A controversial new law in North Carolina. From abc news, its this as we come on the air this week, Bernie Sanders and ted cruz both on a roll. Sanders taking the wyoming caucus, his eighth win in nine contests. Cruz sweeping all the delegates in colorado yesterday after the big win over donald trump in wisconsin. The chance of a contested convention in cleveland higher than ever. Were going to have more on that ahead. We begin with the democrats. Senator sanders is here live in studio. New york ground zero now. And cecilia vega starts us off on broadway. Good morning, cecilia. Reporter george, thats right. Good morning to you. This battle right now is all about new york. Its an empire state showdown. The fight happening on the streets is more heated than ever. News bulletin. We just won wyoming. [ cheers and applause ] reporter with his latest win, Bernie Sanders is on a roll. Coming out on top in 7 of the last 8 states. But despite his 12point wyoming victory, the vermont senator walked away with the same number of pledged delegates as Hillary Clinton. And that shows the uphill battle ahead. The superdelegates factored in. Those delegates free to support any candidate at the convention. Sanders trails by nearly 700. His campaign is now instead focused on the much closer contest for pledged delegates. Those delegates won and lost in state primaries. Clintons lead there, much smaller. 250. Sanders says the contest is far from over. We are on the way to pulling off the biggest political upset in the modern history of america. [ cheers and applause ] reporter and his team is threatening a convention fight if clinton doesnt clinch the magic number of pledged delegates before the summer showdown. The most delegates up for grabs so far, 247, in new york. The next state up. The fight here, nastier than ever. A war of words over who is toe. You said, quote unquote, shes unqualified. This morning, you said shes qualified. So which is it . In a sense, its both. Reporter it cant be both, can it . Yes, it can. In a sense. Reporter bill clinton pulled into the fight, too. Defending his wifes use of the word superpredator. In the 90s, when confronted this week by black lives matter protesters. I dont know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13yearold kids hopped up on crack and sent them out on to the street to murder other africanamerican children. Maybe you thought they were good citizens . She didnt. She didnt. Reporter overnight, at the apollo theater, sanders called for him to apologize. The president owes the American People an apology for trying to defend what is indefensible. [ applause ] reporter as the democratic rivals compete to show who is more of a new yorker, a lighter moment overnight. Clinton laughing off her struggle to enter a bronx subway station. Will you just fix these metro card slots in the subway . [ laughter ] yeah, yeah. It took me, like, five swipes. I mean, youve got to fix that. Reporter and overnight, Hillary Clinton says she needs to win big here in new york to secure the nomination. Unify the party, and move on to focusing on republicans. But Bernie Sanders says hes in this race to win it. Neither side is backing down on this one. Okay, cecilia. Senator sanders joins us in the studio. Great to see you in person. Great to be with you, george. Wyoming, another win for you. A little bit of a streak going. But as cecilia pointed out, you tied secretary clinton in delegates so youre no closer to getting the nomination. From wyoming. But heres the point, george. In the last 3 1 2 weeks, we have reduced her margin by a third. I think the proper number is about 220 delegates or so that were now behind. Were moving to new york state. Were moving to pennsylvania. Heading out west to california, oregon, a lot of big states out there. We believe we have the momentum. We believe that the polling is showing that were closing the gap. Actually, as you may have noticed, of the last three National Polls out there, weve defeated secretary clinton in two of them. I think the momentum is with us. Weve come really, really long way. I think we can win this thing. You say 220. The a. P. Says 250 her lead. Is your position, the position of your campaign that unless she has enough pledged delegates to guarantee the nomination, just pledged delegates, that youre going to take a floor fight at the convention . Heres what i think. At the end of the day, what democrats all over the country want to make sure is that somebody like a donald trump or a ted cruz does not end up in the white house. And i think what more and more democrats are saying is that Bernie Sanders is the stronger candidate. Shes getting more votes. Well, shes getting more votes. A lot of that came from the south. If you look at the polling out there, we do a lot better against trump and the other republicans. Almost every instance. Not every one, than she does. The reason is, we both get a lot of democrats. I got a lot more independents than she does. I think youre going to see a lot of democrats saying, look, whats most important is making sure that we defeat trump or cruz or whoever. Bernie sanders is the strongest candidate. We saw the exchange with cecilia vega over where or not secretary clinton was qualified. Did your emotion get the best of you . Look, heres what i think. Its very clear. Im sure you got the press releases from the clinton people. After we won wyoming, there was a change in tone on the part of the clinton people. They said, were not going to be very nice to Bernie Sanders anymore. Were getting beaten every week. Were going to start beating him up. Were going to new york city. Their tone has changed. They used the word or their surrogates have used the word on whether im unqualified. She didnt say it. She didnt quite say that. Her surrogates implied that. And all that i meant by that is, if you vote for the war in iraq, the worst Foreign Policy blunder in the history of modern america. You take through your superpac tens and tens of millions from wall street and other special interests. If you support almost every disastrous trade agreement in the last 30 years. President obama supported that. Is he not qualified . No, hes very qualified. My point is its a question of judgment. It is a question of judgment. Fracing. Secretary clinton supports a 12 minimum wage when the world is clear we want a 15 minimum wage. So i think the issue more is judgment. Does she have the experience . Is she extremely intelligent, we all know she is. Lets go on to some of the other issues that came up this week. We saw you saying that president clinton should apologize. For the statement he made to the black lives protester. The underlying issue was the crime bill which you supported. Do you have second thoughts . Well, that bill was one of these bills that had good things in it and it had bad things in it. If i had voted against that bill, you would be asking me, bernie, why did you vote on the ban against assault weapons that was in that bill. That was in the senate bill. The final passage. Not the original bill. It wasnt a bill i had to vote for. The the violence against womens act. You would say, bernie, arent you concerned about Domestic Violence . If you check the record, i was on the floor, talking about many of the negative aspects, including the death penalty, which i strongly oppose. The bottom line now, george, is that we need major criminal Justice Reform in a broken system. As americans, we should not accept that we have more people in jail. We need reforms of local police departments. All over this country. And i intend, if elected president , to work very aggressively on that. What exactly do you think president clinton should apologize for . We all knew back then what that language meant. That was referring to young blacks. I dont think in this country, um, elected officials or leaders should be using that type of terminology. Also on this issue, the families of the victims of gun violence are calling on you to apologize. Held a press conference here in new york on friday. And erica smielgeski, whose mother was killed in the sandy hook shooting, had this to say. It is completely phony that sanders didnt have the decency to respond to us when asked for an apology. Instead, he used us as political tools in order to attack Hillary Clinton. I urge senator sanders to respond to the families of gun violence about his record of support for gunmakers and to make an apology. Will you . Let me deal with that. Um, i get a little bit upset when one of the great horrific tragedies in modern american history, unspeakable, becomes a political issue. So let me just simply say this. Bernie sanders comes from a state that has virtually no gun control. I have a dminus, a dminus voting record from the nra. When i ran for congress in 1988, i had to take on all the gun people who disagreed with me when i said we should ban assault weapons in this country. I strongly support president obamas effort to improve the instant background checks so we make sure that people who should not have guns dont get guns. I strongly support doing away with this gun show loophole that allows people to circumvent the law. And the store man provision that allows people to buy guns legally and sell them to criminals. So i will do everything that i can. And by the way, coming from a state, a rural state, that has no gun control, i think im in a position to create the kind of consensus theyre talking about the issue of your vote to shield gunmakers from liability. No, im not. In the sense, look, and the American People disagree. Youre a gun shop owner in northern vermont. You sell somebody a gun legally. Go guy comes in, goes through the background check, sells him a gun. This guy shoots somebody. Should you be sued for legally selling him a gun . Youre a gun manufacturer, you do the same. On the other hand, somebody walks in and says, give me 10,000 rounds of ammunition and 14 assault weapons, should you know that theres something going on . You should. And you should be sued for not responding or calling the police to that. So, that is my that is my view. I understand that not everybody agrees with me. Lets talk about economic issues. You called out secretary clinton yesterday for failing to endorse increasing Social Security benefits. And the tax increase to pay for it. Most people have to supplement Social Security even with the increases youre talking about. So, what do you say to people who saved . You said the wall street the people who need to save. You said wall street is based on a Business Model of fraud. Is it too broken for the people to invest in the stock market . Youre asking me two questions. Let me get back to Social Security. There are millions of disabled veterans and seniors trying to make it on 11,000, 12,000 a year Social Security. And they cant. The republicans in many instances want to cut Social Security. I want to expand Social Security. What i said yesterday is, we have legislation and it has good support that says you lift the cap on taxable income. Right now, somebody makes 1 million. Somebody makes 118,000, they pay the same into it. If you lift the cap of 250,000 and above, we can improve benefits for seniors earning 16,000 a year or less by 1300 a year. Not insignificant and extend the life of Social Security for 58 years. That is my view. Now that is a very similar view to what obama said in 2008 when he ran against clinton. She disagreed with him then. Im asking her now, do you believe we should extend the life of Social Security and expand benefits . Shes not responded to that. Secondly, though, how about the broader issue of investing in the stock market . Is the entire model so broke that people should stay away . I dont think people call me up as a Financial Adviser as to what they should do with their money. This is what i believe. We bailed out wall street, against my vote, by the way. Because, as youll recall, they were quote unquote too big to fail. Today, 3 out of the 4 largest banks in this country are bigger than they were then. When we wail ee eed bailed t out because they were too big to fail. The largest six banks have assets of 58 of the gdp of america. Youre quite right. I believe the Business Model is fraught, as you know, a couple of months ago, Goldman Sachs reached a 5 billion set ltment with the United States government because, in fact, they were selling wort lest packages and sub prime mortgages. People do what they want with their money. I believe well have a better and stronger Financial System if we break up the major banks on wall street. Finally, the tax filing deadline is this week. The issue of tax returns has come up in the election. Secretary clinton has released eight years of tax returns. You have released one years summary. Will you release more . Sure we are. Absolutely. I know the clinton people are raising. It will be fairly boring. I mean, the truth is it will be as my wife actually does our taxes. Shes been very busy doing a great job on the campaign. Yes, well get them out. There will be nothing there that will shock you. Sorry to tell you, it will not be a big story. Not like trumps returns . I dont know what are in his. Mine are pretty boring. New york must win . I have been asked that question from iowa, New Hampshire, every state in the country. Every state is a must win in a sense. Clearly, new york has a lot of delegates. Were working really hard here. We want to win. We think we got a shot to win. If we win here it will be a major boost to pennsylvania, other states out west. Senator sanders, thank you for coming in. Thank you. Move on to the clinton campaign. Cecilia vega showed Hillary Clinton making fun of herself for the subway snafu this week. Saturday night live jumped in, too. The new york city subway is the best way to get around. Ow. Its been awhile. This is a working metro card. Ill just go in the oldfashioned way. Ill take a cab. Cab is the best way to get around. And were joined now by the chair of the clinton campaign, john podesta, he joins us here in the studio. Lets start with the question i just asked senator sanders. New york even more must win for Hillary Clinton, right . Were going win in new york. No question. Hes competing vigorously here. So are we. People in new york remember what a great job she did as a United States senator here. Whether that was reconstructing Lower Manhattan on investing in upstate new york. Or getting the health care that the National Guard people of new york need. They know shes someone who doesnt make promises she cant keep. She delivered. So i think were going to win new york. Whats behind the current slump then . Eight contests out of the last nine . Well, look, i mean, he had this is the best territory for him on the calendar. Most of those were western caucuses. But, when you look at whats happened overall, in this election, shes gotten 2. 4 million votes more than Bernie Sanders. 1 million more than donald trump, by the way. We have 220 pledged delegate lead. We came out of february with a delegate lead. We added to that in march. And i believe well add to that again in april. We have six contests coming up on the east coast. Theyre more diverse. Theyre primaries, not caucuses. Has he done well in the western caucuses . Yes. We think that when you get to a bigger state, diverse states, primary states, were going to do very well. I think well end up april in a better position than we ended up march. Could there be something deeper going on . Senator sanders talks about these issues. Trade deals. Wall street influence. The vote on iraq. Is secretary clinton out of step with the broader electorate . On those issues . No. I think that he cherrypicks. But he came and campaigned against her on the trade issue in michigan. We lost that narrowly. She came back and said, i want to build a future that will create good jobs. I will have your back. Ill reject bad trade deals. Ill invest in manufacturing. I want to see wages growing by having equal pay. And shes put forward a plan that caused her to win those five states, primary states, including ohio, illinois, missouri, North Carolina, and florida. Thats where we built up the very large pledged delegate lead. We saw senator sanders not backing down on the call for president clinton to apologize for the engaging with a protester. I think the president got a little hot. But i think that the charge is misled because i think what the president has done is said that there were unintended consequences of the crime bill. He regrets that. We need to move on. We need criminal Justice Reform. That was the first speech hillary gave. And you asked him again, do you regret he voted for this bill. He doesnt regret it. In 2006, he campaigned for the senate saying, im tough on crime. What was his evidence . I voted for the 94 crime bill. I think hes airbrushing history. He wont do what the president has done, what hillary has reiterated. Which is to say, that this thing has had made the problems worse in some ways. We need to fix it. And thats why shes put out a comprehensive reform to end the era of mass incarceration. And to get the job done when it comes to dealing with the problem of overincarceration, what thats done to communities all across america. How about the issue of Social Security benefits . That does seem to be a clear difference now between secretary clinton and senator sanders. Hillary said we need to strengthen and expand Social Security benefits. She said theres different ways to fund it. But hasnt come forward with it clearly. One is to raise the the cap on earned on wage