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Trump Goes After Clinton for "Basket of Deplorables" Comment; Tim Kaine Comments on Clinton Health; Did Clinton Campaign Hide Pneumonia Diagnosis; Sen. Elizabeth Warren's Demands to Wells Fargo Following Financial Scandal; Calm Prevails as Syria Ceasefire Starts. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired September 12, 2016 - 14:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:34:09] BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Moments ago, Donald Trump lashed out at his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, at the National Guard conference. He was speaking there in Baltimore, for her saying half of his supporters are part of a part of "a basket of deplorables." This is how Clinton characterized voters who support Trump. This is from Friday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON, (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Just to be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables.

(LAUGHTER)

Right?

(LAUGHTER)

They're racists, sexists, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Clinton then says she regrets saying half of his voters are deplorable, but also she says she won't stop calling out bigotry and racists rhetoric among Trump supporters.

Trump is pouncing on that calling it angry and divisive.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[14:35:07] DONALD TRUMP, (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: She called these patriotic men and women every vile name in the book. She called them racist, sexist, xenophobic, Islamophobic. She called half of our supporters a "basket of deplorables" in both a speech and an interview. She divides people into baskets as though they were objects, not human beings.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BALDWIN: Let me bring in Lanhee Chen, CNN political commentator and former political director for Mitt Romney; and Tim Naftali, CNN presidential historian.

Gentlemen.

Let's begin, Tim, with you here.

How much of a gaffe was this for hilly Clinton?

TIMOTHY NAFTALI, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Well, you're running to be president of all Americans. And so it's very important for people, even those who don't support you, to think that once you're in power, you will be thinking of know. You're not just president of the people who vote for you. That said, in political terms, the people she was criticizing or the people she does not expect to vote for her, number one. Number two, as opposed to the Romney gaffe, the Romney gaffe played into a narrative in 2012, that he was out of touch with people because he was a millionaire, that's why I believe it was hurtful, especially politically hurtful. In Hillary's case, I don't think this is going to be politically hurtful, but it does open up the possibility for Trump to appear more human, more in touch with folks. That's not something Hillary wants since she wants to make this a referendum on Trump.

BALDWIN: Let's talk to Lanhee.

Because you were with the campaign when said 40 percent comment happened. In 2012 he said 40 percent of voters wouldn't back him because they're dependent on government. Take me inside the campaign for a moment. When he said that, did you instantly think, oh, this is going to be a tough one to recover from?

LANHEE CHEN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yeah, I mean, I think the sense within the campaign was that obviously, you know, it was going to be a difficult day. I think I remember being actually in California with him the day that the "Mother Jones" piece came out and it first sort of hit the news. I mean, I think as a campaign, it's always very, very difficult to gauge exactly how far something's going to go. It's dependent on not just where the news cycle goes, but how good the other campaign is at deploying it against you. I heard the clip against Trump. I thought that was a pretty effective way of dealing with it. The question is going to be, are they going to continue to be able to do that as the week goes on and drive the comment.

BALDWIN: Remind me then, staying on Governor Romney, how did he respond to that once the "Mother Jones" piece went boom?

CHEN: Well, I think initially we had a very hastily convened conference that evening after a fundraiser basically trying to clarify what the remarks were. Basically saying, look, these comments were meant to reflect the fact that you've got a lot of people that are suffering and government policy hasn't made it any better. And then I think we went on and the response sort of morphed and changed as time went on. I think the key is to lance the boil. I think that's what Hillary Clinton as campaign tried to do over the weekend with her statement.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Tried to do. Have they been successful?

CHEN: It's a question it allowed her to do. I don't think we were successful at it, unfortunately.

BALDWIN: I mean, the Clinton campaign.

CHEN: The Hillary Clinton campaign did a little better.

BALDWIN: You do think so?

CHEN: Yeah. I think -- I think there's -- their's was fine. I think the question will be how this comment takes on its own and I think toe your other guest's point, it has a lot to do with the frame in which we see these candidates. If Hillary Clinton is already seen as out of touch, what Donald Trump needs to do is say, this proves she's out of touch. That will cause many more problems than the actual comment itself.

BALDWIN: Don't you think, Tim, the Trump campaign for the next 47 days take it and end are it all the way to the end zone?

NAFTALI: Of course, they will. They're going to take and run with every mistake Hillary Clinton makes. The issue is whether they have -- these mistakes have traction, and unfortunately for the Romney campaign in 2012, his particular comment fed into this narrative that he was a rich man who didn't really understand ordinary Americans. What Hillary needs to think about, Secretary Clinton needs to think about, is how to talk to Americans who do not support her and support Trump, and what she lacked in that statement was empathy. That's not to be sympathetic of racists or homophobes. But to give the impression to support Trump is to be a racist or homophobe. She needed to be more presidential and diplomatic, and won't help her and Trump will use it against her.

[14:35:17] BALDWIN: Tim Naftali, Lanhee Chen, Thank you very much. We'll see how it goes the next to months and how they use this.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Coming up next, eight years after the financial crisis, one of America's biggest banks is caught defrauding customers and stealing their money. Have you heard about this? We'll tell you what one Senator is now demanding in the wake of all of this.

Also ahead, did the Clinton campaign hide her pneumonia diagnosis? We'll talk to spokeswoman, live. And her running mate here, Tim Kaine, just weighed in from the trail.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:40:14] BALDWIN: So, we know that Hillary Clinton, she has pneumonia. We officially found out from the campaign as of yesterday. We know she is taking two days off the trail. She's home in Chappaqua recouping. We have heard from her running mate, Tim Kaine, weighing in on just how demanding her schedule has been.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TIM KAINE, (D), VIRGINIA & VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I know you're probably just like me thinking about Hillary now after she was at the outdoor ceremony yesterday and got a little overheated. I can tell you this, within a few minutes after I heard the news, I reached out to communicate to her, and she reached right back out to me and said, no, I'm going to be fine. Then she started to make fun of me because I was sitting, reading endless debate prep memos. She said, you know, our staff knows how to kill a lot of trees by putting together massive books. She was immediately responding back and joking around.

But I know you're thinking about her. I am, too. I'll tell you this, I've just been on the campaign since July 22. Hillary Clinton has been on the campaign trail for 18 months. Her energy staggers me.

(APPLAUSE)

KAINE: I have a hard time keeping up with her.

(APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: When you are running to be the leader of the free world, how much privacy are you entitled to? The pneumonia news prompted criticism, particularly from David Axelrod. He took to Twitter and said this: "Antibiotics can take care of pneumonia. What's the cure for an unhealthy penchant for privacy that repeatedly creates unnecessary problems?" That's been retweeted many, many times. Jim Palmieri tweeted, "We could have done better yesterday but it is a fact the public knows more about HRC than any nominee in history."

Joining me now to discuss what it's like covering her, transparency questions, I have our Dan Mercia, CNN politics producer in Chappaqua; and joining us closely, Dylan Byers, CNN senior media and politics reporter.

Dan, first to you.

We talk about how thrilling to finally be on the plane with her, asking questions, then, boom. How frustrating is it knowing the camp apparently knew for two days before telling you guys?

DAN MERICA, CNN POLITICS PRODUCER: It's quite striking, to be honest. We saw her on Friday multiple times. She did an interview with CNN, spoke with Chris Cuomo. It was notable after the national security meeting that, you know, she came out, spoke with the press, took some questions, but as she walked away, she gave a very deep, long cough. It actually had some reporters thinking, you know, this is- there's something going on. Obviously, we had no idea it was pneumonia. Frankly, some of her top aides didn't know she had pneumonia until yesterday. They had no idea. It's raising a lot of questions inside the Clinton campaign. Has she been overscheduled? How are they going to deal with a candidate who famously wants to power through these things, at the State Department wanted to power through sicknesses? Clearly, we saw on Friday she wants to power through this. How do they balance that with what is going to be a grueling schedule for the next two months? It's been tough. She's been on the campaign trail for 18 months now. It's tough. It's not an easy schedule to keep, as Tim Kaine noted. It's going to get harder. The next two months will be some of the most grueling months of her career with travel, fundraisers. She's a candidate that needs to be at fundraisers to raise money. She headlined 37 fundraisers in August. That's an astounding amount. She's not going to headline that many this month but she's still somebody -- it's a labor-intensive fundraising process.

The campaign is weighing how they go about scheduling secretary Clinton for the next to months given she's going to try and power through this pneumonia diagnosis and anything that might come in the future.

Yeah.

Dan, stand by.

Let me bring in Dylan in.

I don't know how either of them do it with the travel they have to do. I think Americans have a right also to have that sort of transparency with both Trump and Clinton and their health records.

Dylan, you wrote a piece also pointing out, the protective pool, the protective press, travels along with the secret service and you can't monitor the candidates.

DYLAN BYERS, CNN SENIOR MEDIA & POLITICS REPORTER: That's right. We're in September and we're less than 60 days out from the election. If you go back and look although previous presidential candidates, they had these protective pools in place as early as July, June, August, what have you. We should really have protective pools for both of these candidates. For viewers who don't know what those pools do, they enable the press, at least one reporter, a group of reporters, to follow these candidates on a minute-by-minute basis and keep the public abreast of their actives. If you had had a protective pool in place on Sunday, you would have had voters knowing what was going on with Hillary Clinton in real time. We didn't have that. That led to these feelings there's something secretive was going on with Hillary Clinton, when she left, when she went to her daughter's apartment, and then north to Chappaqua.

[14:45:19] BALDWIN: Dylan Byers, thank you.

Dan Merica, thank you as well.

We'll loop back to this. We'll also press a member of the campaign at the top of the hour. For now, though, I want to move on and talk about Syria. A ceasefire

under way in Syria's civil war. But the country's dictator has issued huge warning. We'll take you live to the border here on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: "Staggering fraud" is how Elizabeth Warren describes this Wells Fargo scandal. Here's the story. Employees at this bank opened essentially fake bank accounts with real customers' information, without their approval, just to earn bonuses. Now Senator Warren wants them to answer for it. She and four other Democrats called for the CEO of Wells Fargo to testify in front of Congress. She wants a full explanation of exactly how this can happen. The bank will pay $2 billion in fines and penalties and will make full restitution to all customers here.

With me now, Rana Foroohar, CNN global economic analyst and assistant managing editor at "Time" magazine.

Rana, when you look at the numbers, 5300 employees, more than two million bank accounts, fake accounts, how can this happen especially after the financial crisis?

[14:50:29] RANA FOROOHAR, CNN GLOBAL ECONOMIC ANALYST: It just shows how much we still have to do in terms of cleaning up finance. I think this reflects a few different things. It reflects, for starters, this malfeasance has been widespread for a number of years. A study shows those that have worked in the financial system have seen fraud, they have seen their bosses make bad decisions. The other thing it reflects is bank's profit margins are suffering. The Dodd/Frank regulation curbed a lot of risky moves so they're pushing for different profit centers. Unless that's properly regulated and there's a cultural shift that will result in the scandal we've just seen.

BALDWIN: We don't know exactly how this happened because the CEO is saying they know nothing -- or they didn't know this was happening. How about 5300 employees sort of get the memo to fake accounts?

FOROOHAR: Well, I think that in the financial sector in general the memo is basically, make money, push for profits. And I think that you're now seeing -- you had seen it previously before the financial crisis in the investment banking area, in the loan area. I think now you're seeing it more in the consumer area, in part, because banks are turning their business models towards consumers. They've had to get out of a lot of other kinds of trading they were doing pre-2008. This is now a big area. Consumer finance is becoming a bigger area. You are at risk of seeing more fraud in this area.

BALDWIN: We'll see if the call for testimony and fessing up will happen on Capitol Hill.

Rana Foroohar, thank you so much.

FOROOHAR: Thank you. BALDWIN: Moments ago, Vice President Joe Biden reacted to Hillary

Clinton's, quote/unquote, "deplorables" remark when talking about Donald Trump's supporters. And he actually uses that quote to go after Trump.

Plus, two weeks from tonight, the two nominees square off in their very first presidential debate. And now Trump is floating the idea of not having a debate moderator. How would that work? We'll talk to two people who actually say that's a great idea.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:56:51] BALDWIN: Breaking news out of Syria. A U.S./Russian brokered ceasefire is three hours old. The trust went into effect over the weekend after heavy bombardment. The U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry says under this deal the Syrian air force must stop attacking opposition targets. Humanitarian aid will also be allowed to reach the hardest hit areas. Secretary Kerry, who helped broker this deal, spoke just moments ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN KERRY, SECRETARY OF STATE: The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that major conflict zones in Syria were calm after the ceasefire took effect at 7:00 p.m. on Monday. Their quote is, "Calm is prevailing," the director said, giving an early assessment, I repeat, early assessment.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Let's go straight to CNN's senior international correspondent, Arwa Damon, there live along the Turkish/Syrian border.

Arwa, we now know it's three hours ago that this truce -- this knowing this part of the world the way you do, how confident are you the ceasefire holds?

ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I would love to be able to say that I was very confident that it would, but the sad reality in this part of the world is these things tend not to. And, in fact, in the words of Secretary Kerry there describing it based on the reporting from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is being, relatively speaking, calm, again, relatively speaking.

There were a number of violations that were reported by activists and residents on the ground in Aleppo and in Idlib to have strikes on civilian area and some rebel fighting positions. Some activists within Aleppo have described the start of the cessation of hostilities as being a lot less viable than the earlier one that had happened in the winter that lasted for about 27 days.

But that being said, Brooke, the other reality is that when these things do begin, we don't necessarily see this magical period of calm emerging right away. It does tend to say some time for it to settle. A key indicator will be whether or not over the next few hours we see a period of prolonged calm and, perhaps more importantly at this stage, whether or not humanitarian aid is, in fact, able to access those besieged areas.

And this is really the key first step towards trying to build upon this agreement that was brokered between the U.S. and Russia because there are several steps involved. One is an initial 48-hour time frame. Then there's a seven-day time frame. Then we're supposed to seeing a greater level of cooperation between the U.S. and Russia going after ISIS and after the -- the group formal early known as al Nusra Front.

There are is a lot of questions, a lot of skepticism on the ground. But at the end of the day, Brooke, these are people that need a respite from the violence and they'll take anything they can get, whether it's a few hours, a few days or something longer.

BALDWIN: You talk to them, you would know. I know you're watching the coming --