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Obama Attacks Trump in Commencement Speech; Trump Strikes Back at New York Times Article on How He Treats Women; ISIS Claims Responsibility For Gas Plant Attack; Christians Under Threat Across Country; Clinton Woos Kentucky Voters Ahead Of Primary. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired May 16, 2016 - 09:00   ET

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


[09:00:01] CUOMO: Teacher Janelle Caverly used her class lesson to benefit him. A prosthetic arm costs thousands. Caverly found the right resources and got a bionic arm made for him on a 3D printer with no charge to his family.

CAMEROTA: What?

CUOMO: And he's quickly learning to use it. Somebody made that with their home printer frame.

CAMEROTA: That's awesome.

CUOMO: Because they wanted to reward his attitude.

CAMEROTA: What little boy doesn't want a bionic arm.

CUOMO: Absolutely.

CAMEROTA: That is so cool. Chris, thank you for that.

Time now for "NEWSROOM" with Carol Costello.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Hi. Have a great day. NEWSROOM starts now.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: Happening now in the NEWSROOM, President Obama takes aim at Donald Trump.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Ignorance is not a virtue.

COSTELLO: And members of Trump's own party not giving up hopes for a third-party candidate.

REINCE PRIEBUS, CHAIRMAN, REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE: They could try to hijack another party to get on the ballot but look, it's a suicide mission.

COSTELLO: Plus, veepstakes 2016. Who's got the chops? Who's on the chopping block? And how a veep pick could shape this race.

And monster bite. A shark attacks a Florida swimmer and won't let go.

Let's talk. Live in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

President Obama puts on a cap and gown and commences a beatdown of the Republican trying to succeed him. The president did not mention Donald Trump's name in his speech at Rutgers University but it was clear who Mr. Obama was talking about. This as Trump faces new criticisms over how his treatment of women who worked and socialized him -- socialized with him comes under scrutiny.

CNN's Phil Mattingly is here with more on that. Good morning.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. If you talk to White House aides. They have been very clear, President Obama is more or less champing at the bit to go after Donald Trump. He's been tiptoeing around it, starting to approach it a little bit. Yesterday he went all in.

But, Carol, he wasn't the only one criticizing Donald Trump. Donald Trump being hit from all sides. A new reality as the presumptive nominee, he will regularly be under scrutiny and regularly under attack.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

OBAMA: In politics and in life, ignorance is not a virtue.

MATTINGLY (voice-over): Donald Trump facing a not-so-subtle critique Sunday from the man he's campaigning to replace.

OBAMA: It's not cool to not know what you're talking about. That's not keeping it real or telling it like it is. That's just not knowing what you're talking about.

MATTINGLY: The presumptive Republican nominee coming under fire amid new allegations of inappropriate behavior with women. Dozens of women revealing to the "New York Times" accounts of, quote, "unwelcomed romantic advances, unending commentary on the female form, and unsettling workplace conduct."

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Nobody has more respect for women than I do.

MATTINGLY: A defensive Trump lashing out on Twitter, slamming the report as a lame hit piece, dishonest, and a witch-hunt. Trump's allies offering a defense.

SEN. JEFF SESSIONS (R), ALABAMA: People have not expected purity on his part. What they're concerned about, they're deeply concerned about, is this. Somebody strong enough to take on Washington.

MATTINGLY: RNC Chairman Reince Priebus acknowledging it's an issue he will have to confront but won't change the voters' decision.

PRIEBUS: These are things that he's going to have to answer for. All these stories that come out, and they come out every couple of weeks. People just don't care.

MATTINGLY: Trump also denying reports that he used to pose as his own publicist in the '80s and '90s under the names John Miller or John Barron.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's somebody that has a lot of options. And frankly, he gets called by everybody. He gets called by everybody in the book, in terms of women.

MATTINGLY: Despite previously admitting using both pseudonyms.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Is the campaign seriously claiming that that isn't Mr. Trump?

PAUL MANAFORT, TRUMP CAMPAIGN CONVENTION MANAGER: I could barely understand it. I couldn't tell who it is. Donald Trump says it's not him, I believe it's not him.

MATTINGLY: Trump's latest controversies amid continued efforts within the GOP to mount a third-party candidate to derail him. Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse and Mark Cuban both declining the job.

PRIEBUS: They could try to hijack another party and they get on the ballot but, look, it's a suicide mission for our country.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MATTINGLY: So, Carol, for Donald Trump a rough weekend but at least some positive news when it comes to the potential for a third party candidate. No real candidates standing out. No real money commitment so far. And the path forward is not very clear. So it looks like the window is closing there. But on the issue of women, Donald Trump can expect to be attacked repeatedly going forward from Hillary Clinton's campaign it's no secret that his numbers with women nationwide for general electorate not good.

So these stories from "The New York Times" obviously don't help. Trump campaign has made very clear Donald Trump believes he has treated women very well, believes he's elevated women inside his companies to the highest of levels. Those are the women you can expect to see in the days and weeks ahead. They recognize, Carol, they need to push back on these stories and they need to push back hard. These are the types of stories that resonate in a general election campaign.

COSTELLO: All right. Phil Mattingly, thanks so very much.

So Mr. Trump is not the perfect candidate. The RNC chairman acknowledged that. Reince Priebus telling CNN as Christians, judging each other is problematic.

[09:05:07] But the article in the "New York Times" about Trump's relationship with women is problematic. The former Miss Utah told the paper Mr. Trump introduced himself to her by kissing her on the lips. A woman executive who worked for Trump says he commented on her weight. But Rowanne Brewer Lane, who is also quoted in that article, says the "Times" article is bogus.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROWANNE BREWER LANE, TRUMP EX-GIRLFRIEND, FORMER MODEL: Very upsetting. I was not happy to read it at all. The "New York Times" told us several times that they would make sure that my story that I was telling came across. They promised several times that they would do it accurately. They told me several times and my manager several times that it would not be a hit piece and that my story would come across the way that I was telling it, and honestly. And it absolutely was not.

They did take quotes from what I said and they put a negative connotation -- they spun it to where it appeared negative. I did not have a negative experience with Donald Trump. He was very gracious. I saw him around all types of people, all types of women. He was very kind, thoughtful, generous. He was a gentleman.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: With me now, Peter Beinart, a CNN political commentator and contributor for the "Atlantic," also here is CNN political commentator and editor in chief of the "Daily Beast, John Avlon, and Jay Newton Small, a Washington correspondent for "TIME" magazine.

Welcome to all of you.

JAY NEWTON-SMALL, WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, TIME MAGAZINE: Hi, Carol.

JOHN AVLON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Good morning, Carol.

COSTELLO: Good morning. So, Jay, I'll start with you. The "New York Times" interviewed 50 women for its article. Were all of them lying as Donald Trump intimated or just the women who had negative things to say about Mr. Trump?

NEWTON-SMALL: Well, I think it's interesting that the one woman who's come forward hasn't said that the "New York Times" was lying. She doesn't dispute the story that he asked her to put on a bathing suit, that he then took her out and introduced her as this gorgeous Trump woman to the crowd, but she just -- she disputes the tone of it, saying that her experience with Donald Trump was very positive while the "New York Times" viewed that sort of interaction as very negative, sort of asking somebody within minutes of meeting them to change into a bathing suit and go around at a party with you.

Whether more women come out, you know, from the story and dispute the facts remain to be seen. But either way, these -- Donald Trump has had problems with female women voters long before this "New York Times" story and he will continue to have problems with female voters long after this "New York Times" story. The "New York Times" story isn't really the underlying cause of his problems with voters.

COSTELLO: You know, I just -- so 50 women were interviewed for the "New York Times" story over the course of six weeks. Nine women were quoted in the article, including Miss Brewer Lane. None of the other women have come forward. But we do have an interview scheduled at 10:00 pm Eastern with one of the women who talked to the "New York Times" in that article. It will be interesting to see what she had to say.

So, John, Reince Priebus says that we should not cast stones anyway and then he intimates Hillary Clinton actually planted the "New York Times" story. Will any of that matter?

AVLON: Well, look, I think when it comes to stories about women, the Clinton camp is constraint by what they can say. But for Reince Priebus to get all biblical and talk about how we shouldn't cast stones or aspersions doesn't really connect with reality when it comes to Donald Trump's entire style of campaigning, which is all about aspersions and insults.

And so I think it's very difficult to play that victim card if you're Donald Trump here. Look, Miss Brewer Lane is the world's leading authority on what happened between her and Donald Trump. But the "Times" piece is about a massive pattern of behavior in Donald Trump -- between Donald Trump and women, both the good, elevating a woman to run his construction end of his firm in the '80s when that was unusual, and a large pattern of, you know, judging women as an adult on a one to 10 scale, which is some that most folks leave in high school, if they even indulge into it then.

COSTELLO: Well, Peter, is it possible that character doesn't really matter in 2016? Don't people want someone who can shake things up?

PETER BEINART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: People may want something that can shake things but character also matters. And we've seen that in the Republican primaries. That's part of the problem -- the reason that even in the Republican primary Donald Trump is showing some weakness. You saw it in Wisconsin, you saw it very strongly in Iowa, for instance. And, you know, I found Reince Priebus' comment to be disturbing in a couple of levels.

First of all he says, as Christians, we're not supposed to judge. What the heck is the Republican -- head of the Republican National Committee referring to us as Christians? We are called a country in which many of us are not Christians. It's not appropriate for him to start speaking as a member of one religious faith, first of all.

Secondly, I didn't notice in the 1990s a lot of restraint among Republicans in terms of judging the behavior of Bill Clinton because supposedly that runs counter to Christianity. The problem here is not the "New York Times" story per se, the problem is that it comes on the heels of what Donald Trump said about Megyn Kelly, what he said about Carly Fiorina, and a clear pattern. [09:10:09] Yes, there are clearly women who he gave opportunities to

in his company. That's great. But many, many other business people are able to give women opportunities professionally without also demeaning women on a constant basis by focusing purely on their appearance.

COSTELLO: Well, Jay, on the other hand, Democratic voters seem to have forgiven Bill Clinton. So why wouldn't Republican voters be able to forgive Donald Trump?

NEWTON-SMALL: The key here for women, for female voters isn't necessarily Democratic versus Republican voters. You're looking at women overall. And so Republicans have always historically had problems winning the female vote. They haven't won -- for a presidential race they haven't won it since 1988, George H. W. Bush. And in fact the only time that they have won it since George H. W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, who won the presidency by -- even though he lost women by mitigating the loss of women to less than 10 percentage points.

Women are by far the largest voting bloc in America. They make up -- they vote 10 percent more than men do. And they make up 53 percent of the electorate. So in this case, you know, you need to mitigate your loss to less than 10 percent. But Donald Trump, by some polls, by CNN poll he had a disapproval rating of 73 percent with women. So there's a huge amount of distance to make up in order to even come close to winning the presidency. And stories like this clearly do not help.

COSTELLO: Well, John, and some Republicans don't accept this either, right? There's still that talk of a third party candidate even though no one has come forward. And it's interesting that Donald Trump sort of deflected this morning around 6:00 am Eastern this morning. He tweeted out how Bernie Sanders was being disrespected and how he should run as an independent. What do you make of that?

(LAUGHTER)

AVLON: God, you got to love the trolling McCharleson (PH) from Trump early in the morning. You know, his deep concern about Bernie's integrity and his newfound support for a third party candidate on the left is really touching. But obviously the real energy behind this is conservatives who feel that Donald Trump doesn't represent conservative policies or philosophy. And there has been a lot of energy towards trying to find another candidate.

Look, as an independent I appreciate it. And there are a lot of obstacles that are institutional to keeping the duopoly of really having a lock on the nomination process from debates on down. They've got to find somebody and they've got to find somebody quick if they're going to do it. But when Reince Priebus said a third party candidate would be a suicide mission for America, what he meant was it would be a suicide mission for the Republican Party and that candidate. America could use more candidates representing independents and less folks who are liable to hijack their party as Donald Trump has done.

COSTELLO: So maybe the antidote for Mr. Trump, Peter, is to pick a VP that women, Hispanics and African-Americans love and then everything will be better.

BEINART: I don't think so. I mean, history shows that people tend to vote for the top of the ticket. Vice presidents, running mates don't make a very big difference. And I'm not, frankly, sure that Donald Trump could find a particularly credible African-American or Latino running mate. He may be able to find a female running mate. But I think that a lot of the perception that people have about the way Donald Trump, you know, carries himself are pretty baked in. So I'm not necessarily sure what a female candidate is going to say about Donald Trump and mitigate, for instance, what he said about Carly Fiorina or what he said about Megyn Kelly.

COSTELLO: All right. Peter Beinart, John Avlon, Jay Newton-Small, thanks to all of you.

Tonight on CNN, would John Kasich consider being Trump's running mate? Anderson Cooper has an exclusive interview with the former presidential candidate. His first since suspending his presidential campaign. That's at 8:00 pm Eastern on CNN.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, in Syria, Christians fear for their lives as Islamic militants vow to run them out of the country for good.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:16:23] COSTELLO: Today the Iraqi military launches a new operation to take a strategic town from ISIS. Ar-Ruthba (ph) is located on the highway between Baghdad and the Jordanian capital, Amman.

Military operation comes on the heels of a deadly weekend in Iraq. On Sunday ten were killed when two suicide bombers set off explosives inside a Baghdad gas station. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack. The assault caught on camera.

Six ISIS militants stormed the facility, clashing with local authorities. More than 100 people have died in ISIS-related attacks over the past week.

Jihadist groups are vowing to oust Christians from Syria, burning down Christians and destroying priceless icons. In the historic town of Maaloula (ph), Islamist militants are no longer ruling, but some Christians there still fear for their lives. Here is CNN's Frederik Pleitgen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): Jesus loves you no matter how you feel these children sing at a religion class in Maaloula, Syria's most famous Christian town. It was occupied by Islamist militants for six months. Several townspeople are still missing.

I want things to be better, like they were before, and for the kidnapped people to come back, 7-year-old Gabriella says. Similar words from 8-year-old Berla Damoun. I want Maaloula to be better and more beautiful she says.

Shocking their reaction when I asked how many of them had to flee their homes. Islamist rebels led by al Qaeda's wing in Syria, (inaudible) al-Nusra invaded Maaloula in late 2013.

This video by one of the groups allegedly shows a suicide blast that took out the checkpoint to the village. The rebels kidnapped 12 nuns from a convent. It took more than six months of intense battles to oust them.

But scars remain, this is the St. Tekla (ph) Convent and Shrine, or what's left of it, a warning to Syria's Christian community.

(on camera): While some buildings here in Maaloula have been restored others remain exactly like this, completely destroyed and mostly burned out.

[09:20:09]And of course, many people who live in this town ask themselves whether Christianity still has a future here in Syria.

(voice-over): Syria is home to one of the oldest Christian communities in the world. Maaloula is the last place where the Aramaic that Jesus spoke is still in use. But groups like ISIS has vowed to oust the Christians from this land.

This member of Maaloula's city council shows me just some of the priceless icons that were damaged or looted, especially the most ancient ones.

JOSEF SAADI, MAALOULA CITY COUNCIL: They fire the other. Then they fire it.

PLEITGEN (on camera): They burned it?

SAADI: Burned it.

PLEITGEN (voice-over): As we left Maaloula, a Christian song was playing on a loud speaker system in the entire town, a sign of defiance from a Christian community that hopes the children learning about their long heritage in Syria will have a future in the land of their ancestors.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PLEITGEN: So as you can see they are quite a sad situation in that town there, Carol. It is still a very defiant Christian community in that town and generally here across Syria, but also one that has already very much been decimated.

There is one little thing that burn since really got to us, remember we were saying that in that town it's the last place where the Aramaic of Jesus Christ is still the normal language in use.

They had an institute there to try and keep that language alive. The person who headed that institute has already fled the country. That's the situation of the Christian community here in Syria, really one very much living in fear -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Frederik Pleitgen reporting live for us this morning. Thank you.

Colombia's president says it's the biggest drug bust in the country' history. More than 17,000 pounds of cocaine seized from one of the country's most powerful criminal gangs. That's eight tons.

Images released by the Colombia National Police show hundreds of pre- packaged drugs laid out in rows. Four men have been arrested and a handful of weapons have been confiscated.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, Hillary Clinton is making her pivot to the general election, but who will she pick to join her on the ticket?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:26:26]

COSTELLO: Checking some stories for you at 26 minutes after, a shark attack in Florida unlike anything we've quite seen before. A 23-year- old woman was rushed to the hospital after she emerged from the surf with a two-foot shark lock on her arm. Rescuers tried but failed to pry the shark loose.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CAPTAIN CLINT TRACY, OCEAN RESCUE: There was very little blood. She was calm. Good vitals. They secured her to a splint on to the stretcher with the shark. She went to Boca Raton Regional Hospital with the shark attached to her arm.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: The victim is OK. The shark had to be killed before it could be removed.

A man flying solo over the Angeles National Forest is dead after his small plane went down near Mt. Wilson. Fog and rugged terrain prevented rescuers from finding the crash for hours. Two searchers had to actually rappel down a cliff to finally locate the wreckage and the victim.

Mandatory evacuations now under way nearly Little Smoky in Alberta, Canada where another serious wildfire threatens the province. About 2,000 acres have burned since it broke out yesterday. The much larger Ft. McMurray fire is about 260 miles away.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently toured the damage from the Fort McMurray fire, which covers about half million acres and it's still burning. Advancing flames forced more than 90,000 people from their homes.

Good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me. Hillary Clinton working hard to ensure that Kentucky Democrats give her a win in tomorrow's primary. Clinton is holding four different events today as she barnstorms the state in one final push. That's on top of the four visits she made yesterday.

And, with the economy top of mind for voters in Kentucky and elsewhere, Clinton is unveiling her plans to tackle the issue, including the person she would be in charge of fixing it.

Suzanne Malveaux is tracking all things Democrat this morning. Good morning.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. You're absolutely right. Clinton making a big final push in Kentucky today fanning out to four different locations. She is really counting on African-American voters to put her in a better place than, say, West Virginia.

Kentucky is a state where she easily won over President Barack Obama in 2008. But this time, she has come under some criticism for saying that her policies with a lot of coal miners, coal companies out of business.

Well, she since disavow that, but she is now talking up this new role for her husband, Bill Clinton. This is a two for one deal, Carol. She doesn't give a lot of details, but she does say he is going to be in charge of the economic stuff. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: My husband, who I'm going to put in charge of revitalizing the economy because, you know, he knows how to do it. And especially in places like coal country and intercities and other parts of our country that have really been left out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: So Carol, a little waxing, nostalgic, if you will, trying to get the voters to harken back to the day when Bill Clinton was in office, unemployment was low, economy strong, but having covered the end of the administration, I can tell you that not everybody was doing well.

But she is trying to reassure voters they won't be out of work. She is also trying to win over those white male voters in the rust belt states, the south, that Bill Clinton quite frankly has greater appeal with.

COSTELLO: Suzanne, Bernie Sanders has already moved on to Puerto Rico and California. Both of which hold primaries next month. But before he left he did take a swipe at Clinton. What did he say?

MALVEAUX: He did. He thought this was a vulnerability of his. He said, quote, "I don't think Clinton is prepared to do all that needs to be done for working families. So while Clinton is leading Sanders by nearly 300 pledged delegates going into these primaries tomorrow in Kentucky and Oregon, Sanders continues to win some contests.

And he's pledged to stay into the race until the July convention.