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Wolf

New Details on Baton Rouge Police Shooter; Interview with DNC's Debbie Wasserman Schultz; Protesters Outside as Republican National Convention Starts; Turkish President Talks Death Penalty for Coup Plotters. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired July 18, 2016 - 13:30   ET

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

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[13:30:26] WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: We're here in Cleveland, the Republican National Convention, which has just been called to order. There is a business session under way right now. They're going through some technical issues, making sure everything's just perfect for the prime time first night that's about to unfold. We'll have much more on the convention, Donald Trump, the politics of all of this, but there is other important news we're following right now.

I want to turn to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. That's a city still in shock over the killing of three police officers, 32-year-old Montrell Jackson, 41-year-old Matthew Gerald, and 45-year-old Brad Garafola. Just moments ago, Hillary Clinton speaking to members of NAACP at their conference in Cincinnati, addressed the killings.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON, (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE & FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: And today, there are people all across America sick over what happened in Baton Rouge and in Dallas, but also fearful that the murders of police officers means that vital questions about police- community relations will go unanswered. Now, that is a reasonable fear, isn't it? And all of this tells us very powerfully that we have to change. Many police officers across the country agree with that. But it can only happen if we build trust and accountability. Let's admit it, that gets harder every time someone else is killed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: CNN is learning more about the killer and the attack. The killer, a 29-year-old former U.S. Marine. Sources telling us the video evidence right now is pointing to a meticulously planned attack.

Brian Todd is following the investigation for us. He's joining us live from Baton Rouge.

Brian, you're at the scene of that shooting. Give us some new information that you're learning.

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, sources telling us they do believe at this point this was a carefully planned confrontation by the shooter, Gavin Long. This is where the standoff occurred and ended. This is the gas station here in Baton Rouge, and where right here, a makeshift memorial has been set up to the fallen officers, people placing flowers, cards and balloons here. One gentleman just placed this bouquet of roses here just a moment ago.

What really strikes you about this scene, Wolf, is how dangerous this was and how just incredibly catastrophic is conceivably could have been with even much more loss of life. Why? Because look how busy this section is. Our photojournalist, Tony, is going to move with me this way over here. This is an incredibly busy section of Baton Rouge. Look at how congested the traffic is here. Now, it is midday on a Monday. Early Sunday morning, at about 8:40, it was probably considerably less busy, but still pretty congested here. You've got a large shopping center over here, businesses lining up and down this street, traffic everywhere. And of course, we believe, according to sources, that this general area is where the confrontation occurred, where the standoff ended with the shooter, Gavin Long, being killed, but also with three officers being killed.

Wolf, sources telling us today that they believe at least at is moment that he planned to lure the officers to him, that he knew that if he was walking along this area with his A.R.-15-style assault rifle wearing all black and wearing a mask that someone would call 911. They believe he tried to lure the officers here in a kind of ambush situation, and that that's what he did. He might have even called 911 himself, Wolf. So, again when you get a sense of this area and just how congested it is, it's pretty amazing that more people were not hurt or killed in this incident.

BLITZER: All right, Brian. We're going to get more information from you as well. Horrific, horrific murder in ballot rouge, Louisiana.

Brian Todd, thanks very much.

Up next, Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, she's out in Philadelphia right now getting ready for their convention. She's here in Cleveland at the Republican convention. She'll be joining me live. We'll talk about the Republican convention, the Democratic convention, Hillary Clinton's choice for vice president of the United States, much more, right after this.

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[13:38:27] BLITZER: Welcome back to the Republican National Convention here in Cleveland. The mayor of Cleveland, a Democrat, Frank Jackson, is speaking right now. Interesting that he has decided to welcome all these Republicans to his beautiful city.

The Republican governor of Ohio has decided he is not going to be attending this convention. That's caused quite a bit of stir among Republican circles.

But this is the Democratic mayor of Cleveland who's speaking right now.

Hillary Clinton's e-mail controversy, the Benghazi killings, will almost certainly be major lines of attack during this Republican convention. So, how will the Democrats respond? What else will they be doing this week?

Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz is the chair of the Democratic National Committee. She happens to be here in Cleveland with me right now.

(LAUGHTER)

REP. DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, (D), CALIFORNIA & CHAIR, DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE: Just a coincidence.

BLITZER: You're supposed to be in Philadelphia getting ready for the Democratic convention, but you and a whole team from the DNC have come here to make Hillary Clinton's case.

SCHULTZ: Yes. The Democratic National Committee and Hillary for America have come for this entire week to the Republican National Convention to make the case that everything you'll hear on this stage, the American people know that we are better than this, better than the divisive, unqualified, unprepared, racist, bigoted Donald Trump throughout this campaign. And we're going to focus on making sure that we can draw that contrast leading into our convention next week.

[13:40:00]BLITZER: And the Republicans, the RNC will be well represented, in Philadelphia next week.

SCHULTZ: I'm quite sure.

BLITZER: This is a relatively recent tradition over the years. Democrats show up, like you, your team --

(CROSSTALK)

SCHULTZ: I went in 2012 as well.

BLITZER: Yeah, and the Republicans will be in Philadelphia next week. So, how are you going to respond? Because we're going to be hearing tonight a lot about Benghazi, Hillary Clinton's failures, Hillary Clinton's failures in Libya, Hillary Clinton's failures with her private e-mail server. Those are going to be major themes, there's no doubt about that.

SCHULTZ: Well, what there's no doubt about, as I said, is that Donald Trump is the most divisive, bigoted, unprepared, unqualified major party candidate that has ever run and needs to get nowhere near the White House. And that's the contrast that we're going to draw. Whatever is said on this stage tonight and through this week, Donald Trump can't run away from his horrific personal and business record.

BLITZER: Hillary Clinton's, you know, numbers as far as honesty and trustworthiness, they're not very good either.

SCHULTZ: Donald Trump has been bankrupted several times, has abandoned employees, has discriminated against his own employees, has caused thousands of students from Trump University to face economic hardship by his fraudulent university. The list goes on and on of Donald Trump and how he's cheated everyone he's ever dealt with. BLITZER: Presumably, Benghazi, the e-mails, Libya, other failures of

Hillary Clinton will be major themes this week in Cleveland. What will the major themes going against Donald Trump in Philadelphia at the Democratic convention next week?

SCHULTZ: Well, we're certainly going to outline why Hillary Clinton is the most qualified and prepared candidate for president of the United States that we've had, and that she's going to continue to help us move forward and help the middle class and build on the economic progress we've made, but that will be a stark contrast to the divisiveness, to Donald Trump, who has said throughout this campaign that he would ban an preventing Muslims from coming into the country. He began his campaign, Wolf, if you remember, by declaring Mexicans rapists and drug dealers. He said that he would consider developing a database to register Muslims. I mean, this is a man who has really no concept of what American democracy or any concept of the constitution and fairness.

BLITZER: Bernie Sanders has come aboard. He's endorsed Hillary Clinton.

SCHULTZ: Yes.

BLITZER: He says he's going to campaign for her. He wants to make sure that Donald Trump is not the next president of the United States, but a lot of the supporters are not yet on board. They have no great love, many of them say, for Hillary Clinton. Some of them saying they're going to vote for a third-party candidate or they're not going to vote at all.

SCHULTZ: Well, I think the overwhelming majority of our supporters of both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are cong together. We were thrilled to have Senator Sanders join us endorsing Hillary Clinton last week. His supporters are already being incorporated into our campaign as organizers and as neighborhood team leaders and field staff. And we are a united party. We'll be united, unlike where here in Cleveland you have the governor, and for example, none of my south Florida Republican colleagues are here. I'm actually the only federal official from Florida here in Cleveland at the Republican National Convention because my three colleagues had no interest in being anywhere near this convention or associating themselves with Donald Trump's toxic brand.

BLITZER: A lot of Republicans have decided they didn't want to attend, including Governor Kasich.

SCHULTZ: That's right. And both former presidents and Republican nominees from recent times.

BLITZER: We'll look forward to Philadelphia next week, as well.

SCHULTZ: Thank you. Thank you.

BLITZER: Debbie Wasserman Schultz, thank you for joining us.

SCHULTZ: My pleasure. BLITZER: We'll show live pictures. Anti-Trump protesters here in

Cleveland marching towards the convention center. Our reporter is in the crowd. We'll go there next and update you on that and more when we come back.

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[14:48:15] BLITZER: Welcome back to our coverage of the Republican National Convention here at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, outside what they call the "Q." The city is bracing for protests. Some actually got under way over the weekend. We're hearing there are some demonstrations going on right now.

Our Sara Sidner is on the streets. She's in Cleveland with us.

Sara, how are things going right now?

(SHOUTING)

SARA SIDNER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, it's wild. There are several hundred people here, and they jumped over a barricade that was set up to try to keep people in the public square.

(CHANTING)

SIDNER: Now I got you. OK. What's happening is --

(AUDIO PROBLEM)

BLITZER: All right, unfortunately, we can't really hear Sara there.

Protesters, obviously, very, very loud on the streets.

I didn't get a sense of how many there are there, but I do know this, having been now in Cleveland today, yesterday, over the weekend, there are a lot of security personnel around the "Q," the Quicken Loan Arena here in Cleveland. There's a lot of police, law enforcement. They've actually been brought in from all over the country. We'll have much more on this part of the story. That's coming up as well.

[13:40:44] Also coming up, we're going to turn to the chaos in Turkey right now. Turkey's president, he has just sat down for an interview with CNN. We'll tell you what he said about that attempted coupe in Turkey, the future of his own govnerment. Much more right after this.

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BLITZER: Welcome back to our special coverage of the Republican National Convention that just got under way in Cleveland a little while ago. We're here at the Quicken Loans Arena, they call it the "Q." We'll continue our coverage here in just a moment.

But right now, I want to get us up to speed on two major international stories that we're following. The terror attack in France, a French prosecutor says the man responsible for killing 84 people in nice on Bastille Day searched for propaganda on the day of the attack but the interior minister says no ties have been established between the attacker and ISIS, no formal ties. Right now, six people are in custody in connection with that terror attack.

We're also watching the fallout in Turkey after a failed military coup over the weekend. The violence killing 232 people in Turkey. More than 7,000 people suspected of having a role in that plot have been arrested.

Listen now to the Turkish president, President Erdogan, speaking exclusively to CNN's Becky Anderson, through his translator, commenting specifically about the calls for the death penalty to be imposed against the coup plotters.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

[13:55:15] RECEP TAYYIP ERDOGAN, TURKISH PRESIDENT (through translation): There is a clear crime of treason. And your requests can never be rejected by our government. But of course, it will take a parliamentary decision for that to take action in the form of a constitutional measure. So the leaders will have to come together, discuss it. If they accept to discuss it, then as the president, I will approve any decision to come out of the parliament.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: President Erdogan of Turkey speaking exclusively to CNN's Becky Anderson.

Our national security commentator, the former House Intelligence Committee Chairman, Mike Rogers, is with us as well.

This is Turkey, a key NATO ally, with important geography in Europe. All of a sudden the world is stunned Friday when there was this coup. No one anticipated -- I don't think there was any intelligence suggesting a coup was about to take place.

MIKE ROGERS, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY COMMENTATOR: No intelligence directly, Wolf, but there was lots of analytical product so back in about 2011 Erdogan started going leaders. In April, about 275 military officers were -- from the courts were let out of jail, basically, for a previous coup, what they claimed was an attempt, what many said was not really an attempt. So you have all this turmoil within the military ranks and by constitution -- people forget this -- the Turkish constitution says that the army is in charge of keeping Islamism out of the government. And so there was all of this brewing turmoil, Erdogan knew that he had to keep pushing back the army if he was going to continue down the path he was doing so there was a conflict stage. I think what you saw here was they felt that they were getting uncovered by intelligence and police agencies and felt that they had to move quickly. "They" being the --

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: And thousands of these coup plotters have been arrested. You just heard President Erdogan saying he's not ruling out the possibility that some will be executed for their role in this. What's going to be the reaction among other NATO allies, especially in Europe, if there's executions?

ROGERS: Well, there's already been a bit of turmoil over his comments saying if you bring back the death penalty you can't get in the E.U., that would be impossible. I think what you saw there from the prime minister was the determination --

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: The president.

ROGERS: Excuse me, yes, the president of the Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. This was his opportunity to clean out and have a military that's very pro-Erdogan. For a while there was not so -- the plotters were more secular and targeting those more secular military officers for some time. What you saw was a reaction to that, didn't go -- went very badly. The biggest loser, Wolf, is going to be maybe a secular Turkey moving forward.

BLITZER: What about the U.S. military, which relies on this NATO ally, Incirlik, the air base, it's a launching pad for a lot of U.S. air strikes against ISIS targets in Syria and in Iraq as well.

ROGERS: I don't think that's going to go away. As a matter of fact, a lot of those operations have been kicked back in. Erdogan understands the value of having the United States there and attacking folks who, by the way, have also been responsible for suicide attacks in Istanbul. So he'll see the value in that. He probably won't risk it but remember -- and I happened to be there at the start of the Iraq war, I went to Turkey with a few members to try to talk the president at that time prime minister newly elected not serving yet into allowing the Fourth Infantry Division to go through. So he's had a long kind of conflict with the U.S. military.

BLITZER: A very tense situation right now. Critically important.

Mike Rogers, thanks very much.

ROGERS: Thanks.

BLITZER: That's it for me. I'll be back 5:00 p.m. eastern in "The Situation Room." Later, we'll be here throughout the night as this Republican National Convention unfolds.

In the meantime, the news will continue right here on CNN in 60 seconds.

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