Obama to Campaign with Clinton Next Week; Can Donald Trump United the GOP?; NBA Finals: Cavs Look to Even Series.
ALISON KOSIK, CNN ANCHOR: Democrats unite. President Obama with an impassioned endorsement of Hillary Clinton while Vice President Biden and Senator Elizabeth Warren go on the attack against Donald Trump.</s>CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Donald Trump on the campaign trail to unite the Republican base starting with evangelicals. His strategy ahead, and what he promised top party donors. All right. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to EARLY START. I'm Christine Romans.</s>KOSIK: Good morning. I'm Alison Kosik. It's Friday, June 10th. It's 5:00 a.m. in the East. And this morning, top Democrats are closing ranks behind Hillary Clinton in a highly choreographed effort to elevate Clinton as the party's presumptive nominee and disarm her Democratic rival. President Obama met with Bernie Sanders at the White House. Two hours later, the Clinton campaign dropped a web video unveiling the president's long anticipated endorsement of Secretary Clinton. White House correspondent Michelle Kosinski has the latest.</s>MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Alison and Christine. Right, to see this play out was truly remarkable. Here we have a presidential endorsement in a video on Twitter that was released by the Hillary Clinton campaign. When has that ever happened? It was recorded on Tuesday. It was well-produced. You could hear the music behind it there. So, it was clear the White House wanted to let the meeting play out, private meeting between the president and Bernie Sanders at the White House yesterday. It was a lengthy meeting. Let the discussion happen. Let the president hear out Bernie Sanders and work on a path forward. How will he be engaged? How will he work with the White House and Hillary Clinton? Then, as soon as that meeting was over, bam, within two hours, the endorsement was out. And the president wasn't holding back.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I know how hard this job can be. That's why I know Hillary will be so good at it. In fact, I don't think there's ever been someone so qualified to hold this office. She's got the courage, the compassion and the heart to get the job done. And I say that as somebody who had to debate her more than 20 times. I'm with her. I am fired up. I cannot wait to get out there and campaign for Hillary.</s>KOSINSKI: The White House is wasting no time on that either. I mean, now the president is free, unleashed. She's hitting the campaign trail on Wednesday with Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin. And for Democrats right now, it's all about unity. I mean, they want Sanders many supporters to ultimately support Hillary Clinton. They feel that Sanders voice will be crucial in that to rally them, to ultimately go to her side. As well as the voice of President Obama who is such a powerful influence on the younger voters -- Alison and Christine.</s>ROMANS: Thanks, Michelle. As Democrats move to unite, Donald Trump has an issue to get Republicans to line up behind him. House Speaker Paul Ryan repeating his message that Republicans who support a conservative agenda must back the presumptive nominee even if they don't agree with everything he says.</s>REP. PAUL RYAN (R-WI), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: We have a far better chance of putting these ideas in place with a Trump presidency than Clinton presidency.</s>WKOW ANCHOR: Do you worry at all that people are going to hear to the next few weeks and think, well, getting your agenda passing the law is more important to you than, you know, how our nation looks, how our president acts over the next four years?</s>RYAN: Yes. That's a legitimate question, I think. That's why I condemned his comments as clearly as I can. I have spoken to him about it. I spoken to him about other issues and things he said in the past, and I think this has to change. He has to fix this.</s>ROMANS: Today, Trump will work to rally the Republican base headlining the Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference heavily attended by evangelical voters. Then, Trump heads to Richmond for a rally tonight at 8:00. Two stops on the busy schedule Trump promised dozens of top party donors on Thursday he would keep up to beat Clinton in November. All right. Joining to us break it all down, CNN politics reporter Tal Kopan in our Washington bureau. So much to cover yesterday. You finally have this big show of unity among Democrats for Hillary Clinton. I mean, really, a big move from all corners. You know, Senator Elizabeth Warren who has been the only female senator holdout who had not officially endorse months ago Hillary Clinton. This is what she says. "I'm ready to jump in the fight and make sure that Hillary Clinton is the next president of the United States and be sure that Donald Trump gets nowhere near the White House. I'm supporting Hillary Clinton because she's a fighter, a fighter with guts. And then she and Joe Biden go on to attack Donald Trump. Team Trump has been trying to put the judge controversy behind him and move forward to unify, and Democrats are not going to let that happen. Listen to what she said about Donald Trump, really getting a lot of attention this morning.</s>SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D), MASSACHUSETTS: He has personally, personally directed his army of campaign surrogates to step up their own public attacks on Judge Curiel. Trump is picking on someone who is ethically bound not to defend himself, exactly what you would expect from a thin-skinned, racist bully.</s>ROMANS: How effective will Elizabeth Warren be now she is in the corner of Hillary Clinton, even as Bernie Sanders is still holding on?</s>TAL KOPAN, CNN POLITICS REPORTER: Yes, she has been sort of auditioning for the role of attack dog for some time now. She's been going on some Twitter rants against Donald Trump that have clearly gotten under his skin a little bit he has returned in kind on Twitter and they've gone back and forth a bit. On the one hand, I think there was a long stretch during the primary that Hillary Clinton would have loved some of these endorsements and they held out, the president and vice president and Elizabeth Warren, they held out, they held out, until it really was clear that Bernie Sanders was ready to find down the campaign. The upside of that waiting period, she is hitting this general election running full steam with this coterie of really powerful group of Democrats behind her really showing their claws and ready to go after Donald Trump.</s>KOSIK: So, as we see Elizabeth Warren rally behind Hillary Clinton, we see the RNC coming out with its statement saying to its effect, calling her a sellout, referring to -- calling Elizabeth Warren a sellout, referring to Hillary Clinton speeches on Wall Street, about her ties to the fossil fuel industry. The RNC saying, you know, with Elizabeth Warren standing behind Hillary, she is standing for everything that she has stood against.</s>KOPAN: Yes, it's interesting and it's unclear whether this will be a line of attack. And, of course, swirling below all of this is the speculation about whether Elizabeth Warren could be on Hillary Clinton's short list for vice president. Warren's credentials on Wall Street, on consumer issues, really being a purest on the topics that propelled her to the Senate could really help Hillary Clinton recruit some of that base of Bernie Sanders that really believed in those issues that he spoke so deeply about. It's sort of a TBD. It is unclear if she is on the short list, although Senate Democrats surely seems to hope that she is.</s>ROMANS: Another sort of powerful moment for Democrats is Joe Biden and his full throated endorsement of Hillary Clinton and his attack against Donald Trump. Listen to what he said again about the judge controversy that Republicans would like to put behind them, but the Democrats are not going to let them do that.</s>ROMANS: We had seen some muted praise from Republican establishment types for the new Donald Trump performance after California that he is looking forward and talking about helping his party. Not letting his party down. Do you think that Donald Trump is going to be able to get beyond this judge thing even if you have Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton and others out there continually bringing it up?</s>KOPAN: If Donald Trump wants to get beyond this, I think to a certain extent, he will. He continues to double down on it. If he sort of let's it go away, Democrats can continue to bring it up. It will lose resonance at some point. If he continues to make these comments, he will continue to give the ammunition. You know, a truism in politics, or everything, is timing is everything. And when you're talking about the rollout of the general election, this is sort of the first week that we've had of this general election match up, Trump has come in bruised and battered from these comments that he made, while Hillary Clinton has a sort of triumphant moment of a historical candidacy, with all these endorsements coming and giving her wind in her sails. So, it's a difficult week for him, but I highly doubt that this particular controversy is going to be one that we are talking about, you know, for months, months and months. There will be other things that come up for sure.</s>ROMANS: Interesting. All right. Tal, thank you for joining us. We'll talk to you in a bit.</s>KOSIK: We'll see you in a little bit, about 20 minutes.</s>KOPAN: Yes.</s>ROMANS: The Friday twofer from Tal. All right. Time for an early start on your money. Stocks around the world are lower, dragging Dow futures down with them. The selling trigger fears about global growth. You see some talking about Brexit. That vote coming up June 23rd. Stock markets lower, but investors piling into the safety of U.S. treasury bonds, driving the yield down to the lowest since February. Puerto Rico is one step closer to the government bailout. Last night, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill to help the island avoid collapse. This is being hailed as a bipartisan compromise. President Obama and Hillary ton support it. So does House speaker Paul Ryan. It could make it through the Senate and to the president's desk before the July Fourth recess. Puerto Rico, of course, is more than $70 billion in debt. It has defaulted three times in the past year, has a $2 billion payment due on July 1st.</s>KOSIK: A big relief that it needs. All right. In just hours, a final farewell to iconic fighter Muhammad Ali. Thousands expected this morning, next.