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Hillary Clinton's Comments at Fundraiser about Trump Supporters Criticized; Interview with Representative Dana Rohrabacher; Hillary Clinton Issues Statement of Regret Concerning Comment Critical of Trump Supporters. Aired 2-2:30p ET
Aired September 10, 2016 - 14:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[14:00:00] MIKE PENCE, (R) VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: -- farmers, coal miners, teachers, veterans, members of our law enforcement community, members of every class of this country who know that we can make America great again. Let me say from the bottom of my heart, Hillary, they are not a basket of anything. They are Americans and they deserve your respect.
(APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: OK, so in case you missed it, let's go to what everyone is talking about. That is Mrs. Clinton's remarks from that fundraiser last night. And here they are.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
HILLARY CLINTON, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: To just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables.
(LAUGHTER)
CLINTON: Right.
(APPLAUSE)
CLINTON: The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SAVIDGE: Meanwhile, as the campaigns continue going after one another, there is news of a ceasefire deal in Syria reached between the U.S. and Russia that could have implications for both campaigns. Let's bring in Representative Dana Rohrabacher. He's a Republican Congressman from California and a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Thank you, sir, Congressman, for joining us.
REP. DANA ROHRABACHER, (R) CALIFORNIA: Thank you.
SAVIDGE: So I want to start with, of course, the words that we heard coming from Secretary Clinton there. She's been widely criticized, particularly by Republicans and Trump supporters. How great an impact do you think this is likely to have on the campaign?
ROHRABACHER: I don't think it's the impact. It's demonstrating that there's already been an impact. She was so cocky early on that she was going to win, and all along her whole campaign, the campaign against Trump, has been based on personal attacks against Don Trump. That hasn't worked. So now she's going to personally attack people who might want to vote for Don Trump. This is an act of desperation on her part and it's going to do nothing more than alienate even more Americans against her for name-calling rather than looking at the issues at hand.
SAVIDGE: Some have equated this to comments that Mitt Romney had made, the 47 percent, or even to President Obama when he talked about people clinging to their guns and their Bibles. Does it reach that same kind of stature?
ROHRABACHER: I think it does because her wording was just a personal insult to people who disagree with her throughout this country. People who are a little more religious, she thinks they are fanatics. People who really hold true to various beliefs and standards, even right now this administration is trying to say anybody who talks about religious freedom, that's just a buzzword for racism. This is the type of liberal leftism that she represents. It's being rejected by the American people, and now she's calling them names.
SAVIDGE: I hate to use this cliche, but I'm going to ask you this. Should she apologize?
ROHRABACHER: I think whether she apologizes or not, she has already expressed what's in her heart. And I would think that it's up to her whether or not -- if she sincerely regrets having personally attacked so many Americans, fine. If not however, I think that she's expressed what she believes.
SAVIDGE: Let me move on to what we've also talked about, which is Syria and the news of the U.S. and Russia clinching this ceasefire deal. How significant of an issue will Syria and foreign be for the next president? I imagine it is going to only grow.
ROHRABACHER: This is major area of concern that any new president is going to have to pay a lot of attention to. I do not know the details of this latest ceasefire agreement. But as we do know that Donald Trump has expressed time and again that he's willing to work with Putin, the president of a very powerful country, Russia, in order to try and reach understandings that will bring peace to these troubled areas and this conflict, not only this conflict but other conflicts. We have had, whether it's this administration or even past administrations, walking away from trying to cut deals and make agreements with this powerful entity.
[14:05:04] And so I think that the agreement today at least suggests that Putin himself and the Russians are willing to reach out. It looks like we're willing to reach out. What we need is some leadership. I think that's what Don Trump is going to provide. SAVIDGE: Let me point out the Russians are very much in support, of
course, of Assad, the president of Syria, the man who began all of this killing. And so it is unlikely --
ROHRABACHER: No. He didn't begin all this killing. This killing has been going on over -- in the Middle East it's been going on and on and on. He's just another dictator. And the fact is having predicating our policy on toppling him is irrational the same way it was irrational that we didn't accept the deal with Qaddafi. We ended up making the deal and then breaking it. And Qaddafi ended up dead and it unleashed enormous turmoil.
SAVIDGE: I'm not talking about Libya. I'm talking about Syria. President Assad did begin by cracking down on those who protested peacefully against him, and he cracked down brutally. That's what began it.
ROHRABACHER: No, no. Assad has always been a dictator. His father murdered thousands of people who protested against him.
SAVIDGE: True.
ROHRABACHER: As was Saddam Hussein, as was Qaddafi.
SAVIDGE: But he did not kill hundreds of thousands which is where we are now. Let's not -- I'm not going to argue the point.
ROHRABACHER: They all were mass murderers of their own people. Look, either they're a security threat to the United States or they're not. Assad is not a security threat to the United States. Radical Islamic terrorists are a threat to the United States. If we have to keep Qaddafi and Assad in power or Saddam Hussein in power in order to defeat those people who murder us, that's what we should do.
SAVIDGE: It's like he's not a bad dictator as long as he's our dictator. We accept apparently what we don't accept --
ROHRABACHER: As long he doesn't want to hurt United States and support those people who would kill us en masse, yes, we can put up with those people. We don't have to do. And that's one thing Trump is saying. We don't have to send troops all over the world and try to remake the whole world. And we can make deals with people who are not enemies of ours to help us defeat the enemies that would kill us en masse, the radical Islamic terrorists who this administration won't even use those words.
SAVIDGE: Representative Rohrabacher, thank you very for joining us today.
ROHRABACHER: All right, thank you.
SAVIDGE: Donald Trump is expected to speak in the coming hours at the funeral for late conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly. We'll head to St. Louis for that. You're in the CNN Newsroom.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [14:11:09] SAVIDGE: Let's talk more about Hillary Clinton who is facing some very fierce criticism today. This after insulting Donald Trump's campaign, not the candidate himself, but some of his supporters, half of them at least, saying that they fall into, quote, "the basket of deplorables." Today Trump's running mate Mike Pence fired back at Clinton during a speech at the Values Voters summit, and so did some of Trump's supporters. CNN's Scott McLean was at the speech today and he joins us live with more. Scott, we just heard from Hillary Clinton who is trying to respond to the backlash. What is she saying?
SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Martin, earlier today it seemed like the Clinton campaign wasn't backing down from what she. But we've actually just in the last few minutes gotten a statement from the Clinton campaign, and I'll read some of it to you. She says, "Last night I was grossly generalistic and that's never a good idea. I regret saying half. That was wrong. But let's be clear, what's really deplorable is that Donald Trump hired a major advocate for the so called alt-right movement to run his campaign and that David Duke and other white supremacists see him as a champion of their values." That's just part of that statement. She's referring in part to Steve Bannon, one of Trump's top executives now for his campaign. So clearly a change in tone from Hillary Clinton, Martin.
But look, there was an awkward moment before Mike Pence made his comments today at a conference for social conservatives where he couldn't seem to find the text of what Clinton had said. But afterwards they played it for the audience just to make sure those comments got heard by everyone clearly. Mike Pence and Donald Trump are the trying to make this of something. He also tried to compare it to comments that Barack Obama made back in 2008 saying that some Republicans were bitter and that they cling to guns and religion. Other Republicans have compared it to Mitt Romney's comments that he made in the 2012 campaign about a 47 percent of the American electorate that was entitled.
The people I spoke to at that Values Voters summit, many of them Donald Trump supporters, said they were offended by Clinton's comments. Others said they believe she was just doing it for Democratic consumption, not for a wider audience. But all of them said the bottom line is her comments just were not right.
SAVIDGE: It's interesting she said it at a fundraiser as opposed to a wide open public event. But OK. Scott McLean, thanks very much for joining us.
And to talk further about this, joining me now is CNN political commentator and Donald Trump supporter John Phillips and Krystal Ball, a journalist and senior fellow with the New Leaders Council who backs Hillary Clinton.
Krystal, to you first. Did Clinton really, because it seems to me, she just served up a perfect attack line for Donald Trump and their campaign at exactly the wrong moment for them.
KRYSTAL BALL, CLINTON SUPPORTER: You know, I think she was right in what she said and her sort of partial walk back of the comment, because if she had just said from the start that some of Donald Trump supporters fall into these variety categories, it's pretty hard to argue with when you look at the folks that are showing up at the rallies, when you look at some of the social media commentary, when you look at the white nationalist websites and David Duke backing her, it's hard to say that there's isn't chunk of Donald Trump's base supporter who do fall into what you could call a "basket of deplorables." The moment she put a number on it and said it's 50 percent, that's when this really became a problem.
I will say, though, if you look at the numbers, if we're going to put this all in context, about two-thirds of Donald Trump's supporters believe President Obama is a secret Muslim. About 40 percent think that blacks are lazier than whites. So I'm not sure what she said is inaccurate, but as a political strategy obviously she's feeling the heat and doesn't want to alienate anyone who could potentially support her candidacy.
[14:15:02] SAVIDGE: And that's what we're really discussing here is the political strategist. She's a brilliant woman and usually is guided by very smart political people. It seems like just a bad thing to do. So John, are there some Republican who perhaps were on the fence and this is going to change their mind?
JOHN PHILLIPS, TRUMP SUPPORTER: First of all, I'm surprised that she apologized for this given the fact that this is what she thinks. She shouldn't apologize.
SAVIDGE: I don't know if she apologized. I think you're going a little too far.
PHILLIPS: I guess a half-apology. But she calls Republicans racist about as often as she plays whack-a-mole with a hammer on her iPhones.
BALL: That's not fair. That's not fair. She's been specific.
PHILLIPS: What strikes me as being shocking about this, Martin, is that the politics, as you said, are horrific for her. In that region, the rustbelt where Bill Clinton went coal country the day before, she's essentially talking about blue collar whites, these people are going to decide the election. And in the weeks after the convention when Donald Trump had three horrific weeks of polling, three horrific weeks of gaffes, what happened? He was off-message because he was feuding with people whose names weren't on the ballot. He was feuding with the Khan family. He was feuding with John McCain. He was feuding with CNN, and the voters responded very negatively.
Over the last couple of weeks Hillary Clinton has had challenges with the polls. She's gone way down. Why? Because she's fighting with Matt Lauer. She's fighting with Colin Powell. Now she's fighting with Donald Trump supporters. If she thinks this is going to help her, she's got another thing coming.
SAVIDGE: Krystal, I don't like necessarily the way John said it, but he does kind of have a point here.
PHILLIPS: Thank you.
SAVIDGE: In that she has brought something to the fore that might have been in the background which this -- for those that don't like Hillary, they're going to say, aha, see, she's always had this elitist attitude about us.
BALL: I have no idea whether this was part of some intentional strategy. As you pointed out, this was at a fundraiser. She may have thought friendly crowd, not really thought about the broader implications --
SAVIDGE: But "basket of despicables" is not a phrase you pull out of thin air.
BALL: "Deplorables" if we're going to be specific.
SAVIDGE: Sorry.
BALL: I think it is putting the number 50 percent with it that made it a challenge.
On the other hand, if you do want to look at it from strategic political standpoint, it's not a terrible conversation for the Clinton campaign to be having, pointing out the types of fringe folks that are supporting this campaign. We've seen moderate Republican women, college educated white men and women drift away from the Trump campaign in much larger numbers than the Romney campaign because they are uncomfortable with the sort of underlying racist appeal that Trump has made. I'm not sure it's a terrible conversation for them.
SAVIDGE: John, who do you think she was aiming at with that?
PHILLIPS: She was talking to people that live on the coast. She was talking to a room full of people where she was raising a lot of money. She goes to a lot of fundraisers. That's her social circle. Those are the people that she surrounds herself with, and they all think the same thing.
The problem that she's going to have, though, is that people in the middle of the country, the people she was talking about, are the people who are going to decide who wins the election. If Donald Trump wins this thing, if he pulls it out, it's going to be because he wins those states in the rustbelt. He's going to win Pennsylvania, Ohio, those states that she was referring to.
SAVIDGE: These are the independent voters we're talk about. And Krystal, real quick because we're going to have to go, do you think independent voters are going to be impacted by her words?
BALL: I think they will look at the totality of the Trump campaign and the types of people that associated themselves with it and say, you know what, that's not me.
SAVIDGE: OK, John Phillips and Krystal Ball, thank you both very much.
PHILLIPS: Thank you.
BALL: Thank you, Martin.
SAVIDGE: We'll have more on this story right after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[14:22:34] SAVIDGE: We have been talking about it for about three, three and a half hours, and I'm not saying there's a direct cause and effect, but just moments ago Hillary Clinton responding to the backlash over her comments about Trump supporters. She had this to say, quote, "Last night I was grossly generalistic, and that's never a good idea. I regret saying "half." That was wrong." Regret not quite the same as saying I apologize, but there you have it.
Dan Merica was at the fundraiser last night. He was listening to it. And initially this is when all of the dust-up began. He joins me on the telephone. Dan, this was a fundraiser, so it's a little different audience, isn't it?
DAN MERICA, (via telephone): Yes. Hey, Martin. It was a fundraiser of about a thousand people in downtown New York last night. Based on the figures provided, it likely raised around $6 million. This was an audience of supporters who are willing to pay money to see Hillary Clinton, to maybe get some face time with her depending on how much they contribute.
SAVIDGE: How was it said, though?
MERICA: It was only the sixth time that reporters had been invited to a fundraiser to cover it. This was rare occurrence for the Clinton campaign. And you would assume Clinton knew the camera was on her throughout the entire event.
SAVIDGE: And this was not a teleprompter thing? Because she's said this kind of thing before.
MERICA: It wasn't a slip. She said it in an interview with Israeli TV earlier in the week. There are reports that she has said it at other fundraisers before. The Clinton campaign is not shying away from having an argument about whether there are racist, sexist, Islamophobic elements that are animating the Trump. They want that debate as I heard one of you guests say in an earlier segment. Clinton acknowledged in her, I guess we can call it an apology or statement of regret, is that she slipped up by saying "half." She was maligning basically half of Trump supporters, which has been noted would be a lot of people. And some people that her campaign would hope to sway over, however hard that would be.
So she acknowledged that in statement of regret, and now the Clinton campaign hopes they can spin this. Secretary Clinton did something in that statement that, and this is what they're saying, Donald Trump wouldn't do and hasn't done, which is apologize or say that he regrets something that he has said in the past.
[14:25:08] So I think what you're going to start seeing is Clinton and her surrogates noting that she flubbed with the "half" line, but welcoming a debate over whether those elements are animating Trump's campaign.
SAVIDGE: And I imagine we will debate this for a while. Thank you Dan Merica very much for your insights for being there last night.
I'm Martin Savidge. It's been a pleasure. "Agility in Action" starts next.
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