Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Report: Trump Says Blacks, Hispanics Live a Disaster; Iraqi Forces Take Long Held ISIS Territory; Trump Has Revealed Less Medical Info Than Clinton; Officer Kills Dead, Mute Man After Speeding Stop. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired August 23, 2016 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00] WENDY DAVIS (D), FORMER TEXAS STATE SENATOR: And Hillary Clinton has spent decades of her public career working in communities of color, working directly with communities of color, and making sure that the policies and priorities that she's been fighting for are going to be absolutely be positively beneficial to them.

BORIS EPSHTEYN, ADVISER, TRUMP CAMPAIGN: Hillary Clinton cannot point to one success in terms of minorities.

DAVIS: And talking down to communities that he's never spent any time visiting with, and is somehow going to be telling them in a very patronizing way that he knows what's best for them, even though he hasn't offered a single policy solution that is going to actually have a positive impact on them. Not a single one.

EPSHTEYN: That is completely incorrect and first of all as Texas state senator you may be happy that a presidential candidate is there, first. Second, Hillary Clinton in her 30, 40 years in public office has done nothing for inner cities. Except for the crime bill which was absolutely destroyed inner cities.

DAVIS: That's completely unfair, Boris. There is a reason that Hillary Clinton has the vast support of minorities across this country and has the support of the congressional black caucus.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: We've got to wrap it

EPSHTEYN: Absolutely not Wendy, you couldn't be more wrong.

BALDWIN: Wendy Davis, Boris Epshteyn and Juana Summers, thank you. All of these voices 76 days to go, thank you.

Coming up next, our senior international correspondent Arwa Damon embeds with Iraqi forces. Rare access. As they take a town that's been under ISIS control for two years now. Military commanders say they noticed a major change in how the terror group operates. Do not miss this extraordinary reporting.

[15:35:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: In Iraq, forces are making significant progress to retake the city of Mosul. ISIS forces have held that city now for more than two years and the fight to dislodge them has not been easy. Iraqi commanders saying there are at least 10,000 families just south of the city being used by ISIS as human shields. 10,000 families. CNN's senior international correspondent Arwa Damon was granted rare access. She has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Under apocalyptic skies, blackened by thick smoke is Gaeta the next target for Iraqi forces. ISIS used to move around 100 oil tankers of crude a day out of these fields, now set aflame by ISIS fighters to decrease visibility from above.

We are some 65 kilometers or 40 miles south of Mosul. Lands Iraqi forces have not stepped in since ISIS took over more than two years ago. Their corpses left to rot in the sun. And the commander tells us that ISIS appears to be weakening.

GENERAL NAJIM AL-JOBOURI, IRAQI MILITARY OPERATIONS COMMANDER: Before, as I told you, the majority of fighters attack us foreign fighters. Now they put some foreign fighters with local fighters. Now I think they have lack on the foreign fighters.

DAMON: On display, weapons troops found in residential homes. Among them, homemade mortar tubes and mortars larger than anything the Iraqis have at their disposal. Another significant gain in this area, the Gaeta airbase. The third largest in Iraq. Much of it destroyed by ISIS fighters as they withdrew. Leaving, we are told, explosives under piles of dirt on the runways that need to be cleared.

This will be a vital forward base for the Iraqis and potentially U.S. forces. Families wearily haul away what they can stumbling away from the fighting.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE, (translation): They took after of hour men. They forced them to fight for them. They killed my father.

DAMON: Tears for all that they've lost. Loved one gone in a war that few can fully comprehend. The lives they knew and loved disintegrated years ago.

To the southeast of Mosul, the Kurdish Peshmerga have pushed their front line forward. The Peshmerga defensive berm snakes its way along the east and north, the villages controlled by ISIS visible in the distance. Here, too, they have noticed ISIS weakening, showing us how ISIS moves within nondescript buildings like this.

The Peshmerga fighters did initially drop down and take few steps into what appeared to be some sort of tunnel but rather than take their chances they decided to then withdraw and seal of the entrance.

The chokehold around Mosul is tightening and the government's pledge to liberate the city by the end of the year is still the goal. The battle there, with over a million civilians, will potentially be starkly different from the ones out here. But success will be defined in land gained, not lives destroyed or lost. (END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: All the smoke in the sky there. Arwa Damon is now live in Erbil, Iraq. What did you and your crew see today, Arwa?

DAMON: Pretty incredible scenes, Brooke, because not only did you have those dark skies that already created such an ominous atmosphere, pretty much ever since the Iraqi security forces began to attempt to enter the town of Gaeta itself, there were ongoing explosions. They were coming across roadside bombs buried along one of the main entrance routes.

[15:40:00] They had five suicide bombers who attempted to target their positions. There were bursts of fairly intense gunfire happening throughout. Imagine, 10,000 families are stuck inside, families, parents with children, who don't know how to keep them safe in all of this. Then of course there is the added concern that ISIS, as it has done in the past, could possibly, and most likely is using these families as human shields.

That just makes the job for the Iraqi security forces that much harder as they are trying to move through and clear what is a very vital strategic town as they continue to advance towards Mosul. What we are seeing in just this one town, Brooke, is a fraction of what we are potentially going to be seeing when it comes to the intensity of the battles and the dangers civilians are going finding themselves in as troops do finally advance on and assault Mosul.

BALDWIN: 10,000 families. Keep shining light, Arwa. Keep bringing these stories to us. Arwa Damon in Iraq, thank you very much.

Coming up next, Donald Trump has tried to make Hillary Clinton's health an issue in the campaign. But what about his own health? We'll talk to our chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, he joins me live on what we know on the health of both of these candidates.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Just over the past couple of days we've heard Donald Trump and members of his campaign team raise concerns about Hillary Clinton's health. Most, if not all, the claims have been debunked as just totally and completely false. And in fact, questions are also being raised about the health of Donald Trump who has revealed even less information about his medical status than has Secretary Clinton.

I want to talk about all of this with our chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta. What do we know about Donald Trump's health?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: As you said, there's not that much released but a lot of people are filling in the vacuums with all sorts of speculation. As you talk about with Secretary Clinton, speculation is obviously very dangerous sometimes. The only people who can make only accurate assessment are not only doctors but doctors who have actually examined patients. We know he says he doesn't get much sleep three or four hours a night.

He eats primarily fast food. Uses golf as his exercise. There was this letter, Dr. Harold Bornstein who is Mr. Trump's personal physician, released this letter where he basically concluded by saying not only does he think that Mr. Trump is healthy but he said he would being the healthiest individual ever elected president which is obviously just an unknowable thing.

It is one of these things where we just simply don't have objective data. We don't know what certain lab values are or how his health has been over the years and these are questions people are asking.

BALDWIN: What about Hillary Clinton? For her part she was on "Jimmy Kimmel" last night laughing off these totally unsubstantiated rumors about her health. Here they were.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON, DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Take my pulse while I'm talking to you.

JIMMY KIMMEL, TALK SHOW HOST: OK.

CLINTON: So make sure I'm alive.

KIMMEL: Oh, my god. There's nothing there.

CLINTON: There's nothing there. What can I say. Back in October, the National Enquirer said I would be dead in six months. With every breath I take I feel like --

KIMMEL: You have a new lease on life.

[15:50:00] Clinton: A new lease on life. I don't know why they are saying this. On one hand it is part of the wacky strategy. Just say all these crazy things and maybe you can get some people to believe you. On the other hand, it just absolutely makes no sense and I don't go around questioning Donald Trump's health.

KIMMEL: Can you open this jar of pickles? This has not been tampered with. She can open a pickle jar!

BALDWIN: She can open a pickle jar. No. She's laughing it off, but officially with all of these rumors about her health, how is the Clinton campaign responding officially?

GUPTA: I talked with the campaign a little bit ago. What they are saying is there is a lot of conspiracy theories out there, there are a lot of spin doctors who are posing as real doctors out there. Her real doctor who examine her released a note.

There is a couple page letter, a summary. We journalists as well as doctors always like to have more information. But this is what we have to work with be a two-page summary. Probably the most salient points are this that they conclude that she is fit to serve as president of the United States. The real question people want answered, her most pertinent medical

history was we heard about this concussion back in 2012. She developed a blood clot around the brain after that concussion and she's had two blood clots in the past in '98 and 2009. So she takes blood thinners for that. Those are probably some of the most salient points in the letter. Again, we always want to get as much information as we can.

BALDWIN: Sanjay, thank you very much.

Coming up next, police in North Carolina shoot and kill a deaf man who didn't pull over when he was apparently speeding. His family is now pressing for answers about why the officer pulled the trigger.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:55:00] BALDWIN: A North Carolina family is just in anguish today demanding answers after their brother who was deaf and mute was shot and killed

by a state trooper. Police tell our Charlotte affiliate WSOC that 29- year-old Daniel Harris was shot after he got out of his car near his home after he had an encounter with a police officer.

Harris' brother says he wonders whether the fact that he couldn't hear led to some kind of miscommunication. Ed, what do you know?

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It has been nearly a week since all of this happened. And investigators still have not released many details about what they describe as an encounter between the state trooper and Daniel Harris. This happened last Thursday just after six o'clock at night.

Harris led police on a pursuit that lasted more than seven miles. Harris' family says he was making his way back to the house, when investigators say Harris got out of the car and this where this encounter occurred. One shot was fired and that one shot killed Daniel Harris. His brother spoke out about this, who is also deaf. The voice you hear in this is the interpreter.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAM HARRIS, BROTHER OF DANIEL HARRIS, SHOOTING VICTIM (interpreter): He was a few feet away from his home. He was trying to get to the

safe place he knew. Police need to become aware of how to communicate with deaf people, what that might look like, and how to avoid situations like this from ever happening again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAVANDERA: And Brooke, investigators say they're compiling a report on this which could take about a week to come back. They say they're gathering dash cam videos and bodycam videos from about 20 different troopers that responded to that scene. Not many details being released at this point as to what the encounter was all about.

BALDWIN: Let's follow through on that. Ed Lavandera, thank you. Coming up next, staying on politics here on CNN. Donald Trump now is calling for a special prosecutor to investigate the Clinton Foundation. We'll talk about how the Clinton campaign is responding to that request. I'm Brooke Baldwin, we'll be right back.

(COMMERCAIL BREAK)