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Wolf

Trump Says We Will Open New Chapter In American Prosperity; Protesters Interrupt Trump Economic Speech; Daycare Tax Break; A Hidden Tax On Consumers; Trump Will Eliminate Some Deductions And Loopholes; Reviewing Trump's Economic Speech; Protesters at Trump Speech; The Trump Economic Plan. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired August 08, 2016 - 13:00   ET

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

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[13:00:00] DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE (live): -- offering much needed relief to American families. They're suffering. They're suffering. We're going to get them this much needed relief.

I will unveil my plan on this in the coming weeks that I've been working on with my daughter Ivanka, who's here. Stand up. She feels so strongly about this. And an incredible team of experts.

Likewise, our education reforms will help parents send their kids to a school of their choice. It will be so good for Detroit. We will also give our police and law enforcement the funds and support they need to restore law and order to this country. Law and order.

Thank you. Without security, there can be no prosperity. Without security, there can be no prosperity. We must have law and order. We must have law and order.

And by the way, our police in this country are really unrecognized for the incredible job they do. Thank you.

In the coming days, we will be rolling out plans on all of these items. One of my first acts as president will be to repeal and replace disastrous Obamacare, saving another 2 million American jobs. We will also rebuild our military and get our allies to pay their fair share for the protection we provide to them, saving countless more billions of dollars to invest in our own country.

We also have a plan on our Web site for complete reform of the Veterans Administration. This is something so desperately needed to make sure our vets are fully supported and get the care they deserve which they have not been getting, not even close.

Detroit, the motor city, will come roaring back. Roaring back. We will offer a new future, not the same old failed policies of the past. Our party has chosen you to make new history by selecting a nominee from the outside and that's outside of the very, very already proven rigged system.

The other party has reached backwards into the past to choose a nominee from yesterday who offers only the rhetoric of yesterday and the policies of yesterday. Just take a look at what happened to New York state manufacturing and take a look at her promises before this happened. A disaster. There will be no change under Hillary Clinton. Only four more years of weakness and President Obama.

But we are going to look boldly into the future. We will build the next generation of roads, bridges, railways, tunnels, seaports and airports. That, believe me, folks, is what our country deserves.

[13:05:14] American cars -- American cars will travel the roads. American planes will connect our cities. And American ships will patrol the seas. American steel -- American steel will send new skyscrapers soaring all over our country. We will put new American metal into the spine of this nation. It will be American hands that rebuild this country and it will be American energy, mined from American sources that powers this country. It will be American workers who are hired to do the job. American workers.

Americanism, not globalism, will be our new credo. Our country will reach amazing new heights, maybe heights never attained before. All we have to do is stop relying on the tired voices of the past. We can fix a rigged system by relying on the people who -- and just remember this. It's so important. We are reliant on people that rigged the system in the past. We can't fix it if we're going to rely on those people again. We can't solve that problem.

So, we can't solve our problems if we're going to just go back and rely on these politicians because that's what we've been doing. Only by changing to new leadership and new solutions will we get new and great results.

We need -- thank you. We need to stop believing in politicians and start believing in our great country. Before everything great that has happened, the doubters have always said it couldn't be done. They say it right now. It couldn't be done. They actually said it when I ran for political office. It's not going to happen. He's never done it before. It happened.

America is ready to prove the doubters wrong. They want you to think small. I am asking you to think big. We are ready to dream great things for our country once again. We are ready to show the world that America is back, bigger and better and stronger than ever before.

Thank you very much, God bless you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: So, there he is, Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, wrapping up his speech, very carefully drafted speech. He spoke for almost an hour, about 55 minutes by our count at the Detroit Economic Club.

He went into the most specific details so far in his campaign on his economic policy talking about tax reform, lowering the top interest rate, for example from 39 percent down to 33 percent, regulation reform, eliminating a lot of regulations. He says that eliminate, that would create jobs. Trade reform, getting rid of NAFTA, for example, the North American Free Trade Agreement. The war on energy, he talked about the war on coal and other specific issues. He was also interrupted more than a dozen times by some hecklers, some protesters.

Gloria Borger is our Chief Political Analyst. To those of us who follow House Republican economic policy, there seem to be a similar tone, shall we say.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, we were talking amongst ourselves while we were listening to Trump and wondering whether he was suddenly challenging -- channeling, I should say, the House speaker, Paul Ryan.

[13:10:02] Except in a couple of important ways, Wolf, it is -- it is a standard Republican orthodoxy in the ways that you mentioned. But he did differ with Republicans, obviously, on trade. Lots of Republicans are for the TPP and don't want to renegotiate our trade deals, you know, et cetera. So, I think that is -- you know, that is one of the big areas.

The other big area is, of course, deficit reduction which we hear Paul Ryan talk about an awful lot, entitlement reform, that kind of thing. Donald Trump was talking about lowering your taxes. That costs a lot of money, and we're not quite sure how you would make up for the -- for the revenue loss.

BLITZER: Ed O'Keefe is with "The Washington Post." What was your reading on this speech? A very carefully scripted speech. He was reading it from a teleprompter which he often doesn't do.

ED O'KEEFE, POLITICAL REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Yes, and I think this will help quell the concerns of certainly many Republican lawmakers who are out there campaigning right now on the Ryan plan that they can now say, look, you know, we're on the -- about 80 percent of the way there with Donald Trump, when it comes to the economy.

There was no discussion of minimum wage. No discussion of paid -- of family leave. A tip of the hat to a proposal to make all childcare expenses, or most of them, tax deductible. That's clearly an appeal to working women, especially who he's suffering with, if you look at recent polling.

But I think, you know, the differences definitely remain there with trade. Stunning to see him talking about it in a room at an organization that has pushed for these kinds of trade deals before. But, clearly, he's sticking to his guns and saying --

ANNIE LOWREY, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, "NEW YORK MAGAZINE": He was applauded.

O'KEEFE: Yes, and that -- I think that's partly because it looked like the room was larger than normal. He normally speak -- those speeches often given by Republican presidential candidates are usually to a few hundred people at a lunch. This looked more like a -- just a speech to a room full of chairs and people in them.

BLITZER: Yes, he had a lot of supporters in there. He had a few hecklers as well. We'll get to that in a little while.

But the specifics -- there was no discussion, as you point out, about what's called entitlement reform. He has said in the past, he wants to keep social security and Medicare just as it is.

RYAN LIZZA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, I mean, just a couple points. One, I mean, finally, if Donald Trump is talking specifics -- I mean, this really has been a campaign that has lacked policy detail. So, you know, thank God we're getting some detail finally. I think this speech was sort of a coming together of these two wings of the Republican Party that have been at odds for a year. Not the -- not a -- not a full coming together. They're not on the same agenda yet.

But he basically scrapped the tax rates that he had proposed in his last tax policy speech and adopted the tax formula of Paul Ryan. Very, very similar to House Republicans and Senate Republicans on energy reform and regulations. But critically, as Gloria pointed out, no discussion of entitlement reform which is a big Ryan -- piece of the Ryan agenda, something that Donald Trump has said he doesn't want to touch. He doesn't want to touch Social Security and Medicare. So, it will be interesting to see how House Republicans will react.

And the new policy here, that I think the Trump campaign really was excited to talk about is this child care deduction. We don't know the details yet. Remember, it's a deduction not a tax credit. You know, 40 something percent of Americans don't pay federal income tax. So, for some people, if you don't pay federal income tax, you don't get the deduction. So, it will be important to see what the details on that are and to --

BLITZER: And he thanked his daughter Ivanka for that -- for that concept.

LIZZA: Absolutely. And he said it would be the average child care cost which a quick search says about $12,000. That's a big deduction if that's -- what it ends up being.

But I think for Republicans in the House who are skeptical of Trump and would always argue that, don't worry, when he's president, we'll have a whole lot more influence over him. This is an encouraging sign from that wing of the party.

BLITZER: It was interesting -- Annie Lowrey is with us as well, a contributing editor for "New York Magazine." Earlier in this campaign, he spoke of eliminating the seven current tax brackets, going down to 10 percent, 20 percent, 25 percent. Today, he said he has different numbers, 12 percent, 25 percent and the highest tax rate would be 33 percent. That represents a shift from some of his earlier positions on this very sensitive issue.

LOWREY: It does. But, you know, the speech was -- for all that he was giving, the policy detail and for all that he was coming closer to the house Republicans, it was self-contradictory word salad, right? What is complicated about the tax code is not that there's too many different brackets. It's actually a fairly simple part of the tax code. He is giving a huge tax cut to the wealthiest families. His 15 percent tax rate on pass throughs, for instance, he says that that would be for small businesses. Most of the small businesses that are structured pass throughs are (INAUDIBLE) like small law firms that tend to make a lot of money.

And, again, there's not that much detail still to look at here. For instance, on the child care proposal, where the way that it sounds like it's structured, that would be huge tax cuts for wealthy families.

BLITZER: He did say he'd have a lot more to say about --

LOWREY: Yes, good point.

BLITZER: -- that in the coming weeks.

O'KEEFE: I'm agreeing (ph) on her.

LOWREY: Absolutely.

LIZZA: But -- and then, one thing that I would say is a little politically dangerous is the estate tax. He wants a

[13:15:00] full repeal of the estate tax or what Republicans call the death tax.

BLITZER: Most Republicans support that.

LIZZA: Look, if you were Donald Trump and you --

BLITZER: (INAUDIBLE) revolutionary (ph) solution (ph).

LIZZA: But he's worth $3 billion. This is going to be criticized by Democrats as a huge boon to his children.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: But with the whole tax issue --

ED O'KEEFE, POLITICAL REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Is he worth $3 billion, though? He hasn't released his tax returns.

LIZZA: Well --

BORGER: Right. Well, that's it. I was just going to say that --

LIZZA: Let's -- let's say he's very wealthy.

BORGER: Because the interesting thing that this raises, of course, is the more Donald Trump starts talking about your tax rates and how he's going to save you on your taxes and how the wealthy are going to pay some more and the middle class is going to pay some less, the question can be -- then be turned around, and I think it will take about a nanosecond right now for the Clinton campaign to do it, which is, what have you paid? Where are your taxes?

LIZZA: Yes.

BORGER: Why can't we be talking about that if you're prescribing what ought to be done for the rest of America? Let's see how you did in this -- in this current environment.

BLITZER: But, Ed, I think it's fair to say that given where he is as of last Friday in endorsing various Republicans, like the House speaker --

O'KEEFE: Yes.

BLITZER: And John McCain, Kelly Ayotte, this is a natural follow- through in his effort first to unite -- try to unite the Republican Party as much as possible.

O'KEEFE: And this endorsement will matter more to Paul Ryan than the endorsement in the primary race that he faces tomorrow because he has said for more than a year now, I will be speaker, I will be leader of this party, but I'm going to focus on conservative orthodoxy, conservative policy. Getting him even 80 percent of the way there in this speech, again, absent the trade policy and the discussion of deficit reduction.

One you know, one other thing he didn't talk about that he suggested last week was the idea of a massive infrastructure spending program. Well, that's the kind of stuff that causes Tea Party lawmakers to go white in the face and keel over. If he starts pushing that, he's going to face resistance from them. But, today, getting in as far as he did, will be seen as a victory for sure.

LIZZA: And I think we know why he didn't talk about deficit reduction, right, because if you're proposing a massive increase in infrastructure spending --

O'KEEFE: Right.

LIZZA: If you're proposing a big, big tax cut the way he is, balancing the books and cutting the deficits, eliminating it in eight years as he previously promised would be impossible.

BORGER: Well, you need to have the revenue numbers here and you need to have --

LIZZA: Yes.

BORGER: The numbers as --

BLITZER: Well, Ed --

BORGER: As you know better than we do, Annie.

ANNIE LOWREY, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, "NEW YORK MAGAZINE": There's no way that this adds up. It just doesn't. It's impossible.

BLITZER: His argument is basically that --

LOWREY: And especially if you're starting a trade war.

BLITZER: That the economy's going to be growing at such great numbers that it will bring a lot more revenue, taxes in automatically because instead of one or two percent growth, presumably if he has his way, it's going to be a lot bigger than that.

LIZZA: That's what the economists call the magic asterisk --

BLITZER: Yes.

LOWREY: Yes.

LIZZA: Is when you don't have the numbers there, you say, well, the economy will grow at such an accelerated rate that it will take care of the difference.

BLITZER: All right, everybody stick around. There's much more to assess. Trump's economic speech -- and you just heard it live here on CNN -- it was interrupted more than a dozen times by protesters.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(INAUDIBLE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Our national correspondent Jason Carroll is joining us now. He was inside -- he still is inside that auditorium there.

Jason, he was interrupted more than a dozen times. Most of the protesters were women. There was at least one man that I saw protesting. Donald Trump, he kept his cool, didn't say much, didn't say kick them out, get them out, as of the stuff he usually says at his rallies when there are protesters. What do we know about this group of protesters clearly timing their protesters thought that nearly one-hour speech?

JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Right, in the very beginning, they seemed to come just about every few minutes. One, you know, spacing between four minutes and then another coming about five minutes after that. Thirteen women, one man, 14 total I think we counted there. The last man who was escorted out just before Trump's speech ended, we were able to make out he was shouting, "Trump has small hands, Trump has small hands."

They were shouting about a number of different issues. Some shouting about immigration issues. Again, the man that we heard shouting about hands. But what was interesting is Trump, as you say, did stay right on message. He did not let it bother him. At one point actually making a joke about it, basically saying, well, at least they're really well- spaced out. And then in the next breath saying that Bernie Sanders protesters had more energy and vitality.

But at the end of the day, this was a speech that was well-received by the economic club here. At the conclusion of Donald Trump's speech, a representative from the club took to the stage and apologized to Donald Trump and said they were going to get to the bottom of how these protesters got inside.

But, once again, at the end of the day, Wolf, this was a speech that was well-received by the folks here in the room. They felt as though it was upbeat. Some of the themes that he hit on, he said, "we are ready to show the world that America is back, bigger and stronger than before." That really resonated with the crowd here. Another point that resonated with the crowd, when he talked about Hillary Clinton, when he said she "is the candidate of the past. We are the campaign of the future." So, once again, a message that was well-received here. And this is what folks within the GOP want to see more out of Donald Trump, more of him being on message, less rhetoric, more message.

[13:20:22] Wolf.

BLITZER: Jason Carroll in Detroit for us. Jason, stand by.

We're going to continue to stay on top of the breaking news. Donald Trump has just delivered his most detailed economic plan so far. A lot to assess. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Welcome back to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington.

We're following the breaking news. We just heard Donald Trump lay out in the most specific details so far in his campaign his economic plan for America. I want to talk over the Trump economic plan with one of its architects. David Malpass is Donald Trump's senior economic advisory, also served as deputy assistant treasury secretary under President Ronald Reagan, deputy assistant secretary of state for President George H.W. Bush.

[13:25:13] David, thanks very much for joining us.

DAVID MALPASS, SENIOR TRUMP ECONOMIC ADVISER: Hi, Wolf. Good to be on.

BLITZER: All right, so -- so Donald Trump wants to undertake a huge tax cut for almost everyone, the largest in decades, lowering taxes for rich, for the middle class, for almost everyone. Here's the question that the Democrats, a lot of the economists are going to be asking, who is going to pay for that, because that automatically is going to increase the deficit.

MALPASS: Right, and especially it's a tax cut for businesses. And so they're going to be investing more. So this is the biggest tax cut since the Reagan tax cut. I worked on the Reagan tax cut that went in, in 1986. And the way it works is you get a lot more growth in the economy and over time it helps the economy grow and produce a lot more revenue. By ten years after the Reagan tax cut, the budget was balanced. So it's very hard in advance.

You know, you're going to hear a lot of talking heads say, oh, the numbers don't add up, but I think you should ask them what growth rate are you assuming from this plan? I know there was one of the analysis out a month or two ago where they said it would be a big revenue -- a big deficit increaser, but they were assuming only a 3 percent growth rate from the plan. It's going to be more. And that's where -- that's where some of the benefits come.

BLITZER: Well, what is the growth rate that you're projecting under Donald Trump's economic plan?

MALPASS: Well, I think there's no reason the economy can't be growing 4 percent now, and with a surge -- remember after the Reagan tax cuts, there were surges in the economy to 8 percent. The average was much higher. We've been running an economy now for seven years that averaged only 2 percent growth. And so that makes all of the data look worse. The participation rate is worse. People just are getting left out of the economy. So the whole purpose of this is to unleash the economy.

BLITZER: The whole notion, though, of the tax rates, at one point he said the highest tax rate should be 25 percent. Now he says it should be 33 percent. The existing tax rate is a little bit more than 39 percent. Why did he decide to increase that upper level tax rate from 25 percent to 33 percent?

MALPASS: Yes. You know, this is going to go through Congress, recognize that, and so there's going to be a lot of steps in actually achieving tax reform. This is to an extent a unifying part of the plan. You know, the House Republicans have a plan that's for 33 percent and so there's some -- some concept there that you want to work with a big party that's united. And I think the speech did very well in that. There was a lot of clapping in the room and it was a unifying kind of a speech.

BLITZER: He did not mention any changes at all to Medicare or Social Security. Does he still stand by his stance that there should be no changes in Medicare or Social Security?

MALPASS: Yes. And I think that's a very reasonable going in --- a very reasonable position to take. The government is really out of control in spending in all -- in almost all areas. And so why would you want to go into the programs that protect the elderly and cut them first when you really haven't done a full review of the budget? So it seems to me that what we should be focusing on right now is getting the economy growing, getting a lot more people participating in the labor force and getting jobs, getting wages to go up. And that's the focus of this speech.

BLITZER: So he clearly disagrees with Paul Ryan, the speaker, when it comes to so-called entitlement reform. Speaker Ryan wants major entitlement reform on Social Security, Medicare, Trump does not, right?

MALPASS: Right. And so Donald Trump wants the federal government to have really strong finances. But this isn't the -- there doesn't have to be cuts in the entitlements in order to get there. What there has to be under any scenario that you're going to make the finances stronger, you have to have a lot of growth and that should be the first priority, the highest priority and it's a big contrast with -- with Mrs. Clinton. She's really wanted to -- made it clear that she's going to continue the programs that President Obama has done, and that's left us with an average growth rate of 2 percent, over the last year just 1.2 percent. It's a failed program.

BLITZER: What about the minimum wage? He's given conflicting positions on raising the minimum wage. At one point he didn't want to raise it. At another point he said maybe $10. Where does he stand nationally on the minimum wage?

[13:30:07] MALPASS: You know, that wasn't addressed in this speech and there's going to be more parts of the economic program going forward.