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Trump To Rally Voters In New Hampshire; Trump Suggests Major Shift On Immigration; Hillary Clinton States Trump Is Peddling Prejudice And Paranoia; Clinton To Headline Black And Latino Events; Trump Calls Clinton A Bigot; Clinton Hammers Trump Over Immigration Changes; Trump Meets with Minority Supporters; U.S. Navy Fires Warning Shot; Clinton Email Account. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired August 25, 2016 - 13:00   ET

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

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: -- Donald Trump, we have to make sure that we don't miss when he comes out because we are awaiting a lot of important comments from Donald Trump on immigration. Making big, big news this week. He's also reaching out to African-Americans and Hispanics. What will he say, though, from this live podium? We're going to bring it all to you, live, as it happens. Brianna Keilar stepping in for Wolf. She's picking up the coverage.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Hi there, I'm Brianna Keilar in for Wolf Blitzer. It is 1:00 p.m. here in Washington. Wherever you're watching from around the world, thank you so much for joining us.

Up first, Donald Trump ratchets up the rhetoric against Hillary Clinton when it comes to minority voters with less than 75 days and counting until Election Day.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Hillary Clinton is a bigot who sees people of color only as votes, not as human beings worthy of a better future.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Now, Hillary Clinton fired back in a phone interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Donald Trump has shown us who he is and we ought to believe him. He is taking a hate movement mainstream. He's brought it into his campaign. He's bringing it to our communities and our country.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

KEILAR: Donald Trump will speak this hour at a rally in Manchester, New Hampshire and we will bring those remarks to you live. Right now, CNN's Jason Carroll is there.

Hillary Clinton will give a speech today in Reno, Nevada. That's where our Maeve Reston is.

And, Jason, on immigration, this pressing issue that Donald Trump is going to be addressing somewhat soon. He's now suggesting he would let some undocumented immigrants stay in the country after saying for months that they had to go. What is the campaign saying and are we likely to hear more about that today?

JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, first, we are likely to hear about it here. We heard about it in Mississippi and, before that, in Austin as well. Look, there has been some call it a shift, some others call it a change, a softening of his position, as you say, initially calling for some 11 million undocumented workers to be deported.

Now, that may not necessarily be the case. His campaign chairwoman speaking out about this earlier today trying to define exactly what Trump's position.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KELLYANNE CONWAY, MANAGER, TRUMP CAMPAIGN: Nothing has changed, in terms of the policies. I also think we should all give him credit for saying that when it comes to the 11 or 12 million, A -- of illegal immigrants, A, you force the laws. You wouldn't believe, Chris, how much of a change, how quickly, if you actually enforce the laws that are not being enforced.

Number two, he wants to find a, quote, these are his words, quote, "fair and humane way of dealing with them." And, quote, "He doesn't want to cause people harm." That's leadership. That's presidential.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARROLL: You know, what's interesting about this, Brianna, we've been listening to people out here in the crowd talk about this and debated amongst themselves. One man, he's a first generation from Italy, said that if Donald Trump softens his position in any way, he feels as though he's going to lose votes. Then, another man came up, overheard that and said, I believe that Donald Trump needs some wiggle room here in order to be able to really deal with this particular issue.

As you know, we're expecting to hear from Donald Trump next week on this very same issue, when he delivers that policy speech later next week -- Brianna.

KEILAR: And is he going to focus more -- Jason, continue to focus more now on minority voters and outreach to African-American and Hispanic voters?

CARROLL: Well, the campaign has made it very clear that the Trump campaign is going to continue to reach out to communities of color. Critics have questioned that, you know, in terms of the language that he's used and the places where he's chosen to make these statements. Whenever he gives these speeches, they're in predominantly white communities. And critics have really targeted Trump on that. But the -- but the campaign says, look, this is a man who is trying to reach out to these communities. He deserves credit for that, when other members of the GOP have failed to do so -- Brianna.

KEILAR: And, Maeve, we know that Hillary Clinton, in her speech today -- this is all about the alt-right, talking about white nationalism, white supremacism, trying to link Donald Trump with this. She gave a bit of a preview in her interview with Anderson Cooper. Let's listen to that.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

CLINTON: Someone who has questioned the citizenship of the first African-American president, who has courted white supremacist, who's been sued for housing discrimination against communities of color, who's attacked a judge for his Mexican heritage and promised a mass deportation force, is someone who is, you know, very much peddling bigotry and prejudice and paranoia.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

KEILAR: Maeve, she is trying to make sure that voters associate Donald Trump with his most extreme supporters.

[13:05:02] MAEVE RESTON, CNN NATIONAL POLITICA REPORTER: Yes, absolutely, Brianna. And what she's doing is, obviously, trying to reframe the conversation this week back onto Donald Trump. She wants this election to be a referendum on Donald Trump. And, obviously, there's been a lot of attention this week to the Clinton foundation and their donors.

But here in Reno, she's going to be talking about the alt-right movement. And she had an opening because Steve Bannon, who is the C -- the chairman of Breitbart News, came in as Trump's CEO in the recent campaign shakeup.

And so, she's going to make the case here that he is really embracing these fringe elements of the conservative movement. She put out a Web video, just a short time ago, showing clan members praising Donald Trump.

And she's going to talk a lot about how his ideas and over time from the birther controversy onward have really been out of step with mainstream Republican values. Clearly, this is part of her outreach to those more moderate voters who are alarmed by Donald Trump's rhetoric, and she'll try to reframe that conversation here today.

KEILAR: And she's also trying to reach out to black and Hispanic voters. As we've seen, Donald Trump has recently been making a pitch for this. But she's going to be doing this, right?

RESTON: Yes, she certainly is. And Donald Trump, obviously, has had some flubbed attempts over the last couple weeks reaching out to African-American and Hispanic voters. And Hillary Clinton is going to make the case here today that a lot of the rhetoric surrounding his campaign is -- has racist overtones, white nationalist overtones. And so, she's going to be trying to lock down that base and make sure that none of that support goes to Donald Trump.

KEILAR: All right, Maeve Reston, Jason Carroll, thanks to both of you.

And let's talk more now about today's objectives for the campaigns and the other big issues they are battling over. Joining me now is CNN Political Director David Chalian. We have A.B. Stoddard, Associate Editor and Columnist for "Real Clear Politics" and David Catanese, Senior Politics Writer for "U.S. News and World Report."

Let's start, David Chalian, with Donald Trump's latest attack on Hillary Clinton. A lot of folks may not have seen the speech last night. If they didn't see it in its entirety, the one thing that they have taken away from it is that Donald Trump called Hillary Clinton a bigot. So, how is that playing for Donald Trump, at this point?

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: I think this is part of the overall struggle we've been seen in tone. Donald Trump, himself, had a conversation with "The New York Times" about tone and changing the tone and how to deal with that and being more scripted or not. Listen, this is not a new line of attack. He has been saying, for weeks, that Hillary Clinton engages in bigotry. Now he just made the word bigot and said that she is a bigot.

KEILAR: It's a noun, right?

CHALIAN: Right. And so, I don't think it's the --

KEILAR: A stronger noun.

CHALIAN: -- actual line of attack is new. But, yes, it is a stronger use of language. And, listen, I think that Donald Trump is going to constantly balance himself as we go forward here into trying to sort of stick to a fundamental attack on Hillary Clinton day in and day out in -- and trying not to get distracted by these kinds of things. Sometimes, he will slip up. But, listen, he's taken no indication that he regrets the use of that word or wants to take it back in any way that I've seen.

KEILAR: What is he trying to do?

RESTON: Well he's trying to do both things. As David says, he's trying to be Donald Trump and he likes being outrageous. And he thinks being presidential is really dull.

And so, at the same time that he's using a teleprompter every single time he makes a public appearance now, using a script and better written speeches, I would add, every time he's in public, he likes to do these off-the-cuff remarks.

And of those -- anyone who learned about this last night, the comment on the Internet knows that the woman behind him to the left, her eyes almost popped out of her head. Because I think that what he's doing, while he's doing this outreach to African-Americans and Latino voters, is they're supposed to calm down the nerves of white women who voted for Mitt Romney. He's probably risking losing them by calling her a bigot, at the same time.

DAVID CATANESE, SENIOR POLITICS WRITER, "U.S. NEWS AND WORLD REPORT": But he's becoming a more conventional candidate, in this respect. He's being pulled in two directions because he's losing. And I think he's not sure what to do.

You've got this new campaign leadership in with Kellyanne Conway, who I think is trying to soften him. Although, in that "New York Times" interview, he says, I still like my old rallies where they didn't have me on script.

So, you've got him saying Hillary Clinton's a bigot. I don't think that's an argument anyone believes. He's talking to the people in the room, the 40 percent of the people with him. You can say Hillary Clinton's untrustworthy. You can say she lacks integrity. There's a lot of things you could say about her.

But I think it's really hard to convince people that Hillary Clinton is a bigot. So, I think that makes it an ineffective attack, an attack just playing to his base which adds no one to his coalition.

KEILAR: Because his softer message has been, how has she served you, African-American voters, Hispanic voters?

CATANESE: That's a fine point to make.

KEILAR: And yet, he -- that is not what he said --

CATANESE: Right.

KEILAR: -- in this very strong word that he used.

[13:10:00] So, you have Hillary Clinton now questioning Donald Trump on immigration. He was supposed to give his speech this week. It's now next week. It's very clear that he has some big changes. His campaign, no -- they're saying, no, there's no changes which is basically Washington code for, yes, there's some big changes there.

So, Hillary Clinton has been questioning this softening on immigration. She spoke with Anderson Cooper about it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANDERSON COOPER, HOST, "A.C. 360": Donald Trump is now indicating he would allow some illegal immigrants to remain in the country. Early on during the primaries, you well know, he talked about 11 million undocumented immigrants. They all have to get out. The good ones can come back in, in his words.

He's now told Fox News, he would work with people, if they paid back taxes. He said that's not amnesty. They wouldn't get a path to citizenship. What do you make of what appears to be quite a bit shift by him on this, if this, in fact, is his policy moving forward?

CLINTON: Well, you know, my understanding is that the comment you just referred to was the third different position he took yesterday on immigration. Somebody has told him, I guess the latest people that he's consulting, how damaging his statements have been. How terrible his deportation plan is. How offensive his views on immigrants have been from the very first day of his campaign.

So, he's trying to do, you know, kind of shuffle here. But I think we need to look at the entire concept. The -- do we need to believe him when he bullies and threatens to throw out every immigrant in the country? And certainly when he changes his position three times in one day, it sends a message that it's just a desperate effort to try to land somewhere that isn't as, you know, devastating to his campaign as his comments and his positions have been up until now.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: Donald Trump now saying no amnesty but we'll work with them. I mean, this is different, starkly different from they've got to go.

CHALIAN: No amnesty as such, I think is what the terminology was. Listen, this has -- this has been the debate over this issue inside the conservative movement for quite some time. What defines amnesty? Legal status or citizenship? In many people's minds, Ted Cruz's included, others in the conservative movement, what Donald Trump is describing is amnesty.

And so, he's still going to need to explain why it isn't, if he's not going to call it that. Because legal status is precisely the position that Jeb Bush had in the nomination race, that John Kasich had, that Donald Trump was arguing against. And so, this is a really big shift that will require more education.

KEILAR: It does seem that a lot of conservatives believe, if you stay in the country in some way, if you're undocumented, you're allowed to stay even if you're, quote, unquote, "processed in some way," accounted for, that is -- that is amnesty.

I talked to a Republican congressman who's a supporter of Donald Trump's and he was describing in his district how it's essential to have undocumented immigrants who account for a lot of the agricultural labor. And he was talking about a rhetorical deportation of people coming in and being processed. And I said, I don't think that's what Donald Trump has been talking about.

A.B. STODDARD, ASSOCIATE EDITOR AND COLUMNIST, "REAL CLEAR POLITICS": This was the problem for Marco Rubio after he was involved in an immigration bill that passed the Senate and couldn't go through the House. And it was a huge problem for him in the primary campaigning for president among conservatives who think that any permission to stay -- and Donald Trump is talking about stay -- pay to stay. You're going to pay some fees and then we're going to work with you.

KEILAR: Back taxes.

STODDARD: Anything is a reward for breaking the law. And that's the way it's seen. They don't care how much -- how many taxes you're going to pay. The minute you get to stay, you're being rewarded for breaking the law. KEILAR: What happens to his support, David, if he is seen as flip-

flopping on this? Does anything happen to the support he has from folks who are diehard Donald Trump supporters?

CATANESE: I'm not sure we can say it would affect that, like it did Marco Rubio and it would have Jeb Bush if he would have done this. This is an obvious flip-flop. Let's just call it what it is. He has flip-flopped on this. But I think we, as reporters, have underestimated Donald Trump's support tied to personality more than issues.

If you go to his rallies, and I went to a lot of them in the primaries, a lot of the stuff he said, people sort of put that as, well, he says crazy things sometimes. He's not going to do that. He won't implement that. He won't go that far, even after the Muslim ban. They don't -- but they like the theatrics and the -- and they like that he's willing to push boundaries.

And I think Donald Trump's rise to the candidacy is more a tribute to his personality and his willing to shun and shatter political correctness than tied to any one position. So, I don't know if he would pay a price for this. If he flips. He hasn't flipped, by the way, completely. He said he's still weighing this and we'll have more on it soon, right?

[13:15:03] CHALIAN: Yes, I would argue -- and I think you might be right. I do think that his hard core supporters certainly have this appeal to this cult of personality. There's no doubt about that.

But this also was, and I don't know if we'll see support peel away -- but this was the fundamental issue. This was the underpinning of his candidacy. This is what created space for him through his cult of personality to actually drive through the Republican nomination process. If he had this position on June -- in June of 2015 when he launched his candidacy, even with the personality that it was, I think it would have been much, much harder for him to actually get where he got in the nomination process.

CATANESE: But where do his supporters go at this point? And he is hammering Hillary Clinton more and more, staying on that message, making this -- trying to make it a referendum about her more than anything. So where do those people go? Do they decide to stay home? I don't think so. I think they're pretty loyal to Trump and the brand and most of them stay with him.

KEILAR: A.B., I want you to listen to something Donald Trump actually just said, because he is, as we speak, in this meeting where he's concentrating on African-American and Hispanic voter outreach. He just said this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I've made it a very important focal point in the speeches themselves, talking about the little work that's been done by the Democrats for African-Americans. They've been -- they've been very disrespectful, as far as I'm concerned, to the African-American population in this country. And we are making it a very important part of our speeches and of our thought process. And it's, I think, a tremendous (INAUDIBLE).

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: The crux of what he is saying, the important part is where he says that Democrats have been disrespectful to African-Americans. And you're hearing this from Donald Trump. You're hearing this from his surrogates. They're saying, look, you have cities like Baltimore, like Detroit that are run by Democrats and how has it served the people of those cities? Where -- where does that take him? Does that broaden his support?

A.B. STODDARD, ASSOCIATE EDITOR AND COLUMNIST, REAL CLEAR POLITICS: I think that is actually a great argument. And if he had started with it, he would be somewhere now on that argument. But talking to white crowds ten weeks before the election about how people who are not in the room and whose neighborhoods he's never visited on the campaign should just throw their support for Democrats and support him because their lives are so ghastly, they literally, quote, have nothing left to lose. And that's the way he describes your life, that they can't walk down the street without being shot.

It's probably bad timing and the way that he's putting it isn't effective either. It would have been a strong message. It is a case Republicans should have been making for a really long time, what has it gotten you, Democratic policies? But this is not the hour and this is not the way.

KEILAR: Yes, it might be too late. All right, A.B., thank you so much. David, David, thank you so much to both of you.

And an important programing note. Donald Trump will join Anderson Cooper tonight on "AC 360." You can look for that interview beginning at 8:00 p.m. Eastern right here on CNN.

And any moment, Donald Trump is going to be speaking at a rally in Manchester, New Hampshire. This is a day after he accused Hillary Clinton a being a bigot. And Hillary Clinton's campaign press secretary will join me next to respond.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:21:55] ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

KEILAR: We have breaking news. An incident between the U.S. Navy and the Iranian navy. A close call with warning shots fired. CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr is at the Pentagon.

Tell us the very latest. We are just getting this information in, Barbara.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: We are just getting this in. The U.S. officials we are speaking to, Brianna, are telling CNN there was a very serious incident with the Iranian navy yesterday. Now this is just one day after that video everyone saw of a different incident. But yesterday, in the northern end of the Arabian Gulf, there was an Iranian fast attack craft that came out into the water and began harassing two U.S. Navy ships and a Kuwaiti navy ship. The Iranians, we are told, were circling the navy ships. They were coming close. They would not leave. At one point they came within 200 yards of one of the U.S. Navy patrol craft.

The Navy, following standard maritime procedure, tried to call the Iranian ship. They got no answer initially. They fired flares. They did then have, a U.S. official says, a brief radio-to-radio conversation with the Iranians, but still the Iranians did not leave. At that point we are told that this U.S. Navy patrol craft, the USS Squall, then made the decision and fired three warning shots into the water to warn the Iranians to pay attention and to back off.

This is standard maritime procedure for the U.S. Navy. It rarely happens. It has happened in the past. But this is standard procedure when a U.S. Navy ship feels threatened, and that threat does not back off. That is really the last resort before you take lethal action. You fire warning shots into the water.

So just yesterday three warning shots fired at the Iranians. And this comes one day after that video that we all saw that four Iranian ships, again, Revolutionary Guard Corps ships, came out and harassed another U.S. Navy ship. Perhaps the bottom line here is to note that the U.S. believes these Iranian boats belong to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. This is one of the most militant arms of the security and military service in Iran. This is not the regular Iranian navy. There is always concern that these maritime forces of Iran that are doing this are not under the central control of the government and there is always concern that things can get out of hand. The U.S. Navy, yesterday, taking the action to fire warning shots at the Iranians and tell them to back off.

Brianna.

KEILAR: They're really taking it to the brink. All right, we know that you'll continue to look into details on this. Barbara Starr at the Pentagon, thank you so much for that report.

And now turning back to politics. You are looking now at live pictures of the Donald Trump rally in Manchester, New Hampshire. He is actually a little overdo. So we're expecting that Donald Trump will be taking the stage and speaking any moment. We'll be monitoring that and bringing it to you. Hillary Clinton will be speaking from Reno later this afternoon and we will also bring that to you when that happens.

[13:25:11] Now, during Clinton's speech in Reno, she is expected to attack Donald Trump. She will specifically call him out for his support that he's getting from the so-called alt (ph) right. That is shorthand for extremist right wing political philosophies. Things like white nationalism, white supremacy.

Now, for more on this speech, I'm joined by Brian Fallon. He is the press secretary for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. He is at the Hillary for America headquarters in Brooklyn.

Tell us about this speech, Brian, and how she's going to be linking Trump to the alt (ph) right.

BRIAN FALLON, PRESS SECRETARY, HILLARY FOR AMERICA: Well, Brianna, from his earliest days in business, Donald Trump, in the 1970s, was someone who was actually sued by the Justice Department for refusing to rent apartments to African-Americans in New York City. And in the years since, we've seen a troubling pattern of Donald Trump when it came to, for instance, questioning the legitimacy of the first African-American president, by engaging in the theory of birtherism. And in this campaign, he has responded with a wink and a nod to support from white nationalist groups. Just the other day on David Duke's radio show, he and his guests were talking how Donald Trump's candidacy really represents the takeover by white nationalists of the Republican Party.

So this is extremely troubling. And with the elevation of Steve Bannon from Breitbart to the top of Donald Trump's campaign, it really represents the fact that Donald Trump is putting this hate movement front and center in his campaign. It is dangerous for this to be happening in 2016. She's going to call it out today in Nevada.

KEILAR: Do you worry, though, that she could turn off some people who think she is basically saying to them, hey, if you support Donald Trump you're a racist, you're with white supremacist, when really they may have very reasonable qualms about supporting her?

FALLON: I think, Brianna, that you're actually seeing a movement among independents and Republicans who are rejecting Donald Trump for this very reason. This is somebody who began his campaign by calling Mexican immigrants rapists, who just a few weeks ago, soon after clinching the Republican nomination, questioned the integrity of a federal judge based on his Mexican-American heritage.

KEILAR: So you don't worry about people feeling lumped in with white supremacists just because they don't want to vote for Hillary Clinton?

FALLON: Well, I think that there is a very clear solution here. Donald Trump should renounce the white supremacist elements that are supporting his campaign and then he could make it very clear that his campaign doesn't abide that. It doesn't condone it. Instead, he is consistently, very reluctantly, only after being pressed several times, did he suggest that he might not vote for David Duke if he was on the ballot running for office, and in multiple other occasions he's very coyly responded to -- when he's confronted about the fact of the support that he receives from white nationalists. Just the other day, in "The Washington Post," a so-called racialist, which is another euphemistic term for this movement, responded favorably to this ad that the Trump campaign has running right now. And, you know, there's been a lot of talk in the last couple days about a softening in the approach that Donald Trump might take on immigration. Well, just look at the ad he's running in five different states. It is Donald Trump at his most hate-filled in terms of demonizing immigrants and Muslims. And that ad that is running, Latino voters in Florida, that's the ad that they're seeing.

KEILAR: OK. I want to talk to you about her e-mails. This is something that she talked to Anderson Cooper about last night. Here's what she said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE (voice-over): I've been asked many, many questions in the past year about e-mails. And what I've learned is that when I try to explain what happened, it can sound like I'm trying to excuse what I did. And there are no excuses. I want people to know that the decision to have a single e-mail account was mine. I take responsibility for it. I've apologized for it. I would certainly do differently if I could.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: So, Brian, this may have been her most succinct attempt at responding to the e-mail. But a lot of people got to this point where they're listening to it saying, oh, she should have said this before. OK, this is all right. And then she gets to that point where she says, my decision to have a single e-mail account -- and they go what? Why did you put it that way? Because it's not just about a single e-mail account. It's about a private server housed in her basement. A very different situation than any other secretary of state has had.

[13:29:43] FALLON: Well, Brianna, I wouldn't parse it that finally. I think she meant to refer to all of it. She means the decision to use a single account for both work and personal e-mails. She means the server arrangement in her home. She means all of it. And, yes, I do think that last night, in the words that she used, she conveyed an unmitigated expression of regretted for all of this. And I think that's what she's been trying to convey all along. And I think -- I've been in this position, too, of answering many questions from you and from others.