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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

Latest on the European Migrant Crisis; Trump Stumbles on Foreign Policy Questions. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired September 04, 2015 - 12:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[12:30:00] ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: There are and, you know, it was quite heartening to see because, you know, we've been here for about the last ten days or so. And one has to say that this government is very hostile towards the plight of these people.

The security forces are fairly aggressive and abrupt with them. And to see elements of the population coming out along the road giving them water, handing out dates, just declaring their support for them, one woman was almost in tears when handing out food to the little children saying "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry for my prime minister."

People wanting to show that they do not support the government's treatment of what is happening. And you see that question right there, why I cannot tell you how many times we have been asked why. Why are we being treated like this? Why in Europe a heart of the globe that is known to be fairly prosperous our people in capable of even providing the basics.

There are no big humanitarian aid organizations here. In fact, the Hungarian government was approached by UNHCR who offered to help in any way possible even set up camps, large camps that could accommodate these people.

And the Hungarian authorities told them "No thank you, we're OK."

The camps that the government has setup that it wants these people to report to Ashleigh cannot accommodate this volume. They're already full at this stage. But you have this contrast right now that is playing out between the government's attitude and those who support the government. But it's another portion of the population that is really beginning to come out and show itself, show its support to these people who really, really need it.

And that has been especially obvious and very heartening for them as well to see this kindness in Hungary because it's been a very bitter experience for them here.

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: It's just remarkable the pictures that you're giving us live right now Arwa.

And I just want to mention that the person who is behind the lens of the live camera you're watching right now is CNN Photojournalist Christian Streib who has been working alongside of Arwa Damon for days on end. I don't know that either of them had slept. It's just been some remarkable reporting and remarkable coverage of a crisis that you can see unfolding before your very eyes on a first world street. Desperate people walking -- walking their way towards an uncertainty, a boarder that may not accept them, where would they go next? What will those security forces do?

Arwa, stay with us. I'm going to fit in a quick break. But I have many more questions for you about what these people do next as night falls.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:36:23] BANFIELD: We are giving you live pictures from our Arwa Damon who is walking alongside thousands of refugees who are on the march.

Our Michael Weiss is still with us as well, helping to lend perspective as for the GOP political situation that has landed this crisis smack dab in the middle of what looks like a first world highway dealing with a massive crisis.

Arwa, I just want you to help me to sort of understand, we saw you yesterday in a train station. Where there was just absolute mayhem. A woman with a baby laying down on the tracks, the baby's bottle beside her, her husband hitting himself in the head out of fear desperation in terror and such desperation on those trains, no one would get off the frozen train that would not move for fear that they'd be whisked away to refugee camps.

Are we affectively seeing many of the people who are with you now as having escaped that calamity back there? This is sort of the new trajectory of this crisis?

DAMON: Well actually, Ashleigh, those people that were on the train are still there. They haven't left the train and they're still refusing to leave the train.

These are others who were either at the train station waiting for tracks to open up or in other parts of the city who then heard that this walk was happening and decided to make it.

There are -- according to the organizers, 2.5 to 3,000 people here. But the situation that you saw unfolding on the train, that shear desperation there, the fact that now parents walking, carrying their little children because they're there little princesses and they want to be able to give them that life again, that life that they had back in their homelands before they're turned into war zones.

These are people that are all on the move right now whether it's walking this highway or refusing to get off that train making these decisions because they no longer can take it living on the streets anymore, they cannot deal with waiting with politicians, European leaders to make some sort of a decision. And they cannot go into the refugee camps.

They are terrified of going into the camps here, Ashleigh, because they have already most of them been through one on the Hungarian Serbian border. They said the conditions there were inhumane. They were treated like animals and having come this far they refuse to put themselves and their children through that again.

BANFIELD: OK, so Arwa stay with us again.

I want to continue watching your picture. And as you just mentioned those children they look like they're on their way to school and this is just so traumatizing. If it's 20 to 7:00 at night there and night is about to fall and I don't see any food or water or supply stations where you are.

Michael Weiss, bring in some perspective here. They want to get to a boarder that will accept them. A country that will accept them and while we may see this treatment in Hungary, we've seen furrowed banners saying "Welcome, you know, refugees are welcome here in Germany and other countries," but does that mean that if they get there they can enter?

MICHAEL WEISS, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, Germany has been quite magnanimous in its policy. I mean they're referring to Angela Merkel as Mama Merkel, the savior of the outcasts.

You know, this is hitting Europe in a way that I think Europe was never prepared for. They thought the Syria crisis could be contained. This was the policy that was inaugurated as of 2011, 2012. But I and others have argued this is not a containable crisis.

Half the Syrian population -- I just want to put this in perspective spent 23 million people, entire population of Syria. Half of that number has either been killed, made into refugees or is in internally displaced.

Indeed we're talking about people on the street of Hungry and Budapest. We're not talking about people who had gone from Aleppo to Homs from Damascus to Palmyra or whatever who have fled from one barrel bombs that leads to the next. Or one ISIS invaded city to the next.

[12:40:13] This is not a crisis that can be just sort of sewn up. I mean, you know, President Obama once described this is sort of the Congo of the Mediterranean.

We're not seeing many Congolese refugees pouring into Europe looking to escape barbarism and brutality of any strikes. This is not going to go away. This is just the beginning. We're almost half decade into this appalling attritional war, a civil war in Syria.

We're going to be in another in year, two, three years?

I mean this crisis is going to escalate. It won't stop until the entire population of Serbia...

BANFIELD: Yes, I still want to know where there going to -- you know, I want to know where there going to be tonight. Just quickly before I'll let you go Arwa, if you could, weigh in, I don't see them carrying very much.

Each person might have a small bag or backpack. And when they have families and children what are they going to do when night falls shortly?

Where will they sleep and how will they eat. And how will they be cared for?

DAMON: Well, Ashleigh this is all that they really been traveling with ever since they begin this journey for some it is lasted three weeks, for some it is lasted up to two months.

They just came with these small bags. This is the only way that they can actually make the trip.

And they have been through this before. In fact many will tell you they've been through worst than this, they survived that trip across either the Mediterranean or the Aegean.

They then walked across Greece. They took trains or bicycled across Macedonia, they walked into Serbia. And again into Hungry, they spent nights sleeping on the sides of roads like this. Sleeping on pavements, sleeping wherever they can sleep huddled out often, trying to avoid the authorities not entirely sure where they actually are going to get their next meal, buying it in the small towns along the way.

On this route we have been seeing these brief stations that are setup fairly haphazardly, just people doing it on their own, distributing, you know, water in some instances and dates in others. But there is no set plan here.

The only plan right now is let's keep going as far as we can and let's do everything that we possibly can to get as close to that Austrian border before they decide to stop for the night, Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: God, our hearts go out to them when you see those mothers carrying babies and absolutely nothing else, no supplies, nothing.

And Arwa, you have done such an incredible job of covering this story. You know, I just want to make sure our viewers know how hard this has been for her. I don't think she and her Photojournalist Christian Streib has slept more than an hour or two in the last maybe 48 or longer to bring this story to the world. And it is a critical story. It is at a critical point.

Our thanks go out to them. We'll continue to update you on what's happening in Hungary.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:46:59] BANFIELD: If you don't know Hamas from Hezbollah or Quds from Kurds, don't worry about it because you are not running for president.

Donald Trump is. And now he's slamming a conservative radio talk show host for daring to ask what Trump called gotcha questions about well foreign policy and terror and that kind of stuff.

Hugh Hewitt is set to co-moderate the next GOP debate. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HUGH HEWITT, RADIO HOST: At the debate I may bring up Nasrallah being with Hezbollah and al-Julani being with al-Nusra, and al-Masri being with Hamas. Do you think if I ask people to talk about those three things, and the differences, that that's a gotcha question?

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Yes, I do. I totally do. I think it's ridiculous.

HEWITT: That's interesting. So the difference between Hezbollah and hamas does not matter to you yet, but it will?

TRUMP: It will when it's appropriate. I will know more about it than you know, and believe me it won't take long.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: And let me just clarify to, the person you saw in the left Hugh Hewitt, is actually going to be a questioner during the debate not a co-moderator, a little difference there.

I want to bring in Brian Stelter today because my colleague interviewed the interviewer which is now something we I guess have to do in this very unusual circumstance we are in.

So predictably, Donald Trump was not happy about having to answer questions about stuff like, you know, terror and who runs what. And now he's gone after -- I guess this is the predictable pattern. He's gone after the interviewer, even a conservative interviewer.

So walk me out of this and take me forward.

BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: That's right. Hewitt this morning was blasted by Trump. Trump was calling him a third rate radio announcer. A lot of people actually think Hewitt is a first rate radio interviewer. He's had so many candidates on his radio show. He had Trump on four times this month.

And when I talked to him this morning I called up with him and I asked him why he thought this was not a gotcha question. Why it was a fair question.

And he said "Keep in mind, the head of the Iranian Quds force actually came up at the first GOP debate." So he thought Trump would be prepared

Here's what he was told me.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HEWITT: Soleimani came up in the first debate. So I didn't think it was really a gotcha question. Where I was going to go with the interview originally was to the fact that Ted Cruz and Donald Trump are doing a very good thing in rallying American public opinion against this catastrophic deal negotiated by President Obama, John Kerry, and endorsed by Hillary Clinton.

That was my intent. And we got off track. But that's OK, it's an interview. And, again, I'm used to criticism. People don't like questions they can tell me and they do.

I just want them to keep coming back and answering them and I'll give Donald credit for this. He told me right to my face on the interview he thought that was a gotcha question.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STELTER: That's a good point. Trump did do that toward the end of the interview. Hewitt, of course, has had these candidates on. He had Carly Fiorina on last night answering all the same questions. And she seemed more much confident in her answers.

But Trump going after Hewitt this morning, as I mentioned calling him a third-rate radio announcer.

Well of course Hewitt said "I just now have a Trump tattoo."

He welcomes it, of course so many in the media have been criticized by Trump, so now Hewitt is on the list.

So we're going to have more on that interview on Sunday on my show Reliable Sources. But I wanted to share with some, with you Ashleigh.

[12:50:05] BANFIELD: Well, I just want to add to that as well, you're not the only person who's digging down into this because Marco Rubio said these are not gotcha questions. I'm just going to sort of paraphrase this quote.

He says "If you don't know the answers to these questions you cannot serve as our commander-in-chief." That's another, you know, staunch Republican who thinks that those are important questions.

STELTER: It makes me wonder, since we are two weeks from the CNN debate. How much studying Trump may or may not do before September 16th.

BANFIELD: And we've kind of been at war for a long time over stuff like terror, you know. So anyway, that's that. I'm really looking forward to your interview.

And by the way, folks, you can watch more of Brian's Reliable Sources and the interview on it. It airs Sunday at 11:00 A.M. Eastern.

Thank you and happy birthday, Brian Stelter.

STELTER: Yes. Thank you.

BANFIELD: You're welcome. First coming up we're going to hear from Hugh Hewitt as well, you're going to a lot more from that conservative radion talk show host. He's going to talk about everything that's gone down in the last 24 hours in the next hour of CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

R.J. MITTE, ACTOR, VOLUNTEER: Did you like the last episode?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Growing up with cerebral palsy, actor R.J. Mitte had to contend with a lot of nos.

[12:55:01] MITTE: Having a physical disability, there are so many times people will say, you can't do this, you can't do that. You won't be able to walk properly, you won't be able to talk properly. You'll never have a normal life.

(CLIP FROM "BREAKING BAD" ON AMC)

GUPTA: But Mitte didn't let years of physical therapy, leg braces, bullies keep him from his goal of becoming an actor and an example.

MITTE: So many people are afraid to put these types of characters on television. Having my disability makes me want to prove people wrong. "Breaking Bad" gave me the ability to do so much, to open doors, not just for me, but for other people.

GUPTA: Cerebral palsy is a term for a group of neurological disorders that oftentimes prevent parts of the brain, parts of the brain that are responsible for strength, from communicating with the muscles. The result is trouble with movement. But we know physical therapy can help.

MITTE: Do you like music?

GUPTA: In fact, Mitte credits years of treatment at Shriners Hospital. He still volunteers there, inspiring kids like him.

MITTE: There are so many times people try and they just take children and they set them aside. What truly matters when it comes to having a disability is not letting people define you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: Wow, our thanks to Sanjay Gupta.

And thank you for watching as well. Have a great weekend. Brianna Keilar is in for Wolf. And she starts after this quick break.