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U.K. Forces Lacked Equipment & Plan in Iraq War; Videos Capture White Officer Killing Black Man; Clinton Slams Trump's Business Record, Bankruptcies; Trump Defends Use of Star in Controversial Tweet; Former Fox News Host Sues CEO for Sexual Harassment. Aired 12- 1a ET

Aired July 07, 2016 - 00:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[00:00:10] JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR: This is CNN NEWSROOM live from Los Angeles.

Ahead this hour --

ISHA SESAY, CNN ANCHOR: A damning critique of British involvement in the Iraq war. The Chilcot report says U.K.'s forces lacked equipment and a plan.

VAUSE: Donald Trump's angry rant blaming his Star of David tweet on the media and linking it to the Disney movie "Frozen".

SESAY: And white cops kill a black man in the U.S. The Justice Department now investigating as graphic video of the point-blank shooting sparks protests and outrage across the country.

VAUSE: It is a busy few hours to come.

Hello, everybody. Great to have you with us. We'd like to welcome our viewers all around the world. I'm John Vause.

SESAY: And I'm Isha Sesay. NEWSROOM L.A. starts right now.

VAUSE: Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair insists he made the right decision to go to war in 2003 despite the conclusions of a scathing new inquiry.

The Chilcot report took seven years to complete, longer than the war itself.

SESAY: It says Blair's decision to invade Iraq was based on flawed intelligence and Blair was influenced by his interest in protecting the U.K.'s relationship with the United States. The report also says diplomatic options had not been exhausted.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN CHILCOT, IRAQ INQUIRY CHAIRMAN: Military action at that time was not a last resort. We have also concluded that the judgments about the severity of the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, WMD, were presented with a certainty that was not justified. Despite explicit warnings, the consequences of the invasion were underestimated. The planning and preparations for Iraq after Saddam Hussein were wholly inadequate. The government failed to achieve its stated objectives.

TONY BLAIR, FORMER BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: The decisions I've made I've carried with me for 30 years now and will do so for the rest of my days. There will not be a day of my life where I do not relive and rethink what happened.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SESAY: CNN's senior international correspondent Ben Wedeman has reported extensively on the war and its aftermath.

VAUSE: And he reports that most in Iraq now do not believe the country is much better off today than it was under Saddam Hussein.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The Chilcot is finally out. It describes a well-executed invasion of Iraq by coalition forces although it is critical of the U.K.'s decision to rush into Iraq in the first place.

What followed the invasion, however, was a symbolic (ph), chaotic, bloody day after an occupation ill-prepared, under-equipped and undermanned. I remember reporting from the city of (inaudible) the days after the fall of the regime. There was just a handful of U.S. Special Forces there.

The city was in chaos. Looting was rampant. Angry mobs had burned down government buildings -- scenes played out in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. This was not the regime change Bush and Blair had called for. It was state obliteration.

In the months after the fall of Saddam we traveled around Iraq following confused and overwhelmed American and British forces who didn't have a clear idea what their mission was. In one town we watched as a column of American troops drove up to the courthouse. A young army lawyer announcing through a translator to the stunned employees that she had come to revamp their legal system -- this in a town where the people were desperate for the restoration of electricity, water, law and order.

The Chilcot report faulted the British government for assigning too few troops too much responsibility over a vast area of southern Iraq and that certainly was true. With minimal forces on the ground the British, and to a lesser extent, the Americans left a vacuum. A vacuum into which rushed Shia militias and Sunni extremists including al Qaeda which eventually morphed into ISIS.

And Iraqis are now fighting and dying every day in the war against ISIS. Basic public services like electricity and water are still unreliable. The country is one of the most corrupt on earth. Law and order are in short supply. Millions of people have been made homeless and what passes for democracy in Iraq is dangerously unstable.

This is the Iraq Tony Blair insists is better off than it was under Saddam Hussein.

Ben Wedeman -- CNN Baghdad.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[00:05:07] VAUSE: We are joined now by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon. She's the senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of "Ashley's War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on a Special Ops Battlefield".

Gayle -- thanks for being us with.

I want to start with a statement we have from George W. Bush. Apparently he has not read the report but a spokesman released this statement on his behalf. It reads in part, "Despite the intelligence failures and other mistakes he has acknowledged previously, President Bush continues to believe the whole world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power."

SESAY: Yes, well, at the same time when you take a listen to what Donald Trump has had to say about Saddam Hussein. He takes a slightly different view. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I said bad guy really bad guy. But he was good at one thing. He killed terrorists.

Next day, "Donald Trump loves Saddam Hussein". I don't love Saddam Hussein. I hate Saddam Hussein but he was damn good at killing terrorists.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SESAY: So Gayle, you want to tell me -- Bush, Donald Trump -- who is right?

GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: I think in honor of former Prime Minister Tony Blair I'm going to go to the third way here and talk about the fact that I think the most powerful thing is that we are still relitigating the Iraq war. And we're still looking at what happened. How did we get there?

Because the heartbreak, the loss, the carnage that has ensued since then is something that has reshaped foreign policies on both sides of the Atlantic.

VAUSE: Because there is a theory that if Saddam Hussein was still in power in Iraq, Gadhafi was still in Libya, Mubarak was still in Egypt -- the world or at least that part of the world would be a much more stable part.

LEMMON: Yes. I mean I hesitate a little bit about, you know, dictator nostalgia that I think a lot of people have engaged in --

VAUSE: Yes, yes.

LEMMON: Because a lot of people really I think have air brushed pre- 2003 Iraq.

VAUSE: True.

LEMMON: Certainly Westerners who didn't live under a Saddam Hussein have been very quick I think in recent days to find the better part of the regime now. But Iraqis will tell you what's the reality of that life.

But there is a question of stability and how do you bring it back to the region and what's fascinating to me is the containment failed in Iraq. Right -- the invasion happened and yet containment was the policy in Syria as we watch everything basically go up in flames and 400,000 people dead, half the country displaced.

VAUSE: Ok. One of the key parts of the report was that planning for the first war, Iraq, was wholly was inadequate. I was in Basra in the days after the invasion there. Basra was in the south. It was under British control. This is part of the report which I filed from a hospital in Basra.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: The hospital is short on everything from water to electricity which runs for just a few hours a day. It's the best their old generator can do. Normally they can admit 700 patients. Right now there are just 80. The rest are treated and sent home. But worst of all, they say, are the looters.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They want us to get out and to steal something.

VAUSE: Anything?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. We are present here just to protect the hospital.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: What really struck me in Basra at the time is that there was no planning for medical supplies. There were no engineers which came in. There was no planning really for security. There was no planning for governance.

How much of that lack of planning which was across Iraq led to the instability which we saw in the years to come and what's happening now?

LEMMON: Well, I think there are two separate issues. I think wholly inadequate is a diplomatic term in this -- we'll use this contrast because it doesn't even begin to describe the lack of planning that was actually happening on the ground and the lack of governance that immediately the vacuum that immediately ensued without supplies, without enough care for people who needed it. And that is a separate issue from the invasion. Right?

The invasion we can continue to discuss but either way however you felt about the invasion, once you were there, where was the planning? Where was the governance structure to be set up? And I think we are still feeling the ghost of the Iraq war hanging over every foreign policy decisions made in -- I think really on both sides of the Atlantic right now.

SESAY: So when you look at the situation -- when you look at the fallout from it all. I mean are we saying now that effectively Iran was the biggest winner in all of this?

LEMMON: I think a lot of people will say that -- right. I mean who has seen both of their sphere of influence increase -- right? Who has seen and have more allies in the region? Who has seen their ability to get more done that it wants to get done -- right? And to really spread both its messages and its military? I mean it's certainly not the United States.

VAUSE: Tony Blair says he has more sorrow and more regret than anyone. He stands by the decision though for the invasion. Roger Bacon though whose son Matthew was killed in Iraq, he says that those two positions simply cannot stand together. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ROGER BACON, FATHER OF SOLDIER KILLED IN IRAQ: It's difficult to actually see that the two things work together really because clearly if he stands by his decision he thinks he was right to go war. But I have held a view which I held before that it was the wrong thing to do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[00:10:09] VAUSE: Now his son Matthew was one of 187 British soldiers who died alongside more than 4,400 U.S. soldiers, 137 others from different countries are killed as well. Some estimates say about 160,000 Iraqis were killed. I think that number is incredibly low. But whatever that number is, whether it's 160,000 or 300,000, the bottom line here is that the Iraqis are the ones who have suffered the most from all of this.

LEMMON: War is deeply personal. And that is very easy to forget, removed with water and power and light and, you know, where easy decisions are made. And Iraqis continue to pay the price as do American families who lost their children and British families who lost their children.

For them this is not a clinical policy discussion. And if you look at what is happening with Iraqi children as UNICEF just did it is devastating. The amount of children out of school being trafficked, being sent to the front lines against their wills -- this is something that as a generation we will all be paying for.

SESAY: As you say -- you said it best -- War is deeply personal.

VAUSE: Yes. Gayle -- thank you.

SESAY: Gayle -- always appreciate it.

LEMMON: Thank you.

SESAY: Well, U.S. President Barack Obama is revising his troop plan for Afghanistan. He set aside his original plan to cut the troop presence in half by the end of his term. Instead he will reduce it to 8,400 troops. That leaves future decisions for America's longest war to his successor.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The security situation in Afghanistan remains precarious. Even as they improve, Afghan security forces are still not as strong as they need to be. With our help they're still working to improve critical capabilities such as intelligence, logistics, aviation, and command and control. At the same time, the Taliban remains a threat.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: In an online statement Afghan president Ashraf Ghani supported the announcement saying "He welcomes President Obama's decision on keeping 8,400 troops in Afghanistan. It shows continued partnership between our nations to pursue our common interests."

We'll take a short break.

When we come back, there has been another deadly shooting in the United States -- a black man killed by police. A new cell phone video has the Justice Department now involved and protesters demanding answers.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[00:16:15] VAUSE: Now to the U.S. state of Louisiana and a warning. The images you are about to see are very graphic and they are very disturbing.

SESAY: Extremely so.

The U.S. Justice Department is investigating the deadly shooting of a black man by a white police officer. It was caught on camera at different angles.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get on the ground. Get on the ground.

(EXPLETIVE DELETED)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's got a gun.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, bro --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey -- get on the ground.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What's that for, man?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Shots fired. Shots fired.

(EXPLETIVE DELETED)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: Police shot Alton Sterling at point-blank range Tuesday in the state capital of Baton Rouge. Police were responding to an emergency call about a man with a gun.

The mother of one of Sterling's children talked about the shooting while their son saw it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUINYETTA MCMILLAN, MOTHER OF STERLING'S SON: My son is not the youngest. He is the oldest of his siblings. He is 15 years old. He had to watch this as this was put all over the outlet. And everything that was possible to be shown.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SESAY: That is tough to watch. A few hours ago, a band played at a vigil outside the convenience store where Sterling died. He sold CDs there with the owner's permission.

Joining us now civil rights attorney Areva Martin and CNN law enforcement contributor Steve Moore.

VAUSE: Also with us Segun Oduolowu. He is an entertainment journalist, a social commentator. Good to have all of you with us.

SESAY: Welcome everyone.

VAUSE: Areva, we want to start with you. We've all looked at the images. Steve, the two police officers involved they've indicated that they feared for their life. They felt deadly force was necessary and justified. When you look at the video, is that how you see it?

STEVE MOORE, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT CONTRIBUTOR: I don't know. Because I haven't seen where the person -- where Mr. Sterling's right hand is. I don't know what they saw.

VAUSE: But you saw the video. You can't possibly tell?

MOORE: Can't possibly tell. And by the way, every police shooting looks horrible and disgusting whether it's justified or not. The shock of this -- half the shock of this is seeing a police shooting. Half the time it's the officers laying down on the ground.

So I think emotion is important. I think emotion should derive from facts, not create facts. SESAY: All right. Areva -- I'm going to ask you. From your

perspective, you look at these images, you are an attorney. Talk to me -- what do you see?

AREVA MARTIN, CIVIL RIGHTS LAWYER: Yes. First of all I want to say to Steve, what we don't see are videotapes and cell phone tapes of police officers. What we see are African-American men more often than not in these cell phone videos, in these videos being shot by police.

What I see is a man on the ground, pinned to the ground with two officers on top of him. And what I also saw that's so disturbing is an officer literally dash across a car to tackle Alton Sterling. And if you have a call from the dispatch that a man is armed with a gun why, as a police officer, are you tackling someone with a gun, then to say you are in harm's way? Well, you put yourself in harm's way.

[00:20:10] Let's talk about the militarization and this warrior mentality of police officers not to protect and serve, not stand back, assess the situation, and deescalate but let's go from zero to 100 almost instantly.

VAUSE: Ok. Let me get to Segun very quickly. Segun, what is the bigger picture here when African-Americans look at those images?

SEGUN ODUOLOWU, SOCIAL COMMENTATOR: Well, first and foremost I would say to Steve the horror as a black man is not watching the police shooting, the horror is watching two men shoot another man --

MOORE: I know.

ODUOLOWU: -- at point-blank range. And when you say from the tape, you can't see what was going on, I have to differ -- they are sitting on his chest. When you see them point the gun at him they are less than six inches away.

If we want to say that the man was subdued what more do they want do to do? Hog tie the man? They executed the man on video. And my problem as Areva just said is why is it always black -- why is it always black men? Why do they always look like me and around my size? Why do I never see white gentlemen never murdered on videotape but I see black men being murdered on a regular basis on videotape?

SESAY: Steve --

MOORE: Ok. Well, this is again emotion deriving and creating facts. I worked my first years in the FBI on white supremacist stuff. I was undercover with a white supremacist organization. Everybody I dealt with and had -- I didn't have the gunfights but who the FBI had the gunfights with were white. I've seen the other side.

ODUOLOWU: Was it on videotape?

MOORE: I am talking. I'm talking.

SESAY: Segun, let Steve speak. MOORE: So what you're seeing is -- you don't really understand law enforcement procedures because if you say you know what's happened here, you have a crystal ball.

ODUOLOWU: No, wait Steve. Whoa, whoa, wait a second, Steve. I didn't say I understand what is going on. First of all, two things. One --

MOORE: You said you knew what happened. You said you knew what happened.

ODUOLOWU: No, no, no, no. I said they shot a man at point-blank range.

MOORE: You said he was executed. You said he was executed

ODUOLOWU: Was he -- is he dead? Is he alive or is he dead? Because they shot him from six inches away so if you wouldn't call that an execution --

MOORE: You mean if somebody is killed it is always an execution? If somebody dies it's always an execution?

ODUOLOWU: Two on one.

MOORE: Where was his right hand? Where was his right hand?

ODUOLOWU: Steve, from your own admission, from your own admission if the tape doesn't say that, what my statement was they shot a man six inches away, two on one and I never see white people on tape being shot.

MOORE: Yes. You know what, that happens a lot. And officers are shot within six inches.

VAUSE: Ok.

SESAY: So we will -- let us --

VAUSE: Let's move on.

SESAY: Let's move on with the conversation. We've got a lot to --

VAUSE: One of the questions, Alton Sterling, did he have a gun? The 911 call says he was brandishing a gun at the time. A witness though says Sterling was not holding a gun when the police arrived. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Was the gun visible when they shot him?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not at all.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So when did the gun become visible?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: After the cop went inside his pocket to pull it out.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So the cop went in his pocket, pulled out a gun.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There was a gun and went into his car and threw it on top of the seat.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: So Steve it seems he had a gun. Does it matter if the gun is in the pocket or in the hand?

MOORE: It matters completely. It matters immensely. If the officers really didn't see a gun, then this was an unjust killing.

But I can tell you as somebody who has approached a man and touched him before I saw him pull a gun from three or four inches away I know how quickly these things can escalate. And if they were on the ground and if his right hand wasn't controlled even if the gun was in his waist and he was trying to reach for it and they couldn't stop that you have a justified shooting.

I don't know that that's what happened though.

SESAY: And the fact that we don't have the --

VAUSE: We don't have the full facts there.

SESAY: We don't have the body camera video.

So weighing with what we know --

MARTIN: What we do know is that we have videotape from the witnesses that used their cell phones. There apparently is some a surveillance tape that we haven't seen yet from the convenience store. And we have that very, very important witness, eyewitness testimony from the store owner.

He talked about seeing Alton before the altercation. He saw the altercation itself. And he says that Alton was not aggressive, that he was simply trying to understand what the police were doing.

MOORE: That contradicts from what I saw.

MARTIN: Ok. Well, this is what he said. He said he was trying to understand what was happening. And I think we're seeing --

MOORE: I'm seeing what I'm seeing.

MARTIN: -- Steve's point and what I think frustrates so many, particularly African-Americans in this country is we're not addressing what we saw as someone tackle this man. No effort to deescalate, no effort to call for help, call for support and to try make sure this man went home alive to his family. That's what we're talking about.

VAUSE: Ok. Let's get on to some of the numbers here. We've got the number of shootings. So there is no national database of fatal police shootings in the U.S. But the "Washington Post" has some numbers.

They say that this year alone, more than 500 people have been killed. More than 120 are in fact African-American. That is 24 percent of them.

This is again to Steve -- that number is double the percentage of African-Americans in the general population. Is there an explanation why it is so high?

[00:25:10] MOORE: I'm not here as a social scientist.

VAUSE: Sure, I understand.

MOORE: I am here as a law enforcement expert.

VAUSE: Yes.

MOORE: And I am going to tell you that what I'm looking at is a film. I'm not a politician. I am not a social scientist making comment on this.

Are there officers who are quick to escalate with a person of color? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. And we have to root those out like a cancer. But the fact -- there is a continuum of force the police use. There is vocal command and if they don't comply, then there are pain compliance like a taser and if they don't comply with that, the next thing that courts a scene and courts for proof is physical hands on. That's what happened.

They didn't jump on him and point guns at him. And even after they said gun they did not shoot him right away.

SESAY: Segun 30 seconds -- your thoughts on that as we see people on the streets in Baton Rouge the last two nights?

ODUOLOWU: Well, I would just say this. For Steve not being a politician you tap danced around that question very, very well. You should consider office.

But the real issue is that white police officers do not see African- American men as people. They don't. We don't look like their brothers, their uncles, their fathers.

MOORE: That's a little bit over generalized.

ODUOLOWU: So it's very easy to treat a person that you don't really feel as your equal or as family in this manner. Like Areva said, they didn't deescalate that situation. They tackled the man. If they were called to a response and he had a gun why is the first thing you're going to do to tackle him? Where is the calming down? Where is the talking? Why are they so close to him if they feared for their life?

VAUSE: Ok. We could talk about this for a very long time.

SESAY: Yes.

VAUSE: Obviously this will be a conversation which will continue.

SESAY: And we will be talking about it for days to come.

VAUSE: But Steve, we appreciate you for being here, Areva and Segun. Thank you all.

SESAY: Steve, Areva, Segun -- thank you.

VAUSE: And we will take a short break.

Hillary Clinton quietly trying to put the whole e-mail investigation behind her focusing instead on Donald Trump and his failed casinos.

SESAY: And Trump firing back at the Star of David criticism he faced this time using a Disney reference to defend his controversial tweet.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[00:30:40] VAUSE,: Welcome back, everybody. You're watching CNN NEWSROOM live from Los Angeles. I'm John Vause.

SESAY: And I'm Isha Sesay. The headlines this hour.

A British inquiry into the 2003 Iraq war says the decision to invade was based on flawed intelligence at a time when Saddam Hussein posed, quote, "No imminent threat."

The Chilcot Report is highly principled of former Prime Minister Tony Blair. He says he is sorry, but believes he made the right decision.

VAUSE: The U.S. Justice Department is investigating the deadly shooting of a black man by a white police officer in Louisiana. Alton Sterling's death Tuesday was caught by a number of cameras. Police were responding to an emergency call about a man with a gun. The officers have been placed on leave, which is standard practice after police-involved shootings.

SESAY: A supertyphoon is heading for Taiwan bringing with it ferocious winds, heavy rain and a threat of landslides. The sustained winds have already reached 280 kilometers per hour. And the storm is expected to become more powerful. Nepartak is set to make landfall late Thursday local time.

VAUSE: Paralympics sprinter Oscar Pistorius is back behind bars in South Africa, sentenced to six years in prison, Wednesday, for the murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in 2013. The defense says it will not appeal, not there yet, if prosecuted will accept the sentence.

SESAY: Well, the FBI director could face a grilling from U.S. law makers Thursday when he testifies about the decision not to recommend criminal charges against Hillary Clinton.

VAUSE: Attorney General Loretta Lynch accepted that recommendation Wednesday closing the year-long investigation into Clinton's use of private email servers while she was secretary of state. Clinton will also testify before House lawmakers next week.

SESAY: Clinton, herself, has mostly kept quiet on all of this. She is going after Donald Trump instead and attacking his business record.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Remember what he promised, I'm going to do for the country what I did for my business. Well, we should believe him and make sure he never has the chance to bankrupt America the way he bankrupted his businesses.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: CNN's senior political analyst Ron Brownstein joins us now for more about her days of going until the campaign trail.

OK, so it looks like, you know, one of Trump's biggest strengths here is the perception that he's a successful businessman. Clinton now clearly trying to turn that against him.

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. Karl Rove and the John W. Bush campaign really popularized this idea of you have to go head on and kind of shake the foundations of your opponent's strength. And I thought Hillary Clinton was really going after two of the distinct strengths of Donald Trump.

One is this history as a business person and the idea in the head of many American voters that as someone from the private sector, you have a better idea about how to make the economy work. She attacked that head on. But she also attacked what has been a strength for Donald Trump.

The idea that he is a voice or even a tribune of the common man against the elite. And she portrayed him as well as someone who made his riches in part by stiffing ordinary Joes and not paying his bills. So this is really a two for today in going after two of the pillars of his positive argument in this campaign.

SESAY: Meanwhile, Trump is staying focused as much as he can on the e-mail controversy. You looked at the polling, you looked at the data. How much do voters care about this issue to make it a central plank of his campaign?

BROWNSTEIN: I think it has hurt. I think it has clearly hurt Hillary Clinton in really two dimensions. It hurts both in terms of veracity and honesty, whether she has told the truth. And it has hurt her on perceptions of her judgment.

I mean, in the initial, this issue -- I mean, this really has looked worse as it has gone along. I thought the State Department inspector general report and the FBI statement were really the two most damaging --

SESAY: But no charges.

BROWNSTEIN: No charges, but ultimately, you know, there was not a criminal indictment, but it was certainly a political indictment of her judgment really going much further than the FBI usually perhaps ever has gone in public to question it.

And also the State Department inspector general report that basically said they never asked for permission. If they did ask, they would have been told it wasn't appropriate, it was, you know, dangerous in some ways. And that when career professionals raised questions, they were told to kind of back off.

Both of those, I think, raised questions about her judgement. Luckily for her, she is running against someone who faces monumental questions as well about his judgment and temperament.

VAUSE: OK. So he (INAUDIBLE) for the emails, but he is having trouble staying on message.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

VAUSE: The rally a few hours ago. He went on his trip to Scotland, about the reporting on his response to the Brexit.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

VAUSE: And, again, he is talking about the response to this tweet, which many saw as being anti-Semitic with the Star of David.

Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[00:35:00] DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: All of a sudden, it turned out to be in the minds of the press only because it could have been a sheriff's star. It could have been a regular star. My boy comes home from school, Baron. He draws stars all over the place. I never said, oh, that's the Star of David, Baron. Don't.

So it's a star. Have you all seen this? It's a star and it actually looks like a sheriff's star. But I don't know. And behind it, they had money. Oh, but there's money behind it. So actually their racially profiling. They're profiling. Not us. Because why are they bringing this up?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VAUSE: He also tweeted this out, "Where is the outrage for this Disney book. Is this the Star of David, also? Dishonest media." #Frozen.

OK, so to keep this theme going, Donald, let it go. Let it go. Time to move on.

BROWNSTEIN: He sure did. Well, you know, look, I mean, the important point is it's not just the star. The entire image, every aspect of the image, the photo, the star, the money was lifted from a white supremacist, you know, kind of source, to begin with. And, you know, for him to focus solely on the star, simply doesn't answer the question of how this entire image, again, according to the count of the "Washington Post," the fifth time language or imagery from white supremacist sites have ended up in Donald Trump.

Norm Coleman, the former Republican senator from Minnesota, who defeated Paul Wellstone, he was kind of a hero for Republicans for doing -- he wrote a piece today in the "Minneapolis Star Tribune" saying, he simply, he will not ever vote for Donald Trump because he is racist, misogynist, xenophobic and a bigot.

And that is the kind of charge that Trump has open himself up to, not only with his use of white supremacist imagery, but also the Judge Curiel argument, the David Duke language. I mean, there's a whole series of things in which Trump has kind of, either wondered or deliberately strode into waters that most presidential candidates stay far away from.

SESAY: And speaking of wandering, I mean, the star issue, he did not have to go back here.

BROWNSTEIN: It's astonishing, right?

SESAY: It's astonishing. And this is the kind of thing that has the G.O.P. leaders throwing their heads in their hands going where is the discipline?

BROWNSTEIN: And now where is the discipline. But you never know what he is going to say next. And I think what we have seen as a result of that is a very clear pattern where Republican leaders are simply not going to get too close to him because they do not know what he will say next.

Remember, the Judge Curiel controversy erupted almost immediately after Paul Ryan finally endorsed him. And within days, Paul Ryan had to say that the man he had just endorsed had engaged in what he called a textbook definition of racism.

VAUSE: Very quickly, Donald Trump dropped a very big hint tonight about his possible VP pick. It looks like it's going to be Newt Gingrich. It's that certain. The two are very cozy on stage together.

What does Gingrich bring to the ticket both for Trump?

BROWNSTEIN: For one thing, it will be the first six-wife ticket in American political history. But, look, more -- Gingrich is a mixed blessing, because Gingrich is certainly an effective formulator of argument --

VAUSE: Former House Speaker.

BROWNSTEIN: Former House Speaker, but left office in 1998, forced out by his fellow Republicans after their losses in the 1998 election following impeachment. I think Donald Trump needs a current elected official. So many Republicans have expressed -- you know, kept their distance from Donald Trump. The idea that he cannot get a credible current elected official to run with him, it think, really reinforces the idea that the party is ambivalent about him.

Gingrich is a talented politician, but he last was a figure in national politics 18 years ago. And as Jeb Bush reminded us, that's a very long time.

VAUSE: OK. Ron, we're always glad. Thank you so much.

SESAY: Thank you.

All right, time for a quick break now.

And a former "Fox News" anchor says she lost her job because she refused sexual advances from her boss. She is now suing the powerful CEO of the network.

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[00:40:55] SESAY: Hello, everyone. A prominent former "Fox News" anchor is suing the network's CEO.

Gretchen Carlson claims her boss, Roger Ailes, sexually harassed her.

VAUSE: Fox's parent company says it's now reviewing the matter.

CNN media correspondent Brian Stelter has the details.

BRIAN STELTER, CNN MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: Hi, John.

Hi, Isha.

The head of "Fox News," one of the most powerful men in media, also one of the most powerful man in Republican politics now under scrutiny amid these claims of sexual harassment.

We have heard from Gretchen Carlson and her lawyers. She was the 2 p.m. Eastern host on "Fox News" up until about two weeks ago when her contract expired. She says she was terminated. Her contract was not renewed because she refused Ailes' sexual advances.

In an 8-page lawsuit today, she says this pattern of behavior went on for years. One of her lawyers described it to me as a gathering storm that happened over time.

In a meeting last September, which Carlson says she requested in order to talk to Ailes about his pattern of harassment, here's something that she says he said at the meeting.

Quote, "I think you and I should have had a sexual relationship a long time ago. And then you would be good and better, and I'd be good and better."

He went on to say, quote, "Sometimes problems are easier to solve if there had been a sexual relationship between employee and boss."

Now those are the allegations from Carlson. She goes into detail about how she says he would speak with sexual innuendo. Sometimes asking her to turn around so he could see her posterior, things like that.

Ailes is the founding CEO. He's been running the network ever since it launched 20 years ago. He runs the network with what I would call an iron grip.

I have been covering "Fox" for years. And we have not seen a lawsuit like this one before. There have been scattered claims of harassment against Ailes in the past. They are written about in the 2014 book called "The Loudest Voice in the Room" by Gabriel Sherman.

But we have never seen a lawsuit like this before by a woman who was one of the most prominent personalities on "Fox."

So we will see in the days and weeks and months to come if any other women, if any other employees or ex-employees corroborate her story, who will come out and also say they experienced similar behavior while working at "Fox."

Isha, John, back to you.

VAUSE: Brian, thank you.

Now Roger Ailes has released a statement saying in part, "Gretchen Carlson's allegations are false. This is a retaliatory suit for the network's decision not to renew her contract, which was due to the fact of her disappointingly low ratings, who are dragging down the afternoon line-up."

SESAY: Ailes also says, "This defamatory lawsuit is not only offensive, it is wholly without merit and will be defended vigorously."

VAUSE: We'll have more on that in the next hour.

SESAY: Yes, certainly. And thank you for watching CNN NEWSROOM live from Los Angeles, I'm Isha Sesay.

VAUSE: I'm John Vause. "World Sport" is up next. We'll be back with more news from around the world at the top of the hour. You're watching CNN.

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