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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

Hillary Clinton Accepts Democratic Nomination; Two Officers Shot in San Diego. Aired 4-4:30a ET

Aired July 29, 2016 - 04:00   ET

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

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Hillary Clinton accepts the Democratic nomination for president.

[04:00:01] This was the most important speech of her life. Did it do enough to bounce back against Donald Trump? Brand new reaction ahead.

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to EARLY START. I'm Christine Romans.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm John Berman.

ROMANS: Good morning.

BERMAN: Good morning.

It's Friday, July 29th. It's 4:00 a.m. in the East. We are live here not in the CNN grill. This is only looks like water.

When there are no ceilings, the sky's the limit. Hillary Clinton on what politically speaking was the biggest single night of her life, a night in which history was made. Never before had a woman accepted a party's nomination for president and never before had Hillary Clinton had so much to do in one 60-minute address. Make herself relatable to a country that doesn't quite know her after a quarter century in a spotlight. Make herself seem honest to a voting population that doesn't quite trust her after a summer of scandal, and most of all, make herself seem like a better option than Donald Trump. And that she did with serious gusto.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Powerful forces are threatening to pull us apart. Bonds of trust and respect are fraying. We have to decide whether we will all work together so we can all rise together.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: CNN's Phil Mattingly in the middle of what was I believe the biggest balloon drop in convention history.

At least I think they had the biggest balloons. I'm not sure which one it was, one or the other or both, Phil. Maybe you can clear that up.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: One hundred and ten thousand balloons, according to the Democratic convention spokeswoman. As you noted, that is the most balloons ever. So, there you go, that is your fact of the day. Nothing else matters now you have been informed of that.

Look, you kind of laid out the check list of what Hillary Clinton had to accomplish. You can't really overstate how high the stakes actually were. Her point was so much different than what you saw in Cleveland last week. And yes, there were no question, criticism, critiques, attacks of Donald Trump, really trying to dress him down over the course of those 57-minute remarks.

But there was also an uplifting push of optimism. A look at a diversifying country in Hillary Clinton's mind still has a very good opportunity to unite. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLINTON: None of us can raise a family, build a business, heal a community or lift a country totally alone. America needs every one of us to lend our energy, our talents, our ambition, to making our nation better and stronger. I believe that with all my heart. A country where the economy works for everyone, not just those at the top. A country where all our children can dream and those dreams are within reach, and, yes, where love trumps hate. That's the country we're fighting for. That's the future we're working toward.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: Guys, it was the cornerstone of four choreographed days all designed to pretty much take the opposite approach to what the Republicans and Donald Trump took last week, and Democrats that I've been speaking to, Democrats who have been committing on this were very happy with what they heard. Barack Obama taking to Twitter, congratulating the woman he wants to see replace him. Bernie Sanders who was given quite a nod by her Hillary, not just to him but also to his supporters during the speech, congratulating her on her historic achievement, and saying they are stronger together.

Now, it really starts. There's 102 days, guys, until the election. Not that anybody here is counting. You can expect hundreds of millions of dollars to be spent on advertising. You can expect the rhetoric probably only to grow uglier when you talk to campaign aides on both sides of this fight.

The reality is this: these two candidates have high negatives. These two candidates remain close in the polls. The talk on the campaign trail is can one of the candidates convince people to vote for them as opposed to vote against somebody else. Either way, it's an open question right now and either way, somebody has got to win.

The biggest question coming out of Philadelphia is, will Hillary Clinton get a bounce? If so, how long can that sustain? What can she do with it? Those are the answers we're going to be looking forward to in the next couple of few weeks, guys.

ROMANS: All right. Phil Mattingly, I learned two things from you. I learned there are 110,000 balloons and 102 days until the convention. That's what I take away from Phil Mattingly.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTINGLY: Lots of facts, facts only.

BERMAN: And it wasn't as conventional a hall as we were advertising right there. I thought they did some interesting things with it.

Phil Mattingly --

ROMANS: Unconventional hall.

BERMAN: Unconventional hall. Phil Mattingly, thanks so much.

ROMANS: All right. Good morning, everybody.

Again, let's talk about this last night of the Democratic National Convention. We have CNN political analyst Josh Rogin, a columnist for "The Washington Post", and CNN political commentator John Phillips. He's a talk radio host on KABC and Donald Trump supporter.

Let's talk about the poll, a quick poll. I mean, obviously, it is early. We will have to wait to see if she gets a bounce from this.

[04:05:02] But favorable opinion of Hillary Clinton, pre-speech, 73 percent, post-speech, 78 percent. Those are viewers, of course. They're probably more Democrats.

But it looks like -- it looks like -- it looks like the initial reaction is positive. I know the super delegates there and the delegates are happy with the week.

JOSH ROGIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Absolutely. The whole week went according to plan, OK? They planned it meticulously. It followed except for the Debbie Wasserman Schultz firing e-mail scandal.

BERMAN: Maybe it was part of the plan. I think a lot of Democrats love that.

(CROSSTALK)

JOHN PHILLIPS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: She is part of the team, you know?

ROGIN: And so, their argument is, OK, why can't we take that as a sign of confidence? Donald Trump can't even plan a convention, what are the odds he can run a government? If this is the level of organization that the Clinton campaign can muster, why not take that into consideration as we decide who to vote for. What Phil said is right. This is the end of favorable trend and now, it's all downhill. It's a race to the bottom. In Cleveland, remember what happened. All the donors met. They bless the Trump super PAC, although Republican donors have been on the sidelines for the whole summer. Now, there's one. It's called Rebuild America Now.

Paul Manafort called into the meetings, said OK, everybody give money to these guys and the ads are going up, all right? And there's' going to be a lot of them. And money is no object.

I think right now, she should take that bounce and hunker down because it's going to be a long, long August.

BERMAN: She already hunkered down. This speech was more about Donald Trump, more about her opponent than most convention acceptance speeches that I have heard. She focused a lot on him, went right after him, right after his temperament.

And, really, you know, she didn't talk about television ratings, but next to television ratings, she went after him on Twitter. Listen to that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLINTON: So, just ask yourself, you really think Donald Trump has the temperament to be commander in chief? Donald Trump can't even handle the rough and tumble of a presidential campaign. He loses his cool at the slightest provocation. When he has a tough question from a reporter, when he is challenged in a debate, when he sees a protester at a rally.

Imagine if you dare, imagine, imagine him in the Oval Office facing a real crisis. A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: She went after him on Twitter. That's serious, John.

PHILLIPS: That's right. This is the flavor of what's to come. She's going to try to tear Donald Trump's throat out. And she's going to play Santa Claus with all of the Democratic Party interest groups.

Now, what jumps out of me as being interesting here is this is not where the campaign was going to go if the Republican nominee was Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush. If one of those three men or any others became the Republican nominee, this was going to be the election of the culture wars. It would be about abortion. It would be about gay marriages. It would be any host of social issues where the Democratic Party thinks they have an edge.

But what was Donald Trump attacked for in the primaries? Having New York values. She doesn't think that people will accept those arguments against him, so she's going the personal route.

BERMAN: I need to make one note. Hillary Clinton mentioned God more in her acceptance speech than Donald Trump. I think Donald Trump did zero times. Hillary Clinton referred to Ronald Reagan, I don't know if she used the name, but she said morning in America. But she referred to Ronald Reagan morning Donald Trump did, because Donald Trump did zero times.

That's fascinating.

PHILLIPS: Well, she is using a trick that George W. Bush did. When opponents are attacking the government, turn it around and make it an attack on America. Through the party and power, and they're attacking the government, that's you. So, you don't want to absorb those blows. So, you say, oh, they're not attacking me. They're not attacking the leadership. They are attacking the military.

ROMANS: Projecting American strength abroad, you know, standing by allies. You know, talking about God, talking about morning in America instead of midnight in America.

ROGIN: Exactly. And, you know, you have to work with what you have. This is an amazing quote. As she is talking about Donald Trump's temperament, Trump is giving a press conference Thursday afternoon.

He says he is talking about Wednesday night speakers. "You know what I wanted to do, I wanted to hit a couple of speakers so hard. I would have hit them. I was going to hit one guy in particularly, a very little guy. I was going to hit this guy so hard, his head would spin and wouldn't know what happened."

That is a full quote from Donald Trump on the day that Hillary Clinton is calling him a bully, right? Yes, we can talk about the culture wars and this and that. She's going with what she's got. I mean, on the national security night, Donald Trump invited Putin to hack American e-mail systems, all right?

Yes, Donald Trump has an amazing way to take over the conversation and control the media narrative. Hillary Clinton is going with that because what he is saying is sometimes so inflammatory and so ridiculous, it's hard to avoid.

[04:l0:01] BERMAN: It's interesting, too. One of the other things she did was to say, you know, I'm boring. You know, I sweat the details. It's something she specifically says. It was an interesting line.

She also tried to make the case she had plans. She acted like she was laying out the plans in the speech. Listen to what she said about that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLINTON: He spoke for 70-odd minutes and I do mean odd.

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

But he offered zero solutions. But we already know he doesn't believe these things. No wonder he doesn't like talking about his plans. You might have noticed I love talking about mine. (END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: You know, that's playing to what some people say is boring. She campaigns and governs in prose, John, but she makes reference to it right there.

PHILLIPS: Of course, she's going to downplay her showmanship abilities. I don't think she finishes in the money if you're ranking the speech in the Democratic Convention. I would put Michelle in number one slot. I put Barack Obama in umber two. I'd give Bill Clinton the bronze. I think I'd put Joe Biden above Hillary. Hillary comes in fifth. Gabby Giffords and vice presidential nominee, what's his name?

BERMAN: Tim Kaine.

PHILLIPS: Yes.

(LAUGHTER)

ROMANS: All right. Thank you, guys.

BERMAN: Keep it there, because there's a lot more to talk about. I want to talk about something in particular about Hillary Clinton, ripping down Donald Trump's business record, taking aim at his casinos and resorts.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLINTON: In Atlantic City, 60 miles from here, you will find contractors and small businesses who lost everything because Donald Trump refused to pay his bills.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: Two exhaustive reports last month support those claims from Hillary Clinton. "USA Today" found 60 lawsuits against Trump companies for underpayment or failure to pay. It also sorted through 200 mechanics liens and 24 citations for violating the fair labor standards act by failing to pay overtime or minimum wage.

"Wall Street Journal" also found hundreds of claims against Trump companies. Back in June, the Trump campaign didn't respond to CNN's request for a comment, but Trump tweeted this, quote, "Sad case 'USA Today' did article saying I don't pay bills -- false. Only don't pay when work is shoddy, bad or not done. They should do the same."

So, the story is false but he doesn't pay if it's shoddy, or not done, so he doesn't pay when he doesn't pay essentially.

Hillary Clinton last night talking about Donald Trump, talking about his business record. Other people did speak last night as well. And even on a night when the nominee gave her own speech of such high stakes, other people did break through. We'll discuss, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [04:17:15] BERMAN: All right. Welcome back to EARLY START live at the not CNN grill. We are not --

ROMANS: John misses the grill. He misses the grill.

BERMAN: So many people and there was an open bar.

ROMANS: We have our grill friends with us.

BERMAN: We brought our friends, though, if not the beer.

Listen. Fascinating Democratic convention. Fascinating close. Yes, there was Chelsea Clinton giving personal testimony about her mother, but there were also people you don't normally see at a Democratic Convention, speaking in ways you don't normally see at the Democratic Convention.

We want to bring back Josh Rogin and John Phillips.

And, Josh, General John Allen, marine general, a guy who worked hard in the battle against ISIS and highly respected in many national security circles, giving a full throated endorsement to Hillary Clinton and going directly after Donald Trump, shouting with enthusiasm to that crowd. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEN. JOHN ALLEN (RET.), FORMER COMMANDER, U.S. FORCES IN AFGHANISTAN: With her as our commander in chief, our international relations will not be reduced to a business transaction. I also know that our armed forces will not become an instrument of torture and they will not be engaged in murder or carry out other illegal activities.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: That's a through-the-looking-glass moment, I think, you know, again for a Democratic Convention.

ROGIN: Big moment. First of all, I just want to say, sort of my feeling that, you know, generals, even retired generals, should try to stay out of politics, right? That's the culture of military --

BERMAN: Like Dwight D. Eisenhower, George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant?

ROGIN: This guy was in the military six months ago, OK? What you do is you have generals divide inside and outside. They start working in politics. It's a slippery slope, OK? We don't want to go there. But in the sense that it's unavoidable.

What I will say a stark contrast between General John Allen, who is all pro-Hillary, and General Mike Flynn, who spoke last Wednesday in Cleveland, right, these two guys. I know personally. I covered them. They are both accomplished officers who love their country and dedicated their lives to public service. But you couldn't get two different speeches. You had General Flynn

screaming "Lock her up, lock her up", blaming the Obama administration for rise of al Qaeda and ISIS around the world. You have General Allen saying, no, no, this is what the military stands for. This is what the military should be about. We should be about solving these problems and bringing in other groups, using all of the elements of power. Not just the military to tackle the fight against terrorism.

I thought it was a constructive message. I think it's the one that resonate that has more credibility than the sort of, oh, my God.

[04:20:02] Obama messed up the whole world and we have Trump to fix it.

ROMANS: Another moment last night that a lot of people are still talking about this morning is the father of Captain Khan. He pulled out a copy of the Constitution. Let's listen to that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KHIZR KHAN, FATHER OF DECEASED MUSLIM U.S. SOLDIER: Donald Trump, you're asking Americans to trust you with their future. Let me ask you, have you even read the United States Constitution? I will -- I will gladly lend you my copy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ROMANS: John Phillips, the crowd went crazy at that moment. Crazy.

PHILLIPS: This is back to what we are talking about before. You have two separate worlds. You have your general. We have our general. You have your victims of crime. We have our victims of crime.

This is not going to be a campaign about issues. This is a campaign about heroes and villains. And each side defines their own heroes and each side defines their own villains. And what you're going to see is you're going to see those story lines clash and collide all through the campaign.

ROGIN: Can I disagree with that quickly?

ROMANS: You disagree with John? I can't believe it.

(CROSSTALK)

ROGIN: Allow me to proceed. Muslims who serve in the military cannot be anything but heroes. That's the point they are trying to make here. And anybody who serves in the military is not.

Also, Muslims are not villains, all right? He is accomplishing two things. He is pointing out the sort of ridiculousness of this sort of idea that we should take an entire religion of people and set them to one side, all right?

He's also point out that there are hundreds of thousands, millions of Muslims in America who are patriotic, who are loyal, who love their country, who are born, who are going to die here. And for obvious reasons, Muslim Americans are not politically active, OK? They're not very public. They do vote, all right?

And I have been waiting for a long time for someone to come out and access that and say, OK, here is the entire group of people who came to the country either one, two or three generations ago and who care very much about it and have been totally neglected by our political system. And I think this is the first time that that's actually started to change.

BERMAN: That was a very emotional moment. A lot of people I think stood up and, you know, from their seats. This is unexpected in a convention that's been largely scripted.

ROMANS: All right. Thanks, guys. Don't go away. We have breaking news out of San Diego this hour. Two police officers shot. We're going to bring you those new details right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[04:26:57] ROMANS: All right. We've got breaking news for you this morning out of San Diego. These are live pictures on the scene. Police say they have one suspect in custody in the shooting of two officers. Shot overnight.

Officials say they are searching for other possible suspects. Residents in the city's south crest area are still being asked to shelter in place. You see live pictures there in San Diego. Officials say the condition of the two officers at this point is unknown.

BERMAN: We're going to stay on that as details come in.

Back to politics now. The sky is the limit. Hillary Clinton makes history, accepts the Democratic nomination for president. Did she convince wary voters to come her way? That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)