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Clinton Jabs Email Report; Ali's Memorial Set for Friday; Aboard the USS Harry Truman; Sports Headlines. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired June 06, 2016 - 09:30   ET

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

[09:30:00] ADAM GOLDBERG, CLINTON SUPPORTER: I think it's a little more than that. I mean I think the most important thing that came out of the IG's report is that she complied with the law. And it's really important, the fact that she was very open and transparent --

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Well, it said she broke the rules, though. She -- it did say she broke the rules.

GOLDBERG: Well, it referred to some amorphous policies but she complied with the law. She did what other secretaries of state had did. And, more importantly, she was very open and transparent about her use. I think 90 percent of her e-mails went to the state.gov address. So people knew what she was doing.

COSTELLO: But she did destroy e-mails, too, right?

GOLDBERG: Well, I think she delivered all of them. I don't think there's any indication that she -- she deleted any e-mails that are relevant. And going back to sort of the '90s, I think if Ron is right, that this is going to be an election somewhat based on the '90s, I think people remember the '90s and how great the economy was.

COSTELLO: No, well -- no, Adam, I just want to go back to my original question. You know, if she says, you know, everybody knew I was doing it. Isn't that like saying, you know, everybody speeds in this zone, so I'm going to speed, too, and I don't have to follow the rules because everybody else speeds and -- isn't it the same thing?

GOLDBERG: Well, no, I mean I -- well, I think, you know, you know, about the policies, that's different. I mean the big, main point is, did she break the law? And the answer is, no, she didn't. And she was very open and transparent. She never tried to hide what she was doing. She never sent anything that was marked classified. Didn't receive anything, I think, that was marked classified. And she handed over the records when she was asked to do so.

COSTELLO: Ron, is that true?

GOLDBERG: So I think --

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I think -- I think what she's specifically trying to rebut in that comment is the very devastating conclusion in the IG report that she simply never asked for permission. And if she asked for permission, it would not have been granted. And I think what she was trying to say to -- to George Stephanopoulos is, look, you know, people knew. So, presumably, they could have raised an objection if they wanted to. I think that's what she was specifically getting at there.

But can I just make one other point about this ad, which is that it's really striking to me that the first ad from this PAC is similar from the first ad of the Clinton PAC against Trump in that it's entirely about personal attributes. I mean, you know, the Republican race -- we went through the whole republican race, Carol, and I don't know if we could sit here and tell you the difference between Jeb Bush's tax plan and Donald Trump's tax plan. It somehow never came up, things that were historically the fulcrum of a Republican contest. It became kind of a series of personal attacks and insults back and forth between Trump and his competitors. That's the ground that I think he is most comfortable fighting on. And I am struck that, you know, as this -- it may not be that way all the way, but as this race begins with these two candidates at historically high negatives, each side seems to think the easiest way to go forward for them is to further disqualify the other, rather than having a policy debate or making a positive case for their own side.

COSTELLO: Well, Jamie, you could argue that that's working, I mean at least for Mr. Trump, right?

JAMIE WEINSTEIN, SENIOR WRITER, DAILY CALLER: Yes, but -- yes. No question. His whole Republican primary campaign was labeling other people and branding them, something that disqualified him. Jeb Bush was low energy. You know, Ted Cruz lied. And in the case of Hillary Clinton, it's crooked. I think with this ad, we might have seen the nicest ad that's going to be run this campaign. We've already seen that Donald Trump wants to go after Bill Clinton and his alleged affairs, and even, as he claimed on one show, alleged rapes. So this -- this is going to be the nicest ad that's run against Hillary. And Donald Trump is going to go very negative, very hard against Hillary to try to disqualify her, paint her as someone who is not only unqualified to be president, but someone who is crooked, who shouldn't even be allowed to be on the stage because of her e-mail server, who should be in jail.

COSTELLO: So should we expect Hillary Clinton, Adam, to get even more pointed in her attacks than she was last week?

GOLDBERG: Oh, yes, I'm sure, although I think her attacks last week were pretty decimating. I think, you know, one important thing to remember, and it would be worthy of the -- and well worth Trump's supporters remembering history, and Ron I'm sure remembers this from the '90s, what happened to the Republicans who went after both Bill and Hillary? After the impeachment, Bill had his highest approval ratings I think ever. Newt Gingrich was kicked out of office because Republicans, you know, fared really poorly in the elections. Ken Starr went after, you know, Bill, obviously lost his seat in -- any potential seat on the Supreme Court.

And I think to Jamie's point earlier, Trump is going to, you know, if they're going to send ads more like, you know, Trump speaking, I don't think the Republicans really want to send racist ads out there, you know, accusing Indiana born judges of being Mexican and biased and things like that. So, no, I think Hillary's going to be really tough. I think her -- her speech last week was really tough and really effective. Trump has had a really bad five days as a result.

COSTELLO: OK, got to leave it there. Adam Goldberg, Jamie Weinstein, Ron Brownstein, thanks so much.

GOLDBERG: Thank you.

WEINSTEIN: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, Muhammad Ali's final message to the world will be delivered this Friday at his public memorial service. We'll take you live to Louisville, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:38:36] COSTELLO: New details this morning about the funeral and memorial services planned later this week in Louisville, Kentucky, to honor the life and legend of Muhammad Ali. A plane brought Ali's body from Arizona to Louisville yesterday. On Thursday, a Muslim funeral service will be held at Freedom Hall, the site of Ali's last boxing match in Louisville back in 1961. The next day, a public memorial. Former President Bill Clinton, entertainer Billy Crystal and sportscaster Bryant Gumbel are among the VIPs offering eulogies.

And as if a sign from beyond, a swarm of honeybees visited a tree outside the Mohammad Ali center over the weekend. The tree was just feet from a mural featuring Ali's famous quote, "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee."

Ryan Young is live in Louisville with more for you.

Good morning.

RYAN YOUNG, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. A lot of positive energy pushing this way. I can tell you, every time we look at most people who show up here, they have a smile on their face as they remember Muhammad Ali. If you look behind us, you can see the growing memorial. When it first happened here Saturday -- and we've been here since Friday, but when the first roses were delivered, but then I can tell you Saturday it rained all day. And people have actually been trying to take care of this. So they've been trying to organize it.

People leaving personal messages to Ali, talking about his impact. Folks reflecting on that first story about how he even got involved in boxing, the fact that someone stole his bike when he was 12 years old and he said he wanted to whoop that person. That's what he told that cop and that cop ended up teaching him boxing. The rest is history. And I can tell you, there's been a great impact in this area and they're thinking about Muhammad Ali.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[09:40:11] BOB GUNNELL, MUHAMMAD ALI SPOKESMAN: Everything that we're doing here was blessed by Muhammad Ali and it was requested. So, you know, he wanted a memorial service to reflect his life and how he lived. And the fact that, you know, he wanted everyone to be able to attend. He wanted -- he was the people's champ. And so he wanted that memorial service to reflect that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

YOUNG: And the Turkish president will be coming to the memorial service, as well as the king of Jordan. We just talked to a young man who drove all night from Toronto to be here, Carol. He said he wanted to pay his respects to Ali. He started crying here. And he said, that's the reason why he started boxing. He now teaches martial arts to kids. And he's like, this great impact of this man can never be recognized. He said a lot of people have been touched in the heart, will never have a chance to do what he did, which was drive overnight to be here, to stand and pay his respects. So you can feel the impact everywhere.

COSTELLO: All right, Ryan Young reporting live from Louisville, Kentucky, this morning. Thank you.

Next hour, I'll talk to Mohammad Ali's daughter, Hana, about her father's death and the legacy he leaves behind.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, ramping up. A firsthand look at the U.S. war ship that's intensifying its attacks on ISIS.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:45:52] COSTELLO: A non-profit group in Iraq calls it their worst fears confirmed. ISIS is reportedly shooting Iraqi civilians as they try to escape Fallujah. As many as 50,000 people are trapped in the city as the Iraqi military tries to regain control of the ISIS-held city. Over the weekend, security forces stormed a neighborhood in southern Fallujah. ISIS militants also facing intensified attacks from the United States, as the warship USS Harry Truman moves closer to targets in both Iraq and Syria. Fred Pleitgen was one of the few journalists taken aboard the aircraft carrier. He joins us live from outside Krit (ph) with what that was like.

Good morning.

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol. Good morning.

Yes, and the USS Harry Truman has moved from the Persian Gulf to here in the Mediterranean Sea, which means it's only really a couple of minutes of flight time into the area of operations in Syria and then into Iraq. And what the pilots then do normally is they go up into that air space, they get refueled, and then they'll loiter around and wait to get called in to conduct airstrikes.

Now, we spoke to some of the first pilots who conducted missions from here in the Mediterranean. Here's what we saw aboard the Harry Truman.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) PLEITGEN (voice-over): High intensity operations on the USS Harry Truman. Jets taking off every few minutes to hit ISIS, now from a better position than before. The Truman just moved from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea, much closer to Syria. We spoke to F-18 pilots flying one of the first strike missions.

LIEUTENANT "PANUS" PILOT "FIGHTING" 103 (ph): It was a close air support mission. So we don't know the targets prior to taking off. There did happen to be a few targets. We struck those targets.

PLEITGEN: The U.S. says its air strikes are having a major effect as allied forces on the ground continue to win back territory from the extremists in places like Fallujah and Iraq and in northern Syria. American jets not only hitting ISIS positions on the front lines, but also supply lines and cash warehouses.

PLEITGEN (on camera): The U.S. has drastically stepped up its bombing of ISIS targets both in Iran and Syria. And the Harry Truman plays an important role in that stepped up campaign. Now that it's here in the Mediterranean, its jets are even closer to many of the targets they need to hit.

PLEITGEN (voice-over): The increased operational tempo and the move from the Gulf to the Mediterranean put a strain on the Truman's crew. The carrier's tour extended by a full month. But the admiral tells me his men and women are still going strong.

REAR ADMIRAL BRET BATCHELDER, COMMANDER, CARRIER STRIKE GROUP 8: It's a graphic illustration of the flexibility that's inherent with the naval forces. You know, we can -- we can operate anywhere we want to in the world. As it happens on this deployment, our priority has been the support of Operation Inherent Resolve in Iraq and Syria.

PLEITGEN: U.S. commanders believe the coming weeks will be critical in the fight against ISIS, now that the group seems to be losing its grip on some of its major strongholds, gains the Truman's pilots help pave the way for.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have definitely degraded them and we have destroyed them in many different places all throughout Iraq and Syria. So I feel like we've made a large impact.

PLEITGEN: ISIS may be weakened, but some of the most intense fighting against the group probably still lies ahead and so do many more combat missions for this carrier's jets.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PLEITGEN: And, Carol, you know, you were talking about the horrible suffering of these civilians, for instance, in places like Fallujah. Well, of course, the crew of the Truman wants to take care that they don't accidentally hit civilians as they target ISIS there in Iraq and in Syria as well. They say, on the one hand, it's their system of picking targets, what they try to minimize civilian casualties, but they're also using smaller bombs, 500 pound bombs, rather than 1,000- pound bombs to really minimize the impact areas, to try and make sure they hit ISIS and not any civilians. But, of course, it's very difficult, especially when you're talking about big urban areas like, for instance, Fallujah, Carol.

COSTELLO: Absolutely. I was just going to ask you, you know, how long might it take to retake a city like that because, like you said, it's difficult to fight ISIS when they're using civilians as human shields.

[09:50:05] PLEITGEN: Exactly. And that's the big problem is that they are essentially using the civilian population, especially in Fallujah, as human shields. They're hiding out in people's houses. They're forcing, as you said, people to stay inside the city center. Of course, that makes it difficult for those U.S. jets to target ISIS. But at the same time, the pilots there on board says over the past couple of weeks, over the past couple of months, they've seen the front lines move backwards. They've seen ISIS lose their territory. And, of course, they also believe that the fight in Fallujah will take at least a couple more days, if not longer, just to make sure that they can beat ISIS in Fallujah and, at the same time, try and protect the civilian population as best they can.

Carol.

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

Two National Public Radio journalists have been killed while on assignment in southern Afghanistan. David Gilkey and Zabihullah Tamanna were traveling with the Afghan army unit Sunday when the convoy was attacked and their vehicle hit by shell fire. Tamanna was a freelancer hired by NPR as an interpreter. Gilkey was an award winning photographer and video editor. In the 15 years since the 9/11 attacks, Gilkey returned to Afghanistan and other conflict zones many times. In an earlier interview, he described the difficulty of covering stories like these.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID GILKEY, NPR JOURNALIST: You know, when you're taking pictures, it's easier. And that doesn't make it OK. It's not like you put the camera to your face and, therefore, it makes what you're seeing OK. But certainly you can put yourself in the zone. It's I am doing this, and what I'm doing is not pleasant, but you just -- you march through it. I mean it's hard, but you can't get caught up in it and become part of it. You still need to maintain your state of mind that you are helping tell this story.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: The NPR team had been on assignment in Afghanistan for about three weeks when they were killed.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:56:16] COSTELLO: Checking some top stories for you at 56 minutes past.

UCLA students returning to class at the campus' engineering building today. Classes there were canceled after a former grad student shot and killed a UCLA professor last week. The shooter, a former grad student, also apparently killed his estranged wife in Minnesota before driving across the country to Los Angeles.

A West Virginia couple is arrested for trying to sell a baby. Ashley Harmon and Jonathan Flint are charged with child neglect after trying to sell Harmon's three-month-old for $500 to $1,000. According to our affiliate WCHS, they tried to sell the baby to a neighbor.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CAROLYN REDDEN, CARED FOR BABY COUPLE TRIED TO SELL: She was just shaking and jerking and clenching her fists and crying and screaming and he said, well, $1,000. I said, well, I can't just buy no baby. And then they came back the next day, and they wanted me to babysit it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: The neighbor cared for the baby but called 911 when she ran out of bottles and the baby became ill. The baby is now in the custody of child protective services.

A popular stretch of beach in southern California should reopen today after it was closed because of great white sharks. The sharks were spotted about 150 yards out and were estimated to be at least eight feet long. No swimmers or surfers came into contact with the sharks, but the sighting comes about a week after a 52-year-old swimmer was bitten by a shark in the same general area.

An Army reserve officer now has a crown to wear when she's not in uniform. First Lieutenant Deshauna Barber was chosen as Miss USA in Las Vegas. The Washington, D.C., native will now represent the United States in the Miss Universe Pageant.

A record-breaking season, a history-making MVP, and now just two games into the NBA finals, the Golden State Warriors have yet another record under their belt. Oh, I'm so sorry, Cleveland fans. Coy Wire is here to tell us more.

Good morning.

COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS: Good morning, Carol.

It's been some good old-fashioned passionate butt whooping. The Warriors have won the first two games against the Cavs by 48 points combined. That's an NBA record to start a finals series now just two wins away from calling themselves back-to-back NBA champs.

But check this out. Before the game, they honored the greatest champ of all time. Moment of silence for Muhammad Ali. And, you know what, Ali's fighting spirit was with the Warriors. They knocked the Cavs out cold again, crushed them by 33 points, and it was Draymond Green landing the haymaker, 28 points for Green. That's one less than the Cavs Kyrie Irving and LeBron combined. (INAUDIBLE) win 110-77.

And as if going down two games to one -- none wasn't bad enough for Cleveland, their big man, Kevin Love, goes down too, elbow to the back of the head. He's got a concussion. He's in the NBA's concussion protocol. He's now questionable for Wednesday's game three in Cleveland. After the game, Draymond Green and Klay Thompson, they had some fun after being compared to some of the NBA's all-time great teams. Listen to what they had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To say we're better than the showtown Lakers, how can you say it? We can never play them.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We were better than the showtime Lakers.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know, like, say we're better than the Bulls. Like, you -- we'll never play them. You know, it's two completely different eras.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WIRE: Carol, Klay Thompson saying they're better than the showtime Lakers? His dad, Michael, played for those showtime Lakers. Won two titles with them in the '80s. Klay Thompson's about to be grounded, Carol. If I said that about my dad, I'd get a butt whooping. But you know he loved getting that shot on his dad.

COSTELLO: More importantly, what's with the Cavaliers? Come on, what's with the Cavaliers?

WIRE: They need to step it up. Only three teams in NBA history have come back from a 2-0 deficit. We'll see if LeBron can pull it off.

[10:00:01] COSTELLO: If anyone can, LeBron can.

Coy Wire, many thanks.

The next hour of CNN NEWSROOM starts now.

Happening now in the NEWSROOM, Clinton wins Puerto Rico.