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Video Suggests Dem Operatives Incited Violence At Trump Rallies; Trump & Clinton Face Off In Final Debate Tonight; Iraqi & Kurdish Forces Battle ISIS In Mosul; Protests Turn Violent Outside U.S. Embassy In Philippines; Obama Tells Trump To Stop "Whining" About Rigged Election; Study: "Voter Fraud Is Not A Persistent Problem". Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired October 19, 2016 - 07:30   ET

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

[07:30:00] DREW GRIFFIN, CNN INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: And in the video we have this person here, Scott Foval, who was a subcontractor, explaining how his role was to actually train people to incite violence, and he tells us just how he says he did it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT FOVAL, DEMOCRATIC ACTIVIST, DEMOCRACY PARTNERS: I mean honestly, it is not hard to get some of these assholes to pop off. It's a matter of showing up to want to get into the rally in a Planned Parenthood t-shirt. Or, you know, Trump is a Nazi, you know. You can message to draw them out, and draw them to punch you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRIFFIN: Since this video came out, Scott Foval no longer works for Democracy Partners. He had been let go. And the person who was in charge of this project at Democracy Partners, Bob Creamer -- well- known Democrat, husband of a Democratic congresswoman -- he has also voluntarily stepped aside from working with the Clinton campaign.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Now, the question becomes is this with cause or is this blowback? I mean, how do you feel? People are going to say O'Keefe, Project Veritas, they got busted in the past for doing things wrong, they've been criticized for selective editing. The other side is the person says what they say on the video, so where do you come out on it?

GRIFFIN: I talked to Bob Creamer, OK? He's also on tape. He's also caught undercover. He never said that the words here were edited. What he told me was that this was barroom talk, OK?

CUOMO: Uh-oh, is this the new manifestation of locker room talk?

GRIFFIN: This is what --

CUOMO: Barroom talk?

GRIFFIN: This is what he said. This was barroom talk. This was his guy bragging about something. No evidence this ever had -- I'll give you a little statement he gave us. "With respect to his comments" -- he's talking about Scott Foval -- "they are flat out wrong. We have gone to extreme measures to ensure no violence took place at any of our counter protest events."

We're at the stage, if I could draw a parallel, where we're seeing the Billy Bush tape. Now we're going to see is anybody going to come forward and say well, no, wait a minute, something did happen or maybe nothing did happen and it's all bragging.

CUOMO: Because right now we do know there's been violence, often, at Trump rallies --

GRIFFIN: Right.

CUOMO: -- or in several occasions. There have been so many rallies, you shouldn't say often. But we don't know that any of these people that we're talking about were there creating the situations that led to violence?

GRIFFIN: That's correct. They're saying it didn't happen. On tape, Scott Foval, the man you said is talking about specific events in Wisconsin, Las Vegas, North Carolina, where he says he was intricately involved in inciting the violence that took place there.

CUOMO: Drew, quick work on this. Thank you very much for the turnaround. Appreciate it, as always.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Great reporting, Drew.

CUOMO: Alisyn --

CAMEROTA: All right, let's discuss all of it with CNN national political reporter Maeve Reston and CNN political analyst David Gregory.

OK, you guys just heard all of Drew Griffin's reportings on there. David Gregory, how big of an issue do you think this is for Hillary's campaign?

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, we have to see how much more is known. I mean, if I'm the Trump campaign I use this and I put this in the same category as the basket of deplorables comment. That here is actions on the part of the Clinton team, however large, however loose that confederation is, to try to be dismissive of Trump supporters. To try to stir things up to make them look bad.

But I think, at the same time, the reality is that in a lot of these rallies there are combustible situations. You have Donald Trump who's been whipping up violence against people, including the media, in the way he talks. It wouldn't be surprising if you put Democratic activists together with some of these Trump supporters that things could happen, whether engineered or natural.

So I'm not sure what the impact is other than to maybe reaffirm the view of those people who don't like Hillary Clinton that there's some dirty pool here in all of this to make Trump look bad. CUOMO: Politics is a dirty game, Maeve, and that's the point that this video makes, and it feeds the Trump argument that it's all rigged. How does the Clinton campaign escape that illusion?

MAEVE RESTON, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER: Well, I think he will be able to make that argument, certainly, Chris. But, I mean, this just sort of reinforces the point that so much of politics is theater. Not just what you're seeing up on stage but the people who show up at rallies, et cetera.

At the same time, having been at some of these Trump rallies where this has been this kind of violence, there is -- there is some heated confrontations there. There are passions that are running high. So I don't think that most people should take away from this tape that it's all staged, by any stretch of the imagination. The tensions are running so high in America right now, and at these events, that this has been -- really has been a common occurrence and one that we don't see often in presidential cycles.

CAMEROTA: So, David, does this come up tonight?

GREGORY: Oh, I'm sure it will. I think if Trump has the ability to be disciplined enough to make the case on new revelations about Clinton email, about this tape, it could try to further his argument that has no merit to it that the game is rigged in the most general sense. That everybody's lining up to be against him. Again, I don't know how that helps him add to where he is.

[07:35:09] Hillary Clinton wants to try to expose all of that to try to get Trump to make it about himself -- to trip himself up. But the other tricky part of what she's got to do is really make an argument for her candidacy, for her vision, particularly as she tries to expand the map and win a state like Arizona where she's very competitive.

CUOMO: It is interesting, Maeve, isn't it, quickly, that these candidates have both chosen to try to make advantage of their biggest disadvantages. We've never seen people unliked or untrusted the way these two are and yet, they keep going to that place instead of areas where they might be better off.

RESTON: Yes, and I think that, to David's point, she clearly needs to make a compelling argument tonight for her candidacy. I can't tell you how many times I've been out on the trail talking to undecided voters who still don't understand what her message is or what she stands for. And I think tonight is her last chance to make that big argument to the extent that both of them don't get sort of dragged down by one another.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

RESTON: I do think she'll be trying to land some more punches tonight than she did. She held back in that last debate but this is her last shot, so --

CAMEROTA: I mean, that's a problem, Maeve, you know? I mean, 20 days until the election and people say -- they say that they don't know what she stands for. Give us this past year of our life back, you know?

RESTON: Yes.

CAMEROTA: I mean, they've been on the campaign trail for a year. People, I think, knew what Bernie Sanders stood for and they know that Donald Trump stands for something different. So what do you think, David, she's going to say about that tonight -- her vision?

GREGORY: Look, I mean, it's got -- it's got to be, in part, a policy vision, but I think she stays to the ultimate she's been making, fitness for office. She's the only one who looks and sounds and comports herself as a potential President of the United States. It's baiting him in those ways where he's temperamentally unfit.

Our polling still shows up over 60 percent of voters don't think he's qualified nor has the temperament to be president. I think she sticks with that argument down the stretch and tries to keep building on that success among women.

CUOMO: And, you know, part of it's just slogan, you know, "Make American Great Again".

RESTON: Right.

CUOMO: It's easy, it's obvious, you grab it. With her, she has "Stronger Together" --

RESTON: Play stronger together.

CUOMO: -- but "I'm With Her" is what they used even more, which it attaches to the person, not the message.

RESTON: Yes.

CUOMO: Tricky.

CAMEROTA: There you go. David, Maeve, thank you.

GREGORY: Thanks.

CUOMO: All right.

RESTON: Thank you.

CUOMO: Lots of coverage to be had with this debate tonight. It will begin in full here on CNN at 4:00 p.m. Eastern. And please, watch the debate at 9:00 p.m. right here on CNN.

CAMEROTA: OK, another very important story is the battle for Mosul. It, of course, is dangerous. ISIS fighters are now using civilians who were left behind as human shields. Iraqi troops are trying to root them out. How long will this last? We have a retired general who is going to walk us through what's happening.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [07:42:15] CUOMO: Iraqi and Kurdish forces are fighting to retake Mosul from ISIS. Troops are moving in from the south and the east with small U.S. special force teams alongside them. ISIS fighters are digging in. The Pentagon says that the group is now using civilians as human shields.

We've heard of this before from this man, retired Gen. James "Spider" Marks.

MAJ. GEN. JAMES "SPIDER" MARKS (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Chris, how are you this morning?

CUOMO: It's good to have you with us. You understand the state of play in terms of the strategic significance of this place and what will be encountered on the ground there, so let's go through both. We're standing on the world, here -- certainly, specifically the region, Mosul. Where it is, second-biggest city. Why does it matter then versus now?

MARKS: Well, most importantly, if Iraq is going to be a government that has a capability to govern you can't have an occupied city, especially occupied by ISIS fighters, which has been the case over the past couple of years. Mosul has to be retaken. It has to be a part of a solvent and sovereign Iraq. It's not right now. It's got to get back under Iraqi control.

CUOMO: It's like Chicago being taken over by, you know, bad guys and you still think you have a contained America. Winter, 2015, was pretty much the height, right?

MARKS: Right.

CUOMO: And what did it give them, this range of control in this area?

MARKS: Well, quite significant. I mean, if you look at what ISIS has been able to do, it really expanded. It has morphed in a whole bunch of different ways. Center of power right now in Raqqah, Syria, across the border. They've penetrated into Iraq. It's completely without borders now, that part of the world.

This caliphate, if you will, that they've created includes Mosul. It is significant to the Iraqi government. It is the second-largest city. It is in a contested region in Iraq, too. You've got the Kurds up there that have their own designs for what they're looking at in terms of a future.

So it's doubly important that Iraq plant a flag. That fight in Mosul -- and we'll certainly get into that, Chris -- but that fight in Mosul will be very, very nasty. And we've seen the initial stages of how very tough that's going to be.

CUOMO: Now, many of the brothers and sisters who serve this country -- when you say the name Mosul they still wince from the fights that we had there against al-Qaeda in the last iteration of this war. One of the things that happened there was intense urban fighting where you had the enemy using places of worship -- MARKS: Right.

CUOMO: -- using women, using kids, using homes, fighting from behind people. And they're seeing signs of that with ISIS, which would make sense. I mean, a lot of their guys and their forefathers were al- Qaeda guys and Baathists who wound up going into ISIS. How do you deal with that?

MARKS: Yes, this is learned behavior. We've seen this before, we're seeing this now. We're going to see this over the -- over the duration of this entire fight. You deal with it as delicately -- you're really on the horns of -- not of dilemma but you have these countervailing pressures. You've got to be incredibly vicious, you've got to be incredibly precise, but you've got to be delicate where you have to be delicate. And so, we're asking a heck of a lot of these Iraqi security forces.

[07:45:15] It's what we call the Three Block fight, you know. On one block we may be trying to clean teeth and establish a medical facility. We're trying to evacuate citizens and we're trying to take care of the wounded. On the next block you're blowing stuff up viciously and it's a terrible fight. And on the third block you're trying to advance what governance is going to look like moving forward.

CUOMO: And you got a million innocents in there --

MARKS: Completely.

CUOMO: -- and every time a group of them gets killed you've got propaganda crisis.

MARKS: It's like digging a tumor, sadly, out of a -- you know, a cancerous tumor out of someone's body. You've got to do that very, very precisely, delicately, but you've got to use every capability that you have to do that so that it's final. It's got to be final.

CUOMO: And you don't have the best fighters in the world on the ground.

MARKS: No, no.

CUOMO: You do not have the U.S. men and women --

MARKS: No.

CUOMO: -- doing this fighting in the main. These security -- you know, I've never liked this idea of advisers. They're not advisers. They're going to be there, they're going to be in harm's way, and that should be Americans' concern.

MARKS: Right.

CUOMO: But, how long do you think it takes? One of the Kurdish leaders says we think we can get it done in a couple of months. Many of the Americans who have been there before says ooh, that's ambitious.

MARKS: Every voice that's public has multiple constituencies and so someone says oh, we're going to get this thing done in two months. What that does is that resonates with us and we go, this is good, we've got a horizon. This is going to be a very long fight. It certainly will exceed the estimates of two to three months.

This could -- and then once you're there you have to decide what it looks like going forward. That's when the real hard work, sadly -- that's when the real hard work begins. Everybody is a claimant. Everybody has -- everybody's a constituent within Mosul and has a design on what the future looks likes.

CUOMO: You know, General, you've been a voice on this but it's really important for you to know this at home. The men and women who are in charge of doing the fighting are not in charge of what happens. They're always the ones who warn you at home hey, this isn't over once it's over. And it's the politicians who need to think about that, and they have never gotten it right yet.

General Marks, thank you very much for being with us --

MARKS: Thank you very much.

CUOMO: -- as always -- as always. President Obama is telling Donald Trump to stop whining about his claims about a rigged election. Our next guests did the research and they know the facts on voter fraud. What is real and what is fake? You're going to get answers, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:51:10] CUOMO: Protests turning violent outside the U.S. Embassy in the Philippines. Police using force to clear out 1,000 anti- American protesters voicing support for their new president, who has not shied away from criticizing President Obama.

We have CNN's Alexandra Field live in Hong Kong with the breaking details -- Alexandra.

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Chris, it certainly got ugly outside of that embassy. We have to warn people that the video we're going to show is graphic, it is violent, but you're going to see what happened from a couple of different angles.

(Video playing) This is the clash between protestors and police. We understand that several dozen police and protesters were injured. That's a police van backing up into this crowd of 1,000 and then, you can see, accelerating forward hitting people, dragging one person under the police van, itself. Now, the police are saying that the driver of that van panicked after the crowd surrounded the car. They were hitting that car with sticks.

This all started when that crowd gathered outside the embassy. They were throwing red paint, meant to represent blood, on the U.S. Embassy. Police tried to break up the crowd using tear gas and hoses. You can see them in there with shields and also batons. About two dozen people were ultimately arrested for their role in the demonstration.

This was a group that is protesting foreign policy with the U.S., saying it's an unequal foreign policy. They are supporting Philippines president, Rodrigo Duterte, who's trying to create space with its staunch ally, the U.S. He's currently on a trip to China working to strengthen relations there -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: My gosh, that tape is just so shocking every time you see it. Alexandra, thank you for that reporting.

Well, President Obama sending a strong message to Donald Trump about his claims of a rigged election.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I have never seen, in my lifetime or in modern political history, any presidential candidate trying to discredit the elections and the election process before votes have even taken place. He started whining before the game's even over? If whenever things are going badly for you and you lose, you start blaming somebody else, then you don't have what it takes to be in this job.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Well, our next guests both conducted major research projects on the issue of voter fraud. They know the facts. They're here to share them with us.

Let's discuss with the president of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law and constitutional lawyer, Michael Waldman, and the editorial director for "News21" at Arizona State University. He's the professor at its Walter Cronkite School of Journalism, Leonard Downie, Jr.

Professor, I want to start with you because you and your students spent just an incredible amount of time looking into the issue of voter fraud. You looked at all 50 states. You looked at one billion, with a B, votes cast between the years 2000 and 2001. What did you find in terms of voter fraud?

LEONARD DOWNIE, JR., EDITORIAL DIRECTOR, NEWS21 ASU: By clearing all 50 states for prosecutions for voter fraud we found only about 2,000 from 2000 -- for the year 2000 to the year 2012, and only 10 of those actually involved voters trying to impersonate somebody else at the polls, which is what Trump is saying would be widespread.

And then we decided, in 2016, to go back again to five key states where officials had been worried about voter fraud and we found only about 38 prosecutions for any kind of vote fraud during that period, and no prosecutions for voter impersonation.

[07:55:00] CAMEROTA: OK, very interesting findings. So, 2000 cases, Mr. Waldman, over the course of 10 years, so 200 a year in disparate states that they were able to identify. That would not sway a national election. It probably wouldn't sway a local election. What has your -- what has the Brennan Center found about voter fraud?

MICHAEL WALDMAN, PRESIDENT, BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE AT NYU SCHOOL OF LAW: Well, we and, basically, everybody who's looked at this have found the same thing that the Cronkite School found. The supposed widespread voter fraud is not a reality. Even these examples, mostly, are things that are maybe an absentee ballot issue or someone voting by accident.

CAMEROTA: Meaning a mistake. What you found is that some of these happened -- I mean, there are 2,000 instances that they found but these are mistakes, basically.

WALDMAN: And they're not things that Trump is talking about -- that Donald Trump is talking about. And they're not the kind of conduct that a lot of these laws that make it harder for people to vote would actually touch. Those, again, are this in-person matter, and as a statistical matter you are more likely to be hit by lightning in the United States than to commit in-person voter fraud.

So, you know, what we should be focusing on, I think, is actually making sure that everybody knows they have the right to vote and be able to get that vote counted and not be scared by all this stuff.

CAMEROTA: You talk about something that Donald Trump has mentioned. One of the things, Professor, that he's mentioned is that he believes that illegal immigrants have been able to vote and, in fact, were able to somehow influence the election of President Obama. Let me play for you what Donald Trump said on Monday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Then there's the issue of illegal immigrants voting. The following comes from a 2014 report from "The Washington Post". Because non-citizens tend to favor Democrats, to put it mildly, Obama won more than 80 percent of the votes of non-citizens in the 2008 sample. You don't read about this, right? They don't tell you about this. Your politicians don't tell you about this when they tell you how legitimate all of these elections are.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: So, Professor Downie, there, Donald Trump cites this 2014 "Washington Post" report. What is talking about?

DOWNIE: I haven't the slightest idea -- the slightest idea about that. There are no documented instances around the country of non- citizens registering to vote or voting at all. And the Secretaries of State in Maine and Ohio, who are conservative Republicans, have recently said that in their states they have no evidence of this whatsoever.

CAMEROTA: OK. Mr. Waldman, illegal immigrants cannot vote.

WALDMAN: They cannot vote. There's no reason to think they would vote. There is no reason to think they'd want to stride into a government office and announce who they are and where they live. And this is a phenomenon of scare stories and what is interesting is this -- what we're hearing from Donald Trump right now is kind of a cartoon version of a lot of the charges that a lot of politicians have been making over the years about oh, there must be voter fraud somewhere. We can't actually point to it but -- it's invisible, but it must be out there.

And it's understandable that people hear this noise over and over again, they think it might be true. But it's really important that we listen to the conservative Republican Secretary of State of Ohio, for example, who said let's be very clear. The elections have integrity, they're not rigged. People should, I think, stand up to this phony idea of them being rigged by voting.

CAMEROTA: Yes, and I mean, obviously, keep fact-checking, which is what we're trying to do with both you. One last question, Professor Downie. Is there a difference between voter fraud and voter registration fraud --

DOWNIE: Yes.

CAMEROTA: -- because we do have examples of dead people still being on the registration rolls.

DOWNIE: This is not fraud. The registration rolls are -- have to be cleaned up every year because people move. People move from one state to another, from one county to another. People die and nobody calls up the registration office and said my father just died, please take him off the registration rolls. So they have to be cleaned up periodically.

The Pew Center just did a study a while back showing that there needed to be more cleaning up of registration rolls and states have gotten together to compare their registration rolls. They're cleaning them up and that is not an issue.

CAMEROTA: Professor Downie, Mr. Waldman, thank you very much for sharing your years of research with us so that we can have the facts. I appreciate you being here. Thank you.

All right, we're following a lot of news so let's get right to it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: When it comes to Washington, D.C., it is time to drain the damn swamp.

OBAMA: He started whining before the game's even over?

TRUMP: We've just begun to fight. They even want to try and rig the election.

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Despite all of the terrible things he has said and done, he is still trying to win this election.

TRUMP: She's home sleeping and I'm working. That's the way it's going to be in the White House, too.

OBAMA: Whenever things are going badly for you, you start blaming somebody else, then you don't have what it takes to be in this job.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo and Alisyn Camerota.