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Trump Deposition; Trump Pre-Dawn Rant; Crisis in Syria. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired September 30, 2016 - 14:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:00:15] ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

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

We begin this hour with breaking news about video that is just about to be released that is video of Donald Trump testifying under oath about inflammatory remarks he made about Mexicans. It stems from a lawsuit that he filed against two celebrity chefs who backed out of plans to do business with him at his new D.C. hotel after making those statements when he announced his run for president.

Sunlen Serfaty joins me now in D.C. with more.

Look, we know what was said because the transcripts have been released, but no one in the public has actually seen the video before. Now they will.

SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right, Poppy, and that's what this battle was all about. It had been a lengthy battle over whether to release these actual videotapes or not. And CNN, along with several other media outlets, they filed a motion with a D.C. superior judge in this case to have them released.

And it's important to note here, Donald Trump's lawyers, they argued that the video shouldn't be released. They said it could potentially be used politically. Thought - thinking that it could come up in the presidential campaign, potentially appear in TV commercials by Hillary Clinton and so they argued fiercely that these tapes should be sealed. Now, the judge did not agree, did not give credence to their argument and granted the motion, this was made just last night, to release the tapes.

Now, as you noted, we have seen the transcripts of the deposition before, but this will certainly be the first look at the videotape showing Trump testifying under oath in June as part of that deposition.

HARLOW: And so, Sunlen, I mean the reason that the Trump camp fought so hard to not have these released, and interestingly Judge Curiel is the one who originally said they couldn't be released despite the comments that Donald Trump made about his inability to do his job because of his heritage, he said, no, you can't release them. This is a different judge who says, yes, you can. The Trump camp's argument here was, look, they'll be used in political ads and that's not - that's not just. This judge clearly disagreeing.

SERFATY: That's absolutely right. He point blank did not give any credence at all to that argument, saying that that is not a valid argument to argue that it would enter the political sphere. But I do think that, you know, we'll see, as we go through the videotape, the tone that Donald Trump takes when he says some of these things and we'll bring you that video shortly. Our team is going through it right now.

But I do think the note that the Trump team was certainly against them being released underscores how possibly politically charged these videotapes could become. You know, 39 days before Election Day, reminding voters of more controversial comments that he made throughout his campaign, stemming from day one of his campaign, is certainly not something they want to do so close to when voters go in to make up their final decision.

HARLOW: Yes.

SERFATY: Poppy.

HARLOW: Sunlen, thank you for the reporting. You'll be back with us, of course, when we do have those videos just any minute. Thank you.

Crunch time is bearing down on the candidates, as Sunlen said, 39 days to go until you cast your ballot, nine days until the second presidential debate. And yet with no time to waste, this is now the fifth day that Donald Trump has really indulged in what his rival Hillary Clinton now dubs, quote, "Machado meltdown." Clinton is referring to Miss Universe - former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, who accused Trump of bullying her about her weight back in 1996. Clinton brought her up during the debate. Of course you saw that on Monday night. Fast forward to today when before dawn, kind of in the middle of the night, Trump was mulling Machado, launching a Twitter attack. Here's just one of a string of messages he sent out while many of us were sleeping.

Quote, "did crooked Hillary Clinton help disgusting (check out sex tape and past) Alicia M. become a U.S. citizen so she could user in the debate?" Later in the day Clinton struck back. Quote, "this is unhinged, even for Trump," retweeting his tweet.

Joining me now, CNN political director David Chalian. We are 39 days out, David, OK, 39 days out and this follows what many agree was not a strong debate performance for Donald Trump on Monday night. He has spent the past five days taking the bait and talking about this and not the issues that the voters tell me when I'm traveling across the country they care about, and that is their jobs and their livelihood. Why do this?

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: And actually another thing voters have said that we see in polls is, that his comments about women or Hispanics -

HARLOW: Hurts him.

CHALIAN: Is hurtful to his chances at winning the presidency.

HARLOW: Yes.

CHALIAN: So it is mind blogging and you are right to note, we are now in a phase - he's the Republican nominee for president of the United States. What is clear to me, after looking at this week since, as you said, a widely panned debate performance, is that he cannot resist responding to a perceived slight. If someone comes after him, he always, always feels the need to respond, even if it's on a message.

[14:05:02] HARLOW: Yes.

CHALIAN: Take a look at a couple other tweets he sent in those overnight hours.

HARLOW: OK.

CHALIAN: Along this topic. One tweet said, "wow, crooked Hillary was duped and used by my worst Miss U. Hillary floated her as an angel without checking her past, which is terrible." That followed a tweet saying, "using Alicia M. in the debate as a paragon of virtue just shows that crooked Hillary suffers from bad judgment. Hillary was set up by a con."

Poppy, as you said, it is taking the bait. Hillary Clinton laid a trap in the debate on Monday night -

HARLOW: Right.

CHALIAN: And he stepped right through it.

HARLOW: So I think the bigger picture, and frankly more important for our viewers watching and the voters and the future of this country, is how is this indicative of how he would act as president, right? If he cannot resist responding to these things, even when he often says, well, they started it, I mean, as Anderson pointed out in an interview with him a long time ago, you know, that can be seen by some as the argument of a five-year-old, who started it. If you're going to respond, how do you then respond to world leaders who say things that get under your skin?

CHALIAN: Which is why - exactly. Which is why this temperament issue, it's not just about this circumstance with Alicia Machado or just about his situation with the Khan family, the gold star family -

HARLOW: Right.

CHALIAN: After the Democratic Convention. It is overall his temperament. And that is why the Clinton campaign has put it front and center.

Listen, you'll recall that going into the debate, one of the big things everybody was saying was, he has to cross a threshold where he can be seen by the American people as being fit for the office. Right now a majority of Americans still say that he isn't and he's done nothing this week, after a less-than-stellar debate performance to say the least, to change that around and the impressions of voters.

HARLOW: And Kellyanne Conway has done everything she can to try to get him to do that.

Let's talk big picture. David, stay with me. I want to bring in our panel. John Avlon is with us, author of "Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America." He's also a CNN political analyst and editor in chief of "The Daily Beast." Also joining me, A. B. Stoddard, associate editor and columnist for Real Clear Politics.

Thank you all.

A lot to dissect this Friday. Let me begin - let me begin with you, John.

When you - when you go back the how Clinton responded, let me read you one of her subsequent tweets today. "What kind of man stays up all night to smear a woman with lies and conspiracy theories?" So she's matching him sort of tit for tat, not letting him dominate the news cycle and standing back, but she has to do it in a way, whereas Michelle Obama put it this week, "we go high when they go low." She's walking a fine line, isn't she?

JOHN AVLON, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Absolutely. And, you know, there's an old line in American politics about, you know, the dangers of wrestling with a pig, which is that you get dirty and the pig likes it. But, you know, when Donald Trump does an overnight tweet storm like this, it really does send a very strong message about his character and his temperament and his judgment. And those are the key qualities for anyone inside the Oval Office. When the consultants aren't around to make sure you're saying on message via teleprompter, it's those basic core values, those instincts that make all the difference in a presidency. And the fact that he couldn't restrain himself in the middle of the night, less than 40 days out from Election Day, is a very, very troubling sign.

So, on the one hand, I think the Clinton camp is delighted to see Donald Trump go down his fifth day of being baited by this trap, but they need to engage just enough to create some perspective and engage in the debate. It's a tough line to walk, but Donald Trump's doing most of their dirty work for them.

HARLOW: I think it's interesting, we heard Trump say on Monday night in the debate, "I think I have the best temperament to be president." He doubled down on that a few times. Sort of in the same week, we saw that "Vanity Fair" interview that Doris Kearns Goodwin did with the president and he talked about how his temperament in the office has helped him so much. And you're talking about two very different characters on that front.

A.B., to you. We will hear more from Hillary Clinton at 3:30 p.m., in just over an hour, from Florida. She'll be speaking live. I mean how do you think she does this? How does she most effectively use this to her advantage and not, as John put it, sort of get down in the mud? A.B. STODDARD, ASSOCIATE EDITOR & COLUMNIST, REAL CLEAR POLITICS:

Right. Well, I mean I think that when your enemy is digging his own hole, you get out of the way. She, obviously, has spent a lot of time in this campaign talking about Donald Trump and the dangers of Donald Trump and not too much time selling herself, and that's been a criticism of her even from her own supporters and close allies, that she needs to start making a case and kind of creating a message about her candidacy that isn't just that Donald Trump is a disaster.

So she's going to walk this line where she's - you know, with Bernie, and talking about free college, or whatever she's - different policy proposals, now national service. And I think that's smart because in between now and the debate she doesn't want to spend too much time focusing on Donald Trump. You can bet she will be doing more debate prep and there will be more names that come up, just like the architect she brought up who was stiff by Donald Trump after working for him during the debate. I'm sure she has more of a cast of characters or anecdotes that she's going to spring on him. And so her job is to really try to maximize and capitalize on this moment.

[14:10:00] She can't match him in the character deficiency apartment. This is a woman who's really been a big liar and has her own ethical sort of dumpster fires to deal with. But I think that your guests are right, that it's really about the temperament and the way people respond in a pinch. She's always calm, she's always cool and she's very disciplined and she likes to be prepared. And as long as they can highlight that in the debate without being too insulting, I think that will continue to bring undecideds towards her and really hurt his chances to grow his vote.

HARLOW: Let's - as we keep talking, let's show these new poll numbers that we have, right, because we have some new polling in from some of the key swing states and this is really the first look we're getting post-debate at how they're doing. We'll pull those up as we continue to talk.

But as we do, I also - I mean there you see it, right? So when you look at Florida, it could definitely decide the election, she's up four points. You've also got her up in New Hampshire. You've got her up in Michigan, 42 to 35. So - so you see what's happening here. He needs to catch up in those states.

David, Donald Trump did this interview with a New Hampshire local television network. He was asked about, you know, whether or not he would bring up Bill Clinton's past infidelities. And he doesn't seem worried about Clinton and what she might launch into as a counter. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If i does come up, though, in the next debate, do you think maybe your past marital history is also fair game?

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I guess. I mean they can do - but it's a lot different than his, that I can tell you. I mean we have a situation where we have a president who was a disaster and he was ultimately impeached over it in a sense for lying. And so, we'll see whether or not we discuss it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So you're not worried about your past history at all?

TRUMP: No, not at all. No, I have a very good history.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Here's the thing, David Chalian, Hillary Clinton went back to the '90s to bring up Alicia Machado. And the argument could be made that Donald Trump is going back to the '90s and looking at the way that Hillary Clinton responded to people like Gennifer Flowers or people like Monica Lewinsky. Even in private correspondence with her friend about Monica Lewinsky she did say insulting things. Fair game?

CHALIAN: Well, listen, I think in presidential politics almost anything is really fair game. So I certainly -

HARLOW: Is there an equivalency?

CHALIAN: They're certainly fair game. Well, I don't know. I don't - I wouldn't make an equivalency on this because, you know, I do think that Hillary Clinton has received questions herself from people in audiences. I recall last year, I think it was maybe up in New Hampshire, where a voter asked her about her behavior related to her husband. So it's - it has come up and it is something that she has faced.

But you can also see, though, the Republican hand-wringing around Donald Trump's foreshowing that he may indeed inject Bill Clinton's infidelities into the campaign. And they were like, that did not work for us in the '90s. So -

HARLOW: Yes. Well -

CHALIAN: That is - the larger point here, Poppy, is that, if you look at all the coverage out of the debate, his comments about trade, his comments about being a change agent and that she's been on the stage for nearly 30 years and there are all these still problems that are in - present for the voters in their minds, and yet he's talking about Bill Clinton's infidelities.

HARLOW: Right.

CHALIAN: And that is, I think, where you see a lot of Republicans concerned that he's not going to his strong suit.

HARLOW: At the same time, you have to look at Hillary Clinton's approval rating when she was first lady. Her approval rating was the highest of her entire life in the public eye when she was going through the Monica Lewinsky-Bill Clinton affair.

CHALIAN: Her numbers were pretty sky high as secretary of state, too, we should note - we should note that.

HARLOW: There you go. CHALIAN: Well, but, yes, listen, that era, 1998, 1999, that's what launched her political career.

HARLOW: Absolutely.

Before I let you go, John, I just - I want your take on whether you think Clinton has sufficiently addressed the way that she did speak about those women like Gennifer Flowers, like Monica Lewinsky. If Donald Trump does go there, does bring this up, is there something more we should hear from her than how she's publicly addressed the situations in the past?

AVLON: I don't know that she's sufficiently addressed it, but for her critics, certainly I don't think there is such a thing as sufficient. Both these candidates live in glass mansions and Donald Trump is at best an imperfect ambassador for this particular line of attack given his own, you know, thrice-married history. And, of course, the biggest difference being that Hillary Clinton was the victim of infidelity. And that left scars and it had a lot of, you know, additional baggage to the Clintons about their trustworthiness, about their honesty.

But at the end of the day, she was a victim in that infidelity and I don't think there's a rational reason to think that that wouldn't make her stronger. It's not an equivalent position. And so it's a dangerous road of attack.

My suspicion is, is that these are brushback pitches between debates designed to turn the conversation. Whether Donald Trump actually executes on them in the debate, that will be a big moment. But I - my guess is you'll see Hillary Clinton prepared for it.

HARLOW: A. B., do you think he executes on it in a debate, despite his team not wanting him to, despite his supporters on The Hill not wanting him to?

[14:15:02] STODDARD: I think he will be convinced by his advisors and his friends and Rudy Giuliani and everyone else before he goes into the debate not to do it, but if she baits him and he's really been easily baited recently, I think that there's a potential that he sort of blurts it out when he's, you know, under stress in the debate. So it's not that it would be a planned attack. It wouldn't get approval from the team on high, from Conway and others who have largely kept him on script and on note cards and teleprompter and under control, but I - I could see if he really gets flustered him, you know, coming out with something like that because that's really what happened in the debate. He - you know, when she brought up Machado, he said, "where did you find her?" And so if there's a moment where he kind of loses control, it's entirely possible that he goes after Bill.

CHALIAN: And, Poppy, remember the next debate, it's voters there.

AVLON: That's (INAUDIBLE).

CHALIAN: It's a town hall meeting.

HARLOW: Yes, it's a very different - CHALIAN: So it's a very different kind of debate.

HARLOW: I've got to leave it there. Guys, thank you so much. A.B. Stoddard, John Avlon, David Chalian, thank you.

Coming up next, with diplomacy failing, is the Syrian city of Aleppo on the verge of collapse? Government-led troops, Assad's troops, ready to launch a major assault there. Is a U.S. response in the works?

Also, stunning images. After hours of searching through the rubble, the moment that this rescue worker finds an infant alive, he sobs. We'll have a live report on that.

Also, a family desperate for answers after two American sisters, vacationing at a luxury resort in the Seychelles, are found dead in their hotel room. What do we know about that, next?

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[14:20:23] HARLOW: Bombs raining down on Syria day after day. And when they finally hit their mark, some run from chaos, and others run towards it. The people who run towards it are Syria's civilian rescue workers. They're known as the white helmets. And while these former teachers, electricians and farmers may perform the work of superheroes, they're only human. Clutching the dusty infant, he runs into the ambulance. For hours, the white helmet rescuer dug through the rubble of a four-story building, desperately trying to reach this infant. Finally, she was in his arms. As medics wiped the blood from her face, she reaches her tiny hands towards the man who just saved her life. An emotion washes over him.

(VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Another day, another child, another symbol of this Syrian civil war for the smallest ones. It has been a lifetime of war. They have known nothing but war since they were born.

Joining me now is Nick Paton Walsh, CNN's senior international correspondent.

Nick, the United States is estimating that the entire city of Aleppo could fall in the next few days. That means the 300,000 people inside will be trapped. Many of them don't have access to food or medicine or water. Can you take us into the magnitude of their suffering right now as the world watches?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is an area that's been under siege for months now on and off and under bombardment for years where, as you say, there are 300,000 people struggling to get any kind of food, (INAUDIBLE) and water at this point, to having the Russian and Syrian air force heavily launch attacks on anything that seems to move much of the time, particularly hospitals as well.

Now, the key point recently is that we are hearing from U.S. officials their estimate of something potentially as large as 10,000 Syrian army led troops. That's often Shia militia, some from Iraq, other militia, too, on the outskirts of that rebel held area potentially moving in. Now, if they do, that will take more than days. It will be a lengthy, bloody and exhausting fight. And we're beginning to see signs that fight has begun in some central districts here. In fact, one of which was hit by a barrel bomb. Seven dead in that, including children.

And it's pretty hard to talk about this conflict, what's been happening in Aleppo, purely in numbers, but here's some. In the last week, the U.N. say 96 children have been killed alone in that eastern rebel held area of Aleppo, 223 injured. One medical worker we spoke to today said that my nerves are frayed. I can't really even talk and described how three rockets had recently landed near him and he'd just seen body parts. His only hope, he said, was frankly now in Gods.

And with the bombardment continuing and the possibility of a ground offensive, you have to ask, Poppy, what are the U.S. options here? John Kerry, secretary of state, leveraging heavily the idea his relationship with Sergei Lavrov, his Russian counterpart, could potentially bring a cease-fire. Many Pentagon officials cynical of that. Now we've seen it fall apart. And this military move against the eastern area of Aleppo has taken a lot of time to prepare, frankly. There's a lot of hardware involved. You're going to have many cynics saying, well, the Russians were preparing this for the Syrians, while they were also talking piece. There are limited American options now. They're talking about sanctions, arming the rebels potentially of our gulf allies with some anti-aircraft missiles. But at the end of day two, there's little talk of a war crime being committed here already and perhaps all the west can do at this stage is document it.

Poppy.

HARLOW: And we know that since those discussions and the very tenuous agreement with Russia for a cease-fire is on the verge of collapsing. The other options, we're told, do not revolve around diplomacy. Speak to what can be done, Nick, if Russia doesn't change course here, because Russia is at the heart and the crux of all of this, of ending five years of civil war there.

WALSH: Well, you can't talk about a cease-fire in which 96 children have been killed in the past week through bombardments. So I think everyone's put that aside. Even John Kerry's clear that he can't continue the notion of discussing diplomacy or cooperation with Russia if this continues. They haven't actually officially ruled it out, but they say that's pretty likely. And there's been a lot of mockery, frankly, of John Kerry's approach here by the senators in the past few days or so.

[14:25:14] He has little choice, frankly, because the White House has been explicit, they're not putting troops on the ground. They don't want to risk potentially in conflict with Russia if they launch strikes against Syrian regime forces.

There are limited options here. It could involve political pressure, like the U.S. applied against Ukraine, sanctions potentially to slow them down. But at the end of the day, it seems pretty clear here, the Russians and the Syrians perceive there is a military solution for them in Aleppo, potentially, in the east. There's limited scope for White House involvement towards the end of Barack Obama's term. There's a lot riding on the presidential race that could influence the outcome in the months after the next three or four ahead. And so maybe some see Moscow and Damascus see a window in which they can oppose their own reality and see little comeback from the west. And what does that mean for 300,000 people without food and little water in eastern Aleppo? Well, the weeks ahead will become more hellish than they are if that's imaginable.

HARLOW: If that's possible. Nick Paton Walsh live for us tonight from Beirut. Thank you very much.

Let's talk now with Gayle Tzemach Lemmon. She is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

You wrote an incredible piece this week. The title, "Aleppo: Where Children Die But the World Does Nothing." And you begin it with what the president, President Obama, said two years ago. He said, "if you think thousands of Yazidis stuck on a mountain is terrible, wait until Aleppo falls." Now we are at this point. And this is a crisis that the president said haunts him every day. Is there more the world could be doing and why is it not?

GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON, SENIOR FELLOW, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: Well, and to be clear, that was from an administration official -

HARLOW: Right.

LEMMON: Who actually was favoring more intervention. And you see this policy debate that was within the Obama administration back in 2013, 2014, leading us straight to today, where there's a sense that the Iraq War means we can't get greater involved in the Syrian conflict and yet doing nothing has led us to the moment that we are today in the eyes of many administration officials who want to do more. There is a debate right now about whether or not to suspend officially the talks with Russia that you were just discussing, but, really, what does this mean for the people trapped on the ground? I mean it's, you know, the equivalent of Greensboro, North Carolina, the population that is trapped in Aleppo right now with no food, no generators, you know, children dying because there are no ventilators.

HARLOW: No medicine.

LEMMON: Absolutely. Nothing. And the world is watching in real time and doing very little.

HARLOW: What lessons can be learned from history, do you think? I mean you talk - you talk about Bill Clinton as he reflected on his biggest regrets from his presidency. He said, you know, Rwanda.

LEMMON: Right. And I think the fear for many who are watching this closely is that this will become this moment's Rwanda that we're watching now in real time, right? No one can say we didn't know. We're seeing it on YouTube and on our phones, right?

And so the question though is, the Obama administration has always feared that doing something would actually be worse than doing nothing. That nobody could guarantee that the secondary and tertiary consequences of getting involved wouldn't make the conflict worse.

HARLOW: I mean what could they be? What would those consequences be?

LEMMON: Right.

HARLOW: Say if the U.S. did dramatically change course -

LEMMON: Right.

HARLOW: Which isn't going to happen -

LEMMON: Right.

HARLOW: I don't think, (INAUDIBLE) -

LEMMON: I don't either. Right.

HARLOW: But if they did, what would the repercussions be?

LEMMON: Well, there are people inside talking about, could there will be a no-fly zone, right? Could there be a strike on Syrian assets, right, that would make it clear that you don't - you know, the skies over Aleppo should not be raining down on missiles that are killing civilians. But it's very hard to take that from idea to reality in the dwindling months of an administration that really hasn't wanted to get involved because it really couldn't guarantee it wouldn't make things worse.

And then you have dads, like this one, who's a friend of a friend who was talking about how he used to not let his children play on the streets because missiles would strike and he was fearful of them, but now those missiles are hitting into the basement where they go for safety. And so he's sending his kids out -

HARLOW: Yes, they've now changed the missiles' capability -

LEMMON: Absolutely.

HARLOW: And they're using missiles that can actually get -

LEMMON: Pierce basements.

HARLOW: Penetrate through the basements.

LEMMON: Absolutely. So now he lets his kids go play because he thinks everybody's going to die anyway.

HARLOW: Because they could die anywhere.

LEMMON: Yes.

HARLOW: Can you imagine?

LEMMON: No. I mean, as a parent, you think about it as, anybody who cares about children, right, you just think, what would you do?

HARLOW: And Nick said, 96 more children killed this week in a so- called cease-fire.

LEMMON: That's right.

HARLOW: Gayle, thank you very much.

LEMMON: Thank you.

HARLOW: You should read her piece on cnn.com "Aleppo: Where Children Die and the World Does Nothing."

[14:29:28] Next, back to politics. What the debate commission just revealed about Donald Trump's microphone during the debate. You heard him say it wasn't working properly. The facts on that, next.

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