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Lewandowski Out as Trump Campaign Manager; FBI Releases Killer's Conversations with Cops. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired June 20, 2016 - 10:00   ET

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

[10:00:00] CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: A big shake-up for the Donald Trump campaign just weeks before the Republican convention is set to begin. Trump's campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, is out.

CNN's Jason Carroll outside of Trump Tower to tell us more. Hi, Jason.

JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you, Carol. And the statement coming in from Trump's spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, coming in just a short while ago about Corey Lewandowski. Let me read part of it to you. It says, "The Donald J. Trump Campaign for President which has set a historic record in the Republican primary having received almost 14 million votes has today announced that Corey Lewandowski will no longer be working with that campaign."

She goes on to say that, "The campaign is grateful to Corey for his hard work and his dedication and we wish him the best in the future." This coming on the heels of lots of chatter that's been going on about Lewandowski and his ability to get along with other people in the campaign. The ability to move the message beyond the primary into the general election. This is the result of that.

We can also tell you that today we were told that members of Trump's inner circle and his team will be meeting with some of Trump's family members a well to discuss the campaign, to discuss the message going forward. There has been much talk about Corey Lewandowski, his temperament, his ability to get along with folks like Paul Manafort, the campaign chairman. There's been talk about the inability for the campaign really to get on message.

It's affected not just members of the GOP establishment, it's affected donors a well. Many donors holding back in terms of wanting to submit money to the campaign because they're nervous not only about Trump's rhetoric but about the infrastructure of the campaign. So this coming this late at this stage of the game is definitely a major move for the Trump campaign.

Once again, Corey Lewandowski, campaign manager, now out of a job -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Jason Carroll reporting live from Trump Tower.

So let's talk about this. Larry Sabato is the director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and John Avlon is editor- in-chief of the "Daily Beast." He's also a CNN political analyst. Larry, what do you make of this?

LARRY SABATO, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA: Oh, this is another disaster for the Trump campaign. That campaign is deeply troubled. It goes well beyond Corey Lewandowski and whether he is campaign manager. Campaigns simply don't work well with a two- headed or three-headed hydra. He was kind of co-campaign manager with Paul Manafort, but, Carol, it's so much more than that. This is a campaign that is underfunded, that isn't properly organized. The convention itself is questionable in terms of what it's going to produce and how it's going to produce it.

And the Clinton campaign is simply light years ahead of the Trump campaign. Clinton is on air right now with a 20-plus million dollar advertising campaign in virtually every swing state, and Trump exactly zero is being spent on television, which is the easy part, and the right thing to do right now.

COSTELLO: Well, here is a possible reason why. John, CNN has done some reporting. Donald Trump right now has $2.4 million in the bank. $2.4 million in the bank. That's in addition to $14 million he raised in unsolicited donations and the $44 million he loaned himself. At this time in the campaign Mitt Romney had $100 million in the bank.

JOHN AVLON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. Yes, look, I mean, what you have is clearly a failure of organization and that comes down on the campaign manager's head. Of course, it's totally true that in every campaign tone comes from the top. This isn't just about Corey Lewandowski, the dysfunction inside the Trump campaign. It's about the Donald himself. That said this campaign's organizational structure has been besieged by titanic infighting particularly between Lewandowski and Paul Manafort who was brought in to try to professionalize the operation.

Lewandowski helped pull off an amazing coup in the primaries but had no national election experience to speak of. And therefore to ship was really foundering. And he had won some of these power struggles. Remember the political director Rick Wiley kicked out after only a few weeks but this has been a stalwart figure who Donald Trump has given props to, backed in some tough political fights, out very abruptly.

The question is, what was the precipitating event? Was it the donors and other Republican national figures saying this is pathetic, there is no national campaign. Your campaign manager needs to go. Was it member of Donald's family, his children in particular who hold enormous sway on Donald Trump, turning on Lewandowski and saying this is about to be an embarrassment and we need to take it out on the campaign manager right now?

Whatever you say, though, not a lot of love lost, Carol. And one of Trump's key advisers, Michael Caputo, tweeted out within moments of this coming public, "The Old Wizard of Oz clip, ding, dong, the witch is dead." So, you know, when your own staff thinks about you that way, that's what we call a tell.

COSTELLO: That's cold. [10:05:01] I want to bring in John Brabender, he's Rick Santorum's

former campaign manager.

So, John, you've been in the game. You've been in that situation. What do you think happened?

JOHN BRABENDER, FORMER RICK SANTORUM CAMPAIGN MANAGER: Yes, I -- well, first of all, I think that they're absolutely correct that to some extent Donald Trump has been dating two different campaign managers for the last month, and he's finally decided which one he wants to be in a serious relationship. Obviously it's not Corey. It's Paul Manafort. So I think that's step number one.

Number two is you have a campaign that was built to win the Republican nomination but was not in any way built to win the general election, and I think that became very clear, and that's probably more due to Donald Trump, quite frankly, than it is to Corey or anybody else. And so I think what they finally realized is that they had a huge problem on their hands. That they were better off dealing with this right now, more or less I think a lot of people did an intervention with the campaign, and said, look, you've got to change this now.

And there still is time, and I think they decided they had to do something about it, but I was up at the campaign office just a couple weeks ago in which I was struck by walking through it is it seems a lot more like a campaign, a challenger for Congress rather than a presidential race, and that's because they were built as a PR machine to win the Republican nomination playing off and parlaying Donald Trump's ability to get press, but they did not have the money or the energy or the people to build an organization that you need to win a general election. I think that they now realize they have a big problem and that's why this change I think came along.

COSTELLO: But, Larry, Donald Trump has said in the past he wants to -- he wants to run his campaign lean because that's sort of what he wants to do as president, right? He wants to go lean and save taxpayers money.

SABATO: Yes, well, one of his accomplishments this year may be a campaign with no debt at all but not in possession of the Oval Office, let's put it that way. And look, a lot of this, no doubt, is a result of his success in the primaries and his inability to pivot to a general election. He has a campaign staff that is a fraction of the size of Hillary Clinton's, and that may be something that he touts as a rhetorical point, but you actually need all these people to run a continental campaign that's going to be spending, at least on the Democratic side, $1 billion.

Who knows how much Donald Trump will actually be able to raise.

COSTELLO: Well, help us understand that, John, because you need money for advertising, right? But you also need a lot of money for other things in order to win. Tell us about those things.

AVLON: Well, look, it is a cliche to say that it is all about getting out the vote. Ground game matters especially in swing states. Advertising matters to help set perceptions early to try to persuade swing voters to move your direction. That all can't be achieved on the back of earned media about a candidate who is a reality TV star- slash-celebrity demagogue saying outrageous things. It's a different stage of the campaign. You're not appealing to 25 percent of Republican voters. You're trying to win 51 percent of the American people.

That is an operational challenge and when you don't have any operation to speak of this late in the game, and even though it's June, it's late in the game to be starting at zero. Not putting any ads on TV. That is an unforced error with cataclysmic repercussions for all down ticket Republicans running. So that's where the real pushback comes. It's not solely about Donald Trump freelancing and thinking he can, you know, get all of the earned media he possibly needs by saying outrageous things.

All of a sudden the money, the rest of the party says, look, you're taking us down on something that makes the Titanic look like a successful cruise and they're not going to put up with that and clearly the decision to go with Manafort is about the establishment saying let's see if we can right this ship and win because the ad- hocrasy of this is heading us straight to oblivion.

COSTELLO: So, John Brabender, will Donald Trump's getting rid of Corey Lewandowski calm donors and get other Republicans on board?

BRABENDER: Not in the short term. It's going to look like chaos in the short term. But I will tell, having done so many different campaigns that had similar circumstances, you're actually better off just calling timeout, making these changes, taking two weeks to right the ship, and then it will pay dividends down the road but for today it's going to look like chaos and it's going to be a bad day for Trump, but I do think it was necessary not because of Corey's fault, just because organizationally they were set up as a disaster waiting to happen.

Now at least they can make steps and hopefully they will, to right the ship. It was a necessary thing that they had to do. In the short term, though they'll take a hit for it.

COSTELLO: So, Larry, what does this say about Mr. Trump's leadership style?

SABATO: Well, you know, presidents have to organize a federal government.

[10:10:02] You know, it's not just the White House staff. It's the Cabinet and a lot of pieces of the bureaucracy beyond that. The campaigning is the easy part. All former presidents have agreed on that. If only it were as easy to run the government as it has been to run a campaign.

So in that sense this is a bad signal and I think John Brabender, an excellent campaign manager but he's being very optimistic there in saying two weeks down the pike it's going to look better. I don't think it's going to back better in two weeks. I don't think it's going to look a whole lot better in two months.

COSTELLO: Really? Why, Larry?

AVLON: Yes.

SABATO: Because this is fundamental to who Donald Trump is and how he is running the campaign and what the campaign is about, and we've already seen that he wasted weeks after he wrapped up the Republican nomination. He lost his time with Hillary Clinton in a series of polls, and in the polling averages he's now behind about 6 percent. In some polls much more than that. Things have to change much more dramatically than having a switch in campaign managers.

COSTELLO: All right. I have to leave it there. Larry Sabato, John Avlon, John Brabender, thanks to all of you.

Coming up in the NEWSROOM, at any minute now we are expecting new details from the FBI. What the Orlando killer told police during that standoff. I'll be right back.

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[10:15:29] COSTELLO: At any minute now the FBI will take us inside the mind and motives of a terrorist in his own words. They're about to release transcripts of the nightclub shooter's final conversations with police all unfolding as he carried out the worst U.S. terror attack since 9/11. His pledge to ISIS, his anger with America, and his motivations to slaughter so many people.

Those victims remembered in a massive vigil. Tens of thousands gathered in an Orlando park to light candles and take a look at what happened at that vigil. Overhead mourners celebrated the appearance of a rainbow. As you know a rainbow is a long-time symbol of gay pride and perseverance.

Polo Sandoval in Orlando with more for us this morning. Good morning, Polo.

POLO SANDOVAL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Carol, good morning. Well, we expect in the next hour are, as you said, limited transcripts. And this is going to be basically the conversation and the tense back and forth between the gunman, Omar Mateen, and Orlando PD hostage negotiators who were outside. So that's going to be very clear, this is what we expect likely be typed out transcripts of that conversation.

Loretta Lynch, the attorney general, making it very clear that this will be limited because for two reasons. This is still an ongoing investigation. In fact you just have to look behind me to see this is still a very fluid case. And also in her own words, she does not want to re-victimize some of the people who have already been through so much. So again, this may not be the entire picture but likely will give us an idea of what that exchange was like.

Now what would be in that transcript? As you mentioned, that pledge of allegiance of ISIS from the gunman. Also his motivations for carrying out the attack. And also he touches on American policy. Now the attorney general didn't elaborate a whole lot but again we do expect some of those answers.

What won't we hear today or what won't we read we are told that he was fairly limited when it comes to his involvement or possible involvement with the LGBT community. We know that there are several reports out there that suggest that he could have possibly been a homosexual himself despite having that hatred toward the LGBT community. So again, don't expect a whole lot when it comes to that, a whole lot of questions that we -- we will be asking in the next few -- in the next hour or so, Carol, as that press conference here at the crime scene begins.

COSTELLO: All right. We'll get back to you. Polo Sandoval reporting live from Orlando. With me now is Bob Baer. He is with me now. There you are, Bob Baer.

Bob Baer, thank you so much. You're our CNN terror analyst and CNN intelligence analyst. What do you want to -- what do you want to learn? What do you think we'll learn from these transcripts?

ROBERT BAER, CNN INTELLIGENCE AND SECURITY ANALYST: Carol, I want to hear the pledge. I want to see if he was truly driven by the Islamic State and its ideology. I mean, what did he say in the moment. It's very important. Or was this a homophobic attack? We just simply don't know at this point. And not until we get those transcripts will we, and I hope that the Justice Department releases them, the political part in their entirety because it's very, very important.

COSTELLO: I think one of the concerns is they don't want ISIS using this terrorist's words as recruiting tools. Is that fair?

BAER: No, I understand that, but the public needs to know what drove this man. If it was not an isolated lone wolf attack or it was just a hate crime, we need to know that. We need to know what the threat is. We need to know what the chronology is. We need to know who he saw in Saudi Arabia, at what point did he start recruiting himself. Was it his new wife that did it? Was it somebody in the mosque? All those things are very important.

And unless you actually see the detail, we're just -- we're going on hearsay at this point and I think that's a mistake for the American public.

COSTELLO: Isn't it enough for the investigators to know what all he said inside that club?

BAER: Well, it is, indeed, because the way I see this man, I have seen a lot of press saying he was personally disturbed, this was, you know, a mass killer driven by his demons. I haven't seen that -- I don't entirely agree. I think he found a cause and I think he murdered in behalf of his beliefs and only his words will tell us and, of course, what he was looking at on the Internet is very important. We all should see that and the Islamic State already has all the propaganda it needs and the fact that he called up 911 and said he did it for the Islamic State is very telling for me. COSTELLO: It is interesting, ABC News talked to the shooter's wife's

family and said she had learning disabilities and she was a follower.

[10:20:03] What do you make of that?

BAER: I -- you know, if I look at the chronology of this, she probably had a huge influence on him. You know, to find his way. And here is another question, Carol, who was he talking to? A lot of these Islamic State assaulters like this guy don't talk about their beliefs to everyone. They hide them. In the Paris attacks they found out -- and they were listening to the phones of some of these people, they never let on about their beliefs, what they were doing next, so this is very clear for them that they have to watch what they say on the phone or say to others, and only by going through the evidence piecemeal in a systematic fashion can we really get to the bottom of this.

COSTELLO: All right. Robert Baer, thanks for joining me this morning.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, now that it's over between Donald Trump and his campaign manager, what's next for Corey Lewandowski?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:25:25] COSTELLO: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello.

Donald Trump dumping his campaign manager just weeks before he looks to become the official Republican nominee for president of the United States.

Our chief political correspondent Dana Bash is with me now.

Did you see this coming?

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, I mean, a lot of us, really all of us who have been covering the Trump campaign knew several things as just fact. Number one, there has been incredible turmoil within the campaign, particularly since Paul Manafort was brought on originally to be the guy who was going to help take Donald Trump through a contested convention, but when that no longer was necessary, he really became kind of the old veteran adviser.

And Corey Lewandowski, the campaign manager, now former campaign manager, didn't like it very much, and there was really open friction between the two of them. And so that's number one. Just the dysfunction within the campaign that was untenable.

But number two, the fact of the matter is that campaigns don't have this kind of high-level firing if the candidate is doing well, and Corey Lewandowski did an believable thing in helping shepherd Donald Trump through an unlikely, unprecedented primary season where he beat all of these experienced candidates, and so we know that Trump, because Lewandowski had a lot of trouble, felt loyal to him. But now it's a completely different ball game. It's a general

election. He, Donald Trump, is running against a very polished, very well-staffed, well-funded, experienced campaign in Hillary Clinton, and it was just not tenable to continue to have the same kind of campaign that he had in the primary.

COSTELLO: What do you think the last straw was? Like who's -- is there anyone telling Donald Trump, look, this can't go on this way? Who did that?

BASH: Yes. I mean, our understanding is that in large part it was his family, Donald Trump's family, his children to be specific, have been very involved in his campaign. We've seen so in a public way and the same is true in a private way. And that there were meetings with his family and it was enough is enough.

But I will tell you that Lewandowski himself I don't believe realized that this was coming as swiftly as it did because, I mean, I was in contact with him over the weekend because I was filling in for Jake Tapper yesterday about -- and he actually helped get a guest for me. He was involved in conference calls this morning and in communication with reporters this morning. And so I don't think he realized that this was happening, but like -- let's just kind of take a step back.

There's a lot of kind of personal drama here, and it is -- it is the kind of thing that you -- you know, the reason why we focus on campaigns sometimes when there's inner turmoil like a soap opera but if you look at just the message and the messaging and the way Donald Trump has been behaving and how voters have been reacting to him, it just is not working. It worked in the primaries. It worked for that very specific, narrow, Republican general electorate -- Republican electorate but when he goes out after Orlando and gives the kind of speech that he does, when he says what he said about the judge in his -- one of his Trump University fraud cases and it just completely fails miserably with the voters that he needs, that means that there needs to be a change.

But the question, Carol, is whether or not Donald Trump is going to change now that Corey Lewandowski is out or whether this is really the candidate himself making the decisions and whether he can broaden out his campaign.

COSTELLO: Stay right there. I want to bring in Alex Conant. He's a former communications director for Marco Rubio, Senator Marco Rubio.

Welcome, Alex. So what does Corey Lewandowski's ouster say about Donald Trump's management style when it comes to his campaign?

ALEX CONANT, MARCO RUBIO FORMER COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: Well, I don't think it's a surprise to anyone that's watched Trump over the years now that he likes to fire people. I mean, he had a whole show that was him firing people. But I think Corey deserves credit for getting Mr. Trump this far. I mean, what Trump did in the primaries was historic and very impressive. But now they have political problems, messaging problems, organizational problems, finance problems. I mean, basically the entire campaign is under water right now and

something -- it's a recognition that things are not on the right track. If we continue on this trajectory Trump is going to lose by a historic margin. And so I think it's a recognition by Trump and others in the organization that something needs to change. I don't know that firing one person is going to be enough to right the ship. It could very well be the beginning of the end for Trump.