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How Trump's Fiction Gets More Dramatic over Time; House to Vote on Thursday on Impeachment Procedures; Trump Booed by World Series Crowd, Fans Chant "Lock Him Up"; Crowd Condemns Trump in His Own Backyard; Sanders Criticized for Advising Black Student to Be Polite. Aired 3:30-4p ET
Aired October 28, 2019 - 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: CNN reporter Daniel Dale is with me now. Daniel, let's start there because the President did mention Osama bin Laden in his book.
DANIEL DALE, CNN REPORTER, WASHINGTON BUREAU: He did but it was not a prediction of anything and it was not a declaration that bin Laden had to be killed. What we had in this book which is called "The America We Deserve" -- a 2000 book -- was a passing reference to bin Laden in the context of a discussion of American foreign policy. Trump said, "One day we're told a shadowy figure with no fixed address, named Osama bin Laden, is public enemy number one and U.S. jet fighters lay waste to his camp in Afghanistan. He escapes back under some rock. And a few news cycles later it's on to a new enemy and new crisis."
That was it. There was no declaration that Osama need to be killed in some way. Now in a separate portion of the book, Brooke, Trump did say that he expected a major terrorist attack to hit the U.S. But he did not tie this to bin Laden in particular nor Al Qaeda and he acknowledged that this was a widespread belief, not this own prescient prediction. So this is all nonsense.
BALDWIN: And you're noticing that the President's narratives, right, especially, his public comments are becoming more and more dramatic over time. So let's just start with what he said about signing an executive order on reversing some environmental regulations. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I had ranchers, farmers and some home builders behind me and these are tough people. They were strong, tough men and women and half of them were crying.
Many of them were tough, strong men and women and almost all of them were crying.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: Daniel. You checked the tape? DALE: None of them were crying at all. It's usually hard to check
these claims about people crying because he situates them backstage or in somewhere with no witnesses but in this case, we actually do have video. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: You know what this, you know what it says? Right. You're going back to work. You're going back to work.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DALE: So no tears whatsoever, even though the President again claimed there were.
BALDWIN: No tears. All right. Another escalating tall tale, this idea that President Obama pursued a meeting with Kim Jong-un. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: When I was talking to President Obama, he essentially was ready to go to war with North Korea. He felt you had to almost go to war. I did ask, have you spoken to him? He goes, no. I said do you think it would be a good thing to speak with him, maybe?
President Obama wanted to meet and Chairman Kim would not meet him. The Obama administration was begging for a meeting. They were begging for meetings constantly and Chairman Kim would not meet with him.
President Obama told me that. He said the biggest problem, I don't know how to solve it. He told me he doesn't know how to solve it. I said, did you ever call him? No. Actually, he tried 11 times.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: All right. So let's talk facts. Have any former Obama advisers weighed in on this?
DALE: Yes, former National Security Adviser Susan Rice and former deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes both tweeted to say that this was absolute nonsense, that Obama never wanted to meet with Kim, Obama never called Kim. This is all made up. Obama practiced a doctrine of what they called strategic patience, which was essentially ignoring North Korea while they practiced belligerent behavior. And so there is no evidence for this in the slightest.
BALDWIN: Daniel Dale, thanks as always for running through all of these and fact checking the President. Good to have you on.
Coming up, one of the President's old favorites from the 2016 campaign comes back to bite him at gave five of the World Series in Washington.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CROWD CHANTING: Lock him up. Lock him up. Lock him up.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: What this scene says about our national pastime in the age of Donald J. Trump.
[15:35:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BALDWIN: All right. We are back with some breaking news from Capitol Hill. We are just now learning that the House will vote this Thursday on a resolution related to impeachment procedures. This is coming into us as a former Trump official defied Congress today and refused to show up for his testimony. So let's go straight to senior congressional correspondent Manu Raju. And so, Manu, talk to me about what exactly happens on Thursday?
MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, this is an interesting move by House Democrats who have faced criticism from the White House for not actually having a formal vote to authorize their impeachment inquiry. Now what this will do, this resolution will essentially set the procedures for allowing this investigation to move forward, detail exactly what this inquiry would look like in the days ahead.
And according to a letter that Nancy Pelosi is circulating, it says a resolution establishes the procedure for hearings that are open to the American people, authorizes disclosure of deposition transcripts and outlines procedures to transfer evidence to the Judiciary Committee as it considers potential articles of impeachment and sets forth due process rights to the President and his counsel.
So what that means is significant. It suggests the next phase of this impeachment inquiry is about to happen. Right now we're seeing closed- door hearings happening in the House Intelligence Committee, hearings that have brought in witnesses who have detailed what has happened as it relates to the President's efforts with Ukraine. But the next step, assuming that Democrats do move to impeach this President, would move to the House Judiciary Committee.
The House Judiciary Committee would consider articles of impeachment before sending it on to the full House to vote to impeach the President, which would be the third time in American history that a President has been impeached.
[15:40:00]
So this resolution that's going to be voted on this week in the House will detail what that next phase will look like, public hearings, what the transcripts release will look like and also detail exactly the next step for the Judiciary Committee. What's interesting here, Brooke, of course, is that Democrats have been criticized for weeks on end by Republicans. The White House has not turned over evidence to Congress because they contend they should have had a vote to authorize that inquiry. Democrats have said there's no reason to have any sort of vote, nothing in the rules, in the Constitution requires them to have a vote they say. But by setting forth this resolution moving forward, it's essentially call the White House's bluff, if you will, to say we're going to vote on this, set up procedures and now there's no reason not to turn over this information to Congress. So an interesting decision here by the leaders to actually take a formal vote, setting forward on these procedures, something the Democratic leadership has resisted doing for some time -- Brooke.
BALDWIN: Got it. Thursday, new phase. Manu, thank you very much for that.
Speaking of the House, just moments ago, emotional words from Congresswoman Katie Hill about her reason for resigning. Plus did the crowd at the World Series last night go a tad too far when President Trump showed up?
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CROWD CHANTING: Lock him up. Lock him up. Lock him up.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[15:45:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CROWD: Boo. Boo.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN (voice over): You heard it there, President Trump was booed when introduced to fans inside Nats Park during game five of the World Series last night. And it didn't end there. The boos were followed by this chant.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CROWD CHANTING: Lock him up. Lock him up. Lock him up. Lock him up. Lock him up.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: The President of the United States, the first lady, members of Congress heard the chant as the Houston Astros played the Washington Nationals. The President had been asked to throw out the first pitch but declined. Why? He says it's because he would look too bulky in the bullet-proof vests the Presidents are required to wear. Of course, there is a long, long, long history of Presidents throwing out the first pitch. Herbert Hoover is actually the first one to be booed all the way back into 1931. We'll talk about that in a second. President Obama took some ribbing for the so-called "mom jeans" that he wore to the mound, and President Bush was both cheered in 2001 that was just after September 11th, and then jeered in 2008.
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(CROWD CHEERS BUSH 2001)
(CROWD JEERS BUSH 2008)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: Tim Naftali is a CNN Presidential historian. Amy Bass, author of the book, "One Goal -- A Coach, a Team, and the Game That Brought a Divided Town Together."
So, welcome to both of you. And just out of the gate first, what did you think when you heard the boos and the chant, "lock him up"?
AMY BASS, AUTHOR, "ONE GOAL: A COACH, A TEAM, AND THE GAME THAT BROUGHT A DIVIDED TOWN TOGETHER": I thought it was a moment, a rare, rare moment in which we see the President face a crowd that he hasn't vetted get to react to him. And people were brought together to watch a baseball game and that tends to help people sort of shed identities that might otherwise keep them apart. And they had something they were unified about last night and they used some Constitutional rights to express that.
BALDWIN: There is Democratic Senator I want to get your two cents in just a second. Chris Coons actually said this --
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SEN. CHRIS COONS (D-DE): I have a hard time with the idea of a crowd on a globally televised sporting event chanting "lock him up" about our President. I frankly think the office of the President deserves respect even when the actions of our President at times don't. I certainly hope that we won't hear "lock him up" chants at Democratic rallies or at our convention.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: Does he have a point? What do you think?
TIM NAFTALI, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Well, the lock him up was a bit much but after all the President -- here's the problem. The President has changed all the rules. The President has basically disrupted the office and the question is how should we as American citizens respond to the office that he's disrupted? But it is true, for an international event, the World Series, those are the finals of baseball and to hear that is disturbing. But to get back to where this fits in the history of booing --
BALDWIN: Yes, the history of Presidential booing
NAFTALI: -- Presidential booing. You know when Herbert Hoover was booed and it was the first time that a chief executive --
BALDWIN: 1931.
NAFTALI: 1931. He wasn't in Washington, D.C., he was in Philadelphia. The first President to be booed by civil servants and people who live in the District was Truman. By the way, in 1932, Herbert Hoover went to the opening of the game in D.C. and wasn't booed. So it was like D.C. was somehow a special, protected space for Presidents that they could go to a public game and not be booed. And that's what we saw disappear yesterday.
[15:50:00]
That was the first time, I believe, since the World Series game where -- that was the first time I think since Harry Truman that anyone had been booed, a President had been booed at a World Series game because it was a World Series game that Truman. So I think the issue here is that the President wants a protected space. He wants to be talking to his base.
BALDWIN: To Amy's point about a sympathetic crowd.
NAFTALI: Exactly. And one of the things the President has to be is President of all Americans. So you should be -- you should hope that the President could go into a public space that has not vetted or curated and get -- not only get respect but show respect. And I think this is the issue with someone who comes in to try to destroy being presidential. As he said, being presidential is boring.
Well he may have learned yesterday that if you play the presidential game, you might get presidential respect and by going at the office with such dislike and contempt you may be inviting the kind of treatment he had just yesterday.
BALDWIN: I hear you. It seems that the office, the reverence, it's changed. But to you, just, Amy, on public discourse and how it has changed these last couple of years with Trump in office. Like I don't think it is news that a lot of people in Washington, D.C. didn't like that man, booed him. But --
BASS: No, 4 percent, right. He got 4 percent in D.C.
BALDWIN: But people chanted this. Do you think part of it is on us too? Like we're rolling around in the mud as well if they are chanting this?
BASS: Well, I think there's two things. I think that on the one hand, the booing again, this was such a rare opportunity for people to voice and when we talk about athletes who protest and athletes who create political moments out of their moment in a spotlight. Because they don't change who they are when they are in the game. Spectators, we deserve to think about spectators in the same way.
You know, Mike Pence didn't stand up during the opening ceremony of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympic Games when the Korean delegation walked in. That was his moment to sort of say, you know, no, I'm not going to be respectful. And you know this what right he stormed out of a Colts game because players were kneeling on the field. So I think that on the one hand, you can't have it both ways.
And on the other hand, that people get to use this communal space that sport provides to articulate things in terms of did "lock him up" go too far, I think this is trying to co-opt a phrase that wasn't created by the people that were chanting it last night and throwing it back. And seeing what happens to it. Would we love for that phrase to go away, in terms of political opponents? Absolutely. But maybe it needs to be lobbed over to the other side to see if that can happen.
BALDWIN: Well said. Amy and Tim, Thank you very much.
NAFTALI: Pleasure.
BASS: Thank you.
BALDWIN: More on our breaking news. We are learning who helped authorities in the hunt the ISIS leader killed in the operation over the weekend by U.S. forces, and it involves his DNA. We'll be right back.
[15:55:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BALDWIN: Democratic Presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders sparking backlash for what some believe was a blunt, tone deaf answer to a question about a troubling issue facing African Americans. It happened at a criminal justice forum at an historically black college in South Carolina. A student asked Sanders for advice on how he should handle getting pulled over by a police officer.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I would do my best to identify who that police officer is in a polite way, ask him or her for their name, I would respect what they are doing so that you don't get shot in the back of the head.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BALDWIN: CNN senior political reporter Nia-Malika Henderson is with me. And, Nia, what has been the reaction to his response?
NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: You know, he's gotten pushback particularly online for this answer. You know, the questioner is essentially asking Bernie Sanders to do the kind of talk that black parents often do to their kids. And listen, black parents are telling their kids how to interact with police officers might tell them the exact same thing, essentially, be respectful, don't move in sudden ways, always have your hands in a visible way. And so in that way I think Bernie Sanders was in something of a difficult position because it is odd to sort of hear the kind of respectability politics coming from a white candidate. So I think that was part of the pushback there.
Somebody like Biden and Warren, they probably answered it better because they talked about the systemic problem of police brutality. I think Biden said something like, listen, if you were my child, you would be white and you wouldn't be stopped. Some people thought that was a dodge but he definitely got at the more broader problem, and that is a problem of police brutality that it's not going to be fixed by any sort of individual action by any black or brown person that might be stopped by the police.
BALDWIN: What's your sense, 20 seconds, between the Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden answers? Which got the better reaction?
HENDERSON: Yes. I think both of those got the better reaction even thought they were criticized in some ways too. Biden was sort of criticized for dodging but again I think their answers took much more of a wholistic approach to this problem saying it was essentially a systematic problem of racism in this country and not something that could be addressed by being respectful to a police officer.
BALDWIN: It is an important to be asked. Sure would love to hear from the student who asked it. Nia-Malika Henderson, thank you very much.
HENDERSON: Thanks, Brooke.
BALDWIN: And thank you for being with me these last two hours. I'm Brooke Baldwin, let's go to Jake. "THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper starts right now.
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