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Ivanka Trump Breaks from Father on Family Separations and Media as The Enemy; Manafort Went Broke in 2016 After Ukrainian Money Dried Up; Backlash as TSA Considers Ending Screening at 150 Airports. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired August 02, 2018 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00] BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: Let's see how, you know, you talk about how fear is factoring into Michael Cohen's world and who knows how fear will factor into Paul Manafort's world. And we shall see what happens next. Telling truth and nothing but the truth with regard to this President and this investigation. Michael Daly thank you so much.

Next the first daughter Ivanka Trump taking the opposite view of her father on family separations, and also saying that the media is not the enemy of the people. We'll discuss why, though, she has stayed so quiet until now.

[15:35:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: We have an update for you now on the Paul Manafort trial happening in Alexandria, Virginia. This federal courthouse involving the specific development involving his finances in 2016. So, our senior justice correspondent Evan Perez is there outside of court. It turns out what, despite ostrich jackets and mansions, the guy was broke recently.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN Justice Correspondent: That's right, Brooke. We've been hearing for three hours from Paul Manafort's bookkeeper and she's been going through the ledgers of his finances starting back in 2012 when he was rolling in cash from his clients in Ukraine, making about $1.9 million in 2012 and then fast forward to 2016 when he was practically broke.

He lost $1.1 million, he was $1.1 million in the hole according to the bookkeeper. At one point he was in danger of losing his health insurance he was emailing asking him urgently for $120,000 so she could pay his bill including his property taxes. They really paint a picture, the bookkeeper does, and prosecutors are painting a picture of Paul Manafort losing his golden goose which was the Ukrainian government which had lost power in 2014 and then suddenly in early 2016 he's really practically broke and this is about the time that he decides to offer his services to candidate Donald Trump.

As you remember he worked for Donald Trump's campaign practically for free. He didn't take a salary while he was working for the campaign. So, the campaign and Donald Trump obviously is not a part of this trial, but this is what the prosecutors are trying to do is trying to show how Paul Manafort was managing the money and that he was using essentially nefarious means to hide the fact he didn't have any money and to commit bank fraud and to hide money from the IRS over the years.

BALDWIN: Wow. So, under this umbrella of this Mueller investigation I got a separate piece of news just coming in to us that he really is continuing to push to interview this Russian pop star who encouraged that Trump Tower meeting. This pop star may hold a lot of the answers?

PEREZ: Right. I think by now Robert Mueller has talked to almost everybody who was in that very key Trump Tower meeting in June of 2016. And now we learn that the Emin Agalarov and Aras Agalarov, father and son, Emin is the pop star

in Russia, who you mentioned was encouraging, was behind the idea of encouraging this meeting with Donald Trump Jr. And Robert Mueller's team is still asking for an interview. Apparently, these negotiate negotiations have been going on for well over a year.

And we're told by his lawyer those negotiations are still ongoing. Don't know if there's a deal or not. But what this tells us, Brooke, is this, the Robert Mueller investigation, obviously there's still some key pieces that they are trying to put together. We now know, obviously, that they are still trying to work on an interview with the President, but as far as that Trump Tower meeting which was a key part of this investigation, they really still want to talk to the two key figures, the two Russian key figures who were a part of that, Brooke.

BALDWIN: All right, Evan Perez thank you so much in Alexandria. Staying in Washington here, Ivanka Trump the President's daughter and officially his special assistant breaking ranks today on the separation of immigrant children from their parents by her father's administration.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

IVANKA TRUMP, DAUGHTER OF DONALD TRUMP: That was a low point for me as well. I feel very strongly about that, and I am very vehemently against family separation. And the separation of parents and children.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Moments ago, the White House was asked to respond to Ivanka Trump's statement that this was a low point.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SARAH SANDERS, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: The President himself has stated that he doesn't like idea of family separation. I don't think anybody does. We also don't like idea of open borders, we don't like the idea of allowing people in our country if we don't know who they are, where they are going and why they are coming? The President wants to secure our borders which is why he asked Congress to fix the law. We haven't been unclear about what our position is here.

(END VIDEO CLIP) [15:40:00] BALDWIN: Let's go to Kate Bennett our CNN White House reporter and Olivia Nuzzi, Washington correspondent for "New York" magazine who has

written extensively about Ivanka Trump. Kate, first to you. On this immigration policy, the policy is long done. Separations between the parents and the children has already happened. So why didn't she speak up when this policy was actually being made?

KATE BENNETT, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: I think that's the mystery, Brooke in her role as senior adviser and what we all thought when she went into the White House being the voice for women and children, the heart issues. The "New York Times" reported back in June she did bring it up with her father at the time, but by contrast I just want to mention Melania Trump had already tweeted the tweet about governing with heart and booked her first trip to Texas to the border to see it before we even heard from Ivanka.

I think she gets criticism with this complicit word and she has since the beginning of her father's administration for a number of reasons whether that's fair or unfair, this certainly bringing thunder and saying how vehemently she opposed it but there's no tangible evidence of that opposition. Another reason why people question what she does behind-the-scenes and how influential she is with her father.

BALDWIN: I want to play one other clip and Olivia I want to talk to you. Ivanka Trump says she doesn't believe that the media is the enemy of the people despite her father's insistence otherwise.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: First I have to ask you, for a number of our colleagues here on the press, do you think that we're the enemy of the people.

IVANKA TRUMP: Sorry?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're the enemy of the people.

IVANKA TRUMP: No, I do not.

AUDIENCE: [laughter]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is that a view shared in your family.

IVANKA TRUMP: You're looking for me to elaborate?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sure.

IVANKA TRUMP: No, I don't. I certainly -- I certainly have -- I can share my own personal perspective. I've certainly received my fair share of recording on personally I know not to be fully accurate. So, I've had some, I have some sense -- sensitivity or concerns around people who feel targeted but no I do not feel that the media is the enemy of the people.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BALDWIN: First Olivia, let's just say, thank you Ivanka Trump because that's something her father has not been able to say, Sarah Sanders has not been able to say when Jim Acosta was asking her to say it at the briefing a bit ago, but also seemed like she was so surprised or taken aback by the laughter in the audience. Again, I ask the question what has taken her so long to say this?

OLIVIA NUZZI, WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, "NEW YORK" MAGAZINE: There aren't that many opportunities for Ivanka Trump to be publicly asked questions like this. It's not as though she's on the talk show circuit. She's not sitting down with magazines and newspapers all the time. She has a very controlled public persona. This is a pretty rare thing to see her in a setting like this being questioned by journalists rather than from someone like Dr. Oz.

That's why I think we haven't gotten a response from her like this before. I don't know if we should thank her. I don't think the bar should be that low where people get praised for saying something that's obvious. But I do think this is probably a reason why she is not typically out there being questioned by journalists. She doesn't put herself in these situations. When she's asked questions like this with an obvious answer for a sane human being she does sometimes, I guess, believe things that are in opposition to what her father believes and what the administration believes.

But I don't think that she really did stand in opposition to what Trump has said about the child separation policy. She said that she opposed it. As you noted in the previous conversation there's no evidence of that, it's been a month since that policy ended. There's still I think 700 children who have not been reunited with their families. But her language on it was not actually that different from what Trump himself said.

So, I think Sarah Huckabee Sanders was trying to conflate a few things, as the White House has said previously that it was not their policy or not a policy at all whatever that means, but I think that even as she was saying she opposed it, she really didn't say anything that suggested that she did anything to change it.

[15:45:00] BALDWIN: Just lastly, I've just been curious, Kate, do you think that Ivanka Trump is laying the ground work for some sort of political future?

BENNETT: I do. I don't think -- I don't have reporting on this but I talked to a number of people who know her, her ambitions are not secret. She wants to do everything. Have a brand. Be in the White House. Be a working mom. Be a pillar of society. I don't think it's beyond the realm of possibilities that these sort of safe, as Olivia said, not doing a lot of interviews, answers, she's not wading too much into these issues meaning she might be lining herself up for something in the future.

BALDWIN: Thank you both so much.

Coming up next the Trump administration weighing in on an idea to stop screening at more than 150 smaller airports across the country. A lot of experts calling the idea dangerous, so we'll talk to a former TSA training specialist to get his take.

[15:50:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Tasked with making sure none of us bring a shampoo bottle bigger than three ounces on a plane. The Transportation Security Administration, the TSA, is considering stopping screenings at about 150 small and medium-sized airports. According to internal TSA documents obtained by CNN passengers and luggage would be checked once they arrive at a major airport.

And if you are wondering we have been doing this for so long why would this change? And who would support this?

Let's put those questions to a couple of experts. My two Paul's, Paul Cruickshank is a CNN terrorism analyst and Paul Schmick is a former TSA training specialist. Thank you so much. Paul Cruickshank, we are so used to going through the machines and shampoo bottles and everything else. Why would they want to change this? How would this be anything more than wanting to cut costs at quote lower risk airports?

PAUL CRUICKSHANK, CNN TERRORISM ANALYST: It is stunning that they are considering this. Al Qaeda and ISIS continue to see commercial aviation as a priority target. That includes 50-person passenger jets. ISIS have told its supporters in the West attack any target big or small. If they were able to blow a 50-person passenger jet from the sky from one of the small airports where they are proposing to have no screening, then you would have a lot of panic and big economic impact and very significant loss of life.

They say that 9/11 was a failure of imagination to anticipate. We don't need a lot of imagination to see that without screening at these airports you could have greater opportunity to take control of an aircraft. Get into the cockpit. Of course, we saw what happened on 9/11.

BALDWIN: On 9/11 where some of these hijackers came from a small airport in Maine on into Boston on to reeking terror in this country. To you, Paul Schmick, what is the alternative? If you take all of these screening devices away from the smaller airports what would we have instead?

PAUL SCHMICK, FORMER TSA TRAINING SPECIALIST: We don't know what that looks like yet. We are seeing is a reduction in a move to save $115 million that impacts about 10,000 passengers a day.

BALDWIN: 115 million.

SCHMICK: $115 million. So, over the TSA budget of several billion dollars, and under the larger DHS budget it's a small amount of money. The challenge here is to see how much risk we are willing to take 17 years beyond 9/11. When we look at the risk overall, we know that aviation is still a hot bed for attacks. We know that not just locally or nationally. We know that globally. It is interesting to see the TSA move to this position and even consider it. To me this looks like we are just so far beyond 9/11 that we are starting to beget the pain and anguish that was caused from civil aviation.

BALDWIN: I couldn't find this. Can you give me another example other than saving money why the TSA would want to do this?

SCHMICK: No. This is pure risk. They are looking at the risk calculation and saying how much risk is in the smaller airports. And these are more regional, Brook, right. These are the smaller airports that go to connecting flights. It's just looking at risks and saying there is a great reduction of risk there. Let's reallocate that money and that staffing to higher risk airports.

BALDWIN: Paul Cruickshank, how would that not be telegraphing to the terrorists what airports would be vulnerable? Last question.

CRUICKSHANK: It would absolutely be telegraphing that very fact. Al Qaeda and ISIS have been doing a lot of R&D into laptop bombs and into underwear bombs, into shoe bombs. If you don't have screening at all, you don't need these sophisticated devices necessarily to bring down an aircraft.

[15:55:00] Rudimentary explosives could be brought on board. It could just be an extremist inspired by ISIS who perhaps goes on to the internet and learns how to build these kind of bombs. There are investigations into jihadi activity in all 50 states right now. That means every last corner of the United States. And make no mistake if the vulnerability is there they will go after it.

BALDWIN: Paul Cruickshank, Paul Schmick. Thank you so much for coming on. Coming up next, it was a show of force at the White House. Intelligence chiefs all warning that Russia right this very moment is trying to attack the midterm elections, they were also questioned on why the message from the President seems to be so different from what they put forth? We have those details ahead.

[16:00:00] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Less than 60 seconds until the closing bell and Apple has officially become the first American company to cross $1 trillion in value. That is a 1 followed by 12 zeroes. Apple stock is up and had a strong earnings report. The only other company was a Chinese oil company back in 2007. Its value has dropped to just $200 billion.

Just 30 minutes from now embattled CBS chief is expected to speak about the sexual misconduct allegations against him. He has a conference call scheduled with Wall Street analysts. Yesterday the board of directors hired two law firms to investigate the allegations against him. He has strongly denied the accusations. Thanks for being with me today. "THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper starts right now.