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Interview with Challenger to Wasserman Schultz Senate Seat; Obama Hits 10,000 Syrian Refugees Milestone; Poll: Clinton, Trump Historically High Unfavorable Ratings; Hackers Breach Election Systems Databases in Illinois, Arizona. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired August 29, 2016 - 13:30   ET

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

[13:30:00] WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Do you have any evidence from the health perspective, from the medical perspective, from his emotional or psychological perspective, he is unqualified to serve the people of Arizona?

DR. KELLI WARD, (R), FORMER ARIZONA STATE SENATOR & SENATE CANDIDATE: Actually, a lot of you in the media have been saying that. I've been saying he's been in Washington nearly four decades and that's way too long for anyone to be in Washington, D.C. It's time for new eyes on the problems that are facing this country. The people who have been there for decade after decade after decade have put us where we are. People are looking for a change, looking for a bold, fresh, fearless person to be their voice in Washington, and that's voters will elect, overwhelmingly Dr. Kelli Ward.

BLITZER: Kelli Ward, thanks very much for joining us.

WARD: Thanks, Wolf. Great to see you.

BLITZER: Another race that bears watching at tomorrow's battle in Florida's 23rd district where the incumbent, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, is trying to hold on to her congressional seat in the wake of the Democratic National Committee e-mail hacking scandal that led to her resignation as the DNC chair.

Her opponent in this Democratic primary is Tim Canova, a law and public finance professor down in Florida.

Thanks very much for joining us.

We also invited, by the way, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, but she declined our invitation.

Let's talk about some of the issues out there, you were endorsed by Senator Bernie Sanders. Hillary Clinton, as you know, she's backing Debbie Wasserman Schultz. She -- Hillary Clinton won your district by a huge, huge 37-point margin. How do you combat that? Do you believe you have a realistic chance of beating Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz tomorrow?

TIM CANOVA, (D), FLORIDA CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE: Well, we know we do. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are not on the ballot. In fact, back in March, when we had the presidential primary, Bernie Sanders didn't even have a field operation in our district and I think he only had one field office in all of south Florida. You compare that with our operation. We have the largest field operation in the entire count for any house campaign. We have four field offices in the district, dozens of field organizers and hundreds of volunteers. And we're knocking on 10,000 doors a week right now and having conversations with the voters and it's making all the difference.

The very few polls that have been out already, they showed a tight race but there are also polls that are only surveying likely voters. What we're finding is a lot of unlikely voters are now turning out to the polls. Thousands of Independents are registering Democrats. The supervisor of elections is reporting a very high percentage of the votes already cast in vote by mail and early voting sites are people who don't ordinarily turn out and vote in an august primary. So we've expanded the field and we like our chances a lot of winning tomorrow.

BLITZER: Did you ask Senator Sanders to come down to Florida to campaign with you over the past few weeks?

CANOVA: Well, Senator Sanders, as has been reported, his new organization is walled off. We've not been able to have any direct communications. But I'll tell you, our phone is ringing off the hook. Thousands of people are stepping up who are not walled off from our campaign. We really have so much grassroots energy coming our way. The momentum is all on our side and it's because the message is resonating. We've been saying -- we've been pointing out the facts from the beginning and you could fact check it. It has been already. Wasserman Schultz has been taking millions from the biggest corporations and Wall Street banks and pushing their interests for several years now over those of ordinary folks in south Florida. So she's been for the bad Trans-Pacific Partnership deal. She's been trying to protect payday lenders that charge over 300 percent interest rates on loans here in south Florida. She's been actually taking money from private prison companies and pushing private prisons. And Florida is one of the states that leads the nation in private prisons. And she's been taking money from big agricultural and big sugar interests that have contributed to the environmental crisis that's unfolding with the blue/green algae tide polluting our waters, harming the tourist trade, and even threatening the aquifer and the drinking water.

So issue after issue, these are local issues. This is what people are really concerned about. They're not concerned about national politics in this race. They're very much focusing on the local issues.

BLITZER: Tim Canova, thank you for joining us.

CANOVA: Thank you. Nice to be with you. Appreciate it.

[13:34:33] BLITZER: We'll watch the outcome tomorrow in Florida, as well as in Arizona.

Up next, the U.S. hits a milestone ahead of schedule, reaching President Obama's ambitious target for taking in Syrian refugees, 10,000 and counting. We'll be right back.

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BLITZER: It's a milestone day for the White House efforts to try to help Syrian refugees. Last year, President Obama set the goal at accepting 10,000 Syrian refugees by this October. Today, the U.S. reached that goal, 10,000 Syrian refugees, more than half of them are children under the age of 18. Compare that to other years in, 2014, 105 Syrian refugees were admitted into the United States and just 96 combined in the first three years of the Syrian civil war.

Joining us now is our CNN global affairs correspondent, Elise Labott.

Elise, critics say the refugees could be a threat, wolfs in sheep's clothing. Are they being tracked? Do we know where they are after they're placed into communities, for example?

ELISE LABOTT, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, as you know there was a very stringent vetting process for them to come into the country. Once they come into the country resettlement agencies are helping place them in communities and they know where they are initially but once they come here they're like any other immigrant possibly applying for citizenship and they're not tracked in the general sense, per se. Refugee agencies that are helping them with services have a general idea of where they are because they need to locate them. They're not tracked in particular. But, again, there was a very stringent vetting and security process for them to enter the country in the first place.

[13:40:33] BLITZER: Is the U.S. more eager to allow in families with small children over individuals, let's say?

LABOTT: Well, as you said, half of them are children and a lot are women and adults over 60. A lot of these people coming in are women who are head of households, perhaps they lost their husband in the Syrian civil war, and the U.S. also puts a lot of priority on people who were the most vulnerable so we're talking about some adults, elderly, those who were sick, those who were subject to violence, and so the are really the most vulnerable. Only about 2 percent of them are men of fighting age.

BLITZER: The State Department has said that the 10,000 number is a floor, not necessarily the ceiling. So is there a ceiling? How many more refugees do we expect the U.S. to take in from Syria this year?

LABOTT: Well, it could be more than 10,000. And certainly the State Department is expecting over the next six weeks more to come in. But the U.S. does have a lot of kind of flexibility at its disposal. There's a 34,000 cap, Wolf, on refugees from what they call the Middle East and Southeast Asia -- and south Asia, so they could take more from that particular quota and take away from refugees from other -- some other countries in the Middle East. And there's also a $6,000 unallocated reserve, and so if the U.S. needs to bring in more refugees, they could. There's a lot of flexibility at their disposal and they are expecting more than 10,000, note a whole lot more, though.

BLITZER: What is the State Department response to Donald Trump who says you can't vet Syrian refugees because there is no real government over there and that ISIS will try to slip in terrorists to come to the United States.

LABOTT: Well, these refugees have a-year vetting process, Wolf. It's a very strict policy through the United Nations who does their own investigation, through a lot of these refugee agencies. And so what the U.S. Says these are some of the strictest refugee policies that any country in the world has. I want to read a little bit of a statement from national security adviser, Susan Rice, who when the 10,000 refugee enters the country, she issued the statement earlier today, "On behalf of the president and his administration is extend the warmest of welcomes to each and every one of our Syrian arrivals as well as the many other refugees resettled this year from all over the world." And in thanking U.S. employees and the federal government for their commitment, Wolf, she said that, "Meeting the president's expectation that we both increase our refugee admissions and strengthen the integrity of the refugee program, including its stringent security screening protocols has been essential to this effort."

And so the U.S. says it has a screening process like no other and that these refugees are very carefully vetted -- Wolf?

BLITZER: Elise Labott reporting for us. Thank you very much, Elise.

Coming up, a new poll released just moments ago shows both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump with historically high unfavorable ratings, but it seems to indicate Donald Trump may be closing in at least a bit on Hillary Clinton. We have the details.

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[13:47:50] BLITZER: New national poll numbers just out today show Hillary Clinton holding on to her lead over Donald Trump. Both candidates are registering historically high unfavorable numbers.

Joining us now to talk about that and more, our chief political analyst, Gloria Borger; and Patrick Murray, the director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute.

Patrick, first of all, walk us through the new numbers, how large is Hillary Clinton's lead right now?

PATRICK MURRAY, DIRECTOR, MONMOUTH UNIVERSITY POLLING INSTITUTE: Well, among registered voters right now she had a 43 percent lead over Donald Trump seven points, but she's holding on to some core base support. The Democrats, Independents are supporting her more than Trump right now. So that's giving her these kinds of underlying metrics that are holding on to her support.

BLITZER: You have 46 percent for Hillary and Donald Trump 43 percent for Hillary, among registered voters, that's the number we have up there right now among likely voters. It's 46 percent to 39 percent, but it's narrowed a bit since the earlier poll you did shortly after the Democratic convention. MURRAY: Right. Right. And what we thought was happening there that

there was a big bounce. We saw it, in fact, when we were asking people in our last poll early in august right after that convention is that they were unhappy with what they saw or turned off by wt they saw in the Republican convention, OK with what they saw in the Democratic convention that was switching some party allegiances around. I think it's kind of settled back down right now.

BLITZER: Gloria, give us a little sense of how important this upcoming supposedly major immigration speech that Donald Trump will be delivering on Wednesday is going to be because this has been a huge part of his campaign.

[13:49:40] GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Yeah, and it's also been a very big problem for him lately because the issue demands some clarity. If we take a step back, Wolf. Don't forget this was the signature of Donald Trump's campaign. Not only building the wall-to--pronged immigration issue. Not only building the wall but also a mass more those 11 million or so undocumented immigrants in this country now out of here. And now what we hear from the campaign is, of course, they are going to build the wall. That's issue number one. But the question is, what are they going to do about rounding up and deporting people? There is a sense, obviously, if you look at polling among women voters, that there is a sense that that could be inhuman, for example, to families. See is a kind of softening of Trump or Trump polling his audiences, what do you think you want me to do? And again, this is on an issue that was the cornerstone of his candidacy.

Now we have some reporting from Jim Acosta, who spoke with a Trump adviser, who said to Jim that there will be a conversation about what to do with those undocumented people who are here. And the quote from Jim is, "You shouldn't be having that conversation until years from now." Well, the campaign started out having the conversation on day one, and now maybe in that speech we'll hear a postponing of the conversation. I just don't know. But is think there needs to be some clarity.

BLITZER: Well, we'll see if that clarity emerges on Wednesday.

Patrick, in your new poll, both of these candidates have what you describe as historically high unfavorable numbers, right?

MURRAY: Right. This is what you're hearing, some of the issues playing into this right now, that voters don't have an understanding of where these candidates stand on some key issues. But we found that 35 percent of voters are saying they don't have a favorable opinion of either of these candidates. And is looked back historically at past election, and the highest number is saw was in 1992 with Ross Perot and George Bush, thinking of that as being historic. That was 9 percent. We're looking at 35 percent. Nothing has ever come close to this number of voters who say is can't bring myself to say anything positive about either of these two major party nominees. Yet, most of them are going to have to vote for one or the other. And that's what they are telling us, they are holding their nose and voting for one of those two candidates. BLITZER: Gloria, does that suggest that there will be low voter

turnout?

BORGER: It could. It could suggest low voter turnout. Although, is have to tell you that each of these candidates motivates the base of the other person's party, so nothing will turn out Democrats like Donald Trump and nothing will turn out Republicans like Hillary Clinton. And is think that it's the voters, who are holding their noses the most, those Independent voters, those unsure voters, and that's what this is all about right now. They are all trying to catch the precipice of switching from one party to the other. But the folks who are undecided, sure, they could stay home. Or, by the way, they could vote for a third or fourth-party candidate, right?

BLITZER: Potentially, indeed.

Guys, thanks very much. Gloria Borger, Patrick Murray, appreciate it.

The database in two states' election systems have reportedly been hacked. Who is responsible? What did they steal? We have new information. Stay with us.

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[13:58:03] BLITZER: There's breaking news we're following, we're learning hackers have breached databases for election systems in Illinois and Arizona. The personal data of as many as 200,000 registered voters has apparently been compromised.

Our justice correspondent, Evan Perez, is joining us.

Evan, you got new information. What do we know about this hack? Could it have any effect on the general election coming up in November?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, the systems that were hacked were voter registration systems. In the case of Illinois, there were about 200,000 records, voter registration, personal information of voters, including parts of their Social Security number, their addresses, and stuff like that was stolen by hackers.

In the case of Arizona, officials there say they believe someone downloaded a virus and may have compromised access into the system. It's not clear whether anything at all -- any records were touched as of yet. Both of those cases are under investigation by the FBI.

As far as damage or concern about the election system, we're told that both of these systems, as it is generally around the country, are not connected to the Internet. So the systems, the voting machines where people cast ballots as well as a tabulation system, are generally separate and not connected to the Internet. So that is one way to make sure that hackers can't get in and can't change the result of an election. That's obviously the big concern here.

In this case, the FBI is very much worried about personal information of voters that may be stolen by criminal groups that want to use it to steal money and other information from voters. So that's one thing we have to be concerned in these two cases -- Wolf?

BLITZER: It's still a very, very worrisome development. If you hear about 200,000 people, their information has been compromised or hacked like this, clearly, there's a lot more information we need to know about what is going on.

Evan Perez, thank you very much.

Thanks it for me. I'll be back 5:00 p.m. eastern in "The Situation Room."

For our international viewers, "Amanpour" is next.

For our viewers in North America, NEWSROOM with Brooke Baldwin starts.