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FBI to Speak to Rahami's Wife Upon Her Return; Police Look to Question 2 Men in NYC Case; N.C. NAACP Addresses Speaks Out on Charlotte Shooting; Trump Comments on Stop and Frisk Cause Controversy. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired September 22, 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] REP. MIKE POMPEO, (R), KANSAS: I think we all have to be very careful about jumping to conclusions, including conclusions that individuals aren't involved. I remember the immediate aftermath for Mr. De Blasio suggesting there was no links to radical Islamic terrorism but we now know that's not the truth. We know this was a committed jihadist who was committed to Osama bin Laden and Anwar al Awlaki, the Ft. Hood bomber. We need to uncover every single fact about the situation.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: As far as you know, the two men in the wanted poster have not come forward and no one has given any hard evidence where they might be?

POMPEO: That's correct, Wolf. As far as I know, they have not had contact with these men yet.

BLITZER: Is it your sense right now that he was simply inspired by al Qaeda or ISIS, Rahami, I'm talking about, or he was more formally directed to undertake a terror bombing attempt?

POMPEO: Wolf, I think about this a little bit differently. I think I know what he was motivated by. These fine granular questions about whether he actually spoke to someone or e-mailed to someone are in some sense important or the investigation but irrelevant to the motivation and the risk to the American people. I think that's the fundamental mistake that the Obama administration's counterterrorism policy has engaged. They don't understand this threat doesn't require a contact. It doesn't require an e-mail or a conversation that can happen in the madrassa, it can happen in the mosque, it can happen online. The threat continues to grow and spread here in the United States.

BLITZER: So was there a bigger plot there, terror cell involved, or was this simply a so-called lone-wolf?

POMPEO: I don't thing we know the scope of Mr. Rahami's connections. We know he spent substantial amount of time in Pakistan, al Qaeda hotbed and Taliban-connected police as well, so don't thing we know the whole picture so that's why the FBI is anxious to speak with Mr. Rahami and his wife.

BLITZER: Congressman, good luck with this investigation. We'll stay in close touch with you. POMPEO: Thank you so much. Thank you, Wolf.

BLITZER: Mike Pompeo, a member of the intelligence Committee.

I want to go back to Charlotte right now. William Barber, of the NAACP, is speaking out. I want to hear what he has to say.

WILLIAM BARBER, NAACP: But they've been in the street long before this happened and they're going to say there and they are attempting to echo the hurt and the pain. And if we hear the sound of Rachel crying because her children are no more, perhaps that lament and the instructions out of that lament can turn us in a new direction and towards a better Charlotte and a better America.

(CROSSTALK)

(APPLAUSE)

UNIDENTIFIED CHAIR, CHARLOTTE CLERGY COALITION FOR JUSTICE: I stand before you as the chair of the Charlotte Clergy Coalition for Justice. We are a multi-faith, multi-racial, multi-generational coalition of faith leaders that are serving in the Charlotte community.

On Tuesday, we gathered in the streets with our community. Bearing witness to the righteous rage, the lament, to the pain that was a pulse throughout our community. We gathered knowing, serving in this community -- I'm a pastor in this community, not only a chair in the coalition. We gathered knowing that Tuesday night did not begin on Tuesday night.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED CHAIR: Yesterday evening, we went back out into the street with our community with protesters to once again bear witness to be a faithful presence to the pain, to the lament, to the righteous rage to the protest. We began at Little Rock A&E Zion, and from there, we went to Marshall Park. Soon we knew that people were gathering, our people. The people we serve were gathering throughout the city. And so the 40 clergy that came out wearing yellow arm bands began to spread out into different where they could be with our community. Some of our clergy went back to Little Rock. Some stayed at Marshall Park. Some went over to the police department. And some headed to the epicenter.

The night began with such promise and beauty, seeing people frankly come together in our community in protest. We had children out there. We had young organizers, 18, 19, 20. We had seniors and elders in our community who knew the pain and felt it and bore witness to it. Early in the evening, the police were around in the community on bicycles and in uniforms.

[13:35:04] And then I received a text message from a colleague, "Please come to the epicenter." As I approached the epicenter with one of my colleagues, we saw that the police were there in riot gear lined up and something in the air had changed. The police officers in riot gear were flanked on either side of Trade Street. So we gathered with our community, with the protesters. And as we gathered with them, we took hands, and then the police began to walk toward us. They marched toward us. And they waited until people gathered around them. We were standing there gathered around them. The same police, many of then, that we had spoken with the night before, that we had protected and promised that they would get home safely, and they did.

We stood in front of them staring at them in their eyes. But this time, there was not conversation. There was a line that was formed. The police moved from standing in front of us to standing to the side, forming a line of two officers, all in riot gear, with bully sticks out.

We then gathered around the police again, once again with our community. And they marched down Trade. No command was given as the night before to move. No issue or instruction was given. They marched us down into the Omni. As they gathered, they put their backs to the glass door. And then we saw people began to be struck with the clubs. We saw people falling and hitting the floor. We heard a shot. People began to run. It was chaos.

I want to be clear. We came to be a presence for justice, clergy, faith leaders, 40 of us in this city out in the night. As soon as the shot was fired, we heard a smoke bomb. As soon as the smoke bomb was released, we heard some kind of light or sound bomb, a flash bomb. And then tear gas. We could not run out of their fast enough as the canisters were released out into us. People were dispersing. We were running.

This is a city that made me a minister. It's the first place I've served. This is the city where I married my spouse, where I had my children. And now this is the city that tear gassed me.

Last night did not have to end like it ended. It did not have to end like it ended. We want to be clear about that. We have critical hours now as our city is being militarized. We praise the decision of leaders not to have a curfew, which we know would further militarize us.

(LAUGHTER)

UNIDENTIFIED CHAIR: We're begging state leaders servicing in this city for action that will deescalate. Tonight, the end of tonight is not yet written.

Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you.

(APPLAUSE)

BLITZER: Powerful words we just heard.

We're going to continue to monitor this news conference. Faith leaders in Charlotte, North Carolina, speaking, clearly worried about a third night of violent demonstrations erupting tonight. Coming up, we're going to continue to follow the deadly police

shootings that are taking center stage right now in the race for the White House. One comment from Donald Trump is stirring up some controversy. What he had to say about the so-called Stop and Frisk policy, and why he's now trying to clarify it. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:43:58] BLITZER: Politics of police violence right now playing out in the presidential campaigns. At a campaign stop in Pittsburgh last hour, Donald Trump responded to the violent protests we saw last night in Charlotte.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The violence against our citizens and our law enforcement must be brought to a very rapid end. The people who will suffer the most as a result of these riots are law-abiding African-American residents who live in these communities where the crime is so rampant. Crime and violence is an attack on the poor and will never be accepted in a Trump administration, never ever.

(APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Trump also called for a national anti-crime agenda to make American cities safe again. Meanwhile, Trump seems to be walking back his call for a nationwide Stop and Frisk policy. Now he says he was only talking about one city in particular.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[13:44:58] TRUMP (voice-over): I was really referring to Chicago. They asked me about Chicago. I was talking about Stop and Frisk for Chicago, and where you had 3,000 shootings so far this year. 3,000 from January 1st. And obviously, you can't let the system go the way it's going. But I suggested Stop and Frisk. And some people think that's a great idea. Some people probably don't like it. But when you have 3,000 people shot and so many people dying, I mean, it's worse than some of the places we're hearing about, like Afghanistan, you know, the war-torn nation. I mean, it's more dangerous.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Let's discuss with our panel. Joining us, CNN political commentator, Errol Louis, a political anchor at Time-Warner Cable News here in New York; "Washington Post" political reporter, Philip Bump; and CNN political analyst, Alex Burns, also national political reporter for "The New York Times."

So, Errol, Trump says he was o a question on black-on-black crime, not specifically about all of the violence around the country. Saying they got to reinstate Stop and Frisk in Chicago only.

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I mean, first of all, from a federalism standpoint, the ability of the president to implement these things. You don't get to pick and choose and set police policy city by city so to that extent the statement is kind of mush. It would be interesting in Trump could come up with what the federal could actually do and what he would actually like to see. When you're sitting in the Oval Office, you don't get to pick and choose. The other thing he should keep in mind is these cities are all very, very different. To the extent there are crimes for lots of different reasons and there are constitutional issues around Stop and Frisk that, again, sort of present a check on the power of the local police as well as the mayor and certainly the president of the United States to sort of Stop and Frisk at will. So, you know, perhaps we'll get think we don't want to make the mistake not, quote/unquote, "grading him on a curve." Somebody who less than seven weeks before Election Day says they want to be president of the United States should fully understand. I don't know that Donald Trump does.

BLITZER: The mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, was on CNN earlier today, said Trump doesn't know the facts. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL DE BLASIO, (D), NEW YORK CITY MAYOR: If the bottom line is, it created a huge amount of division between police and community. We ended that unconstitutional use of Stop and Frisk, that overuse of Stop and Frisk. What's happened in the three year since we made the change, crime has gone down consistently since we actually stopped using it.

Donald Trump talks about Stop and Frisk like he knows the facts. He has had no experience with policing, no experience with public safety. He should really be careful because if we reinstitute Stop and Frisk all over this country, you will see a lot more tension between police and community.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: The mayor is a Hillary Clinton supporter.

But this looks like it's going to be an issue right now.

PHILIP BUMP, POLITICAL REPORTER, WASHINGTON POST: Yes, it's important to note de Blasio is correct that Stop and Frisk has bore no correlation to the crime stats for the city of New York. It was thrown out by the federal court, in part because they were targeting more than half of the people that were caught up in Stop and Frisks were black in the city of New York and another third or so were Hispanic. So there are a lot of reasons to de Blasio's point that this would indeed create -- increase tensions between police and the community. You know, the sense that one gets here is that Donald Trump, former mayor of New York, very close by associated with the crime drop in New York, a little unfairly also, as we should point that out. But this is clearly instance where it is hard to figure out what to do in a place like Chicago. There aren't great easy answers out there. It seems as though Trump is sort of seizing upon something that has been said to have worked even though it really didn't as being a potential solution to the problem. BLITZER: Alex, we got the statistics between 2004 and 2012 when Stop

and Frisk was allowed to take place in New York City. 4.4 million people were stopped accord to New York City police. 87 percent of them were black or Latino. Only 12 percent were actually charged with crimes. What do you make of those numbers?

ALEX BURNS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I think it's pretty interesting that his walk back of that initial statement, which seemed to recommend Stop and Frisk as a national policy, was actually let's just apply only in the second-largest city in the country, right? That's actually still a pretty stark statement for a presidential candidate to make at this point in an election cycle.

And to Phil's point, it is critical to just understanding the larger debate about crime and a larger debate about policing in this election that in most large cities there is not some kind of massive violent crime wave. If Trump made this kind of statement a year and a half ago when think of the merits of Stop and Frisk were still very much up for debate here in New York and when there was still considerable fear that de Blasio's rollback of that policy would just lead to rampant violent crime, the circumstances, the politics of this would be really different. The stage where we are now, the fear of that has mostly abated.

[13:49:53] BLITZER: Let's get to some numbers now. As we anticipate, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will go toe-to-toe in their first presidential debate this coming up Monday night. The debate comes as polls show a close race both nationally as well as in several key battleground states. The latest NBC News/"Wall Street Journal" poll shows Clinton with a six-point lead over Trump. When we include that in our new n poll of polls it shows Clinton ahead of Trump by three points. The poll of polls, by the way, includes the five most recent surveys.

Let's talk about that a little bit more, about the polls, the upcoming debate.

Errol, what are these latest poll numbers. As important as the national polls are, what's even more important, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, these battle ground states.

LOUIS: And it's neck in neck in those states as well. And you have key issues in North Carolina, which we're talking about because of the unrest going on there. It was the closest state in 2012 and it was one that flipped from 2008 to 2012, so it's the definition of a battleground or a swing state. Both are campaigning, both candidates are campaigning really hard there. This issue we were just talking about is going to play out in important ways and we shouldn't imagine that it's somehow not going to be at the top of the agenda. We've already seen at least three prosecutors, right, in Orlando and in Cleveland and in Chicago get turned out of office because of how they handled controversial police killings. It's very much on the agenda. North Carolina is definitely a state to watch. We should expect that they'll be talking past many of the rest of us and talking to voters in Ohio and Florida and definitely North Carolina. BLITZER: Philip, most analysts say even, though it's close, Hillary

Clinton has an advantage when it comes to need to be elected president the United States. Monday night could be decisive.

BUMP: We saw in 2012, there's a huge shift in the polls after the first debate, Trump was generally seen to have done very well against President Obama, shifted the national numbers quite a bit. You're right that the map is favoring Hillary Clinton, even taking everything else out of the picture here. Donald Trump out of the 11 states that are closest. Donald Trump leads in six of those. If he wins all six, he still doesn't get to 270 Electoral College vote. He needs to win the vast majority of the states that are the closest states in order to get past the 270 electoral vote mark and he's made big strides but he's not yet made the strides he needs to get that majority in the electoral college.

BLITZER: She's preparing, she's spending a lot time leading up to Monday night, practicing, rehearsing, learning, going through some of the issues that are almost certainly going to come up in this 90- minute debate. And there will be no commercial interruption Monday night. He seems to be a bit more easy going when it comes to preparation. You've noticed, I'm sure.

BURNS: Just a little bit. It's really striking to see a candidate -- in a normal election year with two normal candidates, two conventional candidates, you would see people mostly clear of the week running up to the debate. Trump, as far as we know, right now, only has one day fully cleared between now and Monday. So if we're expecting to go into Monday night and see somehow a different more disciplined more thoroughly prepared and policy fluent Donald Trump, I think that we might be overestimated the degree of change that can happen.

And, Wolf, if you look at the poll, that national poll that just came out last night, you do see that the burden really is on Trump to have some kind of breakthrough here, because it's not just the swing state map that is a firewall for Hillary Clinton. It's also just the huge share of voters that just don't believe he's ready to be president. And the debate is his best, maybe his only, real opportunity to change their minds.

BLITZER: Errol, you and I asked questions at that last Democratic presidential primary debate at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Hillary Clinton had a tough challenge from Bernie Sanders, but Bernie Sanders, as tough as he is, may not be as unpredictable, shall we say, as Donald Trump.

LOUIS: That's right. You and I and others involved, we spent many, many, many hours in this building preparing and imaging this question, that question, making sure we had the factual support. That she kind of prep that is traditionally done by presidential candidates. That's what we know Hillary Clinton did. And you could hear that we were kind of waiting for the parry and thrust. You ask the question, you get the response, and then you go deeper and dig deeper. Donald Trump is going to blow all of that away. He's not going to play that game and it will be very interesting to see whether or not it makes him seem presidential or simply unprepared. BLITZER: You know, Donald Trump's motto: if you hit me, I'm going to

hit you a whole lot harder. So when she starts criticizing him, who knows what's going to happen.

BUMP: One of the fascinating dynamics that we haven't seen is Donald Trump one-on-one in the debate. During the Republican primary debates, he was always going against other people. This will be the first time we see him going mano-a-mano.

[13:54:55] BLITZER: It will be an important decisive moment, the first debate, and then there will be two more. And I forgot to mention one vice presidential debate as well.

Guys, we will all be watching.

Stay with CNN for complete coverage all day on Monday.

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

For our international viewers, "Amanpour" is coming up next.

For our viewers in North America, NEWSROOM with Poppy Harlow is coming up next. She'll have live coverage of a 2:30 p.m. news conference with the governor of North Carolina on the deadly police shooting there. That's coming up right after this quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:00:06] POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Top of the hour. I'm Poppy Harlow, in today for my friend, Brooke Baldwin.

As we wait for the governor of North Carolina to speak any moment, a major American city is under --