Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

Trump Defends Story Of New Jersey Muslims Celebrating 9/11; Trump Defends Rough Treatment Of Black Protester; Russians Deny Jet Violated Turkey Airspace; Poll: More Say Racism A Big Problem Than 20 Years Ago. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired November 24, 2015 - 07:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: We are watching breaking news. Turkey says it shot down a Russian warplane saying that jet violated its airspace on the Syrian border. Turkey claims Russian pilots ignored ten warnings given within a matter of minutes.

Russia, however, denies that their jet left Syrian airspace. The kremlin is calling this a very serious incident. NATO is now set to hold an emergency session to address the matter. The U.S. is monitoring the situation. Officials say, however, no Americans are involved -- Chris.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, there's a lot on the table right now. It all affects the election of course. We bring in the man from Team Trump. Michael Cohen, executive vice president of the Trump Organization and special counsel to Donald Trump himself. Counsel, good to see you. Happy Thanksgiving in advance.

MICHAEL COHEN, SPECIAL COUNSEL TO DONALD TRUMP: To you as well.

CUOMO: All right, let's take these one by one. The 9/11 happens. Horrible by anybody's reckoning. The idea of celebrating that is inhumane. Donald Trump says he saw it. He believed it. Thousands and thousands, people say it's not true. He says, yes it is. Why make a point of something like this?

COHEN: I think what he's doing is he's comparing it now to what the terrible tragedy that took place in Paris and what's going on all around the world with ISIS. They are really a group of thugs. They are terrorists and they're changing the way the world sees Islam.

CUOMO: Bad guys. Anybody who would celebrate something like that no matter what their faith is, bad people, but why exaggerate it? Why say --

COHEN: Why would you say that he's exaggerating it?

CUOMO: Because he said thousands and thousands.

COHEN: You know, whether it's thousands and thousands or a thousand people or even just one person, it's irrelevant. To celebrate this tragedy, this killing of innocent people that went to work, right, trying to enjoy the American dream to earn a dollar?

It's wrong and Mr. Trump is making his point. Now, many people have criticized and said it's not true. It didn't happen. "Washington Post" on September 18th, 2001, did an in-depth story on this exact position.

And they acknowledge -- Mr. Trump also has millions and millions of followers as you know on social media. I can't tell you the number of people that have responded and said I'm from Jersey and I've seen it.

CUOMO: Yes, here's the thing. I know other people have said it. They say it to me on social media. One, that "Washington Post" article, that was one paragraph and a whole story. The author walked it back. They said the FBI investigated allegations of it.

They never substantiated a claim of thousands. The reason it's relevant is that the guy may be president of the United States and what Donald Trump says has to be as accurate as it can be and thousands and thousands is a gross exaggeration.

If you're going to be president of the United States, don't you have to say it right?

COHEN: The exact number, I don't anybody can say if Mr. Trump said thousands --

CUOMO: Thousands and thousands.

COHEN: I would have to turn around and say that he's probably right.

CUOMO: Probably right?

COHEN: He's probably right.

CUOMO: He's probably wrong.

COHEN: No, he's probably right.

CUOMO: There's no way to substantiate thousands and thousands.

COHEN: There's no way to say that it wasn't. The problem that you have --

CUOMO: They don't have reports. They don't have any video.

COHEN: They pull it back why? Because they are told to pull it back. That's the big --

CUOMO: Thousands and thousands.

COHEN: I don't have the exact number.

CUOMO: Did it happen? Yes, it happened. Was it something that showed a mass movement?

COHEN: It most certainly is. There's a movement that's out there. CUOMO: There maybe be, but I'm saying that didn't happen.

COHEN: The FBI director turned around and said, yes, right now ISIS is confirmed exists in every single state. You know what? It could be thousands and thousands. It could be a thousand. What the exact number was, I don't know. I don't think it's relevant. I think what's relevant is the point that there are really bad people among us and that's what Mr. Trump is actually trying to portray.

CUOMO: Whoever did it is a terrible person. We wish we did have video so there could be action taken against them within our system. I'm just saying. Accuracy is an issue.

Another point of this that became a flash point and it's great to get your head on it is this guy comes and protests at the event. Nobody likes when that happens. That's part of the process, right? He gets beat down at the event. Donald Trump says maybe he deserved it. He was doing something terrible.

COHEN: The guy is a professional agitator. Rumors are out there in the internet and social media. The guy has been tased 30 times. He goes to these various different rallies and he creates all sorts of problems. You know what? It happened. Obviously nobody wants to see anybody get injured.

CUOMO: He said maybe he deserved it.

[07:35:06]COHEN: Maybe he did. Maybe he did. He went there to cause a problem. He went there to start a fight. This is nothing to do with Black Lives Matter. This is a guy that's looking for media attention.

CUOMO: I haven't said the phrase. I'm saying (inaudible), a guy comes to your event and gets beat up. He should be against the people that beat him up.

COHEN: I agree. Nobody wants to see anybody get beaten up. If the guy goes there for the purpose of creating an issue, he wants to be an agitator at what was a great event for Mr. Trump, 14,000 plus people, you know what? That's between the individual who wants to be an agitator and those that want to listen to Mr. Trump, and to try to see America become great again.

CUOMO: What about their leader? Doesn't he want to inspire people to be their best selves or does he want to inspire them to be like whatever the worse agitator?

COHEN: You know what? The guy is an agitator. The guy is looking for (inaudible). It's like a guy who walks into a bar and he wants to start a fight with somebody. He ends up getting beaten up.

CUOMO: And as a bartender, I would say take him outside. Keep your hands off.

COHEN: Beat him up outside?

CUOMO: No, because you want people to be better than what's coming at them.

COHEN: You went outside and helped?

CUOMO: I said take him an outside.

COHEN: Every now and then an agitator deserves it.

CUOMO: I'm just saying it comes down to what the quality of the message is. I'll take your point on it and the people can decide. Trump to Turkey. This is a big situation that's going on. I know it's between Russia and Turkey.

We heard from U.S. authorities. No U.S. forces involved, they say. OK, so it's not about what we did. This is going to be a leadership moment. What would Donald Trump do in this situation? You have to figure out a way to keep this from escalating.

COHEN: I'm not so sure. I think that this is an issue between Vladimir Putin and Turkey. This is Russia and Turkey. They shot down their plane. You're going to hear all sorts of varying conflicts between whether or not that they warned them ten times.

Whether or not they warned them once or as I'm sure Vladimir Putin will say, they didn't warn us at all. They shot our plane down, wasn't even over the territory that they say.

And the difference, Vladimir Putin is not Barack Obama. He will retaliate. He's not the kind of guy that's going to sit back and allow this thing to go unrecognized.

CUOMO: Also make compound a wrong and make a bad situation worse. Let me ask you another quick thing. I don't want to get ahead of this story. It is out there. That the super PACs are raising money and connected to other campaigns and coordinate and don't coordinate, you know how that game goes, but they're coming after your guy. We haven't seen it --

COHEN: Bad decision.

CUOMO: We haven't seen it in full. I don't want to get ahead of the story. But if that's true, how does that change the calculus for Donald Trump?

COHEN: I think it changes everything. I've been on CNN on virtually every show and I've said the same thing. Donald Trump wants to be treated fairly. He will demand that the GOP treat him fairly.

If they don't, he'll take the pledge by himself signed, 16 at the time Republicans, he's the only one that was asked to sign the pledge, and he did.

If they treat him fairly, he will honor the pledge because he's an honorable guy. If they break that agreement with him, as they say woe be on them.

CUOMO: Does the super PAC coming after Trump equate with breaking the agreement?

COHEN: Depends on which super PAC it is that's doing it. Now, of course, they're going to claim that we have no control over it and so on. Reince Priebus has an obligation to Donald Trump to treat him fairly and make sure the process treats him fairly and if they don't, if they don't, this will be a very, very bad thing for the Republican Party.

CUOMO: Heavy words. Michael Cohen, have a very good Thanksgiving. Thank you for being with us.

Also quick programming note, tomorrow on NEW DAY, Republican presidential candidate, Jeb Bush, will be here and be tested live -- Mich.

PEREIRA: All right, Chris, the U.S. and France both want to defeat ISIS, but can either put together a coalition that is strong enough to get the job done? Will it dust up between Turkey and Russia today affect their efforts? Christiane Amanpour joins us next. We have many questions for her.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:43:29]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: We do have breaking news for you this morning. Turkey shooting down a Russian fighter jet saying the Russians violated Turkish airspace. But the kremlin says their pilots were over Syria. They call this a, quote, "very serious incident."

With us now is CNN's chief international correspondent, Christiane Amanpour. Christian, great to have you here. So Turkey says Russia was over their airspace. Russia says no. They were over Syria. Why would Turkey do this? How could this not be seen as an escalation?

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It's a very dramatic and serious development and to that end NATO -- let's face it, this is not just Turkey. It's Turkey as a member of the NATO alliance and it's the first time a Russian or soviet jet has been shot down since the '50s.

NATO is having an emergency session this morning to decide how to react to this. There have been a huge amount of Russian provocations in the past. It's been buzzing different airspace. Not just in the Syria conflict, but over the Ukraine area buzzing, Baltic airspace, buzzing near Britain and France.

And they were doing a lot of entering people's airspace and getting too close for comfort. They have had a lot of warnings against them. We don't know how this is going to shape up and what were the warnings and why did the Russian plane go there and why did Turkey decide to take it down.

But the Turkish ambassador to Washington right now says they need to take Turkish warnings seriously. Obviously, those two countries are on different sides of the Syrian war and may lead this to real serious talk about that so-called de-confliction.

[07:45:03] Ever since Russia entered the air strikes, you heard the United States saying, we have to have de-confliction with the Russians. There were people playing around in this airspace without enough rules.

CAMEROTA: I mean, they may be on different sides of the Syrian war. But of course, they claim to be on the same side of fighting ISIS. That's what is so confusing about this whole region.

AMANPOUR: The difference is that Russia is propping up Assad. Turkey doesn't want to prop up Assad.

CAMEROTA: I have that statement from the Turkish ambassador who tweeted this. This is our translation. Understand this. Turkey is a country whose warnings should be taken seriously and listened to. Don't test Turkey's patience. Try to win its friendship. So if Russia was intentionally provoking Turkey, why?

AMANPOUR: You know, it's hard to make any speculation right now. I think it's going to be really interesting to see what this NATO meeting comes up with. But it all does come at a time when Turkey, Russia, the United States, France, are trying to figure out how to -- coalition may be not the right word, but how to coordinate an attack against ISIS.

In the middle of that, you have these different missions and goals of who wants to go after Assad as well. Turkey definitely wants to go after Assad as well. You know, the French president is here to meet President Obama this morning. We'll hear what they have to say at a press conference later this morning.

He's had Prime Minister Cameron to Paris yesterday. He's going back to Paris where he'll have Angela Merkel, the head of Germany, Matteo Renzi, the prime minister of Italy, and then he will go to Russia to meet Vladimir Putis.

So this a very big week of diplomacy for Hollande of the back of those horrible Paris attacks to try to get a real military coalition. That word is a bit loaded.

CAMEROTA: Why use that word?

AMANPOUR: No, I don't think so because they are very concerned about having Russia in a so-called coalition. We'll see how it works out. Up until now they didn't want to call it a coalition, but there needs to be some coordination if they're really going to go after ISIS. And then the whole thing is what about Assad? That's where it gets tricky of course.

CAMEROTA: So then how does this change? How does this incident change the conversations happening at the White House and then with Putin?

AMANPOUR: I don't know. We'll see. It's definitely a dramatic incident and again it's not just Turkey. It's NATO against Russia. It could be framed like that if Russia wants to do that. Probably, hopefully, they'll want to try to de-conflict.

And as I said, we heard this very technical language when Russia started its bombing about Americans trying to de-conflict the skies and get each side into their own corner so to speak.

CAMEROTA: I mean, you've spelled out perfectly how complicated this all is. It can't be a tough sell to get everyone onboard to fight ISIS. That seems like a general shared goal.

AMANPOUR: You're right. It can be a tough sell, but the question is how. So certain countries want to do it by air. For instance, David Cameron, the prime minister of Britain, is going back to parliament to try to get the parliament to allow him just to join the air strikes.

Britain isn't even in the air strikes over Syria right now. They are over Iraq but not over Syria. A couple years ago when we had the red line business that was crossed and uncrossed and all the rest of it, chemical weapons by Syria, Britain did not get parliamentary approval.

Step back and that was a dramatic turn for Britain not to be in these coalitions in the Middle East. Cameron is trying to get his parliament onboard to allow him to go to air strikes.

There's another group of experts and militaries in some countries that believe that ISIS can only be tackled on the ground. The idea is how do you do that without having a full scale war?

There are all sorts of questions that the leaders haven't yet figured out or at least we don't know the answers about how they're going to deal with ISIS and Assad.

Because let us not forget that even though ISIS is the cause of what we have seen in Europe in Paris, et cetera, the huge majority, 96 percent of the deaths in Syria are because of Assad and his barrel bombs and his air force.

CAMEROTA: Christiane, always great to get your perspective. We'll see what happens out of these White House and NATO meetings today. Thank you so much for being here. Let's get over to Michaela.

PEREIRA: Alisyn, coming up, a new survey shows that more Americans think racism is a bigger problem now than they did even four years ago. Is our nation going backwards when it comes to race relations? We'll have that conversation ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:53:33]

PEREIRA: Race and race relations have certainly dominated headlines this year with tensions between African-Americans and police, the rise of the movement Black Lives Matter. It has become a part of our national conversation.

So CNN and the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation joined forces to explore how whites, blacks and Hispanics feel about race ethnicity and the role they play in all facets of American life.

The findings, here you go. Half of Americans feel racism is a big problem. That is up from two decades ago and up from four years ago. Have racism and administration changed or has just our perception?

Don Lemon is here with more on this enlightening poll results. I was thinking back. It is so easy to think that the number has almost doubled since four years ago. I was thinking back to '95 when things were still kind of high, 41 percent. What was going on?

DON LEMON, CNN HOST, "CNN TONIGHT": The economy was better then, during the Clinton administration. Then you have 2011 was near the height of the downturn in the economy. And then President Barack Obama had just been elected. But that is interesting to me because it was only 41 percent in 1995 that said racism was a big problem in America.

And then in 2011, 28 percent and now 49 percent that is half, and to me that is an interesting number. But what is more interesting and probably not as surprising is that blacks and whites see it differently.

[07:55:00]So our country is divided, 49, 49. When you break it down between blacks and whites and Hispanics, because this survey is based on blacks, whites and Hispanics, racism a big problem in America. Whites 43 percent say it is a big problem. Blacks, 66 percent say it is a big problem.

PEREIRA: And Hispanics, look at that number.

LEMON: It's 64 percent. But you said the question, is it real? Or perceived? And how do you measure perception and how do you measure reality?

PEREIRA: Somebody's reality is real to them.

LEMON: Yes. This is a big survey we did in partnership with Kaiser. When you look at these numbers, 30, 40 years ago you and I may not have been able to even sit here.

PEREIRA: Fair enough.

LEMON: Right?

PEREIRA: Yes.

LEMON: So my grandparents even my mother could not walk on the same sidewalk as the white person. You county have that happening overtly in society today. So how does one measure progress?

CAMEROTA: That's something we can measure, but yet how do you explain --

LEMON: To say in 1985 or 1995 that it was, you know, it's worse now -- PEREIRA: Then look at the realities, the fact that black and brown

faces make up a majority of the men that are in prison. Look at the majority --

LEMON: The prison industrial complex.

PEREIRA: And the prison pipeline. Talk about what's going on in inner cities where a lot of people are living well below the poverty line --

LEMON: We are talking about the videotape that we're waiting for Chicago for --

PEREIRA: That's reality.

LEMON: That is reality.

CUOMO: Well, it is a perception of reality.

LEMON: Right.

CUOMO: Because what you will hear from the other side is you and the media decide how to make these things related to everybody else. And instead of somebody attacking the cops you make it the cops attacking them. Instead of guys doing crimes and being in prison you make it sound like they are victims. People have different perception of reality on the same side of statistics.

LEMON: This also plays into it because we see more of it. We're able to record more of it and record not just with police officers but interactions with people and you are able to document it more.

CAMEROTA: So that is awareness.

LEMON: Right.

CAMEROTA: So the awareness has gone up. Maybe the numbers are reflecting the awareness where whites 20 years ago --

CAMEROTA: Can it also be an expectation of what we would have felt -- yes. And where would be under President Obama. I think a lot of people had great hope that things would improve under the leadership of a black president.

LEMON: I can't give it away. The full release comes out at 10:00 p.m., but the most interesting point to me was the biggest problem was institutional discrimination or was it individual prejudice? And it is not exactly what you think it is because we talk so much about institutional racism, institutional racism.

To me and I guess I'm kind of giving it I way. But to me what would be more important is that it is baked in the sauce. You go to work for an institution and there is racism there. You live in a country where there is institutional racism. But it is surprising.

The pole results don't actually show that. I think it is a bigger problem when it is baked into the sauce because it is harder to deal with. You are discriminated against.

People don't see you in a certain way. When I was growing up somebody called you the "n" word or, you know, you just told them back or that's what made --

PEREIRA: A lot tonight on this special. I'm looking forward to it.

CUOMO: You're doing what matters most. You're putting it out there. You're discussing it. You're doing it in a positive way and that is the only way to get progress --

PEREIRA: Let's point you to the special tonight. It will air on "CNN TONIGHT" with Don Lemon conveniently named considering you are here. Race in America airs 10:00 p.m. Eastern. All right, we're following a whole lot of news. Let's go get to it.

CUOMO: To our viewers in the United States and around the world you are watching NEW DAY and we do have breaking news for you, Turkey shooting down a Russian war plane. Turkey says that plane was violating their air space and has the flight plan to prove it and the pilots ignored some ten warnings to leave the area. The Russians insist that is not true, that the plane was in Syrian air space when it was taken out.

CAMEROTA: So NATO is holding on emergency meeting and it is sure to further strain relations between Russia and the west. This remains to be seen how all this will affect a meeting this morning between French President Hollande and President Obama at the White House about the ISIS threat.

So we have this story covered the way only CNN can. Let's begin with senior international correspondent, Ben Wedeman. He is live in Erbil, Iraq with all of the breaking details. Ben, what have you learned at this hour?

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, one is the only the fact that it seems to be clear is that at 9:24 local time, an SU-24 Russian war plane crashed in the mountains of Syria near the Turkish border.