Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Trump Transition Chaos?; Trump Falsely Claims Millions Voted Illegally; Ohio State Attack. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired November 28, 2016 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:01]

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: An 18-year-old of Somali descent who is a legal permanent resident.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CRAIG STONE, OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY POLICE CHIEF: At about 9:52 a.m., a male suspect drove a vehicle over the curb, West 19th, west of College Avenue, struck pedestrians. He exited the vehicle and used a butcher knife to start cutting pedestrians.

Our officer was on scene in less than a minute and he ended the situation in less than a minute. He engaged the suspect and he eliminated the threat. The suspect is DOA.

ANDREW THOMAS, CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER: There were multiple injuries related to lacerations or cuts, most likely, as the chief said, from the stab wounds from the butcher knife.

Then there were a number of people that had orthopedic and other soft tissue injuries related to being hit by the car initially. It's our understanding from the other hospitals and it's our knowledge here that none of the individuals appear to have life-threatening injuries at this time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Nearby, students were told of the unfolding emergency with this chilling text message, telling them three words, "Run, hide, fight."

One witness described the suspect as just completely silent as he chased down and stabbed his victims. In the end, 10 people were rushed to the hospital. Some were stabbed, others injured when they were hit by the suspect's car. While this was all happening, students acted incredibly quickly and swiftly.

You can see here in this video all those chairs stacked up in front of one classroom door, barricading them from any of the potential chaos outside.

The woman who shot this video joins me now on the phone. She is Elise Anthony.

Elise, first of all, are you OK? How are you doing?

ELISE ANTHONY, WITNESS: I'm fine.

BALDWIN: OK. Good. I'm glad you're OK.

I talked to a college freshman who was pretty rattled last hour up. You took this video with all of these chairs piled up high?

ANTHONY: Yes. There was actually an ex-Marine in our class and he kind of just took action when the Buckeye Alert came out and was like, we need to barricade the door and started stacking up the desks.

BALDWIN: Good for him. What were other students in the classroom doing while he was doing that?

ANTHONY: Most of them helped. A lot of us just went and sat in the corner and tried to stay away from the windows as much as we could and stayed there for like about an hour.

BALDWIN: Yes. What kind of communication did you have with the school or police?

ANTHONY: We were receiving updates about what was going on at the school telling us if the shooter had been apprehended or not. Most of them just said, just stay where you are, and stay inside and stay in the buildings as much as possible.

But we had like streams of police scanners and the news going on in the classroom, so we could hear what was going on.

BALDWIN: What year are you, Elise?

ANTHONY: I'm a sophomore.

BALDWIN: You're a sophomore. Have you talked to your parents? I mean, do they know you're OK?

ANTHONY: Yes, my parents were calling me when I was inside the classroom.

BALDWIN: And it's all over and one person's in critical condition, but what was just the most frightening part of it for you?

ANTHONY: It was probably the initial -- when he stood and said, there's an active shooter outside our building. Like, we need to like barricade the door. It not something you usually think is going to happen until it does.

Kind of a very unreal situation not knowing where they are or what they're doing.

BALDWIN: Cannot imagine. Elise, I'm glad you're OK. I'm glad your parents know you're OK. Thank you so much from Columbus, Ohio. Thank you.

Let me bring in Deborah Feyerick, our national correspondent who's been working on getting more information. And also Harry Houck is with us, CNN law enforcement analyst, retired NYPD detective.

Tell me more about what police have said about this suspect.

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: What we know so far is he's an 18-year-old Somali man. He lived in the area. Columbus, Ohio, has the second largest Somali population after Minneapolis-St. Paul.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: In the country.

FEYERICK: In the country.

So the FBI has been well aware that that radicalization could potentially be a threat. They work to try to counter that, to try to engage the Somali community. Unclear right now, though we have his name, what this man's motive was, whether something sparked him to do this, whether it was communication, whether it was an action. We don't know.

That's what investigators are looking at right now. They're looking at all of his electronics, his communications. They're searching the car, the vehicle. It belongs to a family member. That caused a little bit of confusion in the beginning. But they're looking at whatever they can to try to identify who he is, who he was in connection with and what may have inspired him to do this, so, all of that under active investigation right now.

BALDWIN: So, he was saying nothing when he was trying to mow down these students and stab them?

FEYERICK: Yes. That's what's fascinating a little bit about this, is that an eyewitness says he got this crazy look in his eyes. He jumped the curb in his car, came out swinging with this butcher's knife, attacking anybody who he could essentially reach.

That's aside from the people he actually hit with his vehicle, and that there wasn't a word that was uttered, that he was quiet. He was quiet when he was ordered to drop the weapon by the police officer who responded and he was quiet after the first of several shots. So, we don't know what was going on inside of him.

[15:05:11]

BALDWIN: What's your response to all of this?

HARRY HOUCK, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, you know, this looks like this is definitely a self-inspired attack. We look...

BALDWIN: We can't confirm.

(CROSSTALK)

HOUCK: Right, exactly. We can't confirm that. But that's what it looks like to me, based on my experience. Look what happened in Nice. Someone utilized a vehicle there. You

have ISIS who came out sometime before the Nice attack and stated that they wanted their supporters to start using vehicles. We have seen the knife attacks that occurred last -- this year.

So, you know, you put all that stuff together, and you look at where he's coming from, and it definitely looks like it is to me, that it's a self-inspired attack.

BALDWIN: Deb went through what they're looking, what they're trying to find, treasure trove of information, computers, cell phones, maybe even in the car, back home. We don't know if he lived with his family. Who knows. What are they looking for?

HOUCK: Right.

Well, I'll tell you what. They probably executed a search warrant in his home already. Looks like he was driving a family member's vehicle. He probably lives at home with his parents, most likely. The fact is that they're interviewing his parents. Did you see anything like this coming? You can see this was a poorly planned attack, thank God.

BALDWIN: Why do you say that?

HOUCK: Because it looks like it's something he did the last minute. Got in his car, grabbed a knife and decided just to go after anybody in the street.

So, it looks like he might have been inspired by something like 20 minutes before the attack and he decided to do something really quick, because if he had any time to plan this attack, I think there would have been more damage done to victims, all right, but there wasn't any. We can be thankful for that.

FEYERICK: You also have to consider the location, the location he picked. He picked a college campus. He picked a building that was, you know, for chemical engineering. There were a lot of people out there at about 10:00 this morning, the first day back from a Thanksgiving Day vacation.

There are things. Again, it may have been spontaneous potentially, like, I'm going to do it now, but it may have been something that was simply bothering him and he began to sort of, over time, develop an idea he was going to do something, but we don't know what the trigger was that motivated him to act when he did and how he did, but he would have had to get a butcher knife.

If he was living in a home, possibly with his family. It could have come from the kitchen. It's as simple as that. He took the family car. He may have had access to it. All of that, they're trying to piece together. You know, the FBI is so thorough. The police department is so thorough when they deal with things like this, as you know.

So, they just want to be very careful, because you need to make sure you don't take what is somewhat small, isolated incident and magnify it into something larger, even if it is inspired. It's exactly what terrorist groups want and that is exactly what the police and FBI...

(CROSSTALK)

HOUCK: He might have put something out on Facebook. He might have put something out on Twitter. We don't know.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: What do you make of the fact that he was quiet?

HOUCK: Shows me he's a lunatic, basically. What does he have to say? It seems to me he was so annoyed at that moment and just ran out and committed this attack.

And there was something in his head making him do it at that exact second, because when you look at this attack and the way it was done, you say to yourself, this guy didn't put any planning into this attack at all. You know, so like Deborah said, I think maybe, you know, it might have been something that inspired him a while ago, and something that just lit the fuse today and made him go out and commit this attack.

BALDWIN: They will figure it out. The FBI and the police, they will figure it out. The question will be, were any other people involved or was it just from within him?

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Harry and Deb, thank you so much.

HOUCK: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Coming up next, retired General David Petraeus meeting with president-elect Donald Trump right now over at Trump Tower. We will talk about his chances of becoming secretary of state, potentially, especially after Donald Trump senior adviser Kellyanne Conway threw Mitt Romney under the bus over the weekend on TV here on CNN.

Plus, the president-elect says millions of illegal votes were cast in the election with zero evidence to back that claim up. Where is he getting that information? We have actually looked into it. We have more on that coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:13:04]

BALDWIN: All right, just into CNN here, President-elect Trump has won Michigan's 16 electoral votes. Yes, this is still going on since the 8th of November. This is coming from the secretary of state office moments ago. Trump won the state of Michigan by a margin of 10,704 votes.

Michigan was the only state that had not officially been called because the vote was simply too close for CNN's election results. It is likely Green Party nominee Jill Stein, who has initiated recounts in other close states, will all check Michigan to check their results there.

Meantime over at Trump Tower, a couple of people popping through there today, including retired General David Petraeus. There he is. He has arrived. He is up for the most prominent position in the president- elect's future Cabinet, secretary of state.

General Petraeus, though, definitely has some stiff competition, including former New York Mayor and Trump supporter loyalist Rudy Giuliani, and also Mitt Romney, a former Trump critic and former governor of Massachusetts.

So, let's turn now to CNN's Sunlen Serfaty. She is outside of Trump Tower as this, what, conflict, public feud about this secretary of state position has just gone so totally public, Sunlen.

SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Brooke. It really is unfolding in a very public way.

You have these reports of deep infighting that are now really boiling over into the public sphere. You have these very deep divisions within Donald Trump's transition team fighting over, in essence, who is the best choice to be secretary of state. You have Trump loyalist and the most vocal among them Kellyanne Conway, who's arguing against Mitt Romney.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Who we see right now, by the way. These are live pictures inside Trump Tower with Kellyanne in the red suit.

Sorry, Sunlen. Go ahead.

SERFATY: OK, great.

Yes. And we heard her on Sunday really arguing that she believes that it would be a betrayal to many Trump supporters if Trump were to choose Mitt Romney, given he was such a vocal critic of Donald Trump during the campaign, and arguing for Rudy Giuliani behind closed doors.

[15:15:08]

You have basically in the other corner Trump's incoming chief of staff, Reince Priebus, arguing that it would make up a team of rivals, in essence, to choose Mitt Romney.

You have this really public battle between these two men, but then there are other many contenders being considered, namely, as you said, Brooke, someone who's inside Trump Tower right now, David Petraeus, former CIA director, who is inside meeting with Donald Trump. Also tomorrow, he will be sitting down with Tennessee Senator Bob Corker -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: All right, Sunlen, thank you so much.

There were live pictures a moment ago of the naked cowboy with Kellyanne. But, fortunately, for many of you, you missed it. Oh, no, you didn't. Here we go, the naked cowboy and Kellyanne. Never a dull moment in that Trump Tower lobby. Let's move on.

President-elect Donald Trump also making headlines on Twitter, claiming the race he won was tainted by massive voter fraud. This is a Trump tweet from just yesterday -- quote -- "In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide," he tweets, "I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally."

But here's the thing. There is absolutely no evidence to back up what he's claiming, that he won the popular vote. Is Trump getting this from at all?

Let's go to Dylan Byers, our CNN senior media and politics reporter.

The claim is totally false. Let's just throw that out there now. Where is he getting this? What is the source?

DYLAN BYERS, CNN SENIOR MEDIA AND POLITICS REPORTER: The claim is totally false. How often do you have the guy who won the election alleging fraud in the campaign he won?

Look, where he's getting it is something that bubbled up through conservative activists and through conspiracy theory sites. It started with a conservative activist like Gregg Phillips, has about 26,000 Twitter followers. He tweeted something out alleging there had been three million illegal votes that might have tipped the scales in Hillary Clinton just days after the election.

This got picked up and sort of passed around. It wound up at Infowars.com, which is, of course, the Web site belonging to Alex Jones, who has a litany of conspiracy theories that he has peddled under his belt, and then of course it became something that drew national attention when the president-elect, Donald J. Trump, tweeted it out himself with, like you said, absolutely zero evidence that any of it is true.

And, in fact, if you go and you look at the fact-checkers and our own reporting at CNN.com, of course it's not true and there's no merit to back it up.

BALDWIN: With these conspiracy theory stories, and you mentioned Alex Jones, does he have the president-elect's ear?

BYERS: Well, to a degree, absolutely.

It's important to remember how Donald Trump won the presidential election and the sort of support groups that he had among loyal followings in conservative media. And that was true not just among the sort of Breitbart conservative media, but even further down the line of conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones.

In a way, sort of throwing out this baseless allegation about voter fraud might appeal to some of those supporters, especially some of those supporters that might be wary or even critical of the some of the moves that Donald Trump is making that seem to go back on promises he made throughout the campaign.

So, look, insofar as Donald Trump sort of makes his decisions based on appealing to the people who got him elected, there's no question that Alex Jones has his ear.

BALDWIN: Dylan Byers, thank you.

BYERS: Thank you.

BALDWIN: We will discuss all of this with my panel coming up next.

Plus, the warning from Senator Ted Cruz that people will be out on the streets with pitchforks if Republicans don't follow through on their campaign promises.

Stay here.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:23:17]

BALDWIN: As president-elect Donald Trump is building his Cabinet, at the same time, he's cutting away at some credibility of the election that brought him into power because this is a Trump tweet questioning the election results. The election that he won -- quote -- "Serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire, California. So, why isn't the media reporting on this? Serious bias. Big problem."

Joining me now, New York City Councilman Borelli, who is a Trump supporter. Rick Wilson is a Republican strategist who worked on Rudy Giuliani's 2000 Senate campaign. And CNN political commentator Hilary Rosen, who supported Hillary Clinton.

Welcome, welcome to all of you.

And, Joe Borelli, let me begin with you. We're talking about this false claim of Mr. Trump's from his tweet about three million illegal votes for Hillary Clinton. It's just false, and, P.S., he won, so why do you think he's doing this?

JOSEPH BORELLI, CO-CHAIR, DONALD TRUMP NEW YORK CAMPAIGN: Well, again, I don't know if it's entirely false, albeit the number might sound a little inflated.

BALDWIN: Oh.

BORELLI: Look, the GOP and president-elect Trump have long said that the potential for voter fraud has existed in this country. Also, the Pew Research Center produced evidence that 1.7 million Americans are registered who are deceased, 2.75 million Americans who are registered at more than address.

BALDWIN: Joe, did you watch the last segment when we talked about the conspiracy theories?

(CROSSTALK)

BORELLI: I did.

But there's more to it than conspiracy theories. And the only thing that's actually changed and that has been inconsistent is that now the Democrats and the Green Party are finally seeing the potential for the voter fraud that they now allege in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and elsewhere.

BALDWIN: No, they are.

(CROSSTALK)

HILARY ROSEN, CNN POLITICAL CONTRIBUTOR: Well, they're not alleging voter fraud.

BALDWIN: Hilary, let me go to you, because this is reaction to Jill Stein and, you know, she's launching the multimillion dollar recount.

[15:25:01]

And we know that Hillary Clinton's campaign is participating. They want to make sure of course they're represented fairly. We know the results won't change. I want you to respond to what Joe was saying, but also why is the Clinton campaign doing this?

ROSEN: Well, let's go big picture for a minute, though, because it is clear that it drives Donald Trump crazy that he lost the popular vote by millions of votes.

And so this constant sort of delegitimizing that very fact I think is really what his behavior yesterday was about and what now his surrogates are trying to do, to try to make it sound like he has a mandate that he really doesn't have; 54 percent of the country voting for somebody else.

But what Democrats are doing now is not entirely united. Jill Stein and her team basically said the margins were razor-thin in these key states and they were going to go do a recount. They didn't allege fraud. Hillary Clinton's team is not alleging fraud.

They're just looking at the process and saying, you know what, if the Republicans had lost by 10,000 votes in a state as populous as Michigan or by 20,000 in Wisconsin or in Pennsylvania, they would have been all over this. In fact, they were. I lived through it in 2000. But Democrats...

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: But, then, Hilary, what do you say to critics who say that this is a double standard from, you know, team Hillary, that, you know, the sore loser? How do you respond to those critics?

ROSEN: Well, there's absolutely no double standard. Hillary Clinton conceded the election politely and thoughtfully the night, election night, to Donald Trump. She has not interfered with this kind of disastrous transition sideshow.

She has not said a word. She's been essentially out of sight. Her campaign has been disbanded. The person who's been involved has been one of her election lawyers, who's saying, we are going to look -- if Jill Stein is doing this, we're going to look at the process and make sure it's fair. After all, the majority of these votes are ours.

BALDWIN: OK.

Let's move on. Let's move on.

Rick, I'm coming to you. I want to talk about Rudy Giuliani and how very public he's made the case. He wants the gig over at the State Department. He did this interview with "The Wall Street Journal" saying: "I probably have traveled in the last 13 years as much as Hillary did in the years she was secretary of state. My knowledge of foreign policy is as good or better than anybody they're talking to."

We know Trump is meeting with General Petraeus today. We know Romney and Senator Corker are swinging by tomorrow. The fact, though, that Trump is not just immediately giving it to Mayor Giuliani, it seems to really be getting under his skin.

RICK WILSON, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Look, we're deep now into the State Department episode -- version of "The Apprentice," and I think Donald Trump is playing a lot of games here with all these folks.

It's unfortunate, I think, because you have Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney and David Petraeus and all these other folks that have been sort of mentioned or teased out there. And only one will get to stay on the island at the end of this thing.

Unfortunately, it's not, I don't think, being treated with the seriousness it deserves because I think it's become a symbol of the sort of internal Trump warfare between the Priebus camp and the Bannon camp and the Conway camp. And all of it is mediated by the fact that Donald Trump, I don't really think knows who he wants to have in that job.

He's as impulsive as hell. And he's thinking to himself, one day, maybe it's Rudy, one day, maybe it's Romney. And I think he's sort of trying to frame this out in the reality TV version that he does without making an assessment of what we need to do in terms of having somebody in that role who would be a serious, substantive international player.

BALDWIN: Joe, how do you respond to "The Apprentice," "Survivor" comparison and the impulsive accusation there?

BORELLI: I don't think he's making light of the situation at all.

In fact, he's got right now four people he's weighing for this job, all of whom are tremendously qualified. I think some of the criticisms of Rudy Giuliani are unfounded. He's someone who certainly proved his loyalty both to president-elect Trump and to the party and has a vast array of foreign policy knowledge.

But that said, look, the three other candidates are, good, too. I think Donald Trump is in a position where he's weighing and taking the opinions of a lot of people and doing exactly what he's supposed to be do, despite the belief that he wouldn't be acting in this way at all before he was elected.

BALDWIN: Why do you think, Joe, it's gotten so public, so public?

BORELLI: Yes, I mean, certainly I think some people shouldn't be, you know, airing their dirty laundry on television. That might be a prudent thing to do.

But, look, Donald Trump is a transparent person. And the doors to Trump Tower are open for all to see. When you have people like David Petraeus walking in the front door, you can't just keep that secret. We know what positions he's interviewing for.

The transition team has been very open about who they're seeking for different spots. Frankly, I think it's sort of good we're having a public debate about some of the candidates themselves.

BALDWIN: Hilary, are you enjoying this?

ROSEN: Well, it is theater. Let's just be clear.

And he, Donald Trump, is the one who's dictated the theater. In fact, he's tweeted last week: I have lots of finalists, but only I know who's going to be the winner.

You know, it is theater. And it is a little embarrassing and beneath the office. And I think that what we have with these Trump loyalists is that there