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Trump and the Birther Controversy; U.S. Special Ops Assist Turkish Forces; Syrian Cease-Fire Holds but Aid Stalled; Pro-Kremlin Parties Set to Dominate Russian Election; Frantic 9-1-1 Call Leads to Woman's Rescue; Migrants in England Face Xenophobia; Beatles' Documentary Premieres in London. Aired 3-3:30a ET
Aired September 17, 2016 - 03:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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NATALIE ALLEN, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Donald Trump finally admits President Obama was born in the U.S.
But guess who he blames for raising the birther issue?
The U.S. steps up its fight in Syria but the cease-fire may be shaky at best.
And it is the second typhoon in the last week to hit Taiwan. Derek will have that story for us.
And a new mother proves women rock at multitasking. What she did while she ran a marathon. We're going to show you. It is all ahead here on CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Natalie Allen.
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ALLEN: We begin on the campaign trail in the U.S. Donald Trump finally admits that Barack Obama was indeed born in the United States. But now he is repeating the false claim that Hillary Clinton actually started the birther issue.
Trump ended an event Friday by saying that Mr. Obama was born in the U.S., period. He didn't apologize for leading the birther movement starting about five years ago, though. Tom Foreman tells us how Trump got the birther movement going and how we got to this point.
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TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The birther movement had its birth in Barack Obama's first presidential run when some Democrats wanted to stop him and hit on this idea that maybe he wasn't born in the United States and wasn't eligible.
Hillary Clinton never embraced that story.
So why do some people think that she did? Go to 2207, when a campaign aide wrote an assessment of the race, where he said Barack Obama's lack of American roots could hold him back in the primary. What he was talking about was Obama's unusual childhood, living some in Hawaii, some in Indonesia, thought that might not play very well with voters.
He never said Obama wasn't born in the United States. In fact, we know one Clinton campaign worker who tried to push that story out; got immediately dumped by the campaign.
So what kept the story alive?
Republicans embraced it and Donald Trump in particular. As Donald Trump started considering a run for the presidency himself, here we get to 2011 and suddenly he's showing up on TV, saying why doesn't he, Obama, show his birth certificate?
He goes on to talk radio and on the Internet, saying I'm starting to wonder myself whether or not he was born in this country and in an even more pronounced way he said, "If he wasn't born in this country, which is a real possibility, then he has pulled one of the great cons in the story of politics."
So you see how he's stacking up the doubt here. And then Barack Obama releases his long form birth certificate. And everyone thinks the story is dead. It's finished. There's the proof. He was born in America.
But not so fast. We move forward and trump starts bringing it up again, a lot of people do not think it, that birth certificate, was an authentic certificate and then he keeps going, saying things on Twitter, for example. He jumps out there and he says an extremely credible source has called my office and told me that Barack Obama's birth certificate is a fraud.
And he keeps building on it. He never lets it entirely die. Every single one of his appearances did from Donald Trump, a lot of people feel it wasn't a proper certificate. And he never stopped with this. It kept coming up, it, telling CNN just this year, who knows about Obama? Who knows? Who cares right now?
I have my own theory on Obama.
Bottom line, every bit of this came from Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton did not start it. And he did keep it going. Those are two facts, no matter how much Trump may try to deny them.
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ALLEN: Recently on the campaign trail, Donald Trump threatened to roll back the Obama administration's efforts to normalize relations with Cuba if Trump's elected.
In Miami, Florida, on Friday, Trump said Washington should have made a better deal with Havana. He called it one-sided and said it benefits only the Cuban government. Trump said he would get rid of President Obama's, quote, "confessions"
if Cuba doesn't meet certain demands, including releasing political prisoners and allowing more political freedoms.
Trump and Clinton will face off in their first debate against each other on September 26th but there will be no third party candidate with them. Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein won't be there because they have not polled at 15 percent or higher in at least five national opinion polls.
That according to the Commission on Presidential Debates. It says it will review its criteria for the second and third debates. See if they make it on the stage.
The U.S. has announced the death of another high-ranking --
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ALLEN: -- ISIS leader. The Pentagon says a drone strike in Raqqah, Syria, killed ISIS information minister Wa'il Adil al-Salman. The air raid was September 7th. The Pentagon says Salman was in charge of propaganda videos showing torture and executions.
He had direct access to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, another ISIS leader, Mohammed al-Adnani, was killed by a U.S. drone in Syria August 30th.
A contingent of U.S. special ops forces is assisting Turkey in its fight to push ISIS away from its border. Turkish troops entered Syria in August just days after a suicide bomber killed 54 people at a wedding in Turkey. Some 40 special ops troops are now training and advising the Turks.
The Pentagon calls the mission Operation Noble Lance. The U.S. was already providing air support to the Turkish offensive.
The cease-fire that began on Monday in Syria is holding but humanitarian aid still has not reached hundreds of thousands of desperate people. As Frederik Pleitgen reports from Aleppo, mistrust is growing on both sides.
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FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): In Aleppo, this is what the cease-fire looks like, government forces moving around armored personnel carriers in a contested district.
And oftentimes this is what the cease-fire sounds like.
Syrian army personnel acknowledging they don't trust the truce.
"We're sticking to the cease-fire," this pro-government fighter says, "but the other side is not. That's why I don't think the cease-fire will work." For their part, rebels accuse government forces of breaching the
cease-fire. Despite the transgressions, though, the U.N. says by and large the cessation of hostilities is working.
But many Aleppo residents are still suffering from the clashes that took place before it went into effect.
At the Ramouseh hospital, Ahmed Jabr and his 7-year-old son, Mahmud, lay side by side, both wounded by rebel shelling that killed three of Mahmud's brothers.
"When the bombshell fell, I went to the ground," the boy says, "and I was bleeding. I felt the shrapnel in my body."
It happened last Friday, the day the cease-fire was announced, crushing Ahmed Jabr's faith that the cessation of hostilities might work.
"Even after the cease-fire, I was here in the hospital," he says, "and I saw wounded people still being brought here."
And the calm remains strained. Damascus saw heavy clashes on Friday around the rebel-held districts of Jobar. And in the early morning hours of Friday, opposition and government forces exchanged fire right here on the outskirts of Aleppo, another sign of just how fragile the current cease-fire is -- Fred Pleitgen, CNN, Aleppo.
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ALLEN: The cease-fire agreement calls for Russia and the U.S. to work together in the fight against militants if the truce holds. But as Matthew Chance reports, cooperation with the U.S. is not a winning strategy for candidates in Sunday's Russian election.
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MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It is the Kremlin-controlled channel, where most Russians get their news and views. For the first time in years, one of the country's main opposition figures is a guest.
Mikhail Kasyanov was invited to debate upcoming parliamentary elections and to have an American flag planted in front of him by a pro-Kremlin candidate, reminding millions of viewers who Russia's opposition is accused of defending.
But even this exposure on state television is an opportunity.
MIKHAIL KASYANOV, PARNAS PARTY: It is angering some people but others start to waking up. They wake up and saying just it is possible, even in the situation where everything seems to be under total control of Putin. But it is possible but here on the first channel and just it -- they just started thinking that something could be changed or something or other is being changed in the country. CHANCE (voice-over): These are the scenes in 2011 after the last parliamentary elections in Russia. Amid allegations of rigged voting, crowds gathered in Moscow, chanting "Down with Putin." Opposition activists say the Kremlin is desperate to avoid a repeat.
KASYANOV: The differences between this election process and the previous one, which was to solve a dilemma, the difference is that, for the first time, opposition party is allowed to participate in elections. They think they should create some kind of a picture that elections are free and fair, in accordance with international standards and so on.
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CHANCE (voice-over): But that picture is not complete. Opposition figures like Kasyanov have complained of threats and harassment. Here, he was recorded being attacked with a pie in a restaurant.
There's also been a secretly filmed sex tape that posted online, what critics say was a bid to discredit and humiliate.
It gets more sinister, too. Here Kasyanov is shown with another opposition figure in the crosshairs of a sniper rifle. The video was posted by the head of the Chechen Republic in Russia. He said it was a joke. But in a country where Kremlin critics are routinely murdered, no one is laughing.
CHANCE: How concerned are you?
How frightened are you that something could happen to you?
KASYANOV: These days in my country, unfortunately, everyone should be scared by the behavior of authorities and other people. And, me, too. I'm a normal person. That's why I am also scared. I can expect something to happen with me and my family but I have to continue this, I would say, mission or whatever, job, to which we are already committed to do.
CHANCE (voice-over): And like him, hundreds of opposition candidates across Russia are taking that risk, despite the threats standing in these Russian elections, for a slim chance their opposition voices will be heard -- Matthew Chance, CNN, Moscow.
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ALLEN: A woman in the U.S. makes a frantic 9-1-1 phone call as her alleged abductor slept nearby. Coming up here, we will let you know what police found when they got to that house.
Plus: E.U. leaders get together with one important act.
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(MUSIC PLAYING) ALLEN: Edward Albee is being remembered as one of the greatest playwrights of our time and a titan of theater. He certainly was. His personal assistant says Albee died on Friday at his home in Montauk, New York, after a short illness. His masterpiece, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolff?" epitomizes his provocative and often dark style. The three-time Pulitzer winner was 88 years old.
In Ohio, a second body has been identified in a suspected kidnapping and murder case in the U.S. after officials identified another body earlier this week. Officers found the bodies in Ohio after receiving a desperate 9-1-1 call from a woman saying she had been abducted. Our George Howell picks it up from there.
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GEORGE HOWELL, CNN ANCHOR: This story about a woman rescued after abducted and forced to engage in sexual activity by a man who's charged with killing multiple women. Her plea for help captured --
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HOWELL: -- in a very chilling 9-1-1 call. Listen.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: 9-1-1, what is the address to your emergency?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: At the 4th Street Laundromat.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What is it?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: 4th Street Laundromat.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What's the problem?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I've been abducted.
HOWELL (voice-over): The 9-1-1 call is chilling.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But you are at the Laundromat?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, I'm in the bedroom with him.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you know what color the house is?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No. Please hurry.
HOWELL (voice-over): A woman pleading for help, her accused abductor sleeping in the same room.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Does he have a weapon?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He's got a Taser.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you injured?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A little.
HOWELL (voice-over): Speaking in a whisper, the woman's fear is palpable.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Is there any way you can get out of the building?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't know without waking him and I'm scared.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Is there a bathroom in the house?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, his bedroom is closed and he made it so it would make noise.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So if you had to go to the bathroom, he would do something to you?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, because he had me tied up.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you tied up now?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, I -- yes, but I kind of freed myself.
HOWELL (voice-over): The dispatcher encouraging the caller to stay on the line until police arrive at the abandoned house.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, (INAUDIBLE), I think I woke him up.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Just set the phone down.
HOWELL (voice-over): Then silence. Minutes pass as the woman waits desperately.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you still there?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How much longer?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How much longer?
HOWELL (voice-over): Finally, officers arrive and the caller works up the courage to leave the bedroom.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Can you get out of the house?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's locked.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's locked?
Are you at the door?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, I am.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She's at the door.
Is there a window there?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. I'm looking out of it. Tell them to come back.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She said to --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hurry, hurry.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She said to hurry up and come back.
HOWELL (voice-over): After some 20 minutes on the line, the woman is rescued.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Come out, come on out. Hurry up, hurry up. Get out here.
Where is he?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Bedroom sleeping.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Still sleeping?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK, they have her.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Show me your hands. Put up your (INAUDIBLE) hands right now. Do it!
HOWELL (voice-over): Inside, police arrest 40-year-old Shawn Grate before finding two bodies, including the remains of Stacey Stanley, a grandmother, who went missing last week. Grate also leading police to a third body in the rubble of a burned-out home nearby.
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ALLEN: What a riveting story about that young woman was rescued. One of the victims, Stacey Stanley, will be buried Saturday. The suspect is being held on $1 million bail. He is to be in court on Monday.
European Union leaders have agreed on a road map for the bloc's future priorities. They held a summit in the Slovakian capital of Bratislava without the United Kingdom.
European Council president Donald Tusk said talks about the U.K.'s split from the E.U. cannot begin without a formal notice from Britain, possibly next year. London mayor Sadiq Khan said the U.S. -- excuse me, the U.K. shouldn't rush.
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SADIQ KHAN, MAYOR OF LONDON: It's crucial London has a seat around the table.
Why?
Because London is a powerhouse for our country. We need to make sure, for example, even outside the E.U., we could have access to a single market. You're right to remind me, we've got to make sure, even outside the E.U., we can possible threshold (ph) services.
And that's why it is important we don't rush in to negotiations with the E.U.
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ALLEN: And those complications don't even include the chance that Scotland could leave the U.K. to stay with the E.U. Stay tuned.
The United Nations says authorities in the U.K. need to do a better job at condemning and prosecuting hate crimes. A U.N. report says the campaign for Britain to leave the E.U. incited dangerous anti-migrant and xenophobic rhetoric. Isa Soares visited an English town where immigrants from Poland feel targeted.
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ISA SOARES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Nita (ph) comes here every day, in silence with a simple blessing. She pays her respects for life taken away.
Arkadiusz Jozwik was only an acquaintance to her. But his death had made many Poles here in Harlow feel like he was family. He was knocked unconscious and left for dead on this very spot by a group of six teenagers, an incident local police are treating as a hate crime, one of more than 30 against Poles since Britain voted to leave the European Union, according to the Polish embassy.
Nita (ph) has experienced the racism first-hand, both pre- and post- Brexit vote.
NITA (PH), POLISH NEIGHBOR: My neighbor told me to (INAUDIBLE) his country but since Brexit, it's worse, like beautiful balloon blow up. And many hates come --
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NITA (PH): -- on people. Many people are not political correct anymore. And they say what they think, what they always think but never then tell about that.
SOARES (voice-over): It's these experiences that have left the Polish community here on edge. So to ease tensions, Polish police have sent two officers to Harlow to patrol the streets for a week. We bumped into them in the center of town.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are here basically to help our colleagues from the Essex police. That's our main role. We want to speak with the Polish community, see what their concerns are.
SOARES: Sixty-eight percent of people here voted to leave the European Union. Whilst we can't say that the incidents here are related to Brexit vote, what there have exposed a huge fault line in a community that has one of the highest levels of Eastern European immigrants in the country. SOARES (voice-over): The locals, many outraged by the death of
Arkadiusz tell me this isn't a racist town. They say it's just anti- social behavior by a group of unruly youngsters.
But as we walk through the city center, the social divide is palpable.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I've not come across any racism. People argue and get annoyed but we are getting a lot of Europeans coming into the town. And Harlow Council seem that they have given them (INAUDIBLE) housing, when people who've lived there all of their life are struggling to get on that council list.
SOARES (voice-over): Economics clearly play a part here. Harlow, once a vibrant town full of opportunities, with factories dotted around it, is now full of boarded-up properties with unemployment among the highest in the county. And those who have been here for years with little to do are looking for someone to blame.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This didn't happen before Brexit, put it that way. It's as simple as that. It didn't happen. Before Brexit, everything was going on all right. But they are blaming Eastern Europeans. You can't blame them. I can understand it. I mean, I'd go somewhere if I could get a better life, get everything paid for me. Of course I would.
SOARES (voice-over): For this 40-year-old night shift factory worker, nothing was for free. And in the pursuit of a better life, he was the one who paid the highest price -- Isa Soares, Harlow, Eastern England.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ALLEN: Lawyers for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said they will appeal a ruling by a Swedish court to uphold his arrest warrant. He is wanted in connection with rape allegations from 2010. He has been holed up in Ecuadoran embassy in London since 2012.
He said he is afraid Sweden would send him to the United States, where he could be charged for publishing government secrets. Ecuador said last month they would let Swedish investigators question him. That is set for October 17th.
Speaking of leaks and U.S. government secrets, Oliver Stone's new movie about Edward Snowden has opened in theaters in about 1 dozen countries. Snowden fled to Russia about three years ago after leaking a trove of highly classified national security documents. They revealed a massive surveillance program.
Now he is asking President Obama to pardon him, saying his actions helped bring about needed changes. The White House said he should return and face espionage charges.
Meantime, just watch the movie and see what Oliver Stone has done with it.
DEREK VAN DAM, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Yes, it will be interesting to see the Hollywood spin on it. ALLEN: Yes, it will be.
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ALLEN: All right, you've got to stick around for this one. You know the saying about a cat having nine lives?
Hopefully that woman does. Well, here's one that must have more than (INAUDIBLE). That's a little kitten. Somehow it fell out of an SUV. That's kind of a -- hmm, I don't know how that happened -- on a highway in Russia. Seventeen cars just missed this tiny little cat, often coming within a whisker of the little thing.
Somehow this stunned kitten survived until one savior, a motorist stopped in the middle of the busy road and carried the little stranded cat to safety, where we hope it has a very nice little life now.
Poor little thing.
All right. Well, running a half marathon is hard enough. Wait until you see this. Especially when you just had a baby five months ago. I wouldn't know this.
But this multitasking supermom is taking it to another level.
What's she doing right there?
Well, Annie Young (ph) from the state of Utah pumped breast milk during her race last Saturday so she could feed her baby at the finish line. Afterwards, she found a race photographer had captured the picture.
So she decided to share it on Facebook, hoping it would help other moms in the U.S. struggling with breast-feeding in public. And 10,000 likes later, it appears it has. And there's a happy fed baby. That mom is a supermom.
Beatlemania returned to London Thursday night. Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney decided to come together for the film premiere of The Beatles' "Eight Days a Week: The Touring Years."
The new documentary is directed by Ron Howard. It follows the Fab Four's rise to stardom and features rare and exclusive footage of the lads from Liverpool. Be sure to watch that one.
Thanks for watching CNN. I'm Natalie Allen. Next is Erin Burnett "OUTFRONT" and our top stories.
