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Legal View with Ashleigh Banfield
Trump Acknowledges He believes President Obama was Born in United States. Aired 12:30-1p ET
Aired September 16, 2016 - 12:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[12:30:02] ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: I hear all the time on the internet that there's stuff in those tax -- If he just presented. I mean I wish I had $5 million to give to the charity, if he would just present the tax returns. But there might be some there that -- I'm not saying that there's there, there, I don't know who cares?
But I'm hearing from Uncle Louie (ph) in Florida that there could be there, there in those tax returns. So if he would just present the long form tax return, I could finish this. I could take credit for finishing this.
Donald Trump, please, help me. Help me help you take credit for finishing this. Present your long form tax returns. That's just me on my soap box. Dana Bash, Ryan Lizza, Errol Louis, Philip Bump if you could all stick around I still have a lot more questions for you.
Donald Trump today, not only rehearsing himself on the birther issue in 33 seconds including pauses, but also redefining his not so friendly relationship with, you know who, the folk behind the lens. The media covering his campaign. Yet another story of someone being physically restrained at an open media event billed as a press conference. We'll explain it.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[12:35:22] BANFIELD: Donald Trump, you saw it here live right here on CNN all within the last hour. Finally, finally. Five years after us begging. He finally acknowledged he's got a brand new position that he now does, in fact, believe that the president of the United States, Barack Obama, was indeed born in the United States. Making him a full- fledged citizen. That's great. Because you have to be, to be president.
He did it at a gathering. It was billed as a news conference. But then when the news conference part of it started, he bolted. He walked away. He didn't take any questions. And then a member of the press crops was physically prevented, physically restrained, as it's being categorized, from joining the media event. I want to get our Senior Media and Politics Reporter, Dylan Byers in here, because media and politics are crushing into one another on this one.
I want you to just help our viewers understand what a pool event is because the weeds sometimes are boring, but the weeds are critical in this story. I want you to explain what the pool event is and what happened, and why it matters at this last event? DYLAN BYERS, CNN SENIOR MEDIA AND POLITICS REPORTER: That's absolutely right. It is critical, and sort of boring or in the weeds it may seem to some of our viewers. The pool, there is a dedicated pool of group of reporters tasked with covering each of the presidential candidates.
Now, there is a long standing policy that there needs to be an editorial presence that is a producer or reporter in place covering a campaign event. If you just have a camera in place then what you effectively have is an infomercial. What happened today at Trump's hotel, Trump left his event, started going on this tour, the cameras were let through in order to give him coverage, but the producer from "ABC News" was restrained. After that reporter, or after that producer was restrained the network bureau chiefs came together and made a decision to pull the camera from the pool and to not release any coverage of that Trump hotel tour.
BANFIELD: So what you're saying effectively is that the media got together and said, don't play us like a fiddle. We're not going to show the lovely gilded lily at that hotel and not be at the same time allowed to ask few questions that maybe aren't so shiny for your campaign? Am I right?
BYERS: That's absolutely right and the conclusion here -- look, Donald Trump -- every presidential candidate in this day and age has a rough relationship with the media. Everyone doesn't want to bring the media too close. They like to keep some things private. No one has had such an aggressive level of disrespect for the media, just last night Donald Trump had a campaign event. He left reporters stranded at the airport. Then went to his campaign event and mocked the fact that they had left them at the airport, celebrated the fact he was keeping the media out of his event.
If you look at what happened today with this press conference that he gave, where he effectively played the press, rick-rolled the press, as our colleague Jake Tapper said, that is a disregard for the media and his supporters might celebrated it, they might love the fact that he does that. But there's something really important here, when you have a candidate like Donald Trump who makes so many statements that factually untrue, it's really important to have the media pressing him on those issues. By keeping them away and by mocking them, he's raising serious questions about his own legitimacy to be commander-in- chief in a country that respects the freedom of the press.
BANFIELD: Yeah, I can tell you having covered a couple of dictators in my life in other countries, covering those campaigns is a bummer. Because they don't let me ask questions either. So that's why the American press, love them or hate them, are critical to this democracy. You have to be able to ask people questions if they're going to lead you, and if they're going to get your guns, your military, your nuclear codes. You have to be able to get to ask them questions.
So real quickly, you mentioned it. The fact that Donald Trump, his press pool was left behind last night, and were forced to sort of watch the event on the bus, and then I think they got in just as it was wrapping up. That is -- it's not like that hasn't happened with Hillary Clinton. She's left the press pool behind, too. But then this was what was different. How Donald Trump characterized leaving the press pool behind. Have a look.
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DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I have really good news for you. I just heard that the press is stuck on their airplane. They can't get here. I love it. So they're trying to get here now. They're going to be about 30 minutes late. They called us and said, could you wait? I said, absolutely not. Let's get going, right?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[12:40:09] BANFIELD: So what I'm wondering is, why so much cheering? Other than a lot of people who go to Trump events like to besmirch the media, too, but to people not realize or are they forgetting that other critical elements of it? Either you have a media or you have what I witnessed in Saddam's era, in Libya's era where you never got to actually call yourself press or you'd go to jail for it.
BYERS: Well, look, you know, it's actually rather timely just this week. Gallup came out with a new poll showing that states and the media that hidden all time low less than 1.3 of Americans now have expressed trust or faith in the media to report things accurately, that drop down from 40% last year is largely fueled by Republicans and largely fueled by Donald Trump's anti-media rhetoric and he's even taken credit for bringing that number down.
That is a serious problem, because like you said it is the role of the media to hold these candidates accountable, to hold both the Democratic and Republican and presidential candidates accountable. When you lose that, when you start celebrating restriction of the media, when you start mocking the media, that becomes a serious problem for the very foundation of the Democratic project and the American political system.
BANFIELD: Dylan, can I just tell you an anecdote when I was in Bagdad driving by Saddam Hussein's presidential palace, I was gobsmacked by the size of it and my driver yelled at me, put your eyes forward on the road. Stop looking. We're going to get in trouble. We were on a freeway. We were on a freeway and my driver was terrified that I was staring at Saddam's palace. So there's the other side of this.
Dylan Byers, thank you, appreciate it. Continue to tap into what you find out today about the pool event that wasn't.
Coming up next, Hillary Clinton's campaign just responded to Donald Trump's comment that he made this morning saying that, yes, OK. I'm OK now with this. President Obama was born here. Whatever. I'm paraphrasing, of course. We'll bring you what she said, next.
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[12:46:32] BANFIELD: Look what I have. I knew it was coming. It was just a matter of when. It's the Hillary Clinton campaign, the response they had to Donald Trump's press conference. With his 33-second part of the press conference, and if I can I'm going to read from the statement. "Trump's actions today were disgraceful. After five years of pushing a racist conspiracy theory into the mainstream, it was appalling to watch Trump appoint himself the judge of whether the president of the United States is American. This sickening display shows more than ever why Donald Trump is totally unfit to be president."
And that's the end of the statement for now. Back with us to discuss, CNN Political Commentators Errol Louis, Ryan Lizza also with us from the "Washington Post," the Political Reporter there, Philip Bump. So that's a quick statement. That took me -- going to give the same thing. That took me, Errol, about -- I don't know 26 seconds to read? My guess is that that is not the only thing we're going to hear, we're going to hear about it all day today. We're going to hear about it in every venue he attends. We're going to hear about on Monday during the debates. Am I wrong in that prediction?
ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Oh on, you're exactly right and in fact let's keep in mind this weekend is the Congressional Black Caucus this weekend, and I think the president is scheduled to speak. It might come up there. This is going to be something that Donald Trump doesn't get to just kind of laugh off with a 30-second sound bite.
BANFIELD: 33.
LOUIS: 33-second sound bite.
BANFIELD: With pauses.
LOUIS: He also doesn't get to sort of fabricate, you know, sort of invent this as somehow some sort of strange equivalent where, you know, oh well, Hillary Clinton started it. That 5-year-old excuse that he often gives that, you know, while she started it, he started it. This isn't going to live -- it's not going to have that kind of a life. For all, it's interesting though, look the at my Twitter feed, there are a lot of Trump supporters who think that this just doesn't matter at all, that this, you know, who cares. It doesn't matter and so fort and so on.
They're very wrong about that. There a lot of people for whom this is sort of a signature issue. Not just because there's a lot of the racial bias and animus that lies behind it, but because it really sort of crystallizes something that's been true on so many different issues over the last year which is that simple facts, just a reality. You know, the sun came up in the east, you know, it's ...
BANFIELD: It did?
LOUIS: Yeah. These things happen.
BANFIELD: Can you prove it? Do you have the long form document?
LOUIS: Well, a lot of people say it wasn't. So maybe it's a controversy, right?
BANFIELD: I'm just saying. That some people said.
LOUIS: He has so muddied the water on so many important issues. And as we've taken up so much time just trying to get him to acknowledge that that's what he has been doing. It has been very frustrating and it has been something as we get closer and closer to Election Day that I think people are going to find not just frustrating, but really unacceptable.
BANFIELD: So just -- look, I juggle so many stories right before air. Sometimes I can't even cut tape fast enough and I'm not sure we were able to cut the tape 20 minutes before air of John Kasich, the Ohio Governor, who was not in Ohio today, you know, by the way, Ohio, very, very important. Very important. But he was actually in the White House briefing room today. With White House people, who are Barack Obama's people.
The Republican Governor of Ohio was not out stumping for Donald Trump has said he really intends not to do anything of the like. He was even asked about voting for Donald Trump. Dana Bash sat down with John Kasich. I want you to hear how he characterized what he thinks of that whole process. Take a look.
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[12:50:04] GOV. JOHN KASICH, (R) FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Frankly, part of the problem that the Clinton campaign has is that there's literally no enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton. There just isn't right now. I don't know if it will change but that is her challenge.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BANFIELD: You know, I think he's probably right there. That the enthusiasm is tricky for Hillary Clinton, she's struggling mightily in the enthusiasm category. So what about that whole birther thing? Will that change things? Oh, guess what, you know, what's so funny? The press corps decided to ask John Kasich about it, because they couldn't ask Donald Trump about it, so they asked John Kasich about it. Standing in a Democratic White House press briefing room. How do you think the Ohio Governor decided to answer that? I have it for you. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KASICH: Well, what I was really thinking is that, you know, Bruce Springsteen has to be really happy because "Born in the USA" probably going to sell a lot more albums that's as far I would go. I mean what am I think about it? I'm here for TPP and what's happening in the world, not talking about where somebody was born.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BANFIELD: And that was it. Trans-Pacific Pipeline is on the agenda for him today and not the birther issue. And I want to be real clear. That was a tape that froze. That the Ohio Governor did not freeze. That tape froze. Let's be real clear that was strictly technical. The Ohio Governor was very clear he didn't want to talk about that. But Ryan Lizza, did he even have to talk about it? The fact that the optics so that man is standing in the White House 53 days before the election?
RYAN LIZZA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, a couple of things going on here. One, that the fact the birther issue has emerged again as a national discussion is, it's not good for Donald Trump. Whatever his latest position on this, it's not good for the conversation to be about whether Donald Trump is a bigot and a racist, right? That's the conversation that Trump has tried to move away from over the last month with some success. So the Clinton campaign as your statement makes clear, they are going to pounce on this. They want to turn the conversation toward this.
BANFIELD: And their statement. Not mine, right? Talking about the Clinton statement, campaign makes -- they want this.
LIZZA: That you showed at the top of this, yeah.
BANFIELD: Yeah, that they want to pounce -- go ahead.
LIZZA: They want this to be the conversation. They don't want Donald Trump to have an opportunity to talk about his child's care plan and his maternity leave plan that he recently introduced toward the speech ...
BANFIELD: 4 percent economic growth per year?
LIZZA: 4 percent economic growth. They want to turn the debate to his biggest vulnerabilities. That's why Hillary Clinton was not so upset that she apologized for the famous deplorables comment the other day. It's OK for the Clinton Campaign if this is the conversation, if this is the debate. That's so much of politics is controlling what the two sides debate on. One other very interesting thing, little off topic about this TPP event at the White House, there's a big split now on, in both parties on this issue. Very clear that Obama is going to press TPP in a lame duck session no matter who is the president even though both candidates oppose it.
BANFIELD: I have one minute left. I need you to tell me about Michelle Obama. By the way, there's someone else who's going to hit the campaign trail and she has likeability factors through the roof, compared to everybody, she's in the stratosphere.
PHIL BUMP, POLITICAL REPORTER, WASHINGTON POST: Yeah.
BANFIELD: Does she go into any of this? Does she need to, Phil?
BUMP: I don't know if she needs to. I mean both she and President Obama are very popular. President Obama's proof of rating in the latest post ABC poll, 58 percent, were just probably a little, high but it's hugely important. This is one of those factors that we look at that correlates to the result of the presidential election. The Democratic are going to be very happy to have President Obama out on the trail pressing the case he's already been out there specially when Hillary Clinton was, you know, convalescing from her pneumonia.
So Michelle Obama, Barack Obama on the trail is big, it is important and it's going to be a factor and that's the sort of thing by the way that can drive those enthusiasm numbers.
BANFIELD: The enthusiasm numbers. We'll see if what happened today makes a difference on either side of that scale. If Trump supporters are energized even more to get other people out there on his camp, and if the minority vote is so offended by what's happened that it energizes them to go to the polls in the way they hadn't may be thought before. Errol Louis, Ryan Lizza, Philip Bump, thank you to all three of you. I really appreciate it. And thank you everybody.
Still to come though, Senior Adviser to Donald Trump's campaign is going to join us live to talk about what Donald Trump said a little more than an hour ago in 33 seconds or less. Admitting that President Obama was, in fact, born in the USA. Stay with us.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: For Jane Goodall, a plane ride over Tanzania led to a troubling realization.
DR. JANE GOODALL, ANIMAL RIGHTS ACTIVIST: When I flew over the Gombe National Park where I began studying chimps in 1960, I was absolutely shocked?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She discovered the chimpanzee population was rapidly shrinking and the human population wasn't faring well, either.
GOODALL: There were clearly more people living on that land than the land could support. Unless we could do something to help the people live better lives we couldn't even try to save the chimpanzees.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Goodall reached out to local villagers.
GOODALL: We asked them, what do they feel that we could do to help them? One was to grow more food. Two was to have better health. And three was to have better education for their children.
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
[12:55:06] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Jane Goodall Institute started proving microcredit loans to villagers to help them grow food and raise livestock.
GOODALL: We've seen the complete cycle of regeneration, villagers' lives improving, education going up, affecting memory and the start of a downward trend in family size.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Over-farmed fields have recovered. Barren lands that once divided chimps have grown back, reconnecting the population.
GOODALL: Animals on the brink of extinction can be given another chance when people care and are determined.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [13:00:01] WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, I'm Wolf Blitzer. It's 7:00 a.m. in Honolulu, 1:00 p.m. in Washington, 11:00 p.m. In Aleppo, Syria.
Wherever you're watching from around the world, thanks very much for joining us. We begin with breaking news. "Have born in the USA", Donald Trump finally admits that President Obama...
