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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

Review of Day Three of Democratic Convention; Examining Day Three Speeches. Aired 3-3:30a ET

Aired July 28, 2016 - 03:00   ET

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


(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[03:00:00] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PRESIDENT: There has never been a man or a woman, not me, not Bill, nobody more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as president of the United States of America.

(APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN BERMAN, EARLY START SHOW HOST: A ringing endorsement for Hillary Clinton. President Obama, the Democratic Party, pulling out all the stops and then some big drama on night three of the democratic convention.

Welcome to Early Start, everyone. Live in Philadelphia. I'm John Berman.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, EARLY START SHOW HOST: Good morning. I'm Christine Romans. It is Thursday, July 28th. It is 3 a.m. in the East.

BERMAN: It sure is. It really is.

ROMANS: And it feels like it. We are here at the CNN Grill. We welcome all of our viewers here in the U.S. and around the world. Good morning, everyone.

So it turns out that Barack Obama, he knows how to give a convention speech. The President of the United States capped an evening of big drama and big names in what was a throw everything at them including the kitchen sink effort to beat Donald Trump. Hence, throw in two kitchen sinks because that is exactly what happened.

If you're keeping score at home the president thinks America is already great and thinks Donald Trump is, well, not so much.

CNN's Phil Mattingly joins us now. Good morning again, Phil.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Christine. "Now I'm ready to pass the baton," that was President Obama's message tonight, but it was part of a very strategic effort by the Clinton campaign, speaker after speaker, reaching out to very specific voter groups, each trying to take down Donald Trump with every word it seemed like at points.

Michael Bloomberg reaching out to independents, Joe Biden going for blue collar workers. Tim Kaine, the V.P., the new running mate, more or less reaching out to nice Midwestern guys. And Barack Obama laying out the future argument that included this, as you guys noted, rousing endorsement and asked to vote for Hillary Clinton.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: Tonight, I ask you to do for Hillary Clinton what you did for me.

(APPLAUSE)

I ask you to carry her the same way you carried me. Because you're who I was talking about 12 years ago. When I talked about hope it's been you who fueled my dogged faith in our future. Even when the odds were great. Even when the road is long. Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope.

(APPLAUSE)

America, you've vindicated that hope these past eight years. And now I'm ready 20 pass the baton and do my part as a private citizen. So this year in this election, I'm asking you to join me, to reject cynicism and reject fear and to summon what is best in us to elect Hillary Clinton as the next president of the United States.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: OK. Guys, one of the most interesting elements, really, of this entire night is the democrats are doubling down on staying with the people in power. And this is as we've seen has been a very anti- establishment message.

But their idea has been this. Donald Trump does not represent the opposite party. Donald Trump does not necessarily represent an anti- establishment that would come in and change things for the good. They were trying to deliberately separate Donald Trump, push him aside.

And frankly, if you listen to speaker after speaker from Leon Panetta, the former CIA director all the way to President Barack Obama, paint him as dangerous. And something we're also very likely again to hear tonight.

Hillary Clinton it's her big moment she's coming after three nights of star power driven speeches from democrats, she will now kind of take the final turn at things, closing the convention as she heads off into the next 100 or so days. Who will introduce her? Her daughter, Chelsea Clinton.

So, guys, something to keep a very close eye on tonight.

BERMAN: The bar is high. Phil Mattingly, thanks so much.

Let us talk about what happened last night or tonight or an hour ago, or when it was actually was.

Joining us, the CNN politics executive editor, Mark Preston, CNN political analyst, Josh Rogin, a columnist for the Washington Post, two CNN political commentators here, Angela Rye, the former executive director for the Congressional Black Caucus, and also John Philips, talk radio host on KABC, a Donald Trump supporter.

Angela Rye, that guy, President Obama, broke on to the scene in 2004 with a convention floor which he made note of.

[3:05:01] Last night, sort of closing his political career. Because it's over. He can't run again with a convention speech. What did he do?

ANGELA RYE, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: I think that he really laid the groundwork for Hillary Clinton. I tweeted yesterday that I thought that he gave her a verbal letter of recommendation that closed the deal. I called Michelle Obama earlier in the week to go there. And the Obama family just continues the tradition because he certainly did it, but with he did it in a different way.

Michelle Obama's speech was still my favorite, Christine, but it absolutely was one that was very important talking about Hillary Clinton's record. And I think for many in the room, very important to hear him say that it was going to continue the leg. There are a lot of folks that want a third Obama term in that room.

And I think that he made it very clear that she was a part of the team certainly with the embrace of the end of the speech her coming out and made it very clear that it was...

(CROSSTALK)

ROMANS: That was a big moment, I think.

RYE: Yes.

ROMANS: And when you looked at the cutaways of people in the crowd who were watching the president and Hillary Clinton you think how hard that battle in the primaries in 2008, and then here, you know, here they are. That was I think a big moment, and people inside the room said they could just feel sort of the enthusiasm of this team.

RYE: Yes.

ROMANS: You know, the current president and the secretary of state -- and the former secretary of state. He also talked about her mistakes. You know, I think a nod to the fact that she's had some trouble on the trustworthiness side. And she's been in politics a long time.

Let's listen to that sound.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: Look, Hillary has her share of critics. She has been caricatured by the right and by some of the left. She has been accused of everything you can imagine and some things that you cannot.

But she knows that's what happens when you're under a microscope for 40 years.

(APPLAUSE)

She knows that sometimes during those 40 years, she's made mistakes, just like I have, just like we all do.

(APPLAUSE)

That is what happens when we try. That's what happened when you're the kind of citizen Teddy Roosevelt once described, not the timid souls who criticize from the sidelines, but someone who is actually in the arena.

(APPLAUSE)

Whose strives valiantly, who airs but who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Did you see all those Obama banners there like all over our hotel this morning?

BERMAN: Spontaneous. It just appears there massively.

ROMANS: They're just for all these Obama banners. Everyone brought them home because they wanted to have a piece of it. Was that effective, Mark Preston?

MARK PRESTON, CNN POLITICS EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Yes. I mean, no doubt. Look, you can see well like Barack Obama. You might not like the politics, you might not even like him personally, but the guy can deliver, you know.

Angela is right. He is one of the best speech givers in addition to President Clinton, as well. And I think what he was trying to do was to try to pass the baton, so to speak, and try to get young African- Americans to come out and vote and young people to come out and vote for Hillary Clinton.

BERMAN: So he's passing the baton to Hillary Clinton, he's smacking Donald Trump all around the head with that baton.

PRESTON: Right. I mean, we weave today, and, I mean he weave today and sold it all together.

BERMAN: He said let's listen to this. Donald Trump is selling fear.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: Ronald Reagan called America a shining city on a hill. Donald Trump calls it a divided crime scene that only he can fix. It doesn't matter to him that illegal immigration and the crime rate are as low they've been in decades.

(APPLAUSE)

Because he's not actually offering any real solutions to those issues. He's just offering slogans and he's offering fear.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Josh Rogin, that's the nice stuff that President Obama said about Donald Trump. He called him the homegrown demagogue.

JOSH ROGIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Amazing.

BERMAN: And then in a really, it was subtle if you weren't paying attention, he said we don't want to be ruled.

ROGIN: We don't want to be ruled. Right. So, all the speakers tonight, it has become a very effective tactic. It's called quoting what Donald Trump says, right. And when you take his statements and you take them out of context and you sort of read them back, they're sometimes shocking. And they don't have that sort of folksy charm that they have when Donald Trump delivers them.

He said, he put it up that Donald Trump said that the military was a disaster, something that they've been focusing on. And then he took at one step further.

So, you know, this tactic is meant to just draw her contrast between Donald Trump, a man who has not been in public service and Hillary Clinton who has a 40-year record in public service.

ROMANS: Right.

ROGIN: And, you know, I think that was effective and it wasn't just President Obama. That's what Tim Kaine did, that's what Michael Bloomberg did. He called him a demagogue.

ROMANS: Right.

ROGIN: I mean, they're really sounding the alarm here.

ROMANS: The president also had a moment last night where he could kind of talk about what's happened over the past two terms.

[03:09:59] I mean, he at this point in his presidency where he can -- he can look back and, you know, I keep saying. You know, presidents don't get -- they get too much credit and too much blame for what happened in the economy under their watch.

But the president sort of walking through his accomplishments. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: I stand before you again tonight after almost two terms as your president to tell you I am more optimistic about the future of America than ever before. (APPLAUSE)

After the worst recession in 80 years, we fought our way back. We've seen deficits come down, 401ks recovery. An auto industry set new records, unemployment reach eight-year lows and our businesses create 15 million new jobs.

After a century of trying, we declared that health care in America is not a privilege for a few, it is a right for everybody.

(APPLAUSE)

We brought more of our troops back home to their families. And we deliver justice to Osama Bin Laden.

(APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: John Phillips, this is a narrative that has not been something that the Obama or Hillary Clinton has been able to really capitalize on. I would even add that, you know, we just got news that home prices are back to record highs. You know, they've been going up for more than four years. That's the biggest asset for more Americans is their home.

But this has been something that Trump supporters and Donald Trump himself will just not -- will not agree to.

JOHN PHILLIPS, KABC TALK RADIO HOST: Well, when you've been in power for eight years, the argument is always going to be if you're the party in power, you're better off now than you were eight years ago. You're not going to say you're worse off if you're asking for a third term.

About the speech was good. I think he delivers better at convention speeches than he does in say, a state of the union sort of thing. It started too late. It went on until 11.30 on the East Coast. And I think he had two different things that he wanted to accomplish in this speech.

He wanted to attempt to disqualify Donald Trump as a presidential candidate. And then he wanted to make the country comfortable with Hillary Clinton. One thing that was strange about that is, he kept talking about her credentials.

Well, no one is questioning her credential. Everyone knows her. Everyone is familiar with what she's done. What people don't trust is her honesty. And I don't think he hit that portion hard enough. Interesting.

(CROSSTALK)

RYE: I think that...

ROGIN: I think that's the -- that's the part that Tim Kaine was focusing on, right?

BERMAN: Right.

ROGIN: And Tim Kaine's whole speech was don't believe Donald Trump, right? Another way to say that is that, oh, he's even less honest and trustworthy than Hillary Clinton.

BERMAN: You know what? That's a nice segue to our next segment. We're going to talk about the other folks who spoke last night. It wasn't just the president, Tim Kaine, Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg, a whole slate of people took that stage. And they made the case for Hillary Clinton and against Donald Trump. That's next.

[03:15:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TIM KAINE, VIRGINIA STATE SENATOR: It's going to be great, believe me. We're going to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it, believe me. We're going to destroy ISIS so fast, believe me. There's nothing suspicious in my tax returns, believe me.

Here is the question. Do you really believe him?

(CROWD SHOUTING)

I mean...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Tim Kaine, impression of Donald Trump. It was Saturday night -- no, it was Wednesday. What day is it? I'm not sure.

BERMAN: It was that bad humor. As someone...

(CROSSTALK)

RYE: Bad, bad, humor.

ROMANS: All right. Trump was called unprepared, he was called dangerous. He was called a demagogue. He was mocked. It seems that most of the convention speakers had Donald Trump right in their crosshairs.

We've got Mark Preston, Josh Rogin, Angela Rye. Let's bring in CNN political commentator Amanda Carpenter, the former communications director for Senator Ted Cruz.

There were a lot, Amanda -- there were a lot of people on that stage last night. I want to get your thoughts on just the assault, again and again, from so many different people against Donald Trump and all of those people vouching for Hillary Clinton.

AMANDA CARPENTER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. I think the people who were attacking him on his credentials from a national security perspective were probably the most damaging. When you had Leon Panetta out there talking about how Donald Trump

can't be trusted in this weighty position. But also, contrasting that with like the overwhelming almost scurfy message of love, you know, coming saying, support Hillary Clinton. You know, the people...

(CROSSTALK)

ROMANS: What do you have against love, Amanda?

CARPENTER: I do like love in small doses. But, you know, the people holding him on stage, all we need is love. It's very clear to me that they want to make Hillary Clinton that happy cheery candidate and they did a pretty good job of it last night and then make Donald Trump own the hate. Everybody has those sciences, love, Trump, hate. I think that's going to be the major theme through November.

ROGIN: Yes. I just think this shows how different and how much more organized the democratic convention was than what we saw last week. Let's remember, last Wednesday was the night that Mike Pence got up and gave the speech that contradicted all Trump's foreign policy and Ted Cruz gave a speech and got chase under the place with pitch marks.

And so, it's very coordinated, it's very strategic. What the Clinton campaign could not have predicted was that Donald Trump would hand them a gift and spend the entire day talking about asking Vladimir Putin to hack Hillary Clinton's e-mails and making even more outrageous statements about NATO than he made before. That plays perfectly into their script. Let's call that an accident.

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: But you had -- and Anderson has brought this up. You had -- they went after Trump in different ways, right? You had Panetta talking about security. You had Michael Bloomberg going after him. You had a billionaire, like a big billionaire, like, you know, a multi, multi billionaire going after Donald Trump. You know, billionaire.

And then you had Joe Biden, you had sort of angry white male going against him on the angry white male front. Let's listen to the vice president because he had quite a speech last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: His cynicism is unbounded. His lack of empathy and compassion can be summed up in a phrase I suspect he's made proud of having make famous, you're fired.

I mean, really, I'm not joking. Think about that. Think about that. Think about everything you learn as a child.

[03:20:07] No matter where you are raised. How can there be pleasure in saying you're fired? He's trying to tell us he cares about the middle class? Give me a break. That is a bunch of malarkey.

(APPLAUSE)

BERMAN: There might be one man in America who can say the word malarkey like that.

ROMANS: Yes.

BERMAN: And they have people listen.

ROMANS: And there is.

BERMAN: And you saw him right there, Angela Rye. That was interesting. In a way, that's what it's been missing in this convention. And you know, a convention where it's clear that Hillary Clinton's weakness is with working class white males. There was the profit right there from the Democratic Party.

RYE: And so interesting that you say profit because I was like Uncle Joe just turned Reverend Joe. Because he wasn't just angry. He was angry about Donald Trump taking advantage of people who were in a less economic advantageous position by saying you're fired, using his power over people to cause harm.

And so he's saying I'm angry because this is not right and it's not righteous behavior. So, he was Reverend Joe in that moment. He was very effective.

ROMANS: You know, Mark Preston, I'm interested because Joe Biden has sort of -- I think he said recently that, you know, the democrats have not done enough to tap into this white voter angst.

PRESTON: Right.

ROMANS: You know, and we've look at the numbers. I've talked about it all the time. The economy is better than people think it is. But they have -- there is a low economic self-esteem and there is a real feeling, especially among those voters that they don't have the opportunities they used to. Have the democrats not been able to capitalize on that?

PRESTON: Yes, well, look. They are power -- the partisan powers so they're going to have to take responsibility for the situation, whether it's fear or it's not.

ROMANS: Right.

PRESTON: I mean, the fact is, they own the White House so they have to own the situation. However, let's just talk about messaging because Joe says these was very well-choreographed. These three nights have been very well choreographed.

Let's go back to Monday night. You had Elizabeth Warren reaching out to Middle America, white middle America about their economic situation. Let's jump ahead to what we had tonight.

You had Michael Bloomberg whose worth more money probably than is in the State of Pennsylvania right now, who goes out and not calls into question Donald Trump's business acumen.

RYE: Right. PRESTON: But also his characters and says, I know that (Inaudible) saying is, I know this guy. I know this guy and he cannot run the country. And then you have Joe Biden right there, the angry white male with those piercing blue eyes. And then, and look, if there was ever a person who was made for a democratic convention, it was Joe Biden.

BERMAN: You have nice eyes, too, Mark Preston. You know, piercing blue and...

(CROSSTALK)

PRESTON: Stop looking like that, Christine.

BERMAN: All right. We're going to talk a lot more about this coming up. There is a lot of other news in the world right now including John Hinckley going free. The man who tried to kill Ronald Reagan will be out of his hospital care and on the streets again. That's next.

[03:25:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ROMANS: The man who shot President Reagan and three other people 35 years ago is about to go free. John Hinckley, his conditional release from a government psychiatric hospital could come as early as August 5th, after a federal judge ruled he is to longer a threat to himself or others.

He will be living with his mother in Leesburg, Virginia. He will be monitored by a treatment team.

President Reagan's daughter, Patty Davis says this ruling sickened her.

BERMAN: All right. Back here to Philadelphia, site of the Democratic National Convention. The President of the United States, Barack Obama, going to back for Hillary Clinton last night. They had a full lineup of people out there for her. Did they score some runs? That's next.

[03:30:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)