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CNN RIGHT NOW
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) Is Interviewed About The Death of Jamal Khashoggi; Trump Shrugs Off Calls to Investigate Journalist's Death; CA Governor: "Xenophobic" GOP Will Become A 3rd Party; Author Accuses Trump of Sexual Assault In The 90s; 10th American Dies in the Dominican Republic. Aired 1:30-2p ET
Aired June 24, 2019 - 13:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[13:30:00] BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: -- meeting with the king there. It's also not a popular subject with the president who downplayed over the weekend, he was citing business deals with the Saudis. What do you think of the president's justification that the Middle East is a violent place anyway?
REP. RO KHANNA (D-CA): Well, the president should listen to his own CIA. The CIA concluded definitively that MBS, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia was behind the Khashoggi murder. The crown prince's brother, the ambassador is the one who called Khashoggi and told him to go to Turkey. And there is a tape of someone telling one of the crown prince's aides that the job was done. And so the president again is defying our own intelligence and it's really sad that we continue to be allied with the Saudis as they bomb in Yemen and create one of the greatest humanitarian crises in the world.
KEILAR: I want to ask you about California Governor Gavin Newsom. He believes that the Republican Party really -- I guess, the Republican Party of President Trump that it's on the way out. He says they could be relegated to third-party status in 10 to 15 years. Let's listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM (D-CA): The Republican Party was walked off a cliff. They're third-party status. It's exactly what Donald Trump is doing and Mitch McConnell was completely complicit is doing the Republican Party nationally. They don't even know what's about to hit them.
They have no governing philosophy. They have no value system that's interesting except the fear of others and those others are going to be a majority. So wake up.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: Do you think he's right? Do you think that the Republican Party is going to be turned into a third party status?
KHANNA: Well, Brianna, I think the Republican Party needs to reform. I think what Governor Newsom is speaking about is what happened in California after Pete Wilson passed Prop 187 in 1994 to win re- election and Prop 187 would have denied even education to those who were undocumented. The Republicans basically were decimated in every election and today don't even have a single statewide officer. And I think what the governor is saying is that if the Republican Party doesn't reform, they won't be successful.
Now, look, George W. Bush understood this. He was --
KEILAR: Can I ask you, though, I mean, I'm a Californian so -- the United States is not California.
KHANNA: Sure, it's not. But the sentiment I think in the United States is similar that we should have people in this country have basic healthcare and basic education. It doesn't make any sense for people not to be able to go to public school or to get basic healthcare and then become disenfranchised and disaffected from the United States will be a greater healthcare cost. And I think there's decency across this country.
And I don't think it's partisan, George W. Bush understands this, he -- I disagreed with him on a lot of things but he proposed a comprehensive immigration plan back in 2006 that his own party rejected. And I think they need to look at how he managed to get 40 percent of the Hispanic vote and minority vote and see what type of reforms they need.
KEILAR: Congressman Or Khanna, thank you for being with us.
KHANNA: Thank you, Brianna, for having me on.
KEILAR: Writer E. Jean Carroll is coming forward with new shocking allegations against President Trump. Let's hear what she says happened two decades ago and why she is speaking up today.
And new today, a tenth American dies while in the Dominican Republic.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[13:38:10] KEILAR: It's a headline that would normally shock a nation. A woman claiming the president of the United States sexually assaulted her. This new allegation against then citizen Donald Trump is the 16th accusation of sexual assaults against the president. E. Jean Carroll is a respected author. She spoke this morning on CNN's NEW DAY and she recounted this alleged incident from the mid-90s.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
E. JEAN CARROLL, ACCUSES DONALD TRUMP OF SEXUAL ASSAULT: When we walked into the lingerie department, there was nobody there which is strange. It was in the evening, so. And on the counter were three really fancy boxes and a see-through body suit. He walks right to the bodysuit and snatched it up and said go, put this on.
Now that struck me as so funny because here I am, I'm 52, I am not going to be putting. My idea was, I said, no, you put it on. And he said, no, it looks like it fits you. I said, no, it goes with your eyes. So I am spinning a comedy scene in my head.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: You go into the dressing room, you think that he's going to hold it up against him.
CARROLL: Yes.
CAMEROTA: And then it gets violent.
CARROLL: Well, he -- the minute -- he went like this, I preceded him, entered the dressing room, the minute he closed that door, I was banged up against the wall. The thing is it shocked me, for a moment I was stunned, right? And then he tried to kiss me which was -- it was so hard but -- so my reaction was to laugh. To knock off the erotic whatever he had going on because a man when you laugh at him, he's like, oh, no, you know, he just went at it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: Dana Bash, our chief political correspondent is here. These are very serious allegations. The president is denying them. He says that she's just trying to sell a book. What's the political fallout if there is any?
DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: You know, that's an open question. I remember very vividly right after the Access Hollywood tape came out.
[13:40:03] Again, these were his words, it were -- that was before allegations of actual assault came out in October of 2016. I was in suburban Philadelphia and I was shocked by how many people who were already committed to Donald Trump, women, educated women were at Trump events and said that they weren't -- that they didn't really care. That it didn't bother them at all.
Now, that was almost four years ago. They were looking for somebody who wasn't Hillary Clinton and wasn't already a politician. Now, this is a new allegation, very, very specific, and you have a president who is trying to figure out a way to continue to appeal to female voters who separate from this are according to people I talked to, you know, inside Trump world, what they see is, who are upset about basic things, his governing, like the chaos and things of that nature.
So, you know, they say inside the Trump campaign, at least my reporting today, that in terms of the allegations of sexual assault, it's baked in, because there were so many allegations before. But this is pretty remarkable as you said at the beginning. We're talking about the president of the United States. This would be a show- stopping time in any other time and any other presidency in any other era.
KEILAR: On its own not just --
BASH: On its own.
KEILAR: All right, Dana, stay with us because we want to keep talking to you. Hear why E. Jean Carroll said she's speaking up now.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[13:46:07] CARROLL: All of the 15 women or 16 who've come forward, it's the same, he denies it, he turns it around. He attacks and he threatens. And then everybody forgets it.
And then the next woman comes along and I am sick of it. I am -- Alisyn, I am sick of it. Think how many women have come forward. Nothing happens. The only thing we can do is sit with you and tell our stories so that we empower other women to come forward and tell their stories because we have to change this culture of sexual violence.
CAMEROTA: Did you consider in 2016 when Donald Trump was running for president and other women were coming forward with stories of an accusation of sexual assault. Did you consider speaking out then?
CARROLL: No, because they were doing the job, they were coming forward, they were --you know, an army of women was -- they were coming forward. So I sat back and also, I thought it was my fault and when -- if I was going to come forward, I'd have to say, I was stupid, I was a nitwit. I allowed this. So my frame of mind was not the best.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: All right, Dana Bash, back with us now. It is interesting. This is the situation she's in from the president is the question about when she, why she didn't come forward sooner.
BASH: Yes. And look, that's always a question when you have allegations that are old. When you have people who say that they were attacked, assaulted, harassed, any form of that and didn't report it to the police, just like her.
KEILAR: Did she tell people at the time?
BASH: I don't know the answer to that. But look, this is something that we live through when this whole Me Too era exploded a couple of years ago, I guess a year-and-a-half ago, and the fact that even during that time when people were feeling more empowered, she says she didn't feel confident enough and comfortable enough. And she still thought it was her fault. Again, these allegations is very telling.
And, yes, she is writing a book. She has written a book. She wants to sell this book. This is one allegation apparently among several others about men in New York City. And the president denies it and she is right. It is a he said-she said until and unless she wants to pursue it more if it's even possible through the legal system as Juanita Broaddrick did or Paula Jones I should say.
KEILAR: Yes. It's been so many years so that's obviously going to be an obstacle. Dana Bash, thank you so much. And the mystery deepens after a tenth American does while in the Dominican Republic.
Also, despite the facts and science, the vice president refuses to acknowledge the threat of the climate crisis.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[13:53:52] KEILAR: Ten. That is the number of American deaths in the Dominican Republic over the last year. But that is not all. CNN has spoken to a dozen tourists who have gotten extremely sick while on vacation there. And all of these cases are raising concerns about the safety of resorts in the DR.
We have CNN Correspondent Rosa Flores who is in Santa Domingo covering this. Rosa, what can you tell us about the 10th tourist who died?
ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, Brianna, I'm waiting for Dominican Republic authorities to release a preliminary autopsy report. They tell me that it could be released as early as today. Now, we have been trying to contact the family of 56-year-old Vittorio Caruso but we have not been successful. However, our affiliate, News 12, did talk to his family, and they say that the 56-year-old was vacationing here in the Dominican Republic, that he spent part of his retirement here. It's unclear how much time. However, they do say that he had respiratory issues, called them, then went to the doctor and then unfortunately died.
One of the things that stands out about this particular case is that it doesn't appear that he was at a resort.
[13:55:01] But Brianna, we have been asking a lot of questions. I'm actually outside the Ministry of Health where a press conference was canceled. But Dominican Republic authorities keep on saying, Brianna, that there is no mystery because all of these deaths were natural, and that none of them are connected.
Brianna?
KEILAR: All right, Rosa Flores, thank you for that report.
We have new CNN reporting that the president is growing disenchanted with some of his closest advisers.
Plus, frustrated residents confronting Mayor Pete Buttigieg at a town hall. We're going to speak with someone who was in the room.
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