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Trump Changes Tone On Muslim Ban; Brexiter Nigel Farage Booed At E.U. Summit; Cameron: Must Not Turn Our Backs On Europe; GOP Report: Clinton Should Have Known Risks

Aired June 28, 2016 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:18] CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

Donald Trump's tough talk on terror helped propel his presidential hopes all the way to the Republican convention. But now with that convention less than three weeks away, Mr. Trump is poised to make a dramatic shift in one very controversial proposal -- his call to ban Muslims from entering the United States.

CNN's Phil Mattingly joins us now with more on that. Good morning, Phil.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. When Donald Trump announced that proposal in December, he called for the, quote, "complete and total banning of Muslims" from entering the United States. There's no equivocation there. No real gray area at all.

But in the months since, Carol, every once in a while you've heard Donald Trump walk away from it a little bit. His advisers walk away from it a little bit. Now that's officially happening. What advisers are working on right now, we're told, is a policy memo that will tailor the idea towards just individuals coming from terror states.

Now the definition of terror states and the very specifics of that proposal are still to be determined. But there is no question at all it is a shift. And it's raising questions as to what was the original rationale for the plan and why the shift. One of the key points Donald Trump and his advisers have continued to make is on vetting, or the concern of the complete lack thereof of refugees coming to the United States. Take a listen to what spokesperson Katrina Pierson told our Brianna Keilar last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: What is the vetting process?

KATRINA PIERSON, NATIONAL SPOKESPERSON, TRUMP CAMPAIGN: That's a great question. I'm so glad we could get there. That is a question for the FBI and the CIA who have told us that they do not have a vetting process. That is something that as president Mr. Trump wants to get with Congress to filter that out because we do not have one yet. KEILAR: OK. Can you sort of flesh that out a little bit for me?

Because you're talking about -- you're talking about Donald Trump getting together with Congress. So this isn't actually his vetting process. This is something he wants to work out with entities that he currently believes are failing at vetting?

PIERSON: Donald Trump is not talking about the vetting process. Donald Trump isn't talking about the vetting process. Donald Trump is talking about individuals coming into this country, period. That's it.

KEILAR: OK. You're talking about whether or not they can be vetted.

PIERSON: Until our politicians -- until our politicians can figure out what's going on. The vetting process needs to take place. The FBI and the CIA -- we have departments and agencies that are supposed to be doing this and they're not.

KEILAR: But he's said he doesn't trust the vetting process. So what is his proposal to address that process --

PIERSON: We don't have a vetting process, Brianna. We don't have a vetting process.

(CROSSTALK)

KEILAR: What, Donald Trump doesn't have a vetting process?

PIERSON: No. The FBI and the CIA do not have a vetting process.

KEILAR: But what is --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: Now, Carol, that's not exactly true. Refugees coming into the United States do go through a process and refugees coming from Syria do go through an expanded process, according to U.S. officials. That includes biometric screening, an in-person interview, and law enforcement and national security agencies all working together through that process. But the Trump campaign has maintained and they have been backed up by national security officials in the Obama administration that there are a lot of gaps when it comes to Syrian refugees.

Just based on the crisis that you've seen over there, it is difficult to track people. That is where a lot of the concerns have come from. Still, those concerns, at least in some way, being assuage inside the campaign as the campaign is now moving off that.

And, Carol, as you noted, 21 days until the Republican national convention, a lot of top Republicans have been opposed to this. Now Donald Trump appears to be shifting towards their way -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Phil Mattingly reporting live for us this morning. Thank you.

That term "political correctness" comes to mind. Is Mr. Trump bowing to the very thing he says is ruining this country?

Let's talk about that with Larry Sabato. He's the director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and Patrick Healy is the "New York Times" political correspondent.

Welcome to both of you.

Patrick, Mr. Trump is definitely changing his tune. He's shifting. He went from a total ban on Muslims to what exactly?

PATRICK HEALY, POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: No. Now he's looking at this sort of country-by-country policy that he's not -- you know, he's not telling us yet what that's going to be.

But, Carol, when I was out in Iowa and New Hampshire earlier this year with Donald Trump, what he would say is that when he was at his rallies, the most important thing to connect with, with his voters, that he would sometimes feel like he was losing them, that, you know, they might be drifting away, and then he always knew that he could say, I'm going to build a wall and it's going to be great, or I'm going to ban Muslims from coming to the country.

And the crowd would erupt and get so excited. Donald Trump knew what he was doing by talking specifically about Muslims, that it was a way to connect directly to voters.

COSTELLO: But what happens now since it's sort of like a shift, although we're not -- I'm not very clear on what exactly it means?

[09:05:02] HEALY: No. I think -- and I think they're, to some extent, still making things up as they go along. This campaign organization is just now growing. They've had sort of seven weeks where after he sealed up the nomination they've been going through a lot of sort of internal changes back and forth. I think what they're trying to do is frankly make peace with Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell and sort of the elites in the party.

Because, look, Carol, his base liked the Muslim ban. The idea that well, now we're going to talk about terror countries sounds more politically correct. So who's he appealing to? His base may not necessarily be happy. Other voters may have lots of other problems with him. This is really designed to sort of tell the elites what they want to hear.

COSTELLO: So, Larry, let's talk about these countries that supposedly are involved in Mr. Trump's ban. I mean, is he talking about Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, France? Because terrorists are born there, too. This is what Eric Trump said on FOX News. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, FOX NEWS ANCHOR; Eric, has his thoughts about Muslim and immigration and his ban, has it been somewhat massaged? Is it somewhat, I mean, refined or narrowed?

ERIC TRUMP, SON OF DONALD TRUMP: Listen, I -- you know, I think, as it pertains to a Muslim coming from Scotland, you know, the difference with -- you know, somebody of Muslim faith coming from Scotland is you can actually vet them. I think my father's biggest point was, hey, listen, if you have 200,000 Syrian refugees coming over to this country, they don't have files. They don't have documents. They're not in any kind of data base. There's no records on these people.

The CIA and the FBI and everybody else and ISIS quite frankly has said that they've infiltrated those Syrian refugees. You can't vet those people. So, I mean, he's concerned about Muslims coming from terrorist seeking nations, places that want to do harm to Americans that want to have another, you know, Orlando or San Bernardino or Brussels.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: So, Larry, does that make sense to you?

LARRY SABATO, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA: Carol, you're just being a narrowing (INAUDIBLE) of negativism. You're bringing up all these specific details that are so critical and important but not necessary for a campaign.

Look, I'm kidding, of course. Carol, if you're looking for details, precise details from the Trump campaign you'll look forever. And they change day by day.

The reason he is changing his policy, three reasons. One, his original policy was unconstitutional. That's a big problem in our system when you try to ban 1.6 billion Muslims from entering the United States. Number two, his friends in the Republican Party who really aren't his friends, all the leaders who don't like him, they did not agree with his Muslim ban.

And number three, the public in general is opposed to what he proposed. His base loves it, but the public as a whole -- otherwise we refer to them as the voters. They did not support what Donald Trump was proposing. So he is moving away from the original proposal because he has to. But he doesn't know what he's moving to. No surprise there.

COSTELLO: Well, I was just going to ask you about that because clearly Katrina Pierson did not know any details of this shift in Donald Trump's, I don't know, partial Muslim ban or partial ban on -- so why send her out there to talk publicly about it?

SABATO: Well, you're -- you're making a critical assumption that isn't true, that they have a very organized campaign and communications program. She clearly didn't know what she was talking about, with all due respect to her. But then others in the campaign have been freelancing, too. Even Eric Trump didn't make any sense. Trump himself, that is, Donald Trump, has talked about banning people with bad thoughts.

Well, boy, if only we knew precisely who had bad thoughts. If they don't leave a record on the Internet, it's kind of difficult to figure out who has bad thoughts and who has good thoughts. COSTELLO: OK. So final question to you, Patrick. Will this work for

Donald Trump? Like, let's say he comes out and he lays out a very specific plan, it makes perfect sense. Will that work for him going forward?

HEALY: I mean, in terms of the details, it's sort of like Brexit. You know, we're going to have to wait down the line to actually see if he got elected, what Congress was willing to work with him. In the short-term, his goal is to create some kind of peace and unity within the Republican Party. So three weeks from now their convention is not a hot mess. So there are people who are showing up, leaders who are showing up.

This kind of language helps get sort of the Republican governors and senators who right now, you know, are keeping their distance, to a place where they're more comfortable. So short term maybe helps with the elite. With voters, I think they're going to be like, well, who -- you know, we liked the old Donald Trump. What about this guy?

[09:10:07] COSTELLO: We'll see what happens. Patrick Healy, Larry Sabato, thanks to both of you.

It is an awkward day for outgoing British Prime Minister David Cameron. He's in Brussels for the first face-to-face meetings with the EU leaders since U.K. voters chose to leave the group, rattling markets worldwide. On the same day, Nigel Farage who led the Independent movement facing European parliament, and he had some harsh words for its members.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NIGEL FARAGE, LEADER, UK INDEPENDENT PARTY: What I would like to see is a grownup and sensible attitude to how we negotiate a different relationship.

(CROWD JEERING)

FARAGE: Now -- now I know -- I know that virtually none of you have ever done a proper job in your lives. Or worked --

(CROWD BOOING)

FARAGE: Or worked in business, or worked in trade, or indeed ever created a job. But listen.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Why?

FARAGE: Just listen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: CNN's Nic Robertson joins us live from Brussels to talk about this and more.

Good morning. NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes. Good

morning, Carol. It's had its lively moments here today. You know, right at that moment where we just cut away, the president of the European parliament cut in and chastised Nigel Farage. We've even had the president of the European Commission today telling Nigel Farage, hey, you voted to leave, why are you still here? There's no love lost between these Euro-politicians, Nigel Farage, and those who voted for the exit of Britain from the European Union.

David Cameron of course is coming here, striking a different tone. He spoke a little while ago between meetings here. He said, look, I've come to tell them yes, Britain is definitely leaving but we want to do this in a constructive way. This is what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID CAMERON, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: Well, we've leaving the European Union. We mustn't been turning our backs on Europe. These countries are our neighbors, our friends, our allies, our partners. And I very much hope we'll seek the closest possible relationship in terms of trade and cooperation and security because that is good for us and that is good for them. And that's the spirit in which the discussions I think will be held today.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROBERTSON: So you've had a lot of the different European leaders making their comments coming in. And one prime minister here quipped on the way in. He said, hey, look, it's not like Facebook where a relationship or a status is complicated. He said it's a marriage. You're either in it or you're out of it. So there's a feeling here among the European politicians, you know, Britain's got to get clear -- got to send this clear message of when it's going to actually negotiate to leave -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Nic Robertson, reporting live from Brussels this morning.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, the horrors of Benghazi and the questions that still burn there more than three years later. What did Hillary Clinton know and when did she know it?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:17:19] CAROL COSTELLO, CNN HOST: Less than five months before the presidential election, Hillary Clinton faces new criticism for her handling of Benghazi, Libya, before and after the terror attack that killed four Americans. House Republicans who led the two-year long investigation releasing their findings last hour.

Now, there is no smoking gun implicating Clinton directly, as you know she was Secretary of State at that time, but the report says a perfect storm had been building for months and Clinton should have recognized the grave danger the Americans faced in Libya.

We're covering all of the angles with two political correspondents, Dana Bash. Barbara Starr will be along with us and then we're going to interview a Republican Congressman.

But Dana, I do want to start with you, as I said there's no smoking gun in this report but it's still damning?

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, absolutely. I mean, the fact to the matter is four Americans including the U.S. Ambassador at the time to Libya were killed. And there were lots of reasons for that laid out in this report, you know, starting with the obvious which is that they were not -- they didn't have the proper security.

One of the questions that have been posed for several years now is, why was Chris Stevens, the ambassador who was killed, even in Benghazi when he -- that was kind of an outpost still and they didn't have proper security, one of the things that has come to light in this report are some of the potential reasons he went.

First and fore most, he was very committed to Benghazi in making a U.S. consulate permanent there. And he found out there was a pot of money that could be available to make that happen, money as you learn reading this with a very hard to come by for them in creating the balance that they needed there. So, he went potentially to try to make the fiscal year deadline of September 30th when that money would disappear.

The other interesting note is Hillary Clinton herself was planning to potentially go to Libya the next month, October of 2012. And e-mails and other documents in this report, it says that her aides were thinking that this could be a "deliverable for her." But as you said, this certainly weaves lots of information and lots of narratives about just how this came to be, what happened on the night when this attack was going on, the kind of response and of course the controversial talking point that Susan Rice, the National Security Advisory used talking about the fact that it was a video which turned out to be not the case.

Now, I should tell you that Carol, the chairman, Trey Gowdy and fellow Republicans on the committee are going to be here in about 40 minutes to formally unveil their report.

[09:25:03] And Gowdy, we expect to say what he has said in a press release that we have as they release the whole thing online which is that he believes that it was important to not draw conclusions which he insists that his 800-page report does not do, that it just lays out the narrative based on two years of work. Our understanding is $7 million. He says that it's to make sure that this doesn't happen again. But, you know, he's kind of caught, you know, with people not happy with him on both sides of this.

Democrats are saying, you know, that they were not involved in this, that they didn't have a chance to participate in the report, that they only got the report maybe about an hour ago or maybe a little bit more, and that they were shut out of the process of making these conclusions.

And then you have Republicans who want to be much more sharp when it comes to Hillary Clinton. And so, two Republicans on the Committee, Carol, Jim Jordan and Mike Pompeo, they released their own findings that do draw conclusions, very sharp ones as you can imagine saying that the administration was much more interested in politics, the fact that it was 56 days before 2012 election, and that they didn't want to highlight the fact that there was a terror attack. And so that's why there was a messaging that was very focused on the political instead of what Republicans said that they needed to do.

COSTELLO: All right, Dana Bash reporting live for us. We'll get back to you at the top of the next hour when Trey Gowdy makes his appearance and talks about his report.

With me now is Representative Peter Roskam. He's a member of the House Select Committee on Benghazi. Welcome sir.

REP. PETER ROSKAM, (R) ILLINOIS: Thank you.

COSTELLO: A couple of questions for you. This report was released kind of in dribs like part of the report was released earlier this morning. And then between 8:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. Eastern time, the whole report was dumped. Why was it done that way?

ROSKAM: I don't know. I think there was a larger effort to get the information out in ways that were sequential and that made sense. And there were some pre-arrangements with some news outlets. But I think the larger point is this, America asks its citizens to go to dangerous places and do difficult things. And they do that willingly.

And that happens with members of the military and the clandestine services and diplomats and they go understanding that it's dangerous and the deal that we make with them essentially is if the wheels come off the cart and they're at risk, everything will be deployed to save them. And the point of the Benghazi Committee is that didn't happen. And it is drawing a very stark contrast between the heroism on the ground. And these stories are just unbelievable, the eyewitness accounts of the severity of the attack, the thickness of the smoke, the confusion of the event in its totality, and is seemingly lack of urgency that took place in Washington, D.C.

And moving forward, we've got to make sure that never happens again.

COSTELLO: And Congressman, you're right, this is a very important investigation but I think that some people are confused about it. And I'll give you an example of why. So, actually two reports on Benghazi are going to be released today and also an addendum rather and this is on the same investigation. The addendum is written by Conservatives on the Benghazi Committee who don't think the report is critical enough of Hillary Clinton.

A separate report was released by the Democrats on Benghazi on that Benghazi committee because they say they were left out of the process. That report clears Clinton of all wrongdoing. And as you just heard Dana said, the whole report is going to release by the Republicans of the Benghazi Committee at the top of the next hour.

So, which report should voters believe? ROSKAM: Well, here's I think the larger point. So, it's not unlike a Supreme Court opinion. You have a majority opinion, sometimes you have concurring opinions, you have a minority opinion. But the Democrats to claim that they were not a part of this process is a conclusion that they're coming to of their own choosing.

Remember, this is the group of people that said, we shouldn't have this report, we shouldn't every -- question has been asked, they said. Every question has been answered. Every witness has been interviewed, we were told by the Democrats on the committee. There's no new information.

COSTELLO: But conservative Republicans on the committee have -- are going to release their own addendum. They don't agree with the report either.

ROSKAM: Yes, that's not unusual. Well, they agree with the lion's -- they agree with the report. They're not objecting to the report. You can ask them specifically about their essentially, a concurring opinion. But as Dana pointed out a minute ago, what they're trying to do is highlight and bring into contrast some of the political issues that the main report doesn't though.

COSTELLO: Do you wish -- Does a part of you wish --

ROSKAM: It doesn't mitigate any -- go ahead.

COSTELLO: Does a part of you wish that those Conservative Republicans wouldn't do that and talk about the --

ROSKAM: No, not for a second.

COSTELLO: -- when Trey Gowdy is trying to make this nonpolitical?

ROSKAM: Look, here's the point, Washington's failed. Washington completely was acting as if that was somebody else's family that was under attack.

[09:25:05] The officials in Washington from the State Department to the White House to you name it, the Department of Defense were slow- moving. There was never a force that was going to be deployed to Benghazi. That's what the report finds. Never. Isn't that shocking? Isn't that jarring the notion that these people were basically told possibly somebody's coming to rescue you and nobody was ever coming to rescue them? That's the scandal that we need to focus on. And that's the thing that we need make sure never happens again.

COSTELLO: OK, so there was an Accountability Review Board. It made 29 recommendations to the State Department. The State Department adopted 28 recommendations. Now that the report is out, what's the endgame? What should happen? What needs to happen? Should there be more recommendations? Should the State Department change -- institute changes, more changes like what's the endgame here?

ROSKAM: The endgame here is number one, to have a thorough understanding of what actually happened. And it means spending several hours and as Trey Gowdy pointed out a couple of minutes ago, he said look, the reading of this report, the totality of the report is about the same time as our soldiers were sitting on a tarmac waiting for aircraft to take them to do the rescue mission. So, it's not too much to ask people to read the entire report.

Secondly, we've got to recognize that there has to be an immediate urgency. So for example, the president of the United States issues an order at 5:00 p.m. It's followed up by a subsequent order by the Secretary of Defense at 7:00 p.m. and that information is not transmitted through the entire Department of Defense for hours.

In the meantime, new information we learn that there was a White House meeting where they spent the lion's share of their discussion talking about a video which was never part of the point in the first time. So here, we've got people that are taking their eyes of the ball.

COSTELLO: Should there be consequences? What consequences? I mean, should somebody be charged -- what consequences should there be for this?

ROSKAM: The consequences of a tragedy are unfortunately born by the people and the families of those who lost their lives --

COSTELLO: I guess I'm talking about who should be punished, for lack of a word, because of all of these mistakes that were made?

ROSKAM: Look, the entire system failed them. Chris Stevens goes into Benghazi without any diplomatic cover when he first goes in. He's not covered by the Vienna Convention. He's not covered by the normal things. He's just going in basically on his own.

The State Department is fully aware of the nature of the danger. The diplomatic security officers say we need a more aggressive machine gun to defend ourselves. They make these repeated requests time and time and time again. And you have bureaucrats in Washington that say we're not going to do this. They're more concern -- the people in Washington were more concerned about the disposition of the Libyans. The rescue forces were forced to change clothes four different times. Should they go in civilian clothes? Should they go in military clothes? Civilian, military, they wasted three hours. Those types of things are absurd. They're scandalous but you know bears the burden? The people that bear the burden are the ones who lost their lives. And that's the shame of this.

COSTELLO: All right, I have to leave it there, Congressman Peter Roskam, thank you so much for being with me.

ROSKAM: Thank you.

Still to come of the Newsroom, U.S. markets down nearly 900 points after two days of drastic losses. Will there be a rebound today? Alison Kosik is at the New York Stock Exchange. Hi Alison.

ALISON KOSIK, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT : Good morning Carol. I am seeing green arrows but the question is will they really last? Whether you'll be able to -- look at your 401k today, that's coming up after the break.

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