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Soon: Trump to Address Birther Issue at DC Event; Clinton: Next 53 Days Will Shape Next 50 Years." Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired September 16, 2016 - 10:00   ET

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


[10:00:00]

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HILLARY CLINTON, (D) PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I look at America, I see everyone. I see our great diversity which is one of our core strengths, not our burden. We know who Donald Trump is. Now it's time for our country to show who we are, and reject his divisive vision. That's why this election is so important. As Michelle Obama said at the Democratic convention, when we go to the polls in November, the real choice isn't between a Democrat or a Republican.

It's about who will have the power to shape our children's lives for the next four years. It's also about the kind of country we want to be and what we want to leave behind for future generations. We are at our best when every person gets to share in our nation's promise, contribute to our progress. Stronger together is not just a campaign slogan. It is the guiding principle for the future we need to build.

So Americans, we need to ask ourselves. Are we going to make our -- economy work for everyone or just for those at the top? Are we going to bring people together, or pit Americans against each other and rip our country apart? Are we going to work with our allies to keep us safe or are we going to put a loose cannon in charge who would risk everything that generations of Americans have worked so hard to build?

Now, in many ways, this profound choice is up to the women in this room. African-American women turned out to vote more than any other group of Americans in 2012. This year once again, you have your hands on the wheel of history and you can write the next chapter of the American story. Keep up the great work with your four for four campaigns. Make sure we get as many people registered and then to the polls as we possibly can. People say to me all the time I don't know what to do about Trump and his supporters and the things he says and inciting violence, and all of the terrible activities that are happening this election year.

Well, here's what we can do. Let's reject the cynicism, the bullying, the divisive rhetoric that my opponent uses to make us afraid of each other, afraid of our differences, afraid of our future. I know that all of us in this room are ready to stand up against this, to rise up for our families, our communities, but most importantly, to show up at the polls this November.

(APPLAUSE) With our power and strength, I know, I believe this or I would not be standing here before you, I would not have run again for president, I would not deal with all the incoming brickbats that are hurled my way, if I did not in my heart believe with every fiber of my being that together we can build a future where yes, love Trumps hate. Thank you all very much.

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CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Hillary Clinton just wrapping up her speech in front of the Black Women's Agenda. She was at a luncheon there. And I would like to welcome our viewers to the show. I'm Carol Costello. Thanks so much for joining me. It has been a wild morning in presidential politics, let me tell you. Hillary Clinton just finishing up, we expect Donald Trump to speak sometime this hour and when he does, he is expected to make big news. Sources telling us he will likely disavow his debunked birther claim that President Obama was not born in the United States. Clinton wasted no time disavowing Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLINTON: Just yesterday, Trump again refused to say with his own words that the president was born in the United States. Now Donald's advisors had the temerity to say he's doing the country a service by pushing these lies. No,

[10:05:16] he isn't. He is feeding in to the worst impulses, the bigotry and bias that lurks in our country. Barack Obama was born in America, plain and simple, and Donald Trump owes him and the American people an apology.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: All right. We have team coverage. CNN chief political correspondent Dana Bash is working her sources. Sara Murray is live in Washington where Trump is expected to speak at a Trump property. But I do want to begin with you, Dana, because you have been working your sources. Will Donald Trump say, will the words come out of his mouth, President Obama was born in the United States and I apologize for all that birther stuff?

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENTS: The second half of that, I would not bet on it. Certainly that is what Hillary Clinton as you just played again demanded in her speech just a moment ago, -- that he actually apologize to President Obama and to the American people. But on the first part, which we have not ever heard from Donald Trump, that is President Obama was born in the U.S., despite and after Obama released two birth certificates including the long one back in 2011. I'm told that the plan is for him to likely say that. He himself has been trying to have a long, very long, very suspenseful drum roll all morning going on a show saying that he is going to potentially do something on that, even just tweeting he's got a major announcement. But we will see what he actually says because this has been a long struggle which really climaxed maybe today but at least so far last night, when in the name of his campaign spokesman, his campaign put out the first statement saying that Donald Trump thinks that Barack Obama was born in the United States. So we'll see what actually comes out of his mouth and how he does it, and that along with as Sara alluded to earlier this morning, the fact he is in Washington to unveil the new Trump Hotel so it's hard to imagine that not being another part of his speech today.

COSTELLO: All right. Dana, stand by. We see Mr. Trump's plane, it just landed at Reagan National. So we expect him to get into his motorcade and make his way to that Trump property where he may or may not say President Obama was born in the United States. And you can see the tail of Hillary Clinton's plane because she, too, is in Washington. That's where she delivered that speech in front of a group of African-American women. I want to go to Sara Murray because she's at that Trump property where Trump is expected to speak in just about a half hour. What's the mood like there Sara?

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICS REPORTER: Well, Carol I think there's a lot of confusion. And even a lot of staffers who are here, who are wondering what Donald Trump is going to come out -- and say today. That's because you know, look, I have been covering his campaign for a year and a half. He obviously propagated this birther thing before he was a presidential candidate. But throughout his campaign, he's really refused to answer questions about whether he still believes that President Obama is not an American citizen and he sort of just furthered that confusion this morning, even after his campaign put out a statement last night in the name of his communications director, not in Donald Trump's name, saying Trump believes that that President Obama was born in Hawaii. He went on TV this morning and he still wouldn't go that far. So take a listen to what Donald Trump said this morning.

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DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: And I'm going to be making a major statement on this whole thing and what Hillary did. But no, she is the one that started it and she was unable or incapable of finishing it. That's the way it worked out. But I got him to release his birth certificate.

MARIA BARTIROMO, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: I remember.

TRUMP: So we will have a big statement and I hope you are going to be watching.

BARTIROMO: I am definitely going to be watching but bottom line is this. We know that -- Obama now - he was born in America, correct?

TRUMP: You watch my statement. I have to -- we have to keep the suspense going. OK? You watch. You're my friend. You watch the statement, OK? I think you'll be happy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MURRAY: Now Carol, the goal of this morning was Donald Trump was expected to be holding a veterans' event here, was expected to be a press conference. Now basically all of that is up in the air. People are waiting to see if Trump is going to come out and give a statement disavowing his birtherism, saying he believes President Obama was born in Hawaii and if he's going to take questions from the press, so we should hopefully get the answer in just a few minutes.

COSTELLO: OK. We will stand by. So you stand by, Sara Murray. And I'm looking at the Trump campaign statement. I have it right here. And I am just going to boil it all down for you right now. The Trump camp is now saying Mr. Trump did a great service to the country by pressuring -- Mr. Obama to produce his birth certificate. Although perhaps the president would laugh at that, like he did at the White House Correspondents' dinner back in 2011.

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BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I know that he's taken some flack lately but no one is happier, no one is prouder to

[10:10:16] put this birth certificate matter to rest than the Donald. And that's because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter. Like did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie & Tupac?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: All right. Mr. Trump was in the audience that night at the correspondents' dinner. He was none too happy. In fact, he left angry although later he said it didn't bother him at all. Still, Donald Trump to this day and even in this -- his campaign statement, he actually blames Hillary Clinton for starting the birther movement although there is absolutely no evidence that Hillary Clinton ever demanded that President Obama produce his birth certificate. But Donald Trump certainly did.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Why doesn't he show his birth certificate? You know what? I wish he would. Because I think it's a terrible pall that's hanging over him. Perhaps it's going to say Hawaii. Perhaps it's going to say Kenya.

TRUMP: There are many people that don't agree with that birth certificate. They don't think it's authentic, Wolf. Last week somebody came out with a very strong statement saying that he stated himself that he was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia. Now, I didn't make that statement that was made by, I assume, either the publisher or the president himself and that's a statement. That's a pretty hard statement to refute.

TRUMP: You know who questioned his birth certificate, one of the first, Hillary Clinton.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: All right. So let's talk about this. With me now, Dana Bash, CNN chief political correspondent, Sara Murray, CNN political reporter. Actually, Sara Murray, she is out at the Trump International Hotel so we will get to her later. Ron Brownstein is also with me, a CNN senior political analyst and senior editor of "The Atlantic," Errol Louis, CNN political commentator and anchor for Time Warner Cable. Brianna Keilar, CNN political correspondent and Gloria Borger. Gloria, you are here with me, too, CNN's chief political analyst. OK. Errol, I want to start with you. What the heck do you make of this day?

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR AND ANCHOR FOR TIME WARNER CABLE: Well, what a day. I think the sort of teasing out and playing out of the birtherism conspiracy nonsense is a discredit to the Trump campaign. -- It shows among other things, confusion at the highest ranks where he's got his campaign manager saying one thing, the candidate says something completely different. The candidate now appears to be trying to sort of play it all off as a joke and act as if all of the different clips you just showed over a period of years never happened. A very unfortunate distraction from what was supposed to be I think his news of the day which was that he finally unveiled a fairly comprehensive economic and tax plan yesterday that we are not talking about that he must know nobody's going to really focus on with all of this other foolishness in the headlines.

COSTELLO: So -- Gloria, why now? -- His campaign put out this statement to the surprise of everyone last night and now Donald Trump is like kind of teasing all of us that he may or may not say that President Obama was born in the United States. You see Donald Trump deplaning there. Why now?

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, -- I think to understand why now we have to take a step back. This is the way Donald Trump got national attention and catapulted himself on to the national stage as a potential presidential candidate. This is what he did. He raised the birther issue and it got him a lot of press and it got him a lot of play and it put him sort of into contention.

And now they are at a point in this campaign where they understand now that he's the nominee, in order to move forward, in order to have any shot of attracting minority voters or even younger voters, he has got to get this off his back. The problem for Donald Trump is that he has, in case we all hadn't noticed, a great deal of difficulty in admitting that he has ever made a mistake in his lifetime, and so what we saw last night was a statement from Jason Miller, his spokesperson, on behalf of Donald Trump, saying that Donald Trump had indeed, does now believe that the president was born in the United States. But it did not come from Donald Trump's mouth.

We'll be interested to see what Donald Trump says. I mean, the statement says he takes credit for bringing this to the fore and forcing President Obama to issue his birth certificate, blaming it of course on Hillary Clinton, of which there is absolutely no truth and no fact. And he's doing it in his venue today, one last thing, because this is the opening of his hotel

[10:15:16] and he's -- trying to get a lot of attention for that as well. So you know trying to get rid of this issue and again, his words are going to matter today. It will be very interesting for me to watch his words. -- COSTELLO: -- We will all be interested to watch his words Gloria. So I'm just reading through this Trump campaign statement that you mentioned. It does say in 2011, Mr. Trump, was finally able to bring this ugly incident to its conclusion by successfully compelling President Obama to release his birth certificate. This makes it sound as if Donald Trump stopped talking about this in 2011 which he certainly did not. This is "BuzzFeed" dug up this Trump interview with Irish television. This happened in 2014. Let's listen.

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COLETTE FITZPATRICK, IRELAND TV3: You questioned his citizenship during his campaign and you said afterwards if you produce that long form birth cert, you produce your tax returns. You didn't do it, did you?

TRUMP: Well, I don't know, did he do it? -- If I decide to run for office, I will produce my tax returns, absolutely. And I would love to do that. I did produce actually a financial statement even though I wasn't even running, I did produce a financial statement and it was shocking to some because it was so much higher than people thought even possible. So it was a great statement. It was my honor to do it. But no, the president should come clean. He should have come clean over the years and you know if you remember the very famous story where I offered $5 million if he shows some basic records and he never took me up on it and that would be for charity. So charities would have benefited and it would have been a great thing.

FITZPATRICK: But he is a citizen and he produced that long form birth certificate.

TRUMP: Well, a lot of people don't agree with you. A lot of people feel it wasn't a proper certificate.

FITZPATRICK: Hillary Clinton?

TRUMP: Very smart. She's going to be in my opinion, she's going to run. She's going to be the Democratic nominee and she's going to be tough to beat. Unless the Republicans have somebody very tough and very smart, they're not going to win.

FITZPATRICK: Are you going to beat her?

TRUMP: I think I could beat her if I ran. But we'll see whether or not -- I'll wait until November. You know we have big elections coming up in the United States in November and I will wait until November and we'll see.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: So Ron that demonstrates a lot of things. Of course, we know Mr. Trump is now running for president but if you're going to come out and come clean, right, why not tell the complete and whole truth?

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST AND SENIOR EDITOR OF "THE ATLANTIC": Well, I don't believe that whatever he says today is going to have much impact on anybody. First of all, for the reason you say, every aspect of the way he has described this episode from the idea that it was born by Hillary Clinton to that he did this as a public service rather than trying to destabilize the first African-American president, is completely -- has no basis in fact. It calls to mind Mary McCarthy's great quote about Lillian Hellman, "every word she ever wrote was a lie including 'and' and 'the'." That's the only way you can find to respond to the kind statement they put out.

The reason I don't think it will move anybody is because the portions of the Republican party who are most unsettled by demographic change that he rose to leadership among in part by emphasizing this issue, I think overwhelmingly will view him as moving away not because he believes it but because he feels it's politically necessary. And I think in the rest of the electorate, among African-Americans, Hispanics, college educated white voters in particular, over 60 percent, roughly 60 percent or more whom in polls consistently say they consider him bigoted, I don't believe that they will look at this and say this is a new Donald Trump. I think, everyone on both sides - will see it as a matter of political convenience for a candidate who is trying to get from the low 40s into the higher 40s. --

COSTELLO: All right. I got to leave this discussion here for now because I have to take a break. But I want you all to stay with me because I would appreciate that. As we watch Mr. Trump getting into his motorcade to head to hotel to make supposedly some big statement about President Obama and of course, we are waiting to see if Hillary Clinton says anything else after she wrapped up at that black women's luncheon today. I'll be right back.

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[10:20:16]

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COSTELLO: And welcome back. I'm Carol Costello. You are looking at pictures out of Reagan National Airport. That is Donald Trump walking down the steps of his plane ready to get into his motorcade to make his way to the venue where he will supposedly make a big statement. That's what he tweeted out this morning. We expect him to say something about where the President of the United States was born. Hillary Clinton, that's where Donald Trump is going to speak a little later, Sara Murray, is covering that. We will get to her in just a second. So just about, oh, half hour ago, Hillary Clinton was also speaking and she was quick to pounce on the Trump campaign's supposed disavowal on the birther issue because they did issue a statement disavowing it. Hillary Clinton was speaking in front of the symposium of Black Women's Agenda. Joe Johns was on hand for that. So he joins us now to tell us more. Hi, Joe.

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Carol. One thing you can sure say is the Hillary Clinton campaign is hitting this issue very hard. Last night at the black -- I'm sorry, the Hispanic Caucus Gala she talked about it. She also tweeted about it today. At least her campaign did, calling Donald Trump the birther-in-chief. And then she hit it again here today before this umbrella organization of African-American groups from around the country, very well-known groups. It's because the campaign sees this as an issue that they can use to get out the vote. They can look at African-American voters and say to them Donald Trump is disrespecting the first African-American president and let's listen just to a little bit of what she had to say before this group here in Washington today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLINTON: For five years, he has led the birther movement to delegitimize our first black

[10:25:16] president. His campaign was founded on this outrageous lie. There is no erasing it in history. Just yesterday, Trump again refused to say with his own words that the president was born in the United States. Now, Donald's advisors had the temerity to say he's doing the country a service by pushing these lies. No, he isn't. He is feeding into the worst impulses, the bigotry and bias that lurks in our country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHNS: She went on to say there also that Donald Trump owes President Obama an apology. So this is one of those things that she talks about again and again and again and they just pounced after they heard what Donald Trump had to say last night. Back to you, Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Just one more question, Joe. When the president of this group introduced Hillary Clinton, she said that this group had invited both candidates and only heard back from one. Can you tell us more about that?

JOHNS: Well, that's about the end of it, and it has happened a few other times here to one degree or another, involving groups that are minority-focused, so all I can tell you is what she said and what she said was she invited both of the candidates. Only Hillary Clinton responded and Donald Trump did not. That's about the extent of it Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Joe Johns reporting live. So let's talk some more about this. Again, I'm joined by Ron Brownstein, Errol Louis, Dana Bash and Brian Keilar and Gloria Borger. Welcome back. So Brianna, I brought that up with Joe because Hillary Clinton began her speech by saying you know, I made room in my schedule to be here, intimating that the other candidate did not. It's just kind of ironic that Donald Trump is in Washington at the very same time and could have taken part in talking to this group.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: It's not uncharacteristic, though, for Donald Trump. You know, he did not speak when having an opportunity to the NAACP and when he only recently Carol, started reaching out at least rhetorically to African- American voters last month, he did so at events for instance in Dimondale, Michigan, which is over 90 percent white. Not a very big black population there. Instead of going to a nearby community where he could have easily tried to attract a larger black audience, now he doesn't poll well with African-Americans. That might be part of the reason. But he' gone to these cities that are predominantly white to crowds and you know we checked, we have producers there, crowds that are predominantly white and it was actually at that rally where he said the famous, "what the hell do you have to lose."

You know, some of his rhetoric doesn't endear him, of course, to communities of color, including African-Americans, and we heard that last month when he said, you know, what do you have to lose in the things that he was trying to say is you're in poverty, your schools are no good. When you look at the facts, though, actually it was as if he was talking to African-Americans as if they all live in poverty. Most African-Americans do not. So he's sort of not really connecting even with the group that he says he's trying to speak to.

COSTELLO: OK. -- So today again, supposedly in just a few minutes, Donald Trump will get behind that podium and perhaps say that President Obama was born in the United States. -- Other Democrats supporting Hillary Clinton are making hay of this. Listen to what Bernie Sanders said on "New Day" this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS, (D) VERMONT: Isn't that something. My word. After eight years of having President Obama as president, Donald Trump now thinks he's a legitimate president. Well, I'm just overwhelmed with emotion. Look, this is pathetic. And this goes to the root of what Trump's campaign is about. Let's be clear. It's about bigotry. Remember, let's all remember that a few years ago, Donald Trump was the leader of the so-called birther movement. What the birther movement was about was not being critical of Obama. This is a democracy. We can criticize Obama. It was delegitimizing the first African-American president in the history of our country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: So Dana, will this turn out to be a good day for the Democrats?

BASH: You know, we'll see. We'll see what Donald Trump actually ends up saying.