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Is It Too Late for Trump to Gain Minority Votes?; Obama Administration To Reach Goal of 10,000 Syrian Refugees to U.S.; Actor- Director Nate Parker Discusses Male Privilege As An Issue. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired August 29, 2016 - 10:30   ET

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

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[10:34:24] CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Donald Trump has a new opponent, time. There may be 71 days until the general election but millions of Americans will cast their votes much sooner than that. Early voting starts in Minnesota in just 26 days. And more than 30 other states follow shortly after that.

Mr. Trump is down in the polls but this week he's trying to turn things around by attracting minority voters and by laying out his immigration plan on Wednesday. And meeting face-to-face with African Americans later in the week. But is it too little too late? CNN Senior Political Analyst, David Gergen joins me now live to talk about this. Good morning, David.

DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Hello Carol.

COSTELLO: Hi David. So do you think it is too late? Because early voting starts in a month.

GERGEN: I don't think it's too late, but time is getting short. Two things are happening, Carol. One is we've changed the rules of politics and about when you vote. When I was growing up the race was always down to the wire in October and you'd have a nip and tuck sort of sense as you head toward that finish line.

And now with all these states, as you say, some 33 states having early voting, about 30 percent of Americans who vote this year are likely to vote early. It means that Donald Trump has got to reach them soon because he's back in the polls.

But the other thing, Carol, that's going on here that he has to be very concerned about, his team has to be concerned about, is that 90 percent of voters told researchers that they've already made up their minds. And with him behind, that obviously puts the pressure on him. Although I must tell you, Hillary Clinton should not be complacent.

COSTELLO: OK so Hillary Clinton should not. But when she sees things like this, 90 percent of all voters have already made up their minds, she's ahead in pretty much every poll that's out there, so why shouldn't she feel complacent?

GERGEN: Because we don't know what more -- what other shoes are still to drop. We've got Wikileaks out there promising to unload stuff right before the election, we don't know what kind of emails are coming out of the State Department. And beyond that, if -- once one begets -- if you get complacent you can often get arrogant. And one of the things that Mrs. Clinton has, I think, allowed to build up is this bubble concerning when she's going to give a press conference. She doesn't want to bring that kind of animosity with her after the election. She needs to run full bore right from now until the election date.

I know that will be her sense of things, she won't take things for granted. But there could be people around her who think, "we've got this locked up."

COSTELLO: Well, Mr. Trump certainly knows how to keep himself in the news, right? He's giving this big immigration speech on Wednesday, he's going to meet with African American voters ...

GERGEN: He sure does.

COSTELLO: ... face-to-face, he's constantly tweeting. Hillary Clinton today, I -- she was fundraising yesterday and she's kind of laying low.

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GERGEN: She -- I gather from reports that he's now doing about four times as many events a day as she is. And she is -- I think she's conserving her energy for those final weeks. Especially starting with the debate. And she's preparing for that. She knows -- she's got pretty good assurance, and pretty good reason to believe that the race will remain reasonably static because she'll keep a four or five point lead for the next month or so.

But come September 26th, the first debate, that could, that could break things up. And that's why she's getting ready for it, and I think wisely so. He needs to spend more time, more discipline, and he's been getting ready but it sounds a little bit catch as catch can. We'll have to see how he does. He's good on his feet, we know that, but I do not think she can count Donald Trump out. It is way too early to count him out.

COSTELLO: And he is courting African American voters. He's going to sit down with ...

GERGEN: He is.

COSTELLO: ... a Detroit pastor. And Ryan Fest (ph) I just interviewed Ryan Fest (ph), I don't know if you caught that interview but he has invited Mr. Trump ...

GERGEN: Yeah, I saw that.

COSTELLO: ... to walk down the streets of Chicago to prove that you can actually walk down the streets of Chicago and not get shot.

GERGEN: Sure. COSTELLO: Should Donald Trump take him up on that?

GERGEN: I think he, I think he needs to be in African American communities not in white communities talking about African Americans. And yes, take him up on that, go out into the streets of Chicago, understand there is a large, thankfully, and ever-larger black middle class, very professional. I had the opportunity this weekend to go to an event that was highly integrated here, in Massachusetts. A wonderful group of African Americans who are highly educated, highly professional.

Donald Trump should not paint all African Americans as living in poverty, as living in fear of guns. And sort of essentially being in urban gun zones. He needs to understand, this is a complex country now. And if he really wants to win over the African American vote, he has to do it with great respect and empathy for a variety of life experiences that African Americans now have.

COSTELLO: David Gergen, thanks as always for being here. We appreciate it.

GERGEN: Thanks, Carol. Good to see you.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the Newsroom, the White -- nice to see you, too -- the White House on track to meet a major milestone when it comes to the refugee crisis. We'll tell you about that next.

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COSTELLO: As early as today, the Obama administration could reach a goal of accepting 10,000 Syrian refugees onto American soil. The potential milestone comes after Obama pledged last Fall to resettle refugees amid the migrant crisis in Europe. Not everyone supports the program, however, so let's bring in CNN Global Affairs Correspondent Elise Labott. Good morning.

ELISE LABOTT, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. Well, as of this weekend there were about 9,900 refugees and about a few hundred more should be coming in the next 24 hours. Those refugees could be coming to Virginia and California. But really these refugees have been settled all across the United States. And about 40 states right now have taken in Syrian refugees as part of this resettlement program.

As you know, this has been a very contentious issue in the election campaign with Donald Trump saying that the program has -- really these displaced Syrians pose a real threat to the United States. And he has said that he would want to end the program. Now you know earlier last year the House voted to ban all Syrian refugees. That measure never went anywhere in the Senate.

But the administration maintains these Syrians are highly vetted, it takes about somewhere between 18 months and 2 years for those Syrian refugees to be vetted. But now these ones coming are really the most vulnerable, those who have been facing violence, torture, minorities very glad to be coming here to the United States in the next 24 hours, Carol.

COSTELLO: So how many more might come in after that milestone is reached?

LABOTT: Well really you've seen about a couple hundred a day over the last several months. And the administration says over the next six weeks they anticipate that in these tranches a couple hundred will come. So a few thousand maybe could come. There have been those many vetted. It depends on how many they can get here in the next six weeks.

But I think maybe in the next 24 hours we could see maybe somewhere between 10,550 and 11,000. It won't be several thousand but we could see certainly over the 10,000 mark. The administration says it's a ceiling, not a floor.

COSTELLO: All right, Elise Labott reporting live for us this morning, thank you. Still to come in the Newsroom, male privilege. Why actor/director Nate Parker who faces a firestorm about a 1995 rape trial resurfaces, says that issue is the key to understanding rape culture.

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COSTELLO: Actor and Director Nate Parker speaking out again in the wake of controversy surrounding a 1999 rape case that involved him and a college roommate. Parker, who was a student at Penn State was charged with rape at the time. And he was acquitted. His accuser committed suicide in 2012. Now renewed interest in that rape case has overshadowed the upcoming release of his critically acclaimed film, "Birth of a Nation," and ignited a firestorm for Parker.

After what some say were his insensitive comments to the controversy. In an Ebony Magazine interview, Parker talks about what he says is to blame for his comments. Ebony, this is a question from Ebony, "have you thought about her (the alleged victim in this incident) over the last 17 years?" Nate Parker, "no, I had not. I hadn't thought about it at all." Ebony, "That's going to come off as very privileged." Nate Parker, "It is. Listen to me when I say I'm understanding that I'm dealing with a problem like an addiction. Just like you can be addicted to white supremacy and all the benefits, you can be addicted to male privilege and all of the benefits that comes from it."

So let's talk about that. Jamilah Lemieux is the Vice President of News and Men's Programming at Interactive One. She's also a former Senior Editor for Ebony. And Michael Eric Dyson is a Georgetown Sociology Professor and a cultural critic. And the author of "The black presidency- Barack Obama and the politics of race in America." Welcome to both of you.

JAMILAH LEMIEUX, VICE PRESIDENT, NEWS AND MEN'S PROGRAMMING: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Jamilah, what does Parker mean when he says this about male privilege and all the things that come with it?

LEMIEUX: Well I think that saying that you can be addicted to male privilege is another way of saying there are these rights that you feel that you've been gifted by the virtue of your identity. Be that your race, your class, your gender. And you come to expect that those rights, those entitlements are your due.

And so men, historically, have not been taught about the language of consent. They have not been taught beyond no means no, that you should be looking for affirmative consent ...

COSTELLO: So male privilege in other words, means you can rape an unconscious woman and feel OK about it?

LEMIEUX: No, I would say that male privilege may mean that you don't know that you've committed a sexual assault because you were trained to believe, by culture, by society, maybe even by your parents, that a woman coming to your room is tantamount to consent.

Now we know that that's not true, but we also know that this was not a conversation that was being had at the time where this case happened. I'm a few years younger than Nate and I can tell you no one instructed me about affirmative consent. That's not a term that I heard until I was a full-grown woman.

COSTELLO: But he ...

LEMIEUX: But that's not to excuse Nate Parker or anyone else who may have assaulted a woman but to say let's not be intellectually dishonest about what we have and have not taught young men about how to interpret (ph) women ...

COSTELLO: So here's the thing Michael, here's the thing. Like, when I think about men in my life -- my dad, my brothers, my husband, a lot of the male friends I have -- I would think that they would think it's rape if you had sex with an unconscious woman. And that these are things you should be taught, and have always been taught. Or am I wrong?

MICHAEL ERIC DYSON, GEORGETOWN SOCIOLOGY PROFESSOR: Well not at all but you're making a couple of conclusions here. You keep saying that she was unconscious. Those facts are in dispute, whether one agrees with that or not.

She said that she was a nearly inebriate, intoxicated severely. He said she was hitting on him. So those facts are in dispute. Alcohol abuse, which is something else we're not talking about here, the addiction to alcohol, literally, that has obscured the ability of people to make rational and sane decisions.

But the point that Miss Lemieux is making is that your father, your brother, your -- are all part of a culture of masculinity that you may not always understand how it operates. So what she's arguing here is that let's not pretend that 17 years ago we were having sophisticated arguments about cys gender, about sexual orientation, about identity, about male privilege, about what feminists call toxic masculinity. Which is the addiction to a certain kind of presumption about your right in this world as a man.

And I think it's admirable that Nate Parker -- because first of all, he was legally, technically cleared of rape, so to call him a rapist is a misnomer. But what he has come to grips with is the fact that his own toxic masculinity -- that not only he has, but millions of men around this country and world share it -- has led to a refusal to engage the notions of consent that women themselves have not always dealt with. And that men have to be taught about. That's the kind of thing ...

COSTELLO: OK so ...

DYSON: ... that I think is the benefit ...

COSTELLO: So ...

DYSON: ... of what he's doing here today.

COSTELLO: ... And I wish I had a whole lot of time for this conversation but my show is about to end. So Jamilah, I just want from you -- so what should we learn from Nate Parker and what he said? Is it helpful, should we go see his movie, what have we learned?

LEMIEUX: I think deciding whether you want to support his work as an actor is an individual or personal choice. But I think what we should all learn from this is that we have an opportunity to have the conversation about consent that we have not had in the past. The conversation that we need to have with young people and with adults about the language of desire.

To empower women to affirmatively say yes or no to sex. To teach men that you can not take someone flirting with you, someone drinking with you, someone simply being in your presence as an invitation to do anything that they may or may not want to do. We can change the conversation around sex and we must do it now. Or we will continue to have stories like this and I wish that we had more time. Because we also have to talk about the complications of race, gender, and class in this story.

COSTELLO: Right, right, there's so many elements to this story and I wish we could go on. But thank you both for bearing with me, I do appreciate it. Michael Eric Dyson, Jamilah Lemieux. Thank you for joining me today, I'm Carol Costello. AT THIS HOUR with Berman and Bolduan after a break.

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