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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield

Biden Talks GOP & bin Laden; Trump on Afghanistan; Texas Drops Planned Parenthood. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired October 20, 2015 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00] JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: And that's a low bar.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: I -

BERMAN: Erik Davis (ph), great to have you here. Thanks so much.

BOLDUAN: You lost me at hello.

Great to see you, Erik. Thanks so much.

Zip it.

Thank you all for joining us "AT THIS HOUR."

BERMAN: LEGAL VIEW with Ashleigh Banfield starts now.

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Ashleigh Banfield. Welcome to LEGAL VIEW.

If he's not in, and in soon, that kind of means he's out. And so we begin with the latest public comments from the vice president of the United States, Joe Biden, comments that may or may not offer clues as to whether he will make one more run for the presidency. At a forum just this morning honor former V.P. and unsuccessful presidential candidate Walter Mondale, Biden talked about his own history with President Obama. And if you know what to listen for, you can pick out some subtle, but seemingly deliberate swipes at Hillary Clinton, you know, the former secretary of state and current front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. I want to - I want you to hear now Biden's thoughts on Republicans, whom Secretary Clinton identified as her enemy in last week's CNN debate.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I really respect the members up there, and I still have a lot of Republican friends. I don't think my chief enemy is the Republican Party. They're, you know, this is a matter of - of, you know, making things work.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: On a more specific issue, Biden talked about the fraught decision to launch the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BIDEN: Only two people who were definitive and were absolutely certain. Leon Panetta said go, and Bob Gates, who's already publicly said this, said don't go. And others were 59-41. Some ended up saying go, but it was such a close call. And I joked and I said, you all sound like 17 Larry Summers, the economist, on the one hand and the other hand. And they said, Joe, what would you do? And there was a third option that I didn't really think we should do. I said - well, I said, I think we should make one more pass with another UAV to see if its - if it is him. And the reason I did that is, I didn't want to take a position to go if that was not where he was going to go. So as we walked out of the room and walked upstairs, I said - I told him my opinion, that I thought he should go, but to follow his own instinct.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: There's an awful lot there to pick apart, so I call on senior White House correspondent Jim Acosta to join me, as well as CNN's senior political analyst and former adviser to four presidents, David Gergen, and CNN political commentator Patti Solis Doyle. She managed Hillary Clinton's primary campaign in '07 and went on to lead the Obama team that picked Joe Biden as V.P. and she currently supports Hillary Clinton's campaign for president.

First to you, Jim Acosta. There is some significance to what the vice president just said about the Osama bin Laden account. Unpack that for me.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. I'll try to unpack it and I'll peel back the bubble wrap carefully, Ashleigh. You know, in the last several months, Hillary Clinton has talked about, you know, one of the foreign policy narratives of her campaign is that when it came down to saying which way the president should go when it came to ordering that raid to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, Hillary Clinton has said repeatedly on a number of occasions that her advice was, go for it, take him out, Mr. President. And what Joe Biden was saying earlier this morning at this event honoring Walter Mondale is something very different than that. He said, the only two people in the room who were clear about this were former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and former CIA Director Leon Panetta. And he said in his own accounting of his own role in that decision, he said that the president should go for it.

That is different than what Joe Biden has said in the past. Back in January of 2012 he said at a Democratic retreat, Ashleigh, my suggestion is "don't go, Mr. President." But I should point out that on "Meet the Press" four months later he said that he saw that the president was going to go and he, Mr. President, follow your instincts. So we have some different accounts here from Vice President Biden on this very critical decision. And it's interesting when you put in some of these other comments that he mentioned that were sort of subtle digs at Hillary Clinton throughout this event over at George Washington earlier this morning, he is clearly trying to challenge the narrative that Hillary Clinton has been putting out in the last several months of this campaign, that this was one of her defining moments as secretary of state. He's really going after that, Ashleigh. BANFIELD: Well, there's the defining moment of the debate as well when

Secretary Clinton said that the Republicans would be her enemy had she to choose one, which was the question from Anderson Cooper.

David Gergen, I'd love you to weigh in on that, the notion that Joe Biden just said, I have lots of friends on The Hill. Isn't that really what Americans are telling the politicians right now, we are so sick of the quagmire you're all in, the haters, the constant back and forth, nothing gets done, the paralysis. Is this going to be where Joe Biden can shine?

[12:05:15] DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST : Well, I do think, Ashleigh, that the campaign is going to be about the future and not about the past. So they may have disputes about who said what to whom, who said what to the president and I doubt we'll never know the final truths about who did what on Osama bin Laden. But the - in any campaign the real question is, who wins the debate about the future. And on that issue, I think Joe Biden is basically trying to say, I can work with the Republicans, I can make Washington work.

He may only declare for one term if he gets in, but his theme will be, I'm going to build on the Obama record, but the one difference may be that I'm going to be able to work across the aisle. I come from the Senate and that sort of thing. And Hillary Clinton, pretty clearly, has felt Republicans for a long time were trying to derail her. They were the enemy. So that's a difference and I think that's a more legitimate debate, frankly. It's a more important debate, what's the future?

BANFIELD: All right. And Patti Solis Doyle, maybe weigh in, if you would, on what the Clinton campaign is feverishly doing right now with those comments that just went to air with what the vice president has just said. How does that affect how she strategizes now going forward?

PATTI SOLIS DOYLE, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I think given what he just said, it certainly sounds like he's getting into the race. And I believe that Joe Biden, I had the privilege of working for him in '08 for some months, and I believe Joe Biden is a formidable candidate. He is the sitting vice president. The only time a sitting vice president who is seeking the - his party's nomination for the presidency and didn't get it was Harry Truman's vice president.

He is a straight shooter. He is wildly authentic. And in this political season, that means a lot. And he's beloved by the party. However, and this is a pretty big however, you know, at this stage of the game, this late in the game, he's got a lot of obstacles to get over. He has to hire a staff. And that takes weeks, not days. He has to put together an organization in these states, and that takes months, not weeks. And he has to raise tens of millions of dollars in a primary where Democrats have already hauled in more than $100 million. So that's going to be very difficult.

So I think, you know, in terms of Hillary, if she had a choice, she would probably choose that Joe Biden not get in. But I think that such a strong candidacy will make her better on the trail. And also I think she's done such a great job, her campaign has done such a great job in really getting support from that coalition that Barack Obama built in 2012 and 2008. She's got strong support from women. She's got strong support from African-Americans. She's got strong support from Latinos. So I think, again, that's another steep hill for Joe Biden.

BANFIELD: And since you just mentioned that, she's also just put out today a list of 50 African-American mayors who support her, and half of them are in South Carolina. But let me also show you some other numbers I think that are significant, and, David, I'll get you to weigh in on this if I could. The NBC News/"Wall Street Journal" poll that's most recent suggests that with Joe Biden in the race, Hillary Clinton runs at about 49 percent to Sanders' 29 percent. Biden only gets 15 percent. That is huge. I mean that discrepancy with Biden in the race, again, he's not in the race right now, so let's call it what it is, it's a poll without a guy who's actually running. But his name is included in those polling numbers. How significant is that at this juncture, that's a critical question, at this juncture, to a guy like Joe Biden if he's making this decision?

GERGEN: Well, I think it's too early to tell. Patti was just very generous in her comments about Joe Biden and I think he's going to get off. If he gets in, I think he'll be given sort of a very positive response by many in the press on his first time. But you've got - he's got to come forward, not only just for the campaign team and a strategy, he's got to have a rational for his -for this run. And right now Hillary Clinton, coming off that debate, has a - is in a much stronger position to say, look, you know, I can make this, I can do it and I'm going to have a - you know, she presumably thinks she'll have good hearings now with Benghazi. And so what is the argument for Joe Biden? And I think until he gets that, he can - I think he has to come out and win that argument in order to pole vault from where he is now, otherwise he's going to be - he's going to be trailing her a lot.

BANFIELD: All right, I just want to pop on the -

ACOSTA: Ashleigh, I think - I think that rationale -

BANFIELD: Go ahead.

ACOSTA: I was going to say, to answer David's question, I think that rationale that the vice president was laying out this morning is that he would be the third term for President Obama. I mean he was talking about it, not only from a policy standpoint, but to say that this personal relationship between himself and the president means that he would have that third Obama term, not Hillary Clinton, which is something that a lot of people have been saying she's been trying to articulate in the last couple of weeks. Joe Biden seems to be going after those voters should he decide to get into this race. I don't know why he would be saying these things this morning if he were not getting in, Ashleigh.

[12:10:10] BANFIELD: All right, well, watch the schedule today, folks.

GERGEN: That's good - that's an interesting -

BANFIELD: Watch the schedule today. I just looked and, you know, these are parlor games, clearly, but there's about two to three hours in between each of Joe Biden's events, at least for today, which could be plenty of time for, you know, an announcement. So, Jim Acosta, that's - that's your watch today. You've got to keep your eyes tight to that schedule.

ACOSTA: Thanks. I will.

BANFIELD: Jim Acosta live on the White House lawn. Thank you. David Gergen and Patti Solis, I appreciate it as well. Patti Solis Doyle joining us live as well.

Joe Biden is not the only Democrat making big news today. Presidential candidate Jim Webb says he's going to announce he's dropping out of the race, out of the Democratic race, next hour. And that is coming to us according to two sources with knowledge of this decision.

The former Virginia senator's campaign says he's still thinking about an independent run for the White House. We may find out for sure at a 1:00 p.m. news conference. Jim Webb has had a very poor showing in the polls and completely - or complained repeatedly, you'll probably remember, during last week's CNN Democratic debate that he wasn't given enough time to speak. So much so that it made "SNL" several times. It's never a good sign.

Coming up next, while the Democrats wait to see if Joe Biden will make it a three way race, effectively a three way race, the new CNN numbers show that the GOP contest is now basically down to two, two prominent contenders, which has a lot of people talking about a potential Trump/Carson ticket. Guess who else was talking about that? One of the guys on that ticket. The guy on the left. Hear what he said in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:16:00] BANFIELD: So many candidates, but now just two main contenders in the GOP race for president. That's what the brand new CNN polling shows. It shows that the two men who have never held any kind of public office before are favored by half of Republican voters. Donald Trump is in his accustomed position at the head of the pack, with Ben Carson a very close second and nobody else even above single digits. Now, compare these numbers to a month ago and look at the bottom of your screen. Post debate surge for Carly Fiorina, vanished. Seemingly disappeared just as quickly as it came.

I know what you're thinking, maybe a Trump/Carson GOP ticket. In a wide ranging interview on CNN's "New Day," Donald Trump said, and I quote, "stranger things have happened, but it's too early to think about it." We did hear today what may be the groundwork of a Donald Trump foreign policy doctrine. And I want you to hear my colleague, Alisyn Camerota, asking Donald Trump his views on the United States invasion of Afghanistan 14 years ago this month.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALISYN CAMEROTA, ANCHOR, CNN'S "NEW DAY": You have said a couple of conflicting things about whether or not you thought that it was right to go into Afghanistan. Ben Carson, as you know, this weekend said that he thought going to war with Afghanistan after 9/11 was a mistake, and at times you have said that as well, but at times you've flip-flopped. Was the Afghan -

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: No, I haven't said it. I haven't said it. Look, Afghanistan is a different thing.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

TRUMP: It's next to Pakistan and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. OK.

CAMEROTA: So you think it was OK to - the Afghanistan war, you support?

TRUMP: It's an entrance to Pakistan and Pakistan has nuclear weapons.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

TRUMP: That's a different thing. It's a different - whole different kettle. And one of the reasons I wouldn't have gone into Iraq - I mean the two reasons, number one, they had no weapons of mass destruction. I think Bush wanted to do that for his father, maybe, you know, because actually his father did a good job. He went in and he knocked the hell out of Iraq but he didn't go in. he didn't get into the quagmire. You know, that whole Middle East is a quagmire. Anybody goes in, you're in a quagmire there. You can't get out. And it's not going to change. And it's not going to change with Syria either, by the way. It's not going to be changing - it's like a quagmire. It's like - it's like being in quick sand, you can't get out. In the meantime, we have to build our own country. With Afghanistan, it's different, because they are next to Pakistan, Pakistan has nuclear weapons.

CAMEROTA: Yes, but I just want to ask you about how you feel about the Afghanistan war. Do you think that it was a mistake to go into Afghanistan?

TRUMP: Do I love it? No. Do I love anything about it? No. I like - I think it's important that we, number one, keep a presence there and ideally, you know, a presence of pretty much what they're talking about, 5,000 soldiers, but I think we need to -

CAMEROTA: Right, but originally.

TRUMP: But we really need to do it for a different reason. We have Pakistan next door and Pakistan legitimately has nuclear weapon. It's a real problem.

CAMEROTA: Yes, but - but originally you don't think you -

TRUMP: It would be nice to have other people help us, like China, is taking all of the minerals out of Afghanistan. You know, while we're fighting all of the time, China is on the other side of the ridge with their big equipment, with their excavators, taking all the minerals out. They do nothing.

CAMEROTA: I just want to ask you because -

TRUMP: They do nothing except make money.

CAMEROTA: But I just want to clarify that you do not think it was a mistake to go into Afghanistan after 9/11 because you did say on our air, and let me just read to you what you said on October 6th about Afghanistan, you said, "we made a terrible mistake getting involved there in the first place."

TRUMP: No, we made a - no, no.

CAMEROTA: "We had real brilliant thinkers that didn't know what the hell they were doing and it's a mess."

TRUMP: We made a mistake going into Iraq. I've never said we made a mistake going into Afghanistan.

CAMEROTA: This - our question was about Afghanistan. That day, on October 6th (ph), it was about Afghanistan.

TRUMP: Oh, OK, I never said that. Well, OK, it wouldn't matter. I never said it. Afghanistan is a different kettle. Afghanistan is next to Pakistan. It's an entry in. You have to be careful with the nuclear weapons. It's all about the nuclear weapons.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: All right, so he is, David Gergen, he is saying, I was absolutely speaking about Iraq. You know a lot of people get that confused every so often when speaking, but I want to be really specific here because I have his exact words. They went on a little bit longer and he said - and, again, this was all in, you know, response to a question about the president extending the Afghan mission.

[12:20:02] He said, "at some point they're going to have to be there for 200 years. At some point, what's going on? It's going to be a long time. We made a terrible mistake getting involved there in the first place. We had real brilliant thinkers that didn't know what the hell they were doing. It's a mess. It's a mess. At that point you probably have to stay because that thing will collapse about two seconds after they leave, just as I said that Iraq was going to collapse after we leave."

I don't - I don't know what else to say, David Gergen. He is specifically talking about two policies, the first one, Afghanistan, and then he finished it up with, "just as I said that Iraq was going to collapse after we leave." He seems to be making this stuff up as he goes along. And my question for you is, for someone who has seen so many of these races, why is it, it doesn't matter? Why?

GERGEN: Well, look - look, consistency matters and I think it's - these things will catch up with a candidate, they will catch up with Donald Trump eventually. I think at this stage in the campaign, when a lot of the public is more interested in the theatrics than in the substance of the campaign, he's going to get away with it. But if a series of these build up and he's got flip-flops that are on the record that are as clear cut, you know, and he goes from one position to the other and denies he ever said the first position, that's going to undercut his candidacy.

So my working assumption is that Donald Trump is a master showman, he is terrific at theatrics, and he's smart enough that he could change as a candidate. I think he could become a better candidate. He's certainly had more staying power. This latest poll just demonstrates he's got a lot more staying power than anybody expected. He's been out - basically out front since mid-summer. Everybody thought he'd be disappeared by now, but he's not, and he can get away with these things. He's still driving the conversation. You know, he calls into CNN and, boom, he's driving the conversation. Everybody's responding to what Donald Trump says. That's the mark of a guy who really knows how to play the game a lot better than anybody thought not very long ago.

BANFIELD: All right, David, if that's the case and - then it behooves us to call this stuff out when we see it. If you said it's going to catch up to him, this stuff where he just makes it up and then changes it love on the fly, last night before a crowd of, well, if you asked the fire marshal, 5,600 people, if you ask Donald Trump, 7,900, he said these words, "you know the president is thinking about signing an executive order where he wants to take your guns away. You hear about this? Not going to happen." And then Alisyn asked him about that, saying, there is no such thing at all on the table. Listen to how that conversation with Alisyn went this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: You said, "you know the president is thinking about signing an executive order where he wants to take away your guns. You hear about this?" Now, Mr. Trump, the president has not signed an executive order to take away guns.

TRUMP: No, no, I've heard that he wants to and I heard it I think on your network. Somebody said that that's what he's thinking about. I didn't say he's signing it. I said I think that will be a tough one to sign, actually.

CAMEROTA: But - but the president - yes, it's impossible, in fact. The president -

TRUMP: Yes, I would say it would be impossible. But, nevertheless, he was thinking about it, and I've heard it from numerous networks and I've read it in the papers.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: I've read it in the papers, I see the generals on the TV. When, David Gergen, does this catch up with candidates, because typically before now it has caught up by now.

GERGEN: Look, I - I think that so far Donald Trump has been largely given a pass by the public, but it's also clear that the media is beginning to add these things up, and he's going to start coming after him more and more, just as you are just right now, very insistently saying, here's the record, look at what it is. You said this and now it's that, or you've said something that has no basis in fact. Where are you getting this from? You know, those things catch up.

Look, I - can a politician survive them? Yes. But when - if there are a couple of them. When they get to be a whole string of them people think, you're living in a different planet and we're really not sure that we want that kind of person in the Oval Office. So I think he's going to have to pull himself together and be a more serious candidate if he's going to survive this. He can't go on winging it based on, you know, unreliable information.

BANFIELD: Yes. Well, come on back, because I have a feeling you and I can have this conversation almost daily. David Gergen, thank you, sir.

GERGEN: We may have. OK, thanks.

BANFIELD: Coming up next, uncovering the truth about those undercover videos that were aimed at putting Planned Parenthood out of business. Where did all those graphic images really come from?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:28:34] BANFIELD: The controversy over undercover videos is leading to more fallout for Planned Parenthood. Texas is cutting the group from its Medicaid program. Health officials citing hidden camera videos, like this one, slamming the organization's ethics. Planned Parenthood calls the decision, quote, "outrageous" and, quote, "political." A federal judge blocked a similar move in Louisiana citing concerns about a lack of investigation or any due process. But as for those hidden videos, we are now starting to learn a little bit more about what some people are calling their misleading nature. Senior investigative correspondent Drew Griffin is live in the CNN Center with more, a lot more. You've done some really big digging. Tell me what you found.

DREW GRIFFIN, CNN SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: Ashleigh, the Center for Medical Progress and I guess you would say its founder, David Daleiden, began rolling these videos out this summer and they were damning to Planned Parenthood because they seemed to show the associates of Planned Parenthood, under cover, negotiating, bargaining, talking about pricing for fetal tissue sales from aborted fetuses. The problem though is that the Center for Medical Progress opened the door for controversy when it used two images that are not connected to Planned Parenthood and slipped them into the piece, one of which slipped up a Republican presidential candidate.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CARLY FIORINA (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking.

[12:30:02] GRIFFIN (voice-over): In the second Republican debate, an impassioned Carly Fiorina made this attack on Planned Parenthood, citing this video clip of another baby, in Daleiden's documentary,