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Sexual Assault Allegations Pile Up Against Donald Trump; Trump's Uphill Battle to 270; New Round of Talks on War in Syria; Cuba Hopes to Capitalize on Cigar Market. Aired 12-12:30a ET

Aired October 15, 2016 - 00:00   ET

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

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[00:00:13] NATALIE ALLEN, CNN ANCHOR: The allegations pile up. Donald Trump tries to brush off the growing list of women accusing him of sexual assault. A new round of talks on the bloodshed in Syria but expectations are far from optimistic. Plus Cuba hopes to capitalize on the cigar market in a county that once blocked its products. Country might that be?

It's all ahead here on CNN NEWSROOM. Thank you for joining us. We're live in Atlanta. I'm Natalie Allen.

There are now two more sexual assault accusations against U.S. Presidential Candidate Donald Trump bringing the number to at least eight. One woman says Trump fondled her under her skirt at the New York nightclub in the 1990s. Another says Trump grabbed and aggressively kissed her after she was a contestant on the "Apprentice" T.V. show. Trump says these stories are not true and he is the victim of a smear campaign.

CNN's Jim Acosta has more from the campaign trail but be advised the story has graphic language.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: No apologies and no admissions of guilt from Donald Trump who is still angrily denying he's ever sexually assaulted women.

DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I look on television, I think it's a disgusting thing and it's been pushed. They have no witnesses. There's nobody around. They just come out. Some are doing it for probably a little fame. Phony accusers come out less than a month before one of the most important elections in the history of our country.

ACOSTA: But everyday it seems Trump faces more accusations, the latest, Summer Zervos, who appeared to the news conference with attorney, Gloria Allred, to say she was abused by the real estate tycoon after she was featured on Trump's hit T.V. show "The Apprentice". SUMMER ZERVOS, TRUMP ACCUSER, EX "APPRENTICE" CONTESTANT: He came to me and started kissing me open mouth and he was pulling me towards him. He put me in an embrace and I tried to push away. I pushed his chest to put space between us, and I said, "Come on, man, get real." He repeated my words back to me, "Get real", as he began thrusting his genitals.

ACOSTA: Another accuser, Kristin Anderson, tells the "Washington Post" Trump reached up her skirt and groped her back in the '90s.

KRISTIN ANDERSON, TRUMP ACCUSER: He did touch my vagina through my underwear.

ACOSTA: Both women say they came forward after seeing Trump bragged about grabbing women's genitals in a hot mic moment caught on camera.

TRUMP: You can do anything. Whatever you want.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Grab them by the pussy.

ACOSTA: And after other women surfaced to share their stories of alleged abused as Jessica Leeds did on "AC 360".

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Did he actually kiss you?

JESSICA LEEDS, TRUMP ACCUSER: Yeah, yeah.

COOPER: On the face or on the lips?

LEEDS: All over, wherever he can find a landing spot, yes.

ANDERSON: After that, I was like, "OK, you know what, let me back these girls up." You know, that's not OK.

ACOSTA: Trump says Anderson's account is false.

TRUMP: One came out recently where I was sitting alone in some club. I really don't settle on that that. Much honestly folks, I don't think I sit alone. I going with groups -- I was sitting alone by myself like this. And then I went wow. It's like unbelievable.

ACOSTA: And he cast doubt on Leed's story by suggesting she wasn't attractive enough for him to assault her.

TRUMP: You know, I was with Donald Trump in 1980. I was sitting with him on an airplane and he went after me on the plane. Yeah, I'm going to go after her. Believe me, she would not be my first choice that I can tell you.

ACOSTA: Trump's running mate, Mike Pence, says he has faith in the man at the top of the ticket.

GOV. MIKE PENCE, (R-IN)VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Donald Trump has asserted that all of these recent unsubstantiated allegations are categorically false and I do believe him.

ACOSTA: And Pence politely pushed back on First Lady Michelle Obama who denounced Trump's behavior.

MICHELLE OBAMA, U.S. FIRST LADY: I can't believe that I'm saying that a candidate for President of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women.

PENCE: I have a lot of respect for the First Lady and the job that she's done to the American people over the last 7.5 years, but I don't understand the basis of her claim.

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ACOSTA: Despite the fact that the campaign promised reporter all day long that it would provide evidence proving that Trump did not sexual assault any women, the campaign did not produce any such documentation. Instead, Trump total rally here Charlotte, the allegations against him are 100 percent false.

Jim Acosta, CNN, Charlotte.

ALLEN: During Jim's story, you heard accuser, Kristin Anderson alleged, how Donald Trump assaulted her in the early 1990s. She also discussed why she didn't report him at the time. Here it is.

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ANDERSON: Could I have said something? Maybe. But you know, who am I going the tell? So, I go to the club manager and I say Donald Trump put his hand up my skirt. And then be like, yeah?

[00:05:00] And they'll go to him and say, "Did just do this?" And he'll say no, and then where do we go from there? It's kind of like where we are now. So it's -- you know, he's saying no and there are a ton of women saying yes and more will come out, because if it was that nonchalant, there's no way he didn't do it to many other people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALLEN: Hillary Clinton has largely avoided commenting directly on the sexual assault allegations against Trump. She's also telling supporters to take no satisfaction in what is happening to Trump because of the damage it is causing the U.S. But during an event, on Friday, she did find an opportunity to attack his character once again.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON, (D) U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The whole world has heard how Donald Trump brags about mistreating women and the disturbing stories keep coming. This is who Donald Trump really is. We know that. Now we have to demonstrate who we are. America is better than this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALLEN: Allen Lichtman joins us now from Washington. He's a Presidential historian and distinguished professor at American University. Hello, Professor. Thanks for being with us.

ALLEN LICHTMAN, PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: My pleasure.

ALLEN: I want to point just in case anyone doesn't know because we see you a lot. You've been at this a long time writing about history and elections. You wrote about the election of 1928 and most recently a book, " White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement". It was a finalist that for a major award. So, you've been doing this a long time, and then we have 2016. And you have a model. You have used "Keys to the White House" and have 100 percent success predicting who will win the presidency. You picked Donald Trump as you follow this long. What do this week's revelations do to the mix of -- or your keys to the White House? Are you giving someone else a key?

LICHTMAN: They mixed it up, that's for sure.

ALLEN: Sure, oh my goodness.

LICHTMAN: Although my system of course is based on history. I don't look in a crystal ball. And historically, this should be a change election. A generic Republican should win. But we have in Donald Trump anything but a generic Republican.

ALLEN: A generic Republican. Right.

LICHTMAN: And I said these three weeks ago when I made my first interview to the "Washington Post" and Donald Trump had an opportunity to dampen down the fears, to convince the American people he's not a dangerous candidate through debates, and they only had flamed them. And this was before the tape came out showing him bragging about sexually assaulting women. And by the way, I'm 69 years old. I've been an athlete all my life. I've been in thousands of locker rooms. I have never once heard a man bragging about sexually assaulting women.

ALLEN: So what's -- what is it about where our country is now, and the -- just the anger over Washington and government that has gotten us in 2016 to this point of this kind of election?

LICHTMAN: I think there are several things. Number one, the anger is legitimate. The problem with Washington is not so much that it's corrupt. It's less corrupt today than in has been at various other times in our history. It's the gridlock that, you know, the twain never meet between the Republican and the Democratic Parties.

Secondly, and I hate to say this, but I wrote this in my book, "White Protestant Nation", there is always been this strain in American history that somehow our society, the real Americans are being corrupted by the other. You know, we pass anti-alien laws in 1798, then the enemy was the French, then it was the Irish, then it was the Germans, the Jews, the Mexicans, the Muslims. There's always some other and there's always this strain of racism within our society. And unfortunately, that strain which is a minority has been brought to the four.

And thirdly, we have in Donald Trump an absolutely unique kind of candidate who has stoked all of these fears and all these resentments.

ALLEN: I want to ask you. I like that you just pointed out that in history, you have people who have always pointed to certain groups. They're the one who's going to bring it down. They're the problem, they're the problem, they're the problem, with a tinge of racism or running through. I want to talk about that. What we heard this week from the media saying ever since Donald Trump has blamed the media for these problems with the women and suing the media, we have reporters saying they feel somewhat unsafe at his rallies that it's gone that far. One of the women who reluctantly came forward and allegedly said he groped her said she's not political, she's not voting for either, she really didn't want come to do this, she feels like she should, and she's already getting hate mail. What is it about the fervor that we're seeing and almost as we've seen sometimes the violence?

LICHTMAN: It's really sad but, you know, there has been a strain of violence running through our country.

[00:10:00] In the 1920s, there were five million members of the Ku Klux Klan. That would translate into 25 million members by the population today. So they're always has been the strain of folks, who not only are worried about the other, who are worried about, you know, those who are of a different race, different religion, but those who feel that we need, if necessary, violently defend our heritage, violently defend the real Americans and by demonizing the press, by demonizing his opponent, saying, you know, I'm going to put you in jail. Well, we do that in Putin's Russia, we don't do that here. Plus, he has tried to delegitimize the political process by saying if I lose, it is rigged.

ALLEN: Allen Lichtman, thank you so much.

LICHTMAN: Thank you.

ALLEN: To win the presidency, a candidate has to win at least 270 electoral votes regardless of the overall popular vote. Our John King shows us Trump's uphill battle against the map.

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: As we countdown to the third and final presidential debate, the map looks pretty bleak for Donald Trump, in all of these controversies about women and groping are driving it.

Let's first just look at the latest national numbers. Fox News poll among likely voters, Hillary Clinton, 45, Donald Trump, 38. The third-party candidates peaking up 10 combined. But this 7-point gap, very important to note, just a week ago, Clinton had a two-point edge. How do you go from two to seven? Well, follow the news, you understand why.

There's another way to illustrate that. Look at this. In that same poll, among female likely voters, a 19-point Clinton advantage. That is huge, a gender gap -- the gender gap that is up in just the past week that is driving Donald Trump's increasing troubles.

Here's a way to take a closer look at it. Again this is from that Fox News poll. In just the past week, Donald Trump drops 12 points among women aged 45 and older, drops 10 points amongst suburban women. Close presidential elections are won in the suburbs. That's a huge problem. White women with a college degree, Trump down seven in just a week. Republican women, Trump down six in just a week. Those are national numbers. But they translate into what you might call a severe case of battleground blues for Donald Trump.

Remember early on, he was going to win across the Rust Belt, so called Reagan Democrats. That was the strategy, down nine in Pennsylvania, down 11 in Michigan, Trump is down seven in Wisconsin or you could say Hillary Clinton is up in all those states depending on your perspective. Trump's best state is Ohio. The latest poll has him up one, other polling shows a tie or maybe Clinton up one, but that's Trump's best state. He's up four in Indiana. Mike Pence, his running mate, that his home state. Pence is the governor. But four points in a pretty conservative state, even that is a sign of Trump's struggles. So that lead is now bigger. North Carolina, Clinton leads. New Hampshire, Clinton leads. You get the picture.

You switch over to the map to 270, we already have Clinton favored in enough states to get to the finish line at 272, plus she is leading in Nevada, she's leading now in Florida, and she's leading in North Carolina. Trump might be leading in Ohio. That's his best state. If it play out like that, Clinton wins in a blowout. So can Trump win? Twenty-five days left, one debate left, 24 days left even look, he'd have to turn Florida. He'd have to turn North Carolina. He'd have to hold Ohio assuming he leads a little bit there now. But even if he did that, , no easy task. He's still short. He would need 17 more electoral votes. The only place to get them in one swoop is Pennsylvania where he now trails by nine. This is why even a lot of Republicans say the presidential race is over even before the third debate.

Now, we follow all year, those who say still possible, that, that, that, and that, trying to do that in a little more than three weeks, trying to do that in the middle of all these controversy, extraordinarily difficult. Does Donald Trump still have a path? Maybe. But it is very, very narrow.

ALLEN: John King there. That is a whopper of a week we've had for this presidential election race. And we'll, of course, keep you posted on more developments.

But coming up here, we'll bring you some other news. Diplomats will be meeting in a few hours to discuss a possible ceasefire in Syria. Ahead, why there is little optimism the talks will bring change.

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[00:16:06] ALLEN: Diplomatic efforts to save thousands of Syrians have fallen through before but diplomats will try again in a few hours. Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, is in Switzerland for ceasefire talks with U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, and other foreign ministers. Some experts say the Syrian civil war is at a turning point.

CNN Pentagon Correspondent, Barbara Starr, has more.

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BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: At least 160 people killed by air strikes in eastern Aleppo since Tuesday, activists inside Syria tell CNN, as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made clear, Aleppo's rebels remain a target.

BASHAR AL-ASSAD, SYRIAN PRESIDENT: Going to be the spring board as big city to move to another area to liberate another area from the terrorists. You have to clean -- you have to keep cleaning this area and push the terrorists to Turkey.

STARR: For the White House, the decision to try to save the innocent civilians of Aleppo from Russian and Syrian bombs or allowing Aleppo to fall may be one of the last major foreign policy decisions of the Obama administration. Top officials are discussing three main options, all have problems. Plan A, restart talks with Moscow. Secretary of State, John Kerry, is set to meet with Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, in Switzerland on Saturday. But U.S. officials have little hope of convincing Russia to back off its support for Assad.

MARK TONER, DEPUTY SPOKESPAN, U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT: I certainly don't want to overplay or underplay our expectations for Lausanne. I think that you're right, that the urgent need right now in front of us is some kind of cessation of hostilities.

STARR: Plan B, arming so-called moderate rebels fighting Assad. But the concern, weapons could get into the wrong hands. Plan C, conduct missile strikes against Syrian regime airfields and barrel bomb production and storage sites involved in attacking Aleppo. Those in favor say it's a strong message to Moscow but the Pentagon worries it could escalate into a direct confrontation with Russia. With the election just days away, the administration is unlikely to risk a Russian confrontation, officials say, even as the Aleppo battlefield grows grimmer.

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STARR: And some officials say the White House may simply be running out the clock not wanting to start a new foreign entanglement at this point for a new president.

Barbara Starr, CNN, the Pentagon.

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ALLEN: Forces in Iraq are gearing up for a major battle with ISIS. Iraqi Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi, says the battle to liberate Hawija is imminent. Hawija is one of the last ISIS stronghold in Turk province and an offenses there comes ahead up and expected operation to retake Mosul. Abadi was in Turk city to meet with civil and military leaders. Shiite paramilitaries say government troops and Kurdish forces will join them in the battle for Kuwija. There are conflicting reports over whether the Nigerian government released a number of Boko Haram commanders as part of a process that free 21 Chibok girls. A source closed the deal says some captured militants were released but the Nigerian government insists militants were not swapped for the young women. The 21 girls' freedom, you can see some of them here, were among the nearly 300 that the militant group abducted in 2014. Some of them escape but almost 200 are still missing.

The Nigerian president is taking some heat for how he responded when the First Lady questioned his leadership. The wife of Muhammadu Buhari said if her husband doesn't get a grip on his government, she may not back him in the next election.

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[00:20:03] MUHAMMADU BUHARI, NIGERIAN PRESIDENT: I don't know which party my wife belongs to but she belongs to my kitchen and my living room, and the other room.

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ALLEN: Buhari also said his political knowledge is superior to his wife. He said it during a news conference in Berlin while standing next to one of the world's most powerful women, German Chancellor, Angela Merkel

Well, we'll be back for the first couple of Nigeria to work out.

DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Wow. Yeah. I'm going to quickly -- so let's talk about the weather.

ALLEN: Let's just talk about cyclones.

VAN DAM: Oh, wow. I tell you, you know, the situation in the Western Pacific is very, very dire because they have two storms that is lining up or that continue to line up right near the Philippines and in fact if you're in Luzon or Manila right now, you're probably feeling the outer bands of the first newly formed typhoon Sarika and there it is on your T.V. screens in front of you. But I also want you to see as well what's forming just to its east, just south of Guam, this is the storm that really we have our focus on, but the more immediate concern obviously is with Sarika as it moves through southern sections of Luzon. It is strengthening as we speak.

So, it is still becoming this formidable typhoon. The wind is right now at 150 kilometers per hour. And you can start to see that it's becoming more and more organized as well with that counterclockwise spin to the cloud cover, and a lot of colder cloud tops noted with this. So it could become equivalent to a category three Atlantic hurricane by the time it makes landfall in the next 24 hours across again southern and central Luzon. . But look what happens. It moves over that region and then it goes into relatively warm waters across the South China Sea, reintensifies and then heads towards the extreme southern sections of China and eventually into Vietnam. So that area needs to watch that storm system closely.

Here it is local time overnight on Saturday into early Sunday morning across Manila. So look out for strong gusty winds, but I think the bulk of the storm will be to your north, the north of the capital city. Mudslides, landslides are big concern obviously when you have this amount of rainfall, over 500 millimeters in a few locations. So that means we have a potential for flash flooding as well.

So there goes the first storm system, significant waves associated with that. But look at the second tear storm system starting to form. That is one we are going to monitor for the second half of next week.

This is interesting. Coming to the United States, now the West Coast of the U.S. specifically in Oregon, this is Manzanita. The national weather service out of the region issued 10 tornado warnings in one day, a rarity. It hasn't happened in -- ever in fact for this particular state. We have a major storm system moving across the region that's brought high winds, hurricane force winds at the area, and check out this tornado coming along on shore. Very scary moments for some of the residents there. The path of the storm was about 215 meters wide, 210 kilometer per hour sustained winds with that tornado, and it damaged over 120 homes unfortunately ...

ALLEN: Oh my god.

VAN DAM: ... in that coastal city of Manzanita.

ALLEN: Look at the side of the Pacific, we have that cloud in Pacific.

VAN DAM: That's right, and in fact, this was remnants of an old typhoon that moved across parts of Japan.

ALLEN: Oh, really?

VAN DAM: And you can see how the weather systems are all connected.

ALLEN: All right, Derek, thank you very much.

VAN DAM: All right.

ALLEN: Well, we all know the Cuban cigar is world famous. But in the past, not everyone could smoke one. Well, the times, they are a- changing, and that's next.

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[00:25:09] ALLEN: Cuba is world renowned for its cigars and renewed relations with the U.S. consumer bring a third in demand. Out Patrick Oppmann visits a Cuban tobacco farm to see how they're getting ready for that.

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PATRICK OPPMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Harvesting cigar tobacco, Cuba's green gold, one leaf at a time. Long banned in the U.S., the island's legendary cigars bringing hundreds of millions of dollars. A bright spot in an otherwise tittering economy.

But many more Americans may soon be lighting up a legal Cuban cigar following a change in U.S. regulations that now allows U.S. citizens visiting Cuba for the first time in over half century to bring home an unlimited amount of Cuban tobacco products.

Tobacco farmer, Maximo Perezsays the loosening of restrictions presents a huge opportunity. "The first thing we have to do with the Americans," he says, "is create an appetite for our product because they have lost that. But since what we make is excellent, as soon as they try it, they will see a difference." The question now is whether Cuba can begin to supply a new market for their famous smokes.

Much of the work on this tobacco farm is done by hand, the way it's been done here for generations. Cuban producers say that they make some of the best cigars in the world. So that means they can't cut any corners and meeting a rising U.S. demand could take years.

For Cuban cigar producers, the air is filled with smoke and the realization that the industry needs to prepare for what many hope will be the eventual lifting of all U.S. economic sanctions in Cuba which would allow for the sale of Cuban cigars in the U.S.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's obviously built up demand and excitement in United States for people to smoke Cuban cigars. They hadn't been able to smoke legally for more than 50 years. I think all cigar smokers in America are probably going to want to give a legal Cuban cigar a try.

OPPMANN: Executives of the Spanish-Cuban Joint Venture has sells Cuba cigars within a few years of the lifting of the U.S. embargo taking control some 70 percent of the U.S. market for cigars without compromising their product. "Quality is something we can never give up," he says, "entering any market, including the U.S. market will happen with a product of maximum quality."

Cuban cigar producers say their tobacco doesn't like to be rushed, which means that Americans may have to wait a little longer before they can fully quench their taste for the island's once forbidden cigars.

Patrick Oppmann, San Juan y Martinez, Cuba.

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ALLEN: The times, they are a-changing. That is CNN NEWSROOM. I'm right back with our top stories. Thanks for watching.

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