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Second Amendment People Could Stop Clinton; Rio Olympics Highlights; Olympic Refugee Team; Orlando Gunman's Father Attends Clinton Rally; New Harassment Claims Against Roger Ailes; Fox News Staffers Feared Ailes Was Monitoring Them; Heart Recipient Walks Donor's Daughter Down the Aisle. Aired 12-1a ET
Aired August 10, 2016 - 00:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[00:00:23] JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR: This is CNN NEWSROOM live from Los Angeles. Ahead this hour --
ISHA SESAY, CNN ANCHOR: Veiled threat or joke gone bad? Donald Trump suggesting gun rights people could deal with Hillary Clinton.
VAUSE: Bring it on. An emotional Michael Phelps wins two more golds in Rio.
SESAY: And the Olympic refugee team, they are the darlings of the Rio games. Why the world is much less moved when they don't run or swim fast.
VAUSE: Hello and welcome to our viewers all around the world. Great to have you with us. I'm John Vause.
SESAY: And I'm Isha Sesay. NEWSROOM L.A. starts right now.
Well, one day after trying to reboot his campaign to focus on the economy, Donald Trump is back in the center of another controversy.
VAUSE: The U.S. Republican presidential nominee has consistently attacked his rival Hillary Clinton for her stand on gun control. Tuesday he took it another step further.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish the Second Amendment. By the way, if she gets to pick -- if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know. But I'll tell you what --
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SESAY: Well, critics immediately slammed the remark as a veiled threat. Democratic Senator Chris Murphy said this. "Don't treat this as a political misstep. It's an assassination threat, seriously upping the possibility of a national tragedy and crisis." VAUSE: Trump, though, later told Fox News he was referring to the
political power of the gun lobby.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: This is a political movement. This is a strong, powerful movement, the Second Amendment, you know. Hillary wants to take your guns away. She wants to leave you unprotected in your home. This is a tremendous political movement. There can be no other interpretation. Even reporters have told me. I mean, give me a break.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: Joining us here in Los Angeles, Ron Brownstein, CNN's senior political analyst and senior editor for "The Atlantic".
Ok, Ron -- the Second Amendment, just for our international viewers, is the right to bear arms. So a lot of people have looked at what Donald Trump said as encouraging someone essentially to go out and assassinate or shoot Hillary Clinton. The former director of the CIA, Michael Hayden, he certainly heard it that way. This is what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MICHAEL HAYDEN, FORMER CIA DIRECTOR: When I heard that for the first time, that was more than a speed bump -- all right? That's actually a very arresting comment. If someone else had said that outside the hall, he'd be in the back of a police wagon now with the Secret Service questioning him.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: Ok. So explain the context here. Why in terms of presidential history here in the United States, why is something like that so controversial regardless of what Donald Trump may or may not have meant?
RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. It didn't strike me as quite as inflammatory as some other people heard it but you really have to understand it within the context of everything Donald Trump has said and done since he became a presidential candidate, which in many cases goes far beyond the boundaries of what we have seen in politics. I mean, particularly the air of violence at many of his rallies, especially early on; some of his language about protesters; the point where he said he might pay the legal bills for anybody who took out a protester.
So I think people are kind of extremely sensitive to these kinds of comments. Plus the fact that Trump has kind of portrayed this kind of almost dystopian vision of America -- this idea that the country is at the brink of being irreversibly transformed into something else. And that kind of gives you that feeling of any means necessary.
I saw Thomas Friedman compare this to some of the language that he heard in Israel before the assassination of Yitzchak Rabin. So while it didn't strike me as quite as inflammatory as many others heard it, I can see why people would be concerned.
SESAY: So these comments come a day after his economic policy speech -- a day where, you know, the day after he should be focusing on that. And yet here we are another day, another crisis.
Anything to suggest that he can possibly break this pattern of constantly wading into fresh controversy?
BROWNSTEIN: No. No, no, no. It was very interesting. I mean the fact that Michael Hayden was commenting on this, the former CIA director under President Bush, really kind of underscores the way in which this use of language and this kind of inflammatory rhetoric from Donald Trump goes to one of his core problems.
I mean Michael Hayden was part of the group of 50 -- 50 former Republican national security officials yesterday who wrote really an unprecedented letter saying that Donald Trump was unfit to be president in part because they said he would be the most reckless president in American history.
And that was a missile aimed I think at his biggest vulnerability. 60 percent of Americans say he's not qualified to be president. That number has hardly budged in ABC/Washington Post polls in a year and a half. And this is the kind of behavior that reinforces that.
[00:05:06] And when you have all of these prominent voices from the Reagan, Bush One and Bush Two administrations saying we don't think he has what it takes -- he's not fit for the job, not attacking him on issues, attacking him on his personal qualifications, that is I think a powerful message to a lot of those swing voters.
VAUSE: You mentioned the context of how this remark was made and what Donald Trump has been saying. Today he also brought up the possibility -- you know, the I.D. laws and why there are no I.D. laws when it comes to -- identification laws when it comes to voting.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Why aren't we having voter I.D.? In other words, I want to vote, here's my identification, I want to vote; as opposed to somebody coming up and voting 15 times for Hillary.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: And also for the past week or so he's been going on and on about how the election could be rigged. This is what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: A rigged system.
Rigged -- rigged -- rigged.
To rig the system.
Rig the system. Totally rigged.
Rigged press.
Totally rigged system.
The election's going to be rigged.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: Is there now a tone setting over Donald Trump's campaign the likes of which we haven't really seen in American politics?
BROWNSTEIN: Yes. Absolutely. And if it's a close election this could be very ugly after. But I would argue that this kind of argument from Donald Trump is actually a bad bet for him. Because again, if you think about where he is, he is doing very well with blue-collar whites, particularly those who are most culturally and economically alienated from where the country is going.
This kind of doubling down on the voter I.D. laws which many -- almost all civil rights groups view as an attempt to suppress minority voters helps to explain why the last two national polls had him trailing among African-Americans 92-2 and 91-1.
VAUSE: Wow.
BROWNSTEIN: Wow. Those are wow numbers. That's even lower than Mitt Romney against Barack Obama. And then you kind of look at the last group, which I think is the pivotal group in the electorate, which are these white-collar whites. College educated white voters. No Democrat in the history of polling has ever won most college educated white voters in a presidential election.
Donald Trump is now trailing among them in every major poll including some of these battleground state polls that came out today. And I think one of the reasons is they view -- the two biggest reasons are they view him as racially divisive and they view him as not quite qualified to be president -- reckless, in temperament and kind of erratic. And these kinds of charges I think kind of reinforce those concerns.
SESAY: All right. Let's dig into some of these polls you just mentioned -- a trio of new polls.
BROWNSTEIN: Yes.
SESAY: NBC News, Wall Street Journal and Marist which shows Hillary Clinton leading Trump in three battleground states. Let's put up the numbers.
In Iowa she has a four-point advantage among registered voters over Trump -- 41 to 37. In Pennsylvania she's expanded her lead to 11 points -- 48 percent to 37 percent. And finally, in Ohio she has a five-point lead there -- 43 to 38. How has she opened up this lead, people are asking, particularly in a place like Ohio? Give us your sense of the significance. Because you feel actually Pennsylvania --
(CROSSTALK)
BROWNSTEIN: That's the two in there. With the exception of the Pennsylvania numbers these aren't terrible for Donald Trump in the context of where he is nationally. These numbers could be worse. But these are states that are really at the top of his opportunity list. They are part of those five Rust Belt swing states that are older, whiter, more heavily blue collar. Those are the voters he's strong with.
In the polls that came out today and Quinnipiac University also had polls out in two of those same states -- Trump is running very well with those blue collar voters and there are fewer minorities in these states. The problem he's got is again these college educated white voters are bending away from him more than we have seen for other Republican candidates.
In the polling, again, Quinnipiac today and I'm sure Marist is the same. He was trailing by double digits among whites with a college degree in both Ohio and Pennsylvania. Mitt Romney won whites with a college degree by double digits in both Ohio and Pennsylvania.
VAUSE: Very quickly let's get to Hillary Clinton. She has had her own problems today out on the campaign trail. The father of the Orlando shooter who killed 49 people earlier this year, the father was spotted actually standing behind Hillary Clinton at a rally in Florida.
A lot of questions about how he got there. The campaign has since disavowed his support, saying they essentially did not want him there. But normally this kind of story, this would be like a two or three-day story in any normal campaign but not this election.
BROWNSTEIN: Right. I mean it really goes to the point. Incredibly, when you have a party trying to win a third consecutive term in the White House, which has only happened once since World War II, it is not a referendum in essence on President Obama or even Hillary Clinton. This is primarily at this point a referendum on whether or not you want Donald Trump as president. That is the core issue.
And the challenge he faces is as I said 60 percent of the country consistently in polls has said that he is not qualified to be president. He can drive Hillary Clinton's negatives as high as wants between now and November but unless he reverses these -- I think these twin kind of obstacles in the road for him are again 60 percent say he's not qualified to be president. 56 percent to 60 percent say they view him as racially biased.
[00:09:58] And I think as long as those two perceptions are there it's very -- by the way, even without the violence implications, doubling down on the Second Amendment and gun control, again, speaking to his non-urban blue-collar, you know, small town base but kind of reinforcing the problems with these white-collar swing I think counties in the big metropolitan areas which I think are the principal obstacle on his path to the White House. SESAY: And Ron, very quickly before we let you go, this line has
somewhat been overshadowed by Trump's Second Amendment comments, but he spoke to "Time Magazine" earlier on about the debates and said he is willing to debate but he may be looking to renegotiate the terms. Your thoughts on that and what are his chances of being able to do that?
BROWNSTEIN: You know, the Commission o the Presidential debates has been doing this for a very long time. I think they're going to take a hard line with Donald Trump. I think he's going to push as hard as he can. We'll see where it goes.
In the end right now he's the one that's losing. He is the one who has to shake up the race. He's facing structural problems with these historic deficits among minorities and this underperformance among --
SESAY: He needs the debates --
VAUSE: He needs the debates more than they need him.
BROWNSTEIN: I mean really he's the one -- look, Hillary Clinton is very comfortable letting Donald Trump have the spotlight right now. And she's happy kind of letting him in effect run against himself, be a referendum on himself. He needs the debate that's going to sharpen that comparison again. I think the Clinton campaign is not going to be in a real flexible mode when it comes to changing the rules.
VAUSE: Ron, we hope it speak to you again next hour.
SESAY: Yes. Thank you -- Ron.
VAUSE: Thank you.
SESAY: Well, two more golds for the most decorated Olympian of all time. U.S. swimming superstar Michael Phelps led his team to victory in the 4 x 200 meter freestyle relay, taking home his 21st Olympic gold medal.
VAUSE: The big win came soon after Phelps won gold in the men's 200- meter butterfly. Phelps faced off against Chad le Clos, the South African swimmer who beat him at the same event in London four years ago. Le Clos finished fourth.
Christina MacFarlane live for us again in Rio. Early morning. Christina -- you're so good to be with us. You're going hate us by the end of the Olympics.
SESAY: Hey, Christina.
VAUSE: Ok. This was such a big night --
CHRISTINA MACFARLANE, CNN WORLD SPORTS: I really am.
VAUSE: -- for Phelps. This is such a big night for Phelps. Last night it was the stare when he was, you know, staring out his competition. Tonight as he received that medal for the 20th time, his 20th gold medal, he was emotional. Something we've never really seen from Phelps before.
MACFARLANE: I know. Absolutely -- John. And didn't it just show you what it meant to him to be back here and on the winner's podium? It was of course Michael Phelps' night. And I tell you what, that 200- meter butterfly was the race of redemption for him, not just because he'd beaten Chad le Clos, of course, who defeated him back in London 2012 but because of the journey it's taken him to get here.
Remember in London he retired from swimming. He I said he hated swimming. He didn't want to get back in the pool again. He had a really rocky time after that. He was arrested twice for drunk driving in 2014. It was all going wrong for him.
He said when he came back here to Rio that he just wanted to enjoy himself. And that's what we saw in the pool on Tuesday night. And he has now become the oldest individual gold medalist in Olympic swim history with that gold medal number 20.
But of course it wasn't over just then. He came back out 15 minutes later. He competed in the men's 4x100 meters -- a spectacular race by the American men. There was a slightly hairy moment for Phelps when his swam cap appeared to snap just before he was meant to get in the pool but no real problem as he managed to snap another one. And by the time he got in the pool, of course, the race was all but over. The U.S. men so dominant that all Phelps had to do was swim home for victory. Of course that gold medal number 21. It was spectacular in the pool tonight.
SESAY: Yes, Christina, he really is the most decorated Olympian of all time -- a true great.
Let's talk about the U.S. gymnastics team now -- a fantastic night for the fierce five winning by a huge margin.
MACFARLANE: An absolutely huge margin. You know, before tonight we perhaps couldn't have said it, but now we can. This is the greatest gymnastic team in history that we're witnessing here -- a completely flawless, dominant display. They actually obliterated the competition, their closest rivals Russia, by eight points. They won in every discipline.
And they were so good that by the time their star Simone Biles came out they'd actually wrapped up the gold medal. However, Simone Biles was in top form, as she always is, putting on a spectacular display on the floor there. She is the first gymnast, or she's attempting to become the first gymnast to win five gold medals in one Olympic Games. And I wouldn't put it past her. She really is one of the standout stars of this Olympic Games.
And the U.S. now become the first team to win back-to-back gold medals since the Romanians did it way back in 2000 and 2004. And I tell you what -- we've got more medals to come from these ladies, a spectacular performance from them.
[00:15:10] VAUSE: That wasn't that way back, Christina. Ok?
What's with the green water in the diving pool?
MACFARLANE: Yes. This is a strange one -- guys. We were getting reports today that in the synchronized swimming pool the water in which the ladies were competing had turned green. It was actually blue on Monday but by Tuesday -- you can see there in the pictures -- look how green it had turned. It was so green, in fact, that the competitors were saying they couldn't see their team underneath the water.
Now, the organizers tested the water. They said there was nothing wrong with, it was perfectly healthy, but they just couldn't explain what was actually unfolding. It didn't stop China, however, from picking up the gold medal, although I would say it left their rivals green with envy.
VAUSE: Oh, my gosh. You're done now.
SESAY: Christina -- appreciate it.
VAUSE: We'll see you later.
SESAY: See you later. Thanks so much.
VAUSE: Christina will be back later this hour with a live edition of World Sports from Rio.
In the meantime we'll take a quick look at the medal count after the fourth day of competition. The United States is in first place with nine gold medals.
China is close behind with eight golds while both Hungary and Australia each have four. Really? And rounding out the top six, Russia and Italy with three golds each. The U.S. also leads in total number of medals with 26.
VAUSE: I'm sorry.
SESAY: Not on the medal board.
VAUSE: Not yet. In good time.
SESAY: 20 gold medals up for grabs Wednesday.
Here are some events to keep your eye on. In gymnastics Japan's Kohei Uchimura will be looking to defend the men's individual all-around title. Nobody has defended the title since 1972.
VAUSE: Also the first rowing finals take place after high winds caused trouble in the early part of the competition. And in the men's cycling time trials Tour de France champion Chris Froome is hoping to medal. He won bronze four years ago in London.
And when we come back here, they are a team without a country, but they're the rock stars in Rio. Around the world, though, it's a very different story for refugees.
SESAY: Russia and Turkey are back on speaking terms after a bitter feud. Putin and Erdogan turning the page -- after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PEDRAM JAVAHERI, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Weather Watch on CNN. I'm Pedram Javaheri with you watching the southeastern U.S. yet again as it's the predominant area for any sort of uniform weather pattern, a lot of thunderstorms present. Take a look. The moisture content really sticks out here like a sore thumb when you take a look at how much moisture is locked into that region.
There are some storms on the northeastern corner of the U.S. but it is around the gulf coast that the most high flood risk remains in place. In fact, up and down the panhandle working your way out towards New Orleans in the state of Louisiana there, heavy rainfall expected.
[00:20:01] The models indicating the heaviest rain now could be displaced a little farther back toward the west and that could be again north of 250 to 300 millimeters by the time this is all said and done later this week.
Temps into the upper 30s. You factor in the humidity about 41, 42 degrees across parts of Dallas. In Denver, Colorado also a little steamy there at 34. Winnipeg it's not a thunderstorm possible there, temps should be into the upper 20s and low 30s there.
Here's what's left of Javier -- now losing a lot of its tropical characteristics. The Sierra Madre Mountains across this region of western Mexico, we'll see a lot of thunderstorms begin to flourish into the afternoon hours, some flooding concerns on those higher elevation communities. But temps should be kept a little cooler there into the mid 20s around Mexico City, Chihuahua around 31 degrees. And work your way to the south notice places like La Paz some morning snow showers could mix in as well.
SESAY: Hello everyone.
It's been an emotional first few days in Rio for a team that's making Olympic history. They're all refugees with no home or flag but they do have support from the International Olympic Committee and the media's attention.
VAUSE: Among them a judo fighter from the Congo who took refuge in Brazil three years ago, escaping horrible treatment in his home country.
Here's Shasta Darlington.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SHASTA DARLINGTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Popole Misenga has reined in his brutal tactics aiming for gold as part of the new refugee team. Training in his adopted home, Brazil.
"My fight in the Olympics would be for all of the refugees", he says, "to give them faith in their dreams." But it was a violent road that started in the Democratic Republic of Congo. During the five-year conflict that ended in 2003, more than five million people were killed and millions more left homeless. Misenga was separated from his family during the war and to this day doesn't know if they survived.
He says he was mistreated when he lost matches. Misenga's coach says the experience made him aggressive. "In Congo they always had to win or they were punished in a cage," he says.
He came to Rio in 2013 to compete in the world judo championship for Congo. He stayed and requested asylum, a decision he doesn't regret, although he faces unexpected challenges.
"I thought I'd make a better life here and forget what was going on in my village," he says. "But here shots are fired every day."
We visit Misenga in the working-class neighborhood where he now lives with his Brazilian wife and toddler son.
This is where Popole gets the bus every day to go to training -- three different buses, two and a half hours. He doesn't get home until around 11:30 at night.
He shows us the hair salon where he slept on the floor when he first arrived until he met Fabiana. She says the Olympics are about much more than competing for a medal. "He needs this because it could help him find his siblings," she says. "He hasn't seen them since he was a kid."
Misenga says he wants to bring them to his new home, to Brazil.
Shasta Darlington -- CNN, Rio de Janeiro.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: We're joined now by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, senior fellow at the council of Foreign Relations and author of "Ashley's War: The untold story of a team of women soldiers on the special ops battlefield".
Gayle -- always good to have you with us. The refugee team at the Olympics, they really have been the stars of -- in one respect -- of the Olympics. But Roger Khan of the "New York Times" had a very interesting column and he talked about the vast gulf here between team refugee and refugees around the world.
This is what he wrote in part. "The world is moved by Team Refugees at the Olympics in Rio. They are greeted with a standing ovation at the opening ceremony. Yet it is unmoved by refugees. They die at sea. They die sealed in the back of a truck. They die anonymous deaths. They represent danger and threaten disruption. Would you say he's got a good point?
GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON, AUTHOR: Absolutely. I mean, I think we live in a moment of constant but disposable emotion. And it's very easy to applaud refugees, and it's much harder to say, you know what, we're going to take you in.
And I think we have a story of two international communities. On the one hand, you have the Olympic community who has the first refugee team. We applaud them. On the other hand, you have the United Nations and an international community that has yet to be able to stop a war that has gone on in Syria for more than five years.
[00:25:02] SESAY: Can European governments be moved to actually do more for refugees, or has the politics coming from anti-immigration parties made this an issue that's impossible to touch in a meaningful way?
LEMMON: I mean I always think local politics trumps global compassion. And I think we are in that moment. I would love to tell you that the Syrian mom I met in southern Turkey who cries every morning when her teenage son has to go to work instead of being able to go to school because there are no schools that she can send her son to has millions of people rooting for her every day. But she doesn't. So there's team refugee and then there's reality refugee.
VAUSE: It is certainly a different system -- the Olympics.
LEMMON: Absolutely.
I hope, though it returns the humanity to this conversation that has been sorely missing -- the humanity of these people who are lost.
VAUSE: Well, on the issue of Syria which many of these refugees worldwide have come from, Turkey and Russia, two of the biggest players in Syria appear to have put their problems behind them. They met for the first time since Turkey shot down the Russian fighter jet. Both have agreed to work together to end the fighting in Syria but how does this work out going forward because both Turkey and Russia have been on opposite sides of this conflict?
LEMMON: Right. I mean can you get opposing sides to the same table? And Turkey is showing that it matters. Look at what's happening in Aleppo. That is the next big fight. That is the next big prize in terms of the fight in Syria leading to a negotiating table that might one day lead to an end of the carnage that has led more than four million people to leave their homes in Syria, to leave the country that has taken the lives of at least 300,000 people as far as we know although the numbers are pretty lousy. We'll see.
VAUSE: You see it as a positive that these two leaders are meeting.
LEMMON: I see it as something that could potentially move people toward a negotiating table. But this has been a conflict that has taken turns and twists no one has ever expected.
SESAY: So you this as a positive - but how does the U.S. see it -- the U.S. and its other coalition partners? I mean should they be viewing this with some trepidation?
LEMMON: I think there's always trepidation about the shifting alliances that have been part of the Syrian civil war. The question is can you get enough people to say we're going to get the parties to have a cessation of hostilities that actually lasts? We're going to get the parties to the table to negotiate, and we're going to figure out a transition from Bashar al Assad to whomever comes next in Syria. And those three questions have not yet been answered.
VAUSE: Of course all this comes while the siege in Aleppo continues.
LEMMON: Continues in plain sight.
SESAY: And the U.N. says a total of some two million people living in fear of the effects of the siege.
VAUSE: We'll have more of that next hour -- ok Gayle. Please come back. Thank you.
SESAY: Gayle, thank you. Appreciate it.
LEMMON: Thank you.
VAUSE: Next here, an unlikely supporter shows up at Hillary Clinton's campaign event and stirs up a lot of controversy. More in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[00:31:00] 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.
Michael Phelps won his 20th and 21st Olympic gold medals in Rio on Tuesday. The American swimmer beat South Africa's Chad Le Clos in the men's 200-meter butterfly. Phelps also led team USA to gold in the men's 4x200-meter freestyle relay.
VAUSE: After fasting for 16 years, an Indian activist has ended the world's longest known hunger strike. Irom Sharmila began her protest in 2000 when police allegedly killed ten civilians near her home. She's been force-fed by the government ever since. Sharmila is expected to run in local elections next year.
SESAY: Libyan military commanders say their forces are closing in on ISIS in Sirte. A local militia has launched a major offensive to retake the city in May forcing ISIS fighters to retreat to the city center. Sirte has been under ISIS control since May 2015.
VAUSE: Donald Trump has ignited another controversy with his latest attack on Hillary Clinton. Critics immediately accused him of making a veiled threat of violence. Trump's campaign says he was talking about political influence. This is what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish the Second Amendment. By the way, if she gets to pick -- (CROWD BOOING)
If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know.
But I will tell you what --
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SESAY: Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton's campaign is trying to distance itself from a controversial supporter. The father of the Orlando nightclub shooter sat behind her at a rally in Florida on Monday.
VAUSE: After a time, the campaign came out and finally said it disagrees with his views and disavowed his support.
We get more now from CNN's Brian Todd.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
(MUSIC PLAYING)
BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A rally where she needed to connect with voters in the most important battleground state of them all.
HILLARY CLINTON, U.S. DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Whoa. This is fabulous! Thank you.
TODD: A raucous crowd in Kissimmee, Florida, just a 30-minute drive from the spot where 49 people were killed in the worst mass shooting in American history. Hillary Clinton begins the rally by thanking the Orlando police and city leaders for their response to the Pulse nightclub massacre.
CLINTON: And I know how many people, family members, loved ones and friends are still grieving.
TODD: But as she says that, sitting just behind her, in the red cap with the large mustache, Seddique Mateen, the father of the Orlando shooter. One supporter in the backdrop the campaign never expected.
SEDDIQUE MATEEN, FATHER OF ORLANDO SHOOTER: Clinton is good for United States versus Donald Trump.
TODD: Mateen spoke to CNN affiliate WPTV about why he showed up.
MATEEN: It's the Democratic Party, so everybody can join.
TODD: Mateen showed a banner supporting Hillary Clinton for among other things her position on gun control. This is a man who once touted himself as a candidate for president of Afghanistan. And in the week after the Orlando massacre held rambling incoherent news conferences.
MATEEN: I didn't know what I was saying. TODD: Seddique Mateen says he was invited to the Clinton rally. Hillary Clinton's people say not by them. A campaign aide telling CNN, this was an open door event for the public and, quote, "The campaign was unaware of his attendance until after the event."
But this unforced error by the Clinton campaign, observers say, comes at a bad time as Clinton pushes for support in Florida, which has the most electoral votes of any battleground state.
A.B. STODDARD, REALCLEARPOLITICS: If the conversation returns to her and some error that shows that she might be possibly affiliated with a terrorist's family, then the subject is back on her and off of Trump, and that is not where she wants this debate to be.
TODD (on-camera): A key question. Are the people seated behind the candidates at these events vetted for those placements?
[00:35:04] A CNN reporter who's embedded with the Clinton campaign tells us usually an advance person for the campaign, often a young person, goes through the crowd and picks people to come on stage. Often those people are VIPs, people who are known to the campaign or people who show diversity in age or race.
Clinton loyalist Paul Begala says that advance person for the event in Florida should be fired.
Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SESAY: Time for a quick break now.
And former "Fox News" CEO Roger Ailes is facing yet another sexual harassment claim. And some employees fear he may be monitoring their phone calls and e-mails. That story just ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SESAY: Another woman at "Fox News" has come forward accusing former network boss Roger Ailes of sexual harassment. Angela Tantaros claimed she was repeatedly harassed by Ailes. And when she informed the other higher-ups she says they ignored her.
VAUSE: At least six current and former "Fox News" staffers say hosts and producers feared Ailes had tapped their phones and was listening in on their conversations.
SESAY: CNN senior media correspondent Brian Stelter joins us now from New York.
Brian, good to have you with us.
Thanks.
SESAY: You said some years ago you went on a couple of dates with a low-level "Fox" staffer and at some point came to realize these were not actually dates.
What happened?
BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: This is a little awkward for me. I'm a happily married man here talking about my dating life. But, yes, about ten years ago I had a blog about television news called TV News.
It was very well-read within the halls of "Fox News" and among the bosses of the network. So they wanted to know all about me. And what they did essentially was have this low-level staffer act as a spy, as an intelligence gatherer for the bosses.
So we would go out to dinner. Something like that. Then she would report back the next day about what I thought, my opinions, my feelings about "Fox News" and CNN and "MSNBC."
Basically, she was acting like she was on intelligence-gathering missions, and I had no idea. Now I found out a year or so later after she left "Fox." And I didn't think much of it at the time. But now, now that Roger Ailes, the boss of "Fox News" has resigned, we're hearing more and more about the more sinister versions of this behavior.
Old-fashioned intelligence gathering by private investigators and detectives. There were cases where other journalists were actually tailed and targeted, followed home and things like that.
So these stories have been coming out, kind of on a drip, drip, drip basis. So I thought it was worth sharing my kind of smaller version of this as an example of the strange behavior "Fox News" has engaged in over the years.
SESAY: Yes. Indeed. And in your case, do you know who she was passing the information on to?
STELTER: The head of the PR department at the time. But that was going straight to Roger Ailes as well.
The thing about "Fox News" is that it's both a news organization and a political organization at the same time. And Roger Ailes really blurred the lines between them.
He was a political strategist for Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan before becoming the head of "Fox News." And he was really using Nixonian tactics at the network.
[00:40:00] SESAY: So Gabe Sherman, who has done a lot of reporting on "Fox News" and on Roger Ailes now says that there was a so-called black room set up by former "Fox News" CEO Roger Ailes to keep tabs on reporters and other perceived threats.
The question on the minds of many is, what did the Murdochs know? How far up did this go? I mean, what's your sense?
STELTER: I've been asking that question for weeks at this point. And, frankly, the company is just refusing to answer it. The Murdochs do not want to get involved into questions about what they did or did not know about Ailes's behavior.
You know, the more this picture is painted, it seems like Ailes was abusing his power as the chairman and CEO of "Fox News."
Yes, he has denied all of the harassment allegations against him. But there are a number of other stories as well about these private investigators, about consultants that he had on the payroll.
Gabriel Sherman has really written about this in depth. The "New York" magazine's Web site this week. It seems that Ailes was running his own sort of operation within "Fox News" according to Sherman, even using "Fox's" own money for his own private vendettas.
With that in mind, the Murdochs at some point are going to have to come to terms with what they did or did not know. But so far they're staying silent about it.
SESAY: Yes. And in the face of their silence, how damaging is all of this to the "Fox News" brand?
STELTER: I think in the short term, we look at the ratings, you look at the loyalty and the popularity of the network, we're not seeing short-term damage. Long-term, though, this has severe implications for "Fox News". And that's because we have never seen "Fox News" without Roger Ailes.
These two -- Ailes was "Fox News." "Fox News" was Ailes. He created a one-of-a-kind G.O.P. television channel. A sort of home for Republicans on television in America.
In some ways, he was the most powerful Republican in America that wasn't elected, that didn't hold elected office. To have him disappear all of a sudden is going to have far-reaching consequences because that means some of the stars of "Fox" aren't going to want to stay there anymore.
It means "Fox" might not be as influential among the G.O.P. But we just won't know exactly how it's going to play out, I think, for months down the line.
You know, for now, Rupert Murdoch is the acting CEO. 85-year-old media mogul Rupert Murdoch now running the network every day, running the morning editorial meetings. Must be a fun job for him, you know.
I don't think he ever imagined he'd be running "Fox News" this way. He always let Ailes handle it. Ailes had an incredible amount of autonomy. Maybe too much.
SESAY: Maybe.
Brian Stelter, we really appreciate the insight and the sneak peek into your former dating life. Appreciate it.
STELTER: Thank you. VAUSE: TMI. A little TMI there.
OK, before we go, when Jeni Stepien walked down the aisle this weekend, her father was not there but his heart was.
Jeni's father was murdered ten years ago. His organs were donated. In an emotional ceremony, the man who received her father's heart was the one who gave her away.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JENI STEPIEN, BRIDE: Thank you so much for coming.
ARTHUR THOMAS, HEART TRANSPLANT RECIPIENT: Are you kidding?
STEPIEN: I was just so thankful that my dad could be here with us today in spirit and a piece of his physical being as well. That was really, really special for us.
THOMAS: What greater honor could a person have than walking the daughter of the man who's given his heart to him? I can't imagine a greater honor.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: They've written letters back and forth over the years, but it was not until the day before the wedding they actually met in person.
SESAY: That really is very special.
Well, thank you for watching CNN NEWSROOM live from Los Angeles. I'm Isha Sesay.
VAUSE: I'm John Vause. "World Sport" is up next, live from Rio.
You're watching CNN.
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