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Latest Sexual Assault Accusation against Trump; "Impact Your World" Features GirlTrek; Democratic Primary Polls. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired June 25, 2019 - 08:30   ET

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

[08:30:00] E. JEAN CARROLL, ACCUSES PRESIDENT TRUMP OF ASSAULT: For a moment I was stunned, right, and then he tried to kiss me, which was repulse -- it was so hard (ph). 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)

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: To me, the fact what she describe -- what she describes is legally a rape, puts it in a different category than what we've heard before. Am I wrong?

MARGARET HOOVER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It is certainly a more serious offense. It is a more serious violation of a woman and her sovereignty she has over her body for sure. There's -- there's just nothing to excuse this. This was not excusable. You can look at her, you can determine whether you think she's credible or not. We all have done this a lot over the last two years. And this woman seems to me, as a woman, you know, as a Republican, it -- the politics don't even matter because it's about a woman being violated.

How this plays out in the news is entirely different. And -- and that's maybe what the next layer of this and how we talk about because there does seem to be a level of political immunity that is grant to the president of the United States. And it's not just this time.

CAMEROTA: And, Ana, I mean it's been described as a numbness. Is that what you think is going on?

ANA NAVARRO, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I do. You know, and I -- look, I think the barrage of indecency coming out of that Oval Office and that White House is such that he has exhausted the ability of Americans to be outraged. And I think he is counting on that. And it is a very dangerous place for America to go. We cannot get numb, we cannot get used to the fact, we cannot just shrug our shoulders and say that's Trump being Trump and we've heard this before, we've heard these exact lines before. We cannot get normal. We cannot make normal what is not normal. The lies, the bullying, the attacks on the press, the sexual harassment allegations, now the rape allegation. This is not normal from a White House, from a president of the United States.

And also, you know, Alisyn, in 2016, Democrats nominated a candidate who was burdened and saddened by the actions of her husband and sat their silently while Donald Trump, who had been accused, as you just said, by 15 women, showed up with the women that Bill Clinton had been accused by. Well, I hope that this time somebody does bring it up because decency does matter. Character does matter. Having somebody in the Oval Office with a moral compass does matter. And he should not be able to get off scot free from it just because people are used to it. We should refuse as Americans to be used to this.

CAMEROTA: Nancy, there's a crazy paradox that's happening right now, which is that the media, or the viewers, get more numb upon hearing each story. But in court, legally, if you brought in 15 women who all describe the same M.O. of the same defendant, wouldn't that be more effective?

NANCY ERIKA SMITH, ATTORNEY, SMITH MULLIN: The most effective thing is his own words. Rarely do I have a case where the perpetrators of sexual violence or sexual harassment is on tape admitting sexual violence and sexual harassment.

CAMEROTA: Describing his M.O.

SMITH: Describing exactly what is being described by these women. You never get -- that's called direct evidence. You win. He admits it. And for some reason there's a cult that Fox News has actually cultivated. The loudest voice in the room is just coming out and it showed it last night at the premier --

CAMEROTA: The Showtime series about Fox that went under Rogers Ailes' rein.

SMITH: And it shows how he actually planned to speak to people's grievances and feeling of other and feeling like the great old days of the white male macho world are fading and we have to bring it back, whether it's true or not. And that's what he's done. He literally has a cult of people who you can't talk to about reality. It's very scary.

HOOVER: You know, it used to be that hypocrisy was the unforgivable sin in politics. And now it's like you can't play politics unless you are a hypocrite by design. And I just -- as we talk about -- you know, I said, this isn't the first time a president has been immune from these kind of accusations. And conservatives rallied behind Juanita Broaddrick, who made very similar accusations against President Clinton, and they rallied behind her in the 1990s and they rallied behind her in 2016.

And we have now -- I mean where is Steve Bannon, right? Where are all of the men who brought four of those women as political props? Do they believe that this woman, who has the same allegations, is equally as credible?

This -- we also found out, as you were talking about Fox News, that "The New York Post" spiked the story about this woman and her credible accusations against the president because of the politics.

CAMEROTA: Because they're all (INAUDIBLE).

SMITH: Right. They asked me to be on Fox News today to talk about my client, Meredith Watson, who's accused a Democratic lieutenant governor of rape months ago. Why today? Because let's talk about a Democrat who's --

NAVARRO: You know what -- doing --

CAMEROTA: That's fascinating, isn't it?

Yes, go ahead.

[08:35:05] NAVARRO: When -- when Margaret and I were growing up in the Republican Party, one of the -- one of the legs of the conservative stool was conservative values, was Christian values, was family values, was social values. And we have seen that be turned on its head. We have seen people who are supposedly representatives and leaders of the evangelical movement, of the Christian right, embrace a president who we see time and time and time again represents everything that is against social values and family values and Christian values.

CAMEROTA: OK, so coming up, we're going to talk about whether 2019 is different than 2016. Much more from our panel, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: OK, yesterday we had a chance to sit down with E. Jean Carroll, the woman who accuses President Trump of sexual assault. She told me how she sees a pattern surrounding all of the allegations against the president.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

E. JEAN CARROLL, TRUMP ACCUSER: With all the 15 women who have -- or 16 women who have come forward, it's the same, he denies it, he turns it around, he attacks and he threatens. That is the -- 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.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[08:40:16] CAMEROTA: All right, back with us we have our CNN political commentators Ana Navarro and Margaret Hoover, also attorney Nancy Erika Smith.

Ana, she's talking about the 15 women who came forward during 2016 to accuse the president of some -- somewhere on the spectrum between sexual assault, sexual misconduct. Has anything changed three years later where we hear it differently in 2019?

NAVARRO: I think a lot has changed. Look, we have the Times Up movement. We have the Me Too movement. Women have stopped being silent. Women have lost fear. Women are believed a lot more than they once were. I think that the amount of women that are today in Congress, that ran for office for the first time, many of them won, is a direct result of the anger and frustration that many women felt at the idea that a man got away with it and got elected president. I think you can -- you know, one of the silver linings to the Trump mixed (ph) administration is the fact that so many women got off their, you know, their butts and said we're going to do something about it. We're not going to take this anymore and ran for office.

And I think it's different because you have so many women running for president right now. Back in 2016, you had Hillary Clinton, who, as I said, was burdened and saddened by the actions of her husband, and Bernie Sanders. Today you have a prosecutor running for president. You've got Kamala Harris. You've got Elizabeth Warren. You've got Amy Klobuchar. You've got a slew of women who I hope take the opportunity to remind America that the man who is in the White House is indecent and has no moral compass and that we need that back in the White House. We deserve that back as Americans and that it is important and should be a requirement to the presidency.

CAMEROTA: Margaret, you're in the Republican circles. Do you think things have changed with the way people hear these things three years later?

HOOVER: Well, you can look at just the numbers from 2018 and look at the largest swath of voters that didn't vote Republican, that voted Republican in 2016, where suburban, educated women who were turned off and, frankly, disgusted by the tone and the tenor and the rhetoric coming from the highest office in the land. I mean that is the driver. And that is a critical swing vote in 2020.

And Ana's right, things have changed. Look, nothing changes overnight, all right, but you cannot tell me that the women's movement and Me Too and Times Up happened in a vacuum, all right. There are responses to many, many things and many, many forces all coming together at once. And one of those forces was the election of Donald Trump. I mean there's a reason hundreds of thousands of women marched on Washington right after he was elected. And -- and that, even though it -- that movement itself had phased out over time, there have been others. And there is a groundswell of women who I frankly think women like E. Jean King --

CAMEROTA: E. Jean.

HOOVER: E. Jean Carroll give voice and sort of remind and catalyze that movement again. So this is -- this is a key outlier. It's a swing element that is not fully accounted for. You can't really account for it in the polling, but it is going to be a factor in the 2020 presidential race.

SMITH: I -- I don't -- I think there's a backlash to the Me Too movement. I don't think men are going to easily give up their power and their -- we have a misogynist culture. We have a sexist culture. And we're not going to change it overnight, but we are changing it. We are galvanized, I think, by Trump's election.

And an interesting thing, things do take time, as Margaret said. Some reserve (INAUDIBLE) case, defamation cases against Donald Trump has been upheld. He's going to be deposed.

CAMEROTA: After office? After he's out of office.

SMITH: No.

CAMEROTA: In office he can do it?

SMITH: Yes.

CAMEROTA: He can be deposed while he's in office.

SMITH: Yes.

CAMEROTA: When is that going to happen?

SMITH: Yes. I think it's supposed to happen before the end of the summer. So he's going to be deposed, like we saw -- changed Cosby's life to have that and it changed Bill Clinton's as well when he didn't know what and meant or --

HOOVER: Is -- the definition of the word is is --

SMITH: What does is mean. Yes.

CAMEROTA: Great point. That is really interesting.

OK, on a totally different topic, while we have time --

NAVARRO: And some -- and something else -- and something else that has changed --

CAMEROTA: Oh, yes, quickly, Ana.

NAVARRO: Alisyn, is something else that has changed is that today we know something that we didn't know in 2016, which is that there were women who were paid hush money. We know about Susan McDougal and we know about Stormy Daniels. And Michael Cohen is sitting in jail because he was -- he was a conduit to pay hush money to women. We know that the president of the United States was cheating on the wife that had just given birth with a stripper and with a -- with a Playboy bunny and was cheating on the Playboy bunny with a stripper. We know that.

CAMEROTA: OK, those are interesting points. Thank you all for raising them.

And we will see -- obviously, we don't know today, but we'll see if any of this makes an impact.

[08:45:06] Thank you all, ladies. Great to talk to you and have you here in studio.

John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, that was a great discussion.

Now here is what else to watch today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ON SCREEN TEXT: 2:00 p.m. ET, VP Pence speaks in Miami.

4:00 p.m. ET, McConnell meets 9/11 first responders.

6:45 p.m. ET, Elizabeth Warren town hall in Miami.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: The first presidential debate now just a day away. A day away. Is it tomorrow.

CAMEROTA: Yes, I think so.

BERMAN: It's tomorrow night.

CAMEROTA: It's tomorrow, yes.

BERMAN: So it's just a day away. How debate performance can help or hurt a candidates chances.

But first, African-American women fight a troubling health trend one step at a time in today's "Impact Your World."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

VANESSA GARRISON, CO-FOUNDER, GIRLTREK: I say this out of love, half of black women are obese. Eighty percent of us are over a healthy body weight.

GirlTrek is a beautiful movement of black women who are reclaiming their health and communities through walking.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're asking women to get active with us. So if you just walk 30 minutes, just 30 minutes a day, your risk of diabetes, heart disease, what is it, stroke, dementia even --

GARRISON: Dementia.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, even, is reduced by almost half.

This little light of mine, whoo, I'm going to let it shine.

It's also a sisterhood, right? Women are connecting with their neighbors, their friends, the women at their church, the women on campuses.

When you walk, you talk, right? And so it becomes a support community.

What I am asking anybody watching this is to remember that you are worth taking time for yourself every day.

GARRISON: Take the pledge. Lace up your sneakers. Go on your first walk. After you do that, invite a sister in. Be a sister's keeper. Invite one girl to walk with you. And if you need inspiration, we have you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [08:51:40] BERMAN: So the first Democratic debate is only one day away.

CAMEROTA: I figured that out.

BERMAN: One day away.

CAMEROTA: One.

BERMAN: It is now official. Your second source.

How much could change tomorrow?

There is something about Harry. CNN's senior politics writer and analyst Harry Enten is here.

Before we get to tomorrow, let's get to today and where we are heading in because there has been some serious questions about the Democratic frontrunner, Joe Biden, and also Pete Buttigieg having to do with race, some controversies.

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICS WRITER AND ANALYST: Yes, there's definitely been some controversy. And the one thing that I just keep pointing out in my own head on Twitter, with you guys, is essentially that Joe Biden does very, very well with African-American voters. He has this base. This was an average of our April and May polls conducted by CNN. He was at 49 percent in the Democratic primary among African-Americans. Just 32 percent among whites.

Now, compare that with Pete Buttigieg, who's also had his issues revolving around the South Bend and the police department. And, look at this, with African-American's, he's just polling 1 percent nationally versus 9 percent with white voters.

And I think that there's another way to look at this, and this is favorability ratings, right? Among African-Americans specifically, look at this, Joe Biden, 88 percent of black Democrats have a favorable rating of him. Just 4 percent haven't heard from him. Versus, Pete Buttigieg, only a 32 percent favorability rating. And look at this, 49 percent have never heard of him. So if this is the first news that you're hearing about Pete Buttigieg and you're an African-American, that's why I think this could be much more troubling for him than for Biden.

CAMEROTA: We now know who will be standing next to each other at each of the debate. And does the debate lineup -- how does it really impact what we're going to see?

ENTEN: Right. So take a look at this. So this is the first 2020 debate lineup. And, look at this, look, we have Elizabeth Warren and he'll be ranked, you know, Booker will be beside her and so will O'Rourke, but she's the only star really on the first debate night, versus the second debate night, look at this, look, we have all four of these going on, Biden, Sanders, Buttigieg, Harris.

And what's so interesting about this, these are the top five poll -- top polling candidates. I actually went out and looked, what was the chance that you ended up that you'd have four stars on one night and only one star on the other, and basically the Democrats tried to rig it. Rules required that eight candidates polling at 2 percent or better be split between the two nights. It was an 86 percent chance that you'd have three of the top five polling candidates in one night and two in the other, but they actually ended up with a 14 percent chance of four in the top five polling on one night and one in the top five on the other nights.

CAMEROTA: I actually -- there's a lot of numbers you're throwing at us in this number salad, but I actually understand exactly what you just said.

BERMAN: Basically they have --

ENTEN: Hey, hey, hey.

BERMAN: They had one job and it got messed up. It was the goal --

ENTEN: You had one job, one job and it just didn't work out.

BERMAN: It was to split everyone up, but it didn't happen. So Elizabeth Warren maybe has a clear run tomorrow.

ENTEN: She -- she has a clear run, but also I'm not quite sure as many people will tune in.

But I think there's one thing I want to kind of point out. You know, there's some real questions, will these debates move thing? And I sort of looked at past debates and I'm sort of thinking, I'm a little skeptical.

So, remember oops? Remember that. Rick Perry, you know, he couldn't remember the third department that he wanted to cut, energy, which is actually the one he currently runs. There's this whole idea that, you know, oh, this was the end of the road for Rick Perry. But the fact of the matter was, he was dropping long before that debate. So the night before the debate he was at 10 percent in the average of polls. He was at 31 percent in September of 2011. He had already dropped off. So there really wasn't much movement that happened on that night. That was not a game changer.

CAMEROTA: OK, the opposite was true for Carley Fiorina. She saw a bump, right?

ENTEN: She did absolutely see a bump. And so before the second GOP debate back in 2016, she was at 6 percent. After that debate she jumped up to 10 percent, while Donald Trump, who had a poor performance dropped from 31 percent to 26 percent. But I think this is key, Alisyn. Just because you have a momentary bump does not necessarily mean it will be long lasting because, remember, Trump won the nomination while Carley Fiorina didn't win a single primary.

[08:55:10] BERMAN: There is a sense though with Perry and with what you're about to show us that a bad debate can be the nail in the coffin. ENTEN: Yes, it definitely can be.

This is Marco Rubio. Remember when he had come in third in the Iowa caucuses. He had his 3-2-1 strategy. Come in third in Iowa, second in New Hampshire, win South Carolina, and he had jumped all the way up to 16 percent just before the New Hampshire primary debate, the final one. But then, take a look, after that, where he basically -- Chris Christie went after him and he kept saying, we know exactly who Barack Obama is, he dropped to 14 percent and then just 11 percent in the results. And, obviously, John Kasich came in second in that contest and kind of was the end of the road looking back for Marco Rubio.

CAMEROTA: My daughters are riveted by soccer. Do you have anything on that?

ENTEN: I -- I do. I do, in fact, have something on soccer.

So the women have made another quarterfinal. That is eight consecutive quarter final appearances. That's -- includes every Woman's World Cup. They've at least made the quarter finals in all of them. Versus men's soccer from 1934 to 2018, just one quarterfinal appearance. So the women's soccer team doing very, very well.

CAMEROTA: And yet they are paid less, Harry.

ENTEN: They are paid less.

CAMEROTA: Where is your slide on that?

ENTEN: Well, I'll just say performance has clearly not been correlated with money.

BERMAN: He's got a slide on men's salary, but no side on women's salary.

CAMEROTA: Right. Right. Yes, Harry.

ENTEN: You know, we can make our own slide here.

CAMEROTA: You got it.

BERMAN: All right, Harry Enten, thank you very much.

ENTEN: Thank you.

BERMAN: Go USA.

All right, escalating attacks between the U.S. and Iran. What does it mean to the idea of perhaps negotiating to diffuse tensions? CNN has it covered. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

END