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Hillary Clinton Argues Trump Campaign Built on Prejudice and Paranoia. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired August 25, 2016 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:48]

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, and we continue on. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you for being with me.

We just heard from Donald Trump there. Now we are waiting to hear from Hillary Clinton. She is planning on attacking Mr. Trump by going after a very specific type of Trump voter. She will say it is people who belong to what's called the alt-right, or alternative right, movement.

I know a lot of you aren't familiar with this phrase. Essentially, members say they're about promoting white identity, white nationalism. Critics, including Hillary Clinton, call this group, this movement racist. And she just sent out a tweet. It's a preview of her speech in Reno, which is slated to start momentarily.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Trump named Steve Bannon as his new campaign CEO. Mr Bannon is best known for his controversial Breitbart News, a campaign chair that ran a Web site that has become a field day for the alt-right, which is racist and all sorts of other ists.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The alt-right, which it is the sort of "dressed up in suits" version of the neo-Nazi, white supremacist movement.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lot of what he believes, we believe.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Trump is launching his own counteroffensive. He called Hillary Clinton a bigot last night, although I think it is important to add he skipped over using that word just moments ago in his prepared remarks there in Manchester, New Hampshire. Here he was.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: A response is required for the sake of all decent voters that she is trying to smear, and going to accuse decent Americans who support this campaign, your campaign, of being racists, which we're not.

(BOOING) TRUMP: It's the oldest play in the Democratic playbook. When

Democratic policies fail, they are left with only this one tired argument.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Let's begin there in Reno with my colleague Maeve Reston, our CNN national political supporter, ahead of Hillary Clinton's speech.

We just heard from Donald Trump, a prebuttal, saying she will not only smear me, essentially -- I'm paraphrasing -- she will be smearing all of you, referencing this alt-right philosophy, this alt-right movement.

For folks who aren't familiar with that, explain it for us, Maeve.

MAEVE RESTON, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is an amorphous movement on the far right of the Republican conservative party.

And it is a movement that's very closely associated with white nationalism. It's often criticized as racist, anti-Semitic rhetoric. And Clinton had a clear opening here to tie Donald Trump to this movement because in his recent campaign shakeup, he hired Steve Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News, as the chief executive of his campaign.

And so what she's going to do here today is argue that Donald Trump is espousing essentially this hateful rhetoric. And we got some excerpts of the speech just a few moments ago. She's going to talk about how, "From the start, Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia. He's taking hate groups mainstream and helping the radical fringe take over one of America's two major political parties. His disregard for the values that made our country great is profoundly dangerous."

So, she's clearly trying to reframe the conversation here at a time when Donald Trump is trying to reach out to blacks and Hispanics. She's making the argument that he is way on the right side of the fringe, the far-right fringe, and that he is not an acceptable leader.

She's going to talk about how he's given this alt-right movement a national megaphone, and also make the case that a man who traffics in dark conspiracy theories shouldn't run the government or command the military.

[15:05:07]

So, a very forceful attack, Brooke, coming up from Hillary Clinton, and we will see how Donald Trump responds to that.

BALDWIN: Maeve Reston, stand by. We will keep that picture up on the screen.

Let me bring in my panel. I have Kayleigh McEnany, CNN political commentator and Trump

supporter, with me here in New York. Guy Cecil is back with us today, Hillary Clinton supporter, co-chair and chief strategist of pro- Clinton super PAC Priorities USA. Symone Sanders, Democratic strategist, formerly with the Bernie Sanders campaign. Alice Stewart, CNN political commentator and Republican strategist, and David Chalian, our CNN political director.

So, David Chalian, let me just begin with you.

As sort of many Americans I think are for the first time familiarizing themselves with this movement called alt-right, why do you think she's honing in on this and why today?

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Well, listen, both candidates are pretty clear in what their strategy is. They want to make their campaigns all about the other guy or gal.

They want to make their opponents an unacceptable choice. They think that is what serves them best. We are going to hear so much more in the next 75 days from each candidate about their opponent than we are likely to hear about their own policy proposals and programs going forward, Brooke.

And so Hillary Clinton's been off the campaign trail fund-raising aggressively for the last many days. Obviously, Donald Trump has been much more aggressive this week than we have seen in the past in keeping up a battling message against Hillary Clinton on the e-mails, on the foundation. We just heard him equate it to Watergate.

BALDWIN: Yes.

CHALIAN: And so, why now? Because instead of responding, I think, tit for tat to every charge he's making, she's going to come back out and try to get on offense and make this about him again and, as Maeve said, paint him as fringe in some way, again adding to her argument that he doesn't have the temperament and that he is not fit for office.

BALDWIN: While I have you, picking your political brain, you just listened to Donald Trump the last 40 minutes like the rest of us did. What did you think of his speech?

CHALIAN: I think that this is the new Donald Trump stump speech. I think that it is going to be constantly trying to frame Hillary Clinton as somehow trying to play by her own set of rules, using the examples that have been raised in news accounts of the foundation, of her e-mails, continually to bring this up and paint her as someone who doesn't have everyday Americans' interests at heart, but is out for her and her husband's own personal gain.

That is the argument he made for the bulk of the speech. We have heard it several times this week. And I have no doubt that that is an argument that he's going to consistently try to deliver in the weeks ahead.

BALDWIN: And it may work for him, 74 days remaining.

Kayleigh McEnany, let me just bring you in. Sort of everyone is pointing out or asking the question, can he stick to the script? It could be quite effective for him. Do you think he will be able to?

KAYLEIGH MCENANY, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: I think he absolutely will stick to the script. I thought we heard something new today that I think is very important.

He said, look, this is part of the same, tired old Democratic playbook that you are about to hear from Hillary Clinton, this attempt to call me a racist. And he couldn't be more correct.

BALDWIN: He called it predictable.

(CROSSTALK)

MCENANY: Predictable, exactly.

You look back to 1980, "Esquire" magazine said if you are voting for Ronald Reagan, you are like a good German lining up in Hitler's Germany. You had Jimmy Carter out there saying Ronald Reagan was putting out stirrings of hatred.

Ronald Reagan was none of those things. Rather, he was someone who captivated the American people and was about re-empowering the American people. And that's what we're going to hear once again today.

BALDWIN: I understand him saying that it is predictable that she calls his racist, but he flat-out called her a bigot last night. How is that not the same?

MCENANY: Well, I think that's different.

First of all, definition of bigot is someone who is intolerant of another person's viewpoint. And rather than saying that term today, I think that was good he didn't say that term today.

BALDWIN: He skipped it.

MCENANY: He skipped it.

But he illustrated what he meant at the end of his speech. At the end of his speech, he said essentially what he meant by that was the Democrats think that if you were someone are wants to keep ISIS out of this country, you are Islamophobic. The Democrats think, if you're someone who wants to secure our borders, you're somehow against the Hispanic community.

We heard him list that out. And I think that is what he meant by bigot. They're intolerant of your viewpoint. And they essentially demonize you for holding that viewpoint because they can't tolerate it.

BALDWIN: Symone Sanders, as a Democrat, I want you to respond. SYMONE SANDERS, FORMER SANDERS CAMPAIGN NATIONAL PRESS SECRETARY: Well, I think the only bigot in this presidential election is Donald Trump, because this is the candidate that has endorsed Operation Wetback and has used it as a playbook, if you will, about how he would deal with immigration in this country.

This is the same person that has gotten up on stage time after time after time this week and said that black people are living just in poor communities and we just have to give the Republicans a chance, because what do we have to lose?

Donald Trump has -- he's the only bigot in this presidential campaign. And Secretary Clinton, I think today what you will see from her is she is going to paint the picture. So, she is not just going to throw insults and call names.

[15:10:02]

She is going to really explain how Donald Trump has built this campaign of hate, of divisive rhetoric, from hiring Steve Bannon, his chief campaign chairperson, someone who has called his platform and his organization the platform of the alt-right, someone under Breitbart who has defended white supremacists.

She is going to point that out. I think the Hillary Clinton campaign also just sent out a tweet where David Duke said, if you do not support Donald Trump, you are denying your hatred, David Duke, the former grand wizard of the KKK.

So, and also lay out how it is not just against people of color, but Donald Trump has spoken disparagingly about women. He's attacked disabled people, and really laying how that is not the temperament of someone who should be the commander in chief.

BALDWIN: On David Duke, let me actually have another piece -- oh, I she coming out? This is the watch-and-wait part. Here we are.

Let's listen in, Hillary Clinton.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

HILLARY SCHIEVE, MAYOR OF RENO, NEVADA: Please welcome her to the biggest little city, because we are not a battleground. We are a better ground.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Thank you.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: Thank you so much.

I am so thrilled to be back in Reno.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE) CLINTON: Thank you.

I have to say, though, I know, when I'm here in Reno, I'm the other Hillary.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: And I am more than OK with that, because I think your mayor is doing a terrific job.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: And the fact that she herself is a small businesswoman and committed to really lifting up Reno and giving everybody in this great city, the biggest little city with a big heart, a chance to get ahead and stay ahead, I could not be more honored than to have her support and endorsement in this race.

So, thank you so much, Mayor Schieve.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: And let me also thank Dr. Karin Hilgersom, and everybody here at Truckee Meadows Community College.

I love community colleges. And I know something about what this college is doing to give people of all ages, not just young people, a real chance to get the skills and opportunities that everybody in America deserves. So, thank you.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: Now, I have to begin by saying, my original plan for this visit was to focus on our agenda to help small businesses and entrepreneurs.

This week, we proposed new steps to cut red tape and taxes to make it easier for small businesses to get the credit they need to grow and hire. I want to be a small business president. My father was a small businessman.

And I believe that, in America, if you can dream it, you should be able to build it.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: And so we will be talking a lot more about small business and about our economic plans in the days and weeks ahead.

But, today, here in this community college devoted to opening minds and creating a great understanding of the world in which we live, I want to address something that I am hearing about from Americans all over our country.

Everywhere I go, people tell me how concerned they are by the divisive rhetoric coming from my opponent in this election. And I understand that concern, because it's like nothing we have heard before from a nominee for president of the United States from one of our two major parties.

From the start, Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia. He's taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over the Republican Party. His disregard for the values that make our country great is profoundly dangerous.

In just this past week, under the guise of outreach to African- Americans, Trump has stood up in front of largely white audiences and described black communities in such insulting and ignorant terms, poverty, rejection, horrible education, no housing, no homes, no ownership, crime at levels nobody has seen. Right now, he said you can walk down the street and get shot.

[15:15:22]

Those are his words.

But when I hear them, I think to myself, how sad. Donald Trump misses so much. He doesn't see the success of black leaders in every field, the vibrancy of black-owned businesses, the strength of the black church.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: He doesn't see -- he doesn't see the excellence of historically black colleges and universities or the pride of black parents watching their children thrive. He apparently didn't see police Chief Brown of Dallas on television after the murders of five of his officers conducting himself with such dignity.

(APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: He certainly doesn't have any solutions to take on the reality of systemic racism and create more equity and opportunity in communities of color and for every American.

It really does take a lot of nerve to ask people he's ignored and mistreated for decades, what do you have to lose?

Because the answer is everything.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: Now, Trump's lack of knowledge or experience or solutions would be bad enough.

But what he's doing here is more sinister. Trump is reinforcing harmful stereotypes and offering a dog whistle to his most hateful supporters. It's a disturbing preview of what kind of president he'd be.

And that's what I want to make clear today. A man with a long history of racial discrimination who traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far dark reaches of the Internet should never run our government or command our military.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: As yourself, if he doesn't respect all Americans, how can he serve all Americans?

Now, I know that some people still want to give Trump the benefit of the doubt. They hope that he will eventually reinvent himself, that there's a kinder, gentler, more responsible Donald Trump waiting in the wings somewhere, because, after all, it is hard to believe anyone, let alone a nominee for president, could really believe all the things he says.

But here's the hard truth. There is no other Donald Trump. This is it. And Maya Angelou, a great American whom I admired very much...

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: ... she once said, when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: Well, throughout his career and this campaign, Donald Trump has shown us exactly who it -- who he is, and I think we should believe him.

When he was getting his start in business, he was sued by the Justice Department for refusing to rent apartments to black and Latino tenants. Their applications would be marked with a C, C for colored, and then rejected.

Three years later, the Justice Department took Trump back to court because he hadn't changed. And the pattern continued through the decades.

State regulators fined one of Trump's casinos for repeatedly removing black dealers from the floor. No wonder the turnover rate for his minority employees was way above average.

And let's not forget that Trump first gained political prominence leading the charge for the so-called birthers. He promoted the racist lie that President Obama is not really an American citizen, part of a sustained effort to delegitimize America's first black president.

And, in 2015, Trump launched his own campaign for president with another racist lie. He described Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals. And he accused the Mexican government of actively sending them across the border. None of that is true.

[15:20:15]

And, oh, by the way...

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: By the way, Mexico is not paying for his wall either.

(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: If he ever tries to get it built, the American taxpayer will pay for it. We will be stuck with the bill.

But there has been a steady stream of bigotry coming from him. I think we all remember when Trump said a distinguished federal judge born in Indiana could not be trusted to do his job because -- quote -- "He's a Mexican."

Think about that. The man who today is the standard-bearer of the Republican Party said a federal judge, who, by the way, had a distinguished record as a U.S. attorney, had to go in hiding because Mexican drug gangs were after him, who has Mexican heritage, but, just like me, was born in this country, is somehow incapable solely because of his heritage.

Even the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, Paul Ryan, described that -- and I quote -- "as the textbook definition of a racist comment."

(APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: And, to this day, to this day, Trump has never apologized to Judge Curiel. But, for Trump, that's just par for the course.

This is someone who retweets white supremacists online, like the user who goes by the name WhiteGenocideTM. Trump took this fringe bigot with a few dozen followers and spread his message to 11 million people.

His campaign famously posted an anti-Semitic image, a Star of David imposed over a sea of dollar bills, that first appeared on white supremacist Web sites. The Trump campaign has also selected a prominent white national -- nationalist leader as a delegate in California. And they only dropped him under pressure.

When asked in a nationally televised interview whether he would disavow the support of David Duke, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, Trump wouldn't do it, and only later, again under mounting pressure, did he backtrack.

And when Trump was asked about anti-Semitic slurs and death threats coming from his supporters, he refused to condemn them.

Through it all, he has continued pushing discredited conspiracy theories with racist undertones. You remember he said that thousands of American Muslims in New Jersey cheered the 9/11 attacks. They didn't.

He suggested that Senator Ted Cruz's father was involved in the Kennedy assassination. Now, perhaps in Trump's mind, because Mr. Cruz was a Cuban immigrant,

he must have had something to do with it. And there is absolutely, of course, no evidence of that.

Just recently, Trump claimed that President Obama founded ISIS. And he has repeated that over and over again.

His latest paranoid fever dream is about my health.

(LAUGHTER)

CLINTON: And all I can say is, Donald, dream on.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: But -- but, my friends...

AUDIENCE: Hillary! Hillary! Hillary! Hillary! Hillary!

(LAUGHTER)

AUDIENCE: Hillary! Hillary! Hillary! Hillary! Hillary!

CLINTON: But, my friends, this is what happens when you treat "The National Enquirer" like gospel.

(LAUGHTER)

CLINTON: They said in October I would be dead in six months.

It's also what happens when you listen to the radio host Alex Jones, who claims that 9/11 and the Oklahoma City bombings were inside jobs.

He even said -- and this really just is so disgusting -- he even said the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre were child actors, and no one was actually killed there.

[15:25:09]

I don't know what happens in somebody's mind or how dark their heart must be to say things like that.

But Trump doesn't challenge these lies. He actually went on Jones' show and said: "Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down" -- this from the man who wants to be president of the United States.

You know, I have stood by President Obama's side as he made the toughest decisions a commander in chief has to make. In times of crisis, our country depends on steady leadership, clear thinking, calm judgment, because one wrong move can mean the difference between life and death.

I know we have veterans here, and I know we have families, mothers and spouses and children of people currently serving. The last thing we need in the Situation Room is a loose cannon who can't tell the difference, or doesn't care to, between fact and fiction and who buys so easily into racially tinged rumors.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: Someone so detached from reality should never be in charge of making decisions that are as real as they come.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: And that is yet another reason why Donald Trump is simply temperamentally unfit to be president of the United States.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: Now, I hear and I read some people who are saying, well, his bluster and his bigotry is just overheated campaign rhetoric, an outrageous person saying outrageous things for attention.

But look at his policies. The ones that Trump has proposed, they would put prejudice into practice. And don't be distracted by his latest efforts to muddy the waters.

He may have some new people putting new words in his mouth, but we know where he stands. He would form a deportation force to round up millions of immigrants and kick them out of the country. He would abolish the bedrock constitutional principle that says, if you're born in the United States, you're an American citizen.

He says that children born to undocumented parents in America are anchor babies and should be deported, millions of them.

He'd ban Muslims around the world from entering our country just because of their religion.

Now, think about that for a minute. How would that actually work? So, people landing in U.S. airports would line up to get their passports stamped, just like they do now, but, in Trump's America, when they step up to the counter, the immigration officer would ask every single person, what is your religion?

And then what? What if someone says, "I'm a Christian," but the agent doesn't believe him? Do they have to prove it? How would they do that? Really?

Ever since the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, America has distinguished itself as a haven for people fleeing religious persecution, believing in religious freedom and religious liberty.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: Under Donald Trump, America would distinguish itself as the only country in the world to impose a religious test at the border.

Now, come to think of it, there actually may be one other place that does that, the so-called Islamic State, the territory that ISIS controls. What a cruel irony that someone running for president would equate us with them. But don't worry. Some will say, as president, Trump will be

surrounded by smart advisers who will rein in his worst impulses.

So, when a tweet gets under his skin and he wants to retaliate with a cruise missile, maybe cooler heads will convince him not to.

Well, maybe.

But look at who he's put in charge of his campaign. Trump likes to say he only hires the best people. But he's had to fire so many campaign managers, it's like an episode from "The Apprentice."

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: And the latest shakeup was designed to -- quote -- "let Trump be Trump."

So, to do that, he hired Stephen Bannon, the head --