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Obama Speaks in Hiroshima, Japan; Trump Responds to International Comments; Sanders and Clinton Vie in California; Clinton Responds to IG Report. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired May 27, 2016 - 06:00   ET

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

[06:00:00] MICHELLE KOSINSKI, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: -- he talks about the nature as broadly as you possibly could, he talked about the nature of humanity itself. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, U.S. PRESIDENT: Though we have a shared responsibility to look directly into the eye of history and ask what we must do differently to curb such suffering again, but the memory of the morning of august 6, 1945 was never fake. That memory allows us to fight complacency. It fuels our moral imagination.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KOSINSKI: This is a president who has tried to end wars but has been confronted with other conflicts, who's aimed for denuclearization, he's had some success, the Iran nuclear deal but then again the threat of North Korea, especially in this region looms large.

So you could hear the President delivering the speech. He knew it was a historic moment he wanted to emphasize certain words. He spoke very slowly. He really wanted this to sink in and when he did talk about denuclearization about waiting for a world where people would determine that nuclear weapons were not necessary anymore, but he said, you know, that's not even enough that it's time to change the human mindset on war itself. Ana.

ANA CABRERA, CNN ANCHOR: Michelle Kosinski, reporting, traveling with the President on his historic trip to Hiroshima.

Now, that historic making trip coming at a critical time for America on the world stage with all eyes on our presidential race, Donald Trump brushing off President Obama's comments that world leaders are rattled by him in fact he said that's a good thing. Trump firing back after officially closing the deal to be the presumptive Republican nominee.

And CNN'S Jason Carroll joins us now with all those details. Jason.

JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Ana, Donald Trump hitting on a number of top topics yesterday taking aim not only at President Obama but Hillary Clinton as well and relishing and having enough delegates to accept the party's nomination.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESUMPTIVE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: We had a big day today. Today was a day where we hit the 1,237, right? 1,237.

CARROLL: Donald Trump, officially clinching the Republican nomination, and squashing the once fervent efforts from the GOP establishment to stop him.

TRUMP: Most of them said, and they said very strongly, he will never be the nominee. I could name him, but I don't want to embarrass him.

CARROLL: Trump boasting that he is one step closer to the White House than Hillary Clinton.

TRUMP: Here I am watching Hillary fight and she can't close the deal. And that should be such an easy deal to close.

CARROLL: Trump continuing to hit Clinton hard on that inspector general's report which criticized her for using her personal e-mail server to do government business when she was secretary of state.

TRUMP: She has bad judgment. This was all bad judgment. Probably illegal, we'll have to find out what the FBI says about it, but certainly it was bad judgment.

CARROLL: Trump also taking aim at President Obama.

TRUMP: He's a president who's done a horrible job. Obama could never come up with a solution. Number one, he's incompetent.

CARROLL: After Obama voiced world leaders' concerns about Trump during a G7 summit.

OBAMA: The railed man. The proposals that he's made display either ignorance of world affairs or a cavalier attitude.

CARROLL: Hillary Clinton echoing those fears.

HILLARY CLINTON, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This man who is an unqualified loose cannon is within reach of the most important job in the world, so it should concern every American.

CARROLL: But a defiant Trump is embracing the criticism.

TRUMP: That's good if they're nervous, that's good. I'll have a better relationship with other countries than he has, except we'll do much better and they won't be taking advantage of us anymore.

CARROLL: As Trump continues to be hammered for his controversial remarks about Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren.

TRUMP: Who, Pocahontas?

ELIZABETH WARREN, AMERICAN SENATOR: Is that offensive?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Should you use that term? TRUMP: She is a defensive ...

WARREN: That's very offensive.

TRUMP: You tell me, Oh.

WARREN: Disgrace.

TRUMP: Oh, I'm sorry about that. Pocahontas? Is that what you said? I think she's as Native American as I am, OK? That I will tell you. But she's a woman that's been very ineffective, other than she's got a big mouth.

CARROLL: Trump also hinting he's wide open to who his running mate will be after his campaign chairman said choosing a woman or minority would be viewed as pandering.

TRUMP: We're looking for absolute competence. I fully expect that we will have many women involved.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARROLL: Though Trump has the delegates for the nomination he still has work to do to secure his own party. Trump saying he had a good conversation with house speaker Paul Ryan this week, but still no endorsement from Ryan. And once again, Trump saying he would like to debate Bernie Sanders, saying it would be a dream. Chris?

[06:04:59] CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Jason Carroll. Thank you very much.

The news is out there and swirling in all of these different directions. So let's bring it back down to a good discussion. What about this historic moment at Hiroshima? What is the impact of it, and what about these latest turns in the election?

We have for you, CNN Political Annalist and Presidential Campaign Correspondent for the "New York Times" Maggie Haberman, and CNN Political Commentator and Political Anchor of Time Warner Cable News, Errol Louis.

You guys probably saw it, but just for those at home who did not, in the control room, if we can put up the scenes of President Obama embracing the family members and victims of the Hiroshima attack. It seems like that was the real moment there Errol Louis, President Obama embracing them, no apology but reconciliation, the power of the moment.

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, exactly right. And this is a president who has really sort of made that one of his signature moves. I mean, this is even before he got elected, really. I mean, if you remember back to the 2008 campaign, he speaks at the Brandenburg Gate, he's traveling around the world, he's trying sort of become well, play the role of sort of leader of the free world, one of the titles that the president -- CUOMO: But what did you make of the balance? Sometimes people say

well, you shouldn't apologize for these things. He's going to apologize, that makes us look weak. What about what they did? What about Pearl Harbor? How did he balance that here?

LOUIS: Well, you know, it's extraordinary, because I think of that whole issue of, you know, does it make America look weak as, you know, really not an issue with Japan, right? I mean, nuclear weapons used. War ended. Really, no military for Japan to speak of. Never -- it's never been a question, I think on the table in American politics about whether or not an apology was warranted, wanted or even appropriate.

So, I thought of this as, you know, the apology tour is something that the Republicans have sort of beat up on Obama about, mostly about the Middle East, about other kind of issues, about Europe. Japan, I think this is different. This is sort of special, unique, I think. And this is I think what he was really sort of conveying, the only president ever to have done this.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: And Maggie, there is something so poignant about recognizing this moment, where deadly enemies within the space of a very short time can become allies and even friends, and to just see that with what's going on today, I don't know, there's something sort of comforting or instructive about things change, you know, and then you put it back into our political race of what's happening, and Donald Trump saying he likes the world leaders might be rattled by him, and his followers like that also, because they do like an unpredictability about what the U.S. would do in the future.

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: One of the significant aspects of this trip, I believe is about signaling what is happening in terms of the potential of a nuclear armed North Korea, and I think that is part of what President Obama was hoping to accomplish was saying essentially there is a danger here in escalation. There is a danger here in what the past can teach us about the future.

You had Donald Trump saying in an interview with David Sanger and me not that long ago, you know, that he was open to a nuclear armed Japan and South Korea, he later said to Anderson Cooper, you know, North Korea and that region are going to be nuclear armed eventually anyway. And I think what you are seeing is essentially Obama trying to halt that and draw a line. You are right. Donald Trump likes unpredictability. There are downsides to unpredictability and I think that's where President Obama was hoping to make a very start comparison to.

CUOMO: So, we look at what Trump did yesterday, he had this press conference and, you know, to paraphrase Bruce Springsteen it felt a little bit of one step up and two steps back. He came out and he talked about what we're going to do with energy? He actually outlined some plan proposals or some points, some talking points on it, unusual for Trump, unusual in the selection. But then he went back into his heavy artillery about Hillary Clinton specifically, we have the sound of him talking about Vince Foster, which he is trying to have both ways, right? He's trying to say, I don't know about it, but here's how he put it. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I really know nothing about the Vince Foster situation. Haven't known anything about it and somebody asked me the question the other day, and I said that a lot of people are very skeptical as to what happened and how he died. I know nothing about it. I don't think it's something that, frankly, really -- unless sone evidence to the contrary of what I've seen comes up, I don't think it's something that should really be part of the campaign.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: But he keeps making it part of the campaign. He could just short-circuit it. Is he trying to have it both ways here or you think this is Trump's attempt at being fair?

LOUIS: Having it both ways is a nice way of putting it, I mean he put that -- he raised this absurd and to sort of defamatory conspiracy theory. No, he raised this, it's not like a lot of people are talking about.

CUOMO: He says he was asked about it.

CAMEROTA: He knew about this.

LOUIS: He could have given the answer -- when asked about, he could have given the answer he just gave, which is to say I don't know anything about it. Let's move on. But he never does that, right. And so what you find is somebody who has consistently brought up this kind of conspiracy theories and it place to his days and he send and throws it out there and, you know, slowly but surely, eats away yet another news cycle.

[06:10:03] Well, Instead of talking about anything relevant or anything about policy, he wants to sort of stir the pot, rattle up the base and stop the campaign from really talking about issues.

CAMEROTA: Here is also interesting with Donald Trump, even though he doesn't know anything about it, either hasn't looked into it and researched it, so he does know something about it or doesn't stop him from talking about it and mentioning it that he doesn't anything about it. And people talk about this that there seems to be a lack of intellectual curiosity of things he doesn't know about, he can just dismiss it with I don't know anything about that, but ask away.

HABERMAN: He like -- he has said repeatedly, he has said it in many forms that he likes starting a conversation. He thinks it's exciting, he thinks it's interesting. What he's doing is raising character questions about Hillary Clinton. And so to that extent in the context of a presidential campaign, trying to hit your rival, that is the relevance, but yes, there are a lot of people who look at it and say, if you don't know anything about it then why are we even using about it, why not just shut it down and move on?

CUOMO: Dinner party politics. We're heading into this weekend, you know, it should be a solemn occasion, but certainly there's lots of barbecues and being out. You will hear conversations no matter where you are, no matter who you hang out with and the word Pocahontas is going to come up. And there's going to be a division Errol, some people would just say that's just offensive. I don't care what Elizabeth Warren's Ancecstry.com reveals, you know, this is offensive to American-Indians it's offensive to people who just find them offensive.

Other people are going say, no, she's not Indian and it's, you know, P.C. bah, bah, bah. Do you think he wins on this?

LOUIS: No, absolutely not. I mean, look people I think will use the word racist, right, I mean that it's the kind of offensive talk that if you used it in your workplace and I think ...

CUOMO: Ah, well Alisyn pointed out to me yesterday when I tried to drop that bomb that Pocahontas is a hero? How's it being racist?

LOUIS: You use it in your workplace and I think your H.R. people, my H.R. people, your H.R. people most people watching this broadcast, that you would be, you know, you would be reprimanded, you would be fired, you would be sued.

CAMEROTA: You could just can't define somebody by calling them a name of an entire ethnicity.

LOUIS: Right, exactly. I mean and, you know, I mean faster than you can say hostile workplace, you would, you know, you would have a problem. Donald Trump --

CUOMO: He says I can't mock you as Native American, because you're not.

HABERMAN: Look, to be clear, during the senate race, between Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown, this was not a great issue for her. There were six weeks spent on stumbling around, on trying to figure out how to answer this. It was never a great answer and the reality is and I do think this is some of what Trump is trying to point to. Elizabeth Warren for all of the talk about how she is a great counter puncher and great at framing this, she was not a great day-to-day candidate and I think he was trying to erode the value she could bring on the Democratic side.

CAMEROTA: Thus, stick around. We want to talk about Hillary Clinton's e-mails as well in a moment but first let's get with Ana.

CABRERA: And we'll about the Democratic race because the battle in California is really heating up this morning. Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are now neck and neck in the polls. Clinton forced on the defense again after that scathing report from the inspector general's office on her private e-mail usage, as Sanders turns up the heat on Donald Trump to debate him.

CNN's Sunlen Serfaty is joining us live in Lost Angeles this morning with more. Sunlen?

SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning too, Ana. Well, both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are campaigning here in California today leading into the June 7 primary of course, the last day of contests on this nominating calendar, but Hillary Clinton is now finding herself facing considerable head winds in her quest to close this out.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SERFATY: Overnight, Bernie Sanders stoking talk of a debate between him and Donald Trump.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You made it possible for us to have a very interesting debate?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's right.

SANDERS: About two guys who look at the world very, very differently.

SERFATY: And blasting his primary opponent Hillary Clinton for declining to debate before California's June 7th primary.

SANDERS: It's kind of insulting to the people of the largest state in the United States of America, not to come forward and talk about the issues, serious issues that impact this state and impact the counties.

SERFATY: But Trump appears to be taking the bait, as long as they can raise millions for charity.

TRUMP: I'd love to debate Bernie. He's a dream.

SERFATY: Clinton, now scrambling to drum up support before the delegate-rich primary as Sanders refuses to concede the nomination. The latest poll in California shows Clinton and Sanders locked in a dead heat just days before the final contests.

SANDERS: If we can win big here in California and in the other five states that are up on June 7th, we're going to go marching into the Democratic convention with enormous momentum and I believe we're going to go marching out with the Democratic nomination.

SERFATY: Contending with trust issues over her personal e-mail use as secretary of state, Clinton going on uncharacteristic media blitz, defending herself against the scathing inspector general report which called her out for setting up and using a private e-mail server.

[006:14:56]CLINTON: This report makes clear that personal e-mail use was the practice under other secretaries of state, and the rules were not clarified until after I have left. But as I've said many times, it was still a mistake. If I could go back I'd do it differently.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SERFATY: And today Hillary Clinton will start airing her very first television commercials here in the State of California, certainly one sign especially given those latest poll numbers that she understands she's going to have to fight for it in this final stretch. Chris?

CUOMO: All right, Sunlen, thank you very much.

Hillary Clinton in the news, mounting a defense against the blistering report from an inspector general about her e-mail use. There's a lot of spin in the air about the e-mail controversy. What are the actual violations? What is Clinton's defense? The facts ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

CLINTON: As, you know, this report makes clear that personal e-mail use was the practice under other secretaries of state, and the rules were not clarified until after I had left. But as I've said many times, it was still a mistake. If I could go back I'd do it differently and I understand ...

(END AUDIO CLIP)

[06:20:09] CAMEROTA: All right. That was Hillary Clinton saying she did nothing with her e-mails differently that had been done before. So how big of a problem is this? And what about that possible Sanders/Trump debate? There's a lot to discuss with Maggie Haberman and Errol Louis.

So Errol, how big a problem is this I.G. report about what Hillary Clinton did wrong with her e-mails?

LOUIS: Well, I mean I don't know if it moves the ball politically, I don't know if there's anybody coming to this for the first time, we'll say hey, I didn't realize that, you know, she didn't do what the policy called for. I think that was clear along that she didn't do what the policy called for.

CAMEROTA: But there are new things in it.

LOUIS: Well, I think there is some interesting sort of nuances to it, where they sort of point out that, you know, look this is exactly what she did, what she said -- she said there were no guidelines. They're making clear you know what, there were guidelines. Now, it wasn't may be entirely clear how you suppose to sort of comply with the policy, you know, her bottom line though I think politically, she gets to say what she's always said, which is that she didn't want her personal e- mails mixed up with state department e-mails which would become part of a public record and it wasn't clear how to do it. She chose a way that the state department didn't really approve of in advance and that's where we are today.

CAMEROTA: That's a big -- I mean didn't she say that she's gotten an approval and now we hear she hadn't?

HABERMAN: That to me, is I think the biggest facts that is problematic for her in this report, there's two facts that's been problematic. That's a big one, three. There's a -- It makes pretty clear that it was not widely known what she was doing with this e- mail. It was not widely known a lot of her staffers were routinely using her top aides or the four of them were routinely using a private e-mail for work, apparently.

And that the report makes clear that there were three people who exclusively relied on private e-mail, Colin Powell, was one, former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton was another, and Scott Gration, a former ambassador to Kenya under Clinton in 2011 and 2012, and I remember the I.G. Report around him.

It was pretty critical. It was critical of him for many things. There were other issues with him. But the fact he used personal e-mail exclusively and went to great lengths to do that was highly criticized. I mean IGs report says that is how that is normally handled when that is an issue.

The food news, for Hillary Clinton is that Donald Trump is stepping all over this. This would be dominating headlines if we weren't talking about a debate gimmick essentially between Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. And so, if Hillary Clinton has a not terrible week that is going to be part of why this is not a great backset for her, but I do think Errol is right, that most people's takeaway from this week will be well, we knew about the e-mail situation already.

CUOMO: All right. So we want to talk about the debate, but I think that we've got to take one more beat on this. This is still confusing. I'm listening to the discussion. I'm an attorney. I still think it's confusing, and I think it matters, this issue. I think people have used that the Clinton people do not like this assessment, but I think this issue goes to the root of her unfavorable numbers.

They'll argue all day, no, no, no. it's something else it's the 30 years of piling on. I don't even understand the exchange you two have. There was a rule -- there was a rule in place in 2009, right? They change rules. She was there. This was supposed to get clearance. Did it get clearance?

LOUIS: As far as the report?

CUOMO: Yes.

(CROSSTALK)

CUOMO: No. And the people at the top were told let's not talk about this anymore.

CAMEROTA: Yes. However in the I.G. report the state department also concedes they didn't do a good job of communicating the new rules.

CUOMO: Right. They were sloppy they didn't know how to enforce this law which is one of the things they talk about with Gration, Yes there are a lot of other things with him that made him perhaps, flawed in his position, but it was -- we don't administer this well. The other thing is did anybody else have the kind of infrastructure to seal off her communication?

HABERMAN: No, that's a big piece of it.

CUOMO: Nobody else has ever done this. HABERMAN: No, She had a private server. She had her own server. So when Colin Powell was using private e-mail as far as we know, he did not have a separate setup. If people wanted to ...

CUOMO: It's like Gmail or something.

HABERMAN: Exactly. People want to (inaudible) well actually, people wanted to which is not, you know, going back a ways, but I think if people wanted to obtain his e-mails they had to work unto him directly or they would have gone to AOL. In this case the only person to go to was Hillary Clinton and that is part of the problem.

CUOMO: And the last part of the problem is, where are the e-mails that you deleted? That you were supposed to give us the e-mails. There was a subpoena. You went through them and said well, you only want the ones that have deal with work. So I'm going to separate the ones out, and allegedly got rid of them. Was that allowed? Was that the right reaction?

LOUIS: Well that, I think, is the heart of the problem and this is something that I think in some ways goes beyond the politics of the moment which is that there's a public records act, there's a freedom of information law ...

CAMEROTA: So, meaning AOL would have coughed them up if they hadn't been on a private server, because of freedom of information, if it had been a public server they would have found those e-mails and handed them over?

LOUIS: Well, they have done a different path, you know, or there could be and probably needs to be some guidelines saying you must print out every e-mail that this -- you have to make a record, you know. You can't sort of, you know, find these ways to sort of ...

CUOMO: And they'll segregate you 55,000 pages, it's more than anybody's ever given you.

[06:20:01] HABERMAN: Or you use a government e-mail. I mean, one of the problems for Clinton is that there were a couple e-mails that were discovered yesterday that had not been known off before. One of which made pretty clear there was an issue that was known about previously, and you were right this is a complicated issue and it's confusing to talk about for a lot of people, including us.

But in -- I think it was 2010 there was a problem where people -- where our e-mail system wasn't working, or she couldn't receive them and it was basically discovered at that point by other people she is using a private e-mail. One of her aides said at this point you either set up a government e-mail or, you know, we do it differently and she made pretty clear in this e-mail she did not want the personal e-mails getting discovered. I believe her reason for that to talk to people close to her is, she has been investigated in some form or another for decades, in the contention of her allies wrongly in a lot of cases and she didn't want to have people poring through her personal stuff, the problem is, the way you deal with that, then, is a government e-mail. CAMEROTA: Maggie and Errol, thank you. Have a night holiday weekend.

CUOMO: And that was helpful. Big people are going to be talking about this all weekend, it's in the air. Nobody knows what they're talking about. That's why that was very helpful, because it's confusing and everybody's going to have an opinion of that.

HABERMAN: Yeah, thank you.

CAMEROTA: Let's get to Ana.

CABRERA: All right. Well, hopefully if you're up early with us this morning it's because you are getting ready to go have some fun. It is getaway day on one of the busiest travel weekends of the year. And if you're flying we've got some information you'll want to stick around for. We are going to check just how long you will need to wait to get to your gate, and what is the TSA now doing to speed up security screening? We'll have a live report on this next, here on New Day.

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