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Trump Gives Interview to "60 Minutes"; Trump Criticizes China for Interferring in U.S. Elections; Defense Secretary Mattis May Depart Administration; Elizabeth Warren Releases DNA Test; Warren Running For President?; Mid Term Election Heats Up; Khashoggi Investigation Still Ongoing. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired October 15, 2018 - 8:00   ET

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

[08:00:00] DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Probably.

LESLEY STAHL, "60 MINUTES": Probably?

TRUMP: Probably. But I rely on them. It's not in out country.

STAHL: Why not -- they shouldn't do it. This is a terrible thing.

TRUMP: Of course they shouldn't do it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: We have so much to talk about, so let's bring in CNN senior international correspondent Clarissa Ward, "New York Times" national political correspondent and CNN political analyst Jonathan Martin, and "Bloomberg Business Week" national correspondent and CNN political analyst Josh Green. Great to see all of you. Let's start with Warren, J. Mart, because this has surprised so many people. The timing of this. Why release her rebuttal to President Trump, which has been going on for years, with him calling her names. Why release it today? Why go to the length of interviewing all of her former colleagues and her family to try to rebut something about her ancestry?

JONATHAN MARTIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: It tells me two things right off the bat. Number one, she's definitely running for president, and number two, she intends to run for president in a way that will confront President Trump, that's not going to allow him to launch the kind of swift boat style attack attacks to invoke a former Bay Stater who rate for president in 2004. And this has kind of gone down in Democratic lore that John Kerry let George W. Bush and his supporter smear him and lost that campaign. Democrats have not forgotten that, and certainly they have not in Massachusetts.

And so I think Warren is basically saying here, you're not going to do to me, Trump and GOP allies, what you've done to past Democratic candidates. And, by the way, here is my FOX News watching red state family back in Oklahoma, and here's some country music background, and here's my accent from Oklahoma, my mama and my daddy. She is saying I am running and I am not going to give an inch against you. And by the way, it's going to be harder for you to character me as a Harvard elitist because of this background. And I think all of that has been wrapped into that spot.

And one last point. This is a part of a larger campaign that she's been running now for a while. A series of press leaks have sort of come out showing what she's doing in the midterms, "The Washington Post" talking about how she did not get any kind of favors when she was hired on faculty over the years, was in "The Boston Globe." She has been planning this launch for a campaign with a series of planned leaks now for some time.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: I think it's really smart what Jonathan just said, mostly because it's exactly what I said exactly.

CAMEROTA: Yes, yes.

BERMAN: And you didn't necessarily agree with me.

MARTIN: My man, John Berman.

CAMEROTA: She also didn't say it with a southern accent like he did.

(LAUGHTER)

BERMAN: Josh, let's bring you in to see if you also agree with me on this. I'm also curious very much about the timing of this. And I don't think that has as much to do with President Trump as it does with 19 to 25 other would-be presidents from the Democratic Party. Why do it today?

JOSHUA GREEN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I think it's critical this is all happening before the midterm elections, and that is important because Warren wants to get out and inoculate herself against these charges, potential lines of attack in 2020, because we all know who work in politics and political media that as soon as the midterm elections pass, the national political spotlight is going to turn to those 2020 candidates, and Warren wants to be able to say, if and when she's attacked on these issues, look, I've already addressed that, I've already put out my DNA.

I think the other point here, John, that's worth considering is that the contrast isn't just with other 2020 challengers. It's also with Donald Trump himself. Warren not only put out this full DNA test but months ago she put out years and years worth of tax returns.

MARTIN: Yes, exactly.

GREEN: So she's created a very clear contrast with the president, who is unwilling to make public his tax returns or just about anything else about his businesses, which helps to create the contrast that she's determined to create between Trump, who is someone she considers to be fundamentally corrupt, and her own example of openness, transparency, and disclosure, whether it's her taxes or her ancestry or what have you.

MARTIN: Preemptive inoculation, guys.

CAMEROTA: Got it. Clarissa, let's move on to another remarkable moment, and that was this "60 Minutes" interview that Trump did with Lesley Stahl. He basically defined, I think, articulated what America first mean to him. And here was this moment where Lesley Stahl asked him about Putin. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LESLEY STAHL, "60 MINUTES": Do you believe that the Russians interfered in the 2016 campaign -- election?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, they meddled. I think China meddled too.

STAHL: Why do you say China meddled too?

TRUMP: Let me tell you --

STAHL: Why don't you just say the Russians meddled?

TRUMP: Because I think China meddles also. And I think, frankly, China, is the bigger problem.

STAHL: This is amazing. You're diverting the whole Russian thing.

TRUMP: I'm not doing anything.

STAHL: You are. You are.

TRUMP: I'm saying Russia, but I'm also saying China.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[08:05:04] CAMEROTA: And Clarissa, he went on to say when Lesley Stahl asked him about Vladimir Putin and whether or not he believed, the president believed that he was behind poisonings and assassinations, he said it's not in our country. It's not in our country. And so what does that mean?

CLARISSA WARD, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: And it really was kind of an extraordinary answer, I think, Alisyn, because you have to imagine, what if, God forbid, Russian agents were to kill a U.S. citizen on American soil and the reaction of our European allies was to be like, well, yes, looks like they did it, but it wasn't on our soil.

President Trump has really tried to articulate this vision of America first as being predicated also on necessitating cooperation with our allies, and yet in instances like this he really appears to demean the nature of those alliances. We've seen it repeatedly also with his NATO alliance, undermining that. So you have to think to yourself for a second, if you're Prime Minister Theresa May of the U.K., sitting in London and watching Lesley Stahl have this conversation, you're probably pulling your hair out at this stage.

On China, this is obviously his bugaboo. This is his priority, whether it's about issues of trade, the South China Sea, Taiwan, this is priority number one for him. But why does one have to undermine the clearly pernicious role that Russia is playing?

BERMAN: Josh Green, you're so well sourced in the Steve Bannon world, and they wrote the president inauguration speech, Bannon and Miller. It doesn't seem to me that this is that big of a departure from that kind of language. This is America first to the extent he's saying I just don't care about anything that happens overseas.

GREEN: I think that's right. I think it's also true if you want to get back to Bannon-ism and Trump's foreign policy views that Bannon views the main threat in the Middle East as Iran. And one of the things Trump did as soon as he came in, his first trip was to Saudi Arabia. U.S. foreign policy -- Trump's U.S. foreign policy was built on this idea of partnering with the Saudis to exert American strength against Iran to help contain them. Trump famously came in and brokered a $110 billion arms deal, at least an agreement to sell arms to the Saudis, which he said in the "60 Minute" interview one of the reasons he was reluctant to act was because he didn't want to blow up that deal. So he was very clear about protecting financial considerations of U.S. weapons manufacturers more important to him than the human rights component in this alleged murder.

MARTIN: John, it's kind of like if Henry Kissinger was reading the stage directions out loud. We've seen realpolitik before in terms of American foreign policy, but this is like that kind of cold-blooded approach but saying it out loud. We don't care about the assassination because they weren't on our soil. I don't want to come down too hard on the Saudis because Lockheed is getting a pretty fat contract and those are good American jobs. Trump just says this stuff directly as the cameras are rolling. It's pretty extraordinary to see, but it's not a departure from what we kind of know. It's just that we're not used to presidents saying it so bluntly to the camera, right?

CAMEROTA: There's another moment where the president talks about Jim Mattis, his secretary of defense, and how much more he knows about NATO, basically, than Jim Mattis. Here is this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STAHL: What about General Mattis? Is he going to leave?

TRUMP: Well, I don't know. He hasn't told me that. I have a very good relationship with him. I had lunch two days ago. I have a very good relationship with him. It could be he is. I think he's sort of a Democrat, if you want to know the truth. But General Mattis is a good guy. We get along very well. He may leave. At some point, everybody leaves. People leave. That's Washington.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Clarissa, what does that mean?

WARD: I think it means more confusion from all the U.S.'s allies. Nobody can get a straight story from this administration on who the people who are operating the levers of power are. There was a sense among some quarters where I've spoken to of comfort with people like General Mattis. By calling into question the possible future of the general in his role, that certainly will be rattling a lot of world leaders.

At the same time, people have now come to expect this. They understand that there is this kind of frenetic state of sort of permanent chaos in the White House, and that doesn't necessarily reflect itself into actual policies, that there is a sense somehow the machine, the state of America does keep rolling on, regardless of whether there's anyone in the driver's seat.

BERMAN: I will say, there are a number of countries, U.S. allies around the word, who look at Mattis as the rock. He is the guy that they trust more than anyone else. And when they hear he may be a short timer, that will have repercussions.

[08:10:07] I do want to switch gears now. You're obsessed with baby news. You're obsessed with the royal baby.

CAMEROTA: I do want to say that our word of the day on the show is "baby."

BERMAN: Your word of the day. Mine is Well, my word of the day is Jackie Bradley Jr.

(LAUGHTER)

BERMAN: But the word of the day is baby. The president, sort of unprompted in this interview with Lesley Stahl brought up that term to answer questions. And I want to play it here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STAHL: Reports that he had his half-brother assassinated, slave labor, public executions. This is a guy you love?

TRUMP: I know all these things. I'm not a baby. I'm not saying I trust everybody in the White House. I'm not a baby.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Who's your baby?

BERMAN: Jonathan Martin, he's not a baby. He's not a baby. Why is he telling us he's not a baby? He's obsessed with whether or not people are calling him a baby.

MARTIN: John, when I came on this morning I didn't know there would be a Freudian segment --

CAMEROTA: Oh, yes.

MARTIN: -- you're looking at the president. I'm not sure why -- I think it's like an old New York real estate term. It's a '70s, '80s reference. I'm a sophisticate. I get the tough, cruel world out there, and I'm not naive. I'm not sure why he says it like that, but that's the very Trumpian touch there, right? He also told Stahl, he said I'm president and you're not, which I thought was as extraordinary as saying he was not a baby.

BERMAN: It may be the type of thing that, in fact, a --

CAMEROTA: Baby would say?

BERMAN: If the baby could talk.

(LAUGHTER)

CAMEROTA: Josh, I know you're dying to get in on this conversation, Josh.

GREEN: You can tell.

CAMEROTA: I can.

GREEN: Baby, is actually, it's a Trump verbal tick. There's a scene in the book I did during the campaign where Trump blows up at Paul Manafort, who has decided that in order to communicate with Trump who won't listen to him anymore, this is toward the end of Manafort's tenure, he has to go on cable TV and speak to Trump through TV. There's a scene where Trump blows up at Manafort and says do you think I'm a baby, Paul? Am I a baby, Paul? Do I wear a little diaper? It's a mental image that Trump apparently is obsessed with.

MARTIN: A little "Goodfellas," right.

GREEN: A little bit, a little bit.

CAMEROTA: But it's a mental image that you've now planted in our brain.

BERMAN: We're going to bring in Clarissa to help us dig out of baby- gate here. Clarissa, serious --

WARD: I'm staying well away from this one.

BERMAN: Indeed. I want to ask about Jamal Khashoggi, obviously, because the United States now says that Saudi Arabia will be punished if it turns out that they did kill Khashoggi as is alleged. The Turks are saying the Saudis, we're going to go in and investigate now. Where does this all stand? Where are we tomorrow after this?

WARD: Well, so it looks like, John, like some kind of deal has potentially been struck between the Turks and the Saudis. The Saudis are now letting Turkish authorities into the consulate in Istanbul. This had been a point of conflict between the two powers since essentially Khashoggi went missing. So potentially a sign that there's some progress being made.

We've also heard, as you mentioned, that the Saudis are conducting an internal investigation. Could they potentially admit that this was a botched operation, that it was a rogue, unauthorized operation? Will they continue to double down on their complete denial of any involvement in it whatsoever? No matter what the result is, I still think the president has a very tough time on his hand when it comes to delivering potential punishment to Saudi Arabia. If he's not going to touch sanctions, if he's not going to touch those weapons deals, what would that punishment look like? There aren't a lot of easy answers. Saudi Arabia, as you know, key ally on terrorism and on the fight against Iran which, as we know, President Trump sees as a real priority.

CAMEROTA: Clarissa Ward, Jonathan Martin, Josh Green, thank you all for showing your versatility this morning with all of our breaking new.

MARTIN: Thank you, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: So will Democrats take control of Congress in the midterm elections? And what will they do if that happens? The Democratic whip of the Senate, Dick Durbin, joins us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:15:00]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, NEWROOM HOST: OK, we're following some breaking news. Senator Elizabeth Warren has released a DNA test and a video about her family's Native American ancestry. That's just a portion of it. Joining us now to talk about this and so much more, we have Senator Dick Durbin. He's the Democratic Whip and a member of the House Judiciary Committee. Good morning, senator.

SEN. DICK DURBIN (D), I.L.: How are you?

CAMEROTA: I'm doing well. What do you think Elizabeth Warren is up to? Why did she release information about her DNA and family ancestry today?

DURBN: Well, I haven't heard the story, but, you know, the president ridicules her every chance he gets. And perhaps that was part of the reason to get back in his face.

CAMEROTA: But I'm curious about the timing, and the story just to fill you in and for our viewers who haven't heard it, she has done a DNA test which she says has proven she is at least one-thirty-second Native American. It could be one-five-hundredth, but that she does Native American ancestry.

OK. I mean, obviously she's rebutting the president's insults. We understand that, but why 22 days before the midterms? Why today?

DURBIN: I don't know why she picked today. Elizabeth's a busy woman. I work with her every week, almost every day of every week, and I'm sure this wasn't the highest priority for her, but after all the ridicule she's taken from this president, for goodness sakes to establish she does have Native American heritage, I think it's an important issue in her life.

CAMEROTA: Is she running for president?

DURBIN: Well, she's one of many who are considering it seriously. She should. She's a very talented person.

CAMEROTA: Here's the list. Here's where she ranks on the list right now. Obviously it's early days, but Joe Biden gets 34 percent of the vote in polling right now, then Kamala Harris, 11. Bernie Sanders, 9. Elizabeth Warren is fourth there at 8 percent. Is that possibly what her timing was of why she wanted to get some attention today?

DURBIN: I don't think that was the highest priority. Believe me, that list is going to change almost in a weekly basis, and it doesn't include the 30 or 40 other names of people who are wandering around Iowa and New Hampshire, so we're very early in the process.

CAMEROTA: But do you think that she has decided that she is willing to take on President Trump and this is what she's going to do? She'll come out swinging?

DURBIN: Yes. Oh, that's Elizabeth's actual approach and tactic on everything. She doesn't back off, and that's why Wall Street gets so nervous when she starts talking. But I'll just tell you I've watched her. She's carefully reaching out to people in Illinois, my home state. Democrats who win election get election night calls from Elizabeth Warren.

Those are no accident. You know, those people who are looking forward to perhaps expanding their political horizon make phone calls to winners on election night.

[08:20:00]

CAMEROTA: She's positioning herself.

DURBIN: Absolutely.

CAMEROTA: Let's talk about Saudi Arabia. So as I understand it, this weekend the Ambassador - the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the U.S. called you.

DURBIN: Yes.

CAMEROTA: What did he tell you?

DURBIN: Almost nothing. He didn't admit anything, didn't deny anything. He did tell me that Khashoggi was his friend and that he knew him, and I think he said at one point that he'd actually worked for the Saudi government at one point.

When I went into details he said, "well, it's all under investigation." I said, "by whom?" "Well, by the Turks and by the Saudis." I said, "shouldn't you put a third party into this because you're denying anything happened. The Turks believe it did happen. If you had a third." "No, no, no. We'll stick with these two - the Turks and the Saudis - to get to the bottom of it."

This is just one example of the extremism of the leadership in Saudi Arabia. They suppress their critics and this is the most outrageous example we believe that has happened. But what are we going to do about it? Are we going to basically say business as usual. Let's build some more hotels and buy some more weapons or sell some more weapons? I hope it's much more than that.

We ought to get out of the war in Yemen. The United States government is backing and helping the Saudis in the war in Yemen that is killing millions of people by warfare and famine. We ought to be out of that tomorrow. We ought to make sure that we know the export of this Wahabi extremism that they've been engaged in for decades is unacceptable.

CAMEROTA: Well, none of that's happening. I mean, that's not how President Trump feels. In fact, President Trump keeps - he seems quite fixated on the arms sales. He says that the Saudis are paying the U.S. $110 billion for weapons. Now, fact checkers don't believe that number. They think it's much less.

Nevertheless, his point is if they don't buy it from the U.S., the Saudis will buy it from Russia or China. Does he have a point about that?

DURBIN: The point I want to get to may even agree with President Trump on that then say what are you going to do? If you're not going to stop the arms sales, what will you do to the Saudis so that they understand tomorrow that what they've done is absolutely unacceptable? If it is just a strong letter in some diplomatic channel, absolutely unacceptable.

CAMEROTA: What are you calling on him to do?

DURBIN: Well, first get out of Yemen, that's number one. And number two, we've got to come down harder then in terms of sanctions or some aspect of our treatment of them to let them know this is unacceptable.

CAMEROTA: And then they say, "OK. Then the arms deals off. We're not going to give you billions of dollars."

DURBIN: So what? We're going to be held up. If that's the basic standard that if they get tough with us we back off. That doesn't sound like Mr. Trump, does it? It shouldn't sound like America. What they are engaged in now, what they've been engaged in for several decades is exporting extremism. And now they're suppressing their critics, they are engaged in this war in Yemen. Let's not view them as an ally of the United States that we can count on. We've got to come down hard on them and let them know there's a price to pay for this conduct.

CAMEROTA: We heard last night in the president's 60 Minutes interview that he said basically about Saudi Arabia, about Putin, about Kim Jong-un, it's not happening in our country. It's not happening on our land. If they're doing these bad acts, it's not here. So we can't worry about it that much.

DURBIN: That can't be the standard. For goodness sakes when the Russians are killing off former spies in England, when we have this apparent complicity of the Saudis in the killing of one of their critics, we've got to take this seriously wherever it happens. If these are countries that say they are allied with us in values, we have to make it clear they are not.

CAMEROTA: Speaking of Jared Kushner who has a close relationship with the crown prince, there was a report over the weekend about Jared Kushner's taxes and how he had not paid them for many years through various loopholes and things like that.

If Democrats gained control of the House, would you investigate President Trumps taxes and his son-in-law's taxes?

DURBIN: Well, of course the president should have disclosed his tax returns like Republicans and Democrats running for president had done for years. So we don't know if he paid any taxes either. This depreciation of real estate to have a setoff against any income may have resulted no tax liability and it may have been legal. I don't know the answer.

CAMEROTA: Sure. For sure. I'm not suggesting that it's illegal, but would you investigate? Would that be one of your top priorities?

DURBIN: No. The top priority for the Democrats if we're lucky enough to take control of the House and Senate is to make sure that we respond to issues that working families across America really care about. Can I mention a few? Healthcare so that we have a healthcare system that protects those with preexisting conditions, making sure that folks can save more for their retirement, bringing down the cost of prescription drugs; those are the higher priorities.

These political investigations that everybody fixes on I don't think reach the level, when it comes to most voters, of the high priority.

CAMEROTA: But, I mean, you do have an oversight role. Don't you want to know about President Trump's taxes?

[08:25:00]

DURBIN: Of course. We do have oversight rule, but that is not our highest priority. We want to focus on issues that working families and middle income families across America consider important. That, I think, will restore some faith in our party as responsive to their needs.

CAMEROTA: Senator Dick Durbin, thanks so much. We love having you in the studio.

DURBIN: Good to be here.

CAMEROTA: Thanks for being here. John -

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEWSROOM HOST: All right, you were talking about the Elizabeth Warren story. She decided to release a DNA test. We're going to speak to the reporter from The Boston Globe that broke this story overnight and walk through exactly what was done here. It's fascinating.

(COMMERICAL BREAK) Well here's breaking news. Massachusetts senator, Elizabeth Warren, released a DNA test to The Boston Globe which includes - concludes I should say there's strong evidence that she has Native American heritage in her family tree. Senator Warren also released a video about her family history and the president's treatment of her claims.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: She said she's Native American, and I said, "Pocahontas, Pocahontas, I apologize to you. I apologize. To you, I apologize. To the fake Pocahontas I won't apologize."

(END VIDEOCLIP)

BERMAN: Obviously, the question is why did she release this? Why do it today? Does this mean she's running for president in 2020? Joining us now is the Boston Globe reporter who broke this story, Annie Linksey. Annie, thank you.

[08:30:00]