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Trump and Clinton Battle for North Carolina; Trump Social Media Chief Defends Tweet; Three Suicide Bombings Rock Saudi Arabia in One Day; Iraq's Interior Minister Resigns After Attack; Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired July 05, 2016 - 10:00   ET

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

[10:00:01] CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: This as controversies dogged both campaigns. Hillary Clinton trying to increase her likability by hitching a ride to Charlotte with President Obama on board Air Force One. This will be their first campaign event together ever. And we'll hear from Clinton first. But later this -- actually we'll hear from Clinton first. She's going to address the National Education Association just about 45 minutes from now, and then she'll hop aboard Air Force One with the president.

In the meantime, in Raleigh Donald Trump continues to fuel veep speculation, this time teaming up with rumored pick Senator Bob Corker.

We've got our ream of CNN reporters covering it all for you. Michelle Kosinski live in Charlotte where Clinton will be holding that big event with the president hours from now.

Good morning, Michelle.

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol. Right. This appearance is a long time coming. I mean, as long as we've seen Hillary Clinton on the trail, the White House has been taking questions, when is President Obama going to endorse her, when is he going to get out there? We know that he's been eager to get on the campaign trail. Well, today kicks all that off.

And of course, the Clinton campaign is wanting to get as much out of this as they possibly can. I mean, the pictures that they're going to want to see, the both of them arriving here in Charlotte on Air Force One, walking down those steps together, appearing on stage shoulder- to-shoulder, in this rally in a battleground state.

I mean, I can't tell you how many people we've talked to since we've been here. I've said on both sides they don't know who they're voting for. They don't really like either candidate that much. That's what we keep hearing. And that's why both sides want a piece of this. And at the same time, later on today we're going to see Donald Trump in North Carolina, also in a different city, in Raleigh. He's going to be hitting Hillary Clinton as we've seen him doing.

But this morning he was criticizing the Obama-Clinton appearance. Listen to this, saying in a tweet, "Taxpayers are paying a fortune for the use of Air Force One on the campaign trail by President Obama and crooked Hillary, a total disgrace."

Well, he is right about taxpayers having to foot a big part of this big bill for this kind of travel. I mean, Air force One we know costs about $200,000 an hour to operate and taxpayers do have to pay a chunk of that. I mean, normally this would be something that would be official travel for the president, but because this is campaign travel, the Clinton campaign does have to kick in for it. The way they average it out is looking at what the campaign would pay if they chartered a plane of this size for this amount of time. The exact numbers, though, the White House likes to keep that a secret.

The White House doesn't like to reveal exactly how it's broken down, but you know they're going to face questions about this today because of the way this has come up. So we're going to hear more about that a little bit later on -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Michelle Kosinski reporting live from Charlotte, North Carolina. And as Donald Trump prepares to rally supporters later today, his campaign is still dealing with the fallout from that tweet that critics slammed as anti-Semitic. Trump is finally responding and laying the blame at Hillary Clinton's feet for what he says are, quote, "false attacks."

CNN's Jason Carroll is following that side of the political spectrum. Good morning.

JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: And good morning to you, Carol. As you know the man at the center of this debate is not just Donald Trump, it's also the campaign's social media director, Daniel Scavino. Just within the past hour Scavino weighed in with a tweet. Let me read it to you, it say, "For the MSM," that means the mainstream media, "to suggest that I am anti-Semite is awful. I probably celebrate holidays with my wife's amazing Jewish family for the past 16 years."

Scavino is the one who is responsible for putting out that tweet. Scavino says that what he did was he chose that off of Microsoft shapes. He says it was a sheriff's symbol, not the Jewish Star of David. Scavino also saying in a statement, I want to read this to you because it also weighs into what's going on here. He says, anti- Hillary -- he said he got this image and that it was lifted from an anti-Hillary Twitter user where countless images appear, he said, and not sourced from an anti-Semitic Web site.

So now finally we have this man weighing in on this particular issue, adding another wrinkle to this saying, look, my wife is Jewish, there's no way I am an anti-Semite. There is his picture there. Dan Scavino. But I think what you're going to hear now from Trump's critics, what they're going to say is, look, we understand Trump has got Jewish people in his family. As you know his son-in-law is Jewish, his daughter converted. But you have to look beyond your own family, you have to look beyond your campaign, and you have to look at how images like this could possibly be perceived.

COSTELLO: Yes. And just to be clear, so the social media director pulled the image from an anti-Hillary site. CARROLL: Correct.

COSTELLO: And then fashioned his own tweet --

CARROLL: And then he says -- but here's the problem with that. As you know, CNN found that very same image on a Web site that was posted, what, some 10 days ago, and that Web site definitely fed into anti-Semitic ideology. So this is something that the campaign is going to have to try to square off in some way.

[10:05:05] COSTELLO: All right. Jason Carroll, thanks so much.

With me now to talk about this and more, Douglas Brinkley, CNN presidential historian, and John Avlon, editor-in-chief of the "Daily Beast." He's also a CNN politic analyst.

Welcome to both of you. So, John, this tweet.

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

COSTELLO: This tweet, is everyone making a mountain out of a mole hill here?

AVLON: I don't think so. Look, this is not -- this is about more than this specific tweet. And the issue is not whether Donald Trump or his social media director are anti-Semitic or racist. I think that's an unfair accusation. The underlying issue is, however, that so many of the things that from Donald Trump and his account have tweeted from have come from these sort of absurd corners of the Internet, HN in this case, that are these sort of flurry of anti- Semitic and racist means.

And this is the kind of swamp that they keep fishing from. And if a disproportionate number of your supporters are racist or anti-Semitic, then they're responding to something you're saying, and there's a deeper degree of responsibility that comes from that, in addition to the fact that they keep re-tweeting these unhinged accounts. So there is direct responsibility to that account that needs to be taken into account.

COSTELLO: So, Douglas, has this ever happened in presidential races past? Not the tweeting because I know it didn't exist, but you know what I mean.

DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Sure. I mean, there are always, you know, problems that come up. They're dealing with race or anti-Semitism. You know, I edited Nixon's tapes recently, and Nixon was a well-known anti-Semite who would say horrible things all the time. You know, you have political seasons, Jimmy Carter famously mentioned that he had lust in his heart in a "Playboy" interview and he got excoriated for that. There's constantly these kinds of things coming up.

However, I think John is exactly right that there -- the Trump campaign seems to be attracted to these white supremacist, anti- Semitic places on the Internet. And where they got this from or not, somebody there in Trump camp should have recognized that for most Jewish Americans seeing that was the Star of David, not a sheriff's star. So it's -- at the very least, just bad communications director not thinking through the ramifications of just throwing stuff up there.

And it's part of the problem I think of the Internet. We tend to just kind of quickly without thinking unleash things out there on the public. And then we're always either trying to -- rain it back in or, you know, bottle it back up.

COSTELLO: That's true. And in fact, John, I just want to lay this by our viewers. Ben Carson, Dr. Ben Carson who is a Trump supporter, right, a surrogate. He said -- he sent out a tweet saying this, "Social media provides a great platform for discourse but we must be careful with the messages we send out."

So Dr. Carson seems to be saying there was something wrong.

AVLON: Good, Donald.

COSTELLO: There is something to -- right, exactly. Will it work?

AVLON: Yes. And -- well, look, I mean, you know, Donald Trump, you live by the sword, you die by the sword sometimes. And Donald Trump has used social media enormously effectively, particularly Twitter through the course of this campaign to create unfiltered views. The problem is when he re-tweets a pattern of re-tweeting people who aren't just sort of picking up images of supporters online, you've got to go deep into the vowels of the Internet to Fortune and HN and these anti-Semitic, you know, and racist sites that are often are fixated on hating Hillary. So if you're going fishing on those waters, don't be surprised if you pull up some awful hideous stuff.

COSTELLO: OK. So, Douglas, on the Hillary front. Hillary Clinton will be flying aboard Air Force One with President Obama. They'll land in an important swing state, North Carolina. She's trying to build trust and likability through President Obama. Will that work?

BRINKLEY: Well, it's going to help her tremendously. I mean, North Carolina is a state that Barack Obama was able to carry the first time he ran, and, you know, that's a big deal, if she can make up playing in North Carolina. But I think Obama is going to be the super surrogate not Bill Clinton. I think he has a third campaign in him, Barack Obama. His legacy is at stake. And if you bring him into college campuses or into cities like Columbus or Cincinnati or Orlando, and particularly with African-American community where Barack Obama has a 95 percent approval rating, he could really be a significant person in this campaign if he gets behind Hillary Clinton in the right ways.

And he also has a genius of getting under Donald Trump's skin. He knows how to say the right things like ignorance isn't cool, or, you know, just little jabs that seem to hold up. And Obama now has a public approval rating fairly high, you know, up in the 50s.

COSTELLO: Right, 51 percent. John, Donald Trump is also going to be in North Carolina. He announced that on Saturday. Hillary Clinton announced her trip the previous Thursday. So is Donald Trump trying to, like, you know, take some of the focus off President Obama along with Hillary Clinton, both getting off Air Force One?

[10:10:07] AVLON: Maybe. But, look, North Carolina is a must-win for Donald Trump. The problem is, the demographic map in a lot of these, you know, southern states like Virginia and North Carolina that have become swing means it's more difficult for Republicans to win. In the past, they could have taken it for granted. Not so anymore. Particularly if Hillary Clinton picks like a Tim Kaine, for example, from Virginia as her VP nominee.

But the fact is, is that, you know, the Democrats just need to peel off a couple more swing states and the Republicans are in deep electoral map trouble. So he's going to have to deflect all he can, but he's fighting out fires within his own party as well. And as Doug just pointed out, the fact that President Clinton -- President Obama has an approval rating that's over 50 percent, that's basically double where President George W. Bush was at this point.

So it's unusual for a president to be campaigning in the third term, but he could be a very powerful surrogate as Doug just said.

COSTELLO: All right. Douglas Brinkley, John Avlon, thanks to both of you.

At the top of the hour, interestingly enough, the FBI director James Comey is due to hold a news conference. Now there's no official word on what exactly he'd going to talk about. Buy there are several possibilities.

This news conference comes amid an alarming spike of suicide bombings overseas. Some claimed by ISIS, others likely inspired by the group. And then there's that investigation to Hillary Clinton's use of a private e-mail server and whether she or her aides broke the law. The FBI interviewed Clinton over the weekend as you know. The FBI director expected to talk at the top of the hour. Of course when he does that, CNN will carry it live.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, smoke billows into the air after suicide bombers strike across Saudi Arabia. This target, one of Islam's holiest sites. And now other nations join the outcry.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:15:41] COSTELLO: The Muslim holy month of Ramadan is in its final hours and it has been scarred by violence and terror all by militants claiming to kill in the name of Islam. Within just a 24-hour period, suicide bombers launched three separate attacks in Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally and the spiritual home of Islam. The most shocking attack at the religion's second most sacred site, the Tomb of the Prophet Muhammad. At least four people were killed there. ISIS again the suspect, and are urging its followers to wage terror during Ramadan. Attacks that circle the globe, it's have killed hundreds from Orlando to Europe to Asia.

Let's begin with Becky Anderson, the managing editor of CNN's bureau in Abu Dhabi. Hi, Becky.

BECKY ANDERSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hi, Carol. For the one in five people across the globe who are Muslim, Ramadan, as you know, is meant to be a month of peace and reflection. This year across the Muslim world and beyond, as you pointed out, it has been anything but. While not all of these attacks have been claimed by ISIS, it was that chilling warning by the group's spokesman released by audiotape you'll remember back in late May calling for months of attacks and jihad that has proved to be the precursor to so much of this.

And while not the most deadly, I cannot overstate the emotional and psychological impact the attack on the prophet's mosque in Medina will have had on Muslims around the world. A Saudi source telling me earlier today this was a lone attacker. He was stopped by security personnel as he approached the exit of the prophet's mosque. Just as the call to sunset prayers was ending, he was stopped and questioned and he detonated his device, killing a number of security guards and injuring a number of others.

Were he, though, to have made it into the mosque, he would have been in amongst tens of thousands of worshippers. And the result in carnage might have been just as so spectacular and propaganda that ISIS or groups inspired or professing to be working in the name of have been calling for.

One Saudi I have just spoken to suggested this ought to be a watershed moment. He said what more evidence do Muslims need themselves than an attack on one of the holiest sites to say that enough is enough and to weed out those who might be indifferent to the extremist militants and their actions.

Let's remember that it's mostly Muslims who have been killed in these terror attacks over the past few years, perhaps not in this past month, but 97 percent of those who've been killed in terror attacks since 2005 are Muslims themselves -- Carol.

COSTELLO: I know during the first eight months of 2014 alone, and I'm just talking about Iraq, 24,000 civilians have been killed or injured by attacks. That's just incredible.

Becky Anderson, reporting live for us from Abu Dhabi, thank you.

Now let's go to Iraq where the nation's interior minister resigned just a short time ago. He cites security failures after Saturday's truck bomb that killed at least 215 people.

Ben Wedeman in Baghdad. Hi, Ben.

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol. Not really any surprise that somebody is going to have to take the fall for that bombing that left 250 people at least dead. Mohammad Raban in a live press conference saying he's resigning because of shortcomings in coordination between the security services. Now the government here in the aftermath of that bombing has been scrambling to try to do as much as possible to assuage mounting public anger over what is widely perceived as the failures of the security services. They've beefed up security around the city. The prime minister has

ordered the immediate discontinuation of the use of these completely bogus bomb detection devices that have been used for years, and I've seen it just the other day, by private and government security services in the checkpoints around the city.

They also overnight executed five members of ISIS. That makes 37 in the past two months. And they say they've got another 3,000 people on death row that they'd like to execute as well if they can just pass a new law facilitating that -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right, Ben Wedeman reporting live from Baghdad this morning. Thank you.

So let's talk about all this. CNN military analyst, Lieutenant Colonel Rick Francona is here and David Tafuri joins me as well.

[10:20:06] He's a former Obama campaign foreign policy adviser. He's also a former U.N. and State Department official.

Welcome to both of you.

David, I want to start with you because did you hear what Becky Anderson said? These attacks on the mosque in Saudi Arabia might be a tipping point, might be the thing that draws Middle Eastern countries together to fight a common enemy. Is that possible?

DAVID TAFURI, FORMER OBAMA CAMPAIGN FOREIGN POLICY ADVISER: Well, it certainly is possible. You would hope that it galvanizes the Gulf countries to help more with the fight against ISIS. Of course they have been helping up to now but they can do a lot more. The attacks that have happened over the last few weeks are very tragic, but they are not totally unexpected.

When ISIS is backed into a corner, they do one of two things, either they do terrorist attacks abroad or they seek to attack new cities and towns that they have not attacked before in Iraq and Syria that they seem to think are vulnerable. I think we can expect ISIS to continue to do both of those things because ISIS has lost a lot of territory in Iraq. They went down from about 33 percent of Iraq to about 15 percent now. So they are in a way backed in a corner.

However, they still have a stronghold in Mosul and we have to watch now to see what happens with respect to the operation to take back Mosul.

COSTELLO: Well, exactly, because in light of this huge terror attack that killed 215 people, I think the government of Iraq is stepping back and saying maybe it's not time to retake Mosul. Right, Colonel? Isn't that what they're thinking?

LT. COL. RICK FRANCONA, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: I think so. And of course the dismissing of the Interior Ministry falls right into that. They have to reassess what they're doing. You know, and we've talked about this before, Carol. The residents of Baghdad are more concerned about their own security than this eventual, inevitable fall of Mosul. I mean, the Iraqi government will eventually go back and retake Mosul. But they have to secure Baghdad first.

Everybody thought with the fall of Fallujah and the ridding of ISIS from Anbar Province that the security in Baghdad would improve. This is what Abadi -- Prime Minister Abadi was telling the Iraqi people. But we've seen just in the last couple of days that that's just not true. So I think they're going to step back, reassess what they're doing.

And I think David is right. ISIS is going to continue to do this because this is success for them. And they're going to continue to undermine the Iraqi government just like they're trying to undermine the Saudi government. This is typical.

COSTELLO: No, that's right --

FRANCONA: Go ahead.

COSTELLO: It is typical, David. I ask you, here is a suicide bomber that blows himself up outside a mosque. It could have been awful, it could have been terrible. And what is Saudi Arabia doing about it? What are they doing?

TAFURI: Well, Saudi Arabia, you know, they have to maintain their own internal security. I think they have a pretty good handle on that. Obviously they'll probably make additional changes to their security procedures. But they also need to be supporting the effort to take out ISIS in the places where it's very strong in Syria and Iraq, and they ought to be contributing more to that effort, including perhaps contributing, you know, Sunni soldiers who could assist perhaps on the ground.

It may ultimately take a ground force to push ISIS out. And I think the bombing in Baghdad is very interesting and very telling about the strength of ISIS to continue to do attacks. But remember, when I lived in Iraq and Baghdad in '06 and '07, we had tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers there and we still couldn't prevent attacks like this. So we're going to continue to see attacks like this in Baghdad until ISIS is completely pushed out of Iraq.

COSTELLO: Right. Well, right, that's why Saudi Arabia needs to get involved. But instead what is Saudi Arabia doing? Saudi Arabia is bombing Yemen, right? And it's not targeting ISIS terrorists, is it, Colonel? Isn't it targeting Houthi rebels which are backed by Iran because Saudi Arabia is more afraid of Iran than it is of ISIS?

FRANCONA: Well, that's their big rival in the Gulf of course. And they are involved in Yemen. But they are contributing to the U.S.- led coalition. But we've talked about ground forces with the Saudis for a long time and I think David is right on there. You're going to need some sort of ground force to go in there. And what we're doing on the ground in Syria is not working especially. If you're going to need a ground force and you want Saudi troops to do it, the Saudis have one requirement, that we go in there with them as well. And I just don't see that happening in the current environment.

COSTELLO: All right. I have to leave it there. David Tafuri, Colonel Rick Francona, thanks so much.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, Hillary Clinton hitting the trail with President Barack Obama. Will his popularity rub off on her?

[10:24:33]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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

A bit of breaking news to pass along to you. We are learning that Donald Trump will likely announce his vice presidential pick next week.

Jim Acosta got that information for us. Trump's list is long, Newt Gingrich, New Jersey governor Chris Christie and Indiana Governor Mike Pence. Those are just a few names on the list.

Trump is also considering Iowa Senator Joni Ernest. He actually met with her yesterday. And he'll appear with Tennessee Senator Bob Corker later today in Raleigh, North Carolina. But he's said to make his VP public next week. Of course we'll keep you posted.

On the subject of Hillary Clinton, she is due to speak to the National Education Association, NEA, at any time now. After the speech Secretary Clinton will embark on what you might call a trust-building tour. She'll start her journey with a powerful Democratic ally, President Barack Obama. And the optics surrounding this will be powerful. Clinton will fly to North Carolina on Air Force One. She'll disembark with the president at her side, but it may not be enough.

Some voters simply do not trust her. The latest FOX News poll shows more than half of registered voters do not believe Mrs. Clinton is honest and trustworthy. So how --