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Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees
Donald Trump Speaking Now In Austin, Texas; Trump Responds To AP Clinton Investigation; Clinton Talks Health On Late-Night TV; Trump's Bizarre Health Report; Trump Continues Outreach To African- Americans; Iraqi Forces Make Gains Near Mosul. Aired 9-10p ET
Aired August 23, 2016 - 21:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[21:00:00] ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Donald Trump rallying on Austin, Texas. Senator Jeff Sessions is at the podium now. The candidate himself has been running bit behind schedule. We should be hearing from him very soon. We'll bring that you. He's expected to make news making what certainly appears on the face of it to be a distinct change in his policy on the people in this country illegally what he himself this afternoon called a softening.
Our Jason Carroll is in Austin, he joins us now with the latest. So, we talked to Kellyanne Conway about this softening, what are you hearing about it, Jason?
JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, first of all, let me tell you, we're just mentioning Senator Jeff Sessions. And just a short while ago, Anderson, I spoke to him before he took the stage and I asked him this question about something that Donald Trump said earlier today where he talked about possibly softening his position on illegal immigration, and let me give you the proper context. He was asked a question, specifically, about those illegal immigrants who are living here in the United States, contributing to society, possibly with kids and he was asked, would you deport those people as well or could there be a softening in terms of his position? He said yes.
When I asked Senator Jeff Sessions about that, he really struggled to deal with this particular issue. I said is that something that you support? Do you support a softening of the position and he said, "Look, Donald Trump is not "softening" his position on the legality of illegal immigration. He was really parsing his words, Anderson.
And when he was pushed further, even Senator Jeff Sessions said this is something that "Donald Trump is still wrestling with." So, very clearly, this is an
issue that Donald Trump is going to have to do, what the campaign is going to have to deal with, they're going to have to come out with some specifics in terms of exactly what his position is. As you know, it's evolved over time. In the beginning, it was simply, I'm going to deport the all 11 million illegal immigrants living in this country and then evolve to him, just going to deport the bad ones then it came down to, well, I'm going to do much of what President Obama is already doing. We expect him to address that particular issue here tonight. He's not going to give an immigration policy speech here tonight but he is here in Texas, this is a boarder state, he is expected to address that issue at some point when he takes the stage tonight. Anderson?
COOPER: Yeah, I mean, even last night on Bill O'Reilly's program, he talked about President Obama deporting large numbers of people under existing laws in a favorable way. So, it was actually interesting to hear him saying something positive about President Obama which is not something you hear very often from Donald Trump.
CARROLL: Right, something you not -- you do not hear very often but what that shows you is that this is a position that the candidate is still evolving on. I mean, when you talk to the campaign, what they will tell you is that what Donald Trump is doing at this point is talking to people, getting advice in terms of how to proceed with his ideas and his proposals.
It looks like Donald Trump is about to take the stage right now, Anderson. So we'll hear him possibly just a few minutes if he can get some specifics in terms of how his policy has evolved. Anderson.
COOPER: Jason Carroll, thanks very much.
Donald Trump is staring to come to the stage. Before he starts talking, we should also just point out the Trump campaign got some good news today in Hillary Clinton, the A.P. reporting that Hillary Clinton used the State Department Clinton Foundation charity as a kind of -- these are Trump's words, I should say, a pay-to-play scheme. The Clinton campaign and foundation disputes that.
No matter where you stands tonight, there's no doubt, there are certainly more -- we've learned about this dispute both sides reacting to new A.P. report on the percentage of private individuals who did these two things, give to the foundation, then that was Hillary Clinton . We'll have more on that, of course.
We'll listen to here if Donald Trump speaks about this. No doubt he will because it definitely fits into one of the Trump campaign themes are really focusing on the Clinton Foundation. Let's listen in to Donald Trump tonight in Austin, Texas.
DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. I am so happy to be back in the great State of Texas. Thank you. Thank you.
The people of Texas are proud. They're independent and they are free. There is no better place to deliver the message I have to deliver tonight than right here, right in the middle of freedom. Thank you.
Tonight's message is about re-declaring our independence as a country.
[21:05:07] On November 8th, a very, very important date, we are going to declare our independence from special interests, corrupt politicians and I might add very corrupt politicians. And from a rigged system that benefits only the insiders. We're going to bring our jobs back. We're bringing them back to our country and we're going to create millions of new jobs. We are going to declare our independence from politicians who don't listen to us and media executives that don't care about us. And by the way, who never report our massive and very, very friendly crowds, that's for sure.
We are going to declare our independence from rising crime, soaring poverty rates and crushing, crushing debt.
COOPER: We're going to continue to monitor this. We're particularly looking for his comments on immigration tonight because that is really one of the main headlines of this evening. We'll bring those to you.
I want to bring in Jeff Zeleny who's joining us now with the latest reporting on the Clinton Foundation and reporting by the Associated Press. What did they find, Jeff?
JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Anderson, in a nut she'll, this Associated Press report says that more than half the people who met with Hillary Clinton as secretary of state contributed to the Clinton Foundation. Now, the Clinton campaign is pushing back hard on this report tonight. In a statement Spokesman Brian Fallon says this. He says, "This story relies on utterly flawed data. It cherty-picked a limited subset of Secretary Hillary Clinton's schedule to give a distorted portrayal of how often she crossed paths with individuals connected to charitable donations to the Clinton Foundation. The data, he says, does not account for more than half of her tenure as secretary of state." Anderson.
COOPER: Now, the -- Donald Trump, how's he been reacting to this A.P. report about the Clinton Foundation because it certainly comes at a very good time for the Trump campaign. This is something they have been focusing on now for the last several day.
ZELENY: It does indeed. I mean, Donald Trump and his running mate, Mike Pence, have been calling for the Clinton Foundation to be shut down. So, tonight, they are using this story to fire up their supporters as another example suggesting what they believe the Clintons are corrupt. Trump says this is evidence of pay-for-play.
But important to point out, we have no evidence of that in our own reporting here after going over thousands of e-mails and, of course, there are some more e-mails still to come here, but there's no question, it creates at least the appearance of conflicts. And for the Clinton campaign, that's another headache here in this ongoing controversy.
But tonight a State Department spokesman also told CNN that donors to the foundation actually do request meetings, they're interested in global affairs, humanitarian affairs. So, they say there's nothing unusual or improper about that. But in this political context, this gives fresh meat to the Trump campaign and I suspect he will use it tonight.
COOPER: Well, I guess one of the questions to be determine is, you know, did they get these meetings because they're donating to the foundation or did they get these meetings as people do with the State Department and are they requesting these meetings specifically through the Clinton Foundation who then, you know, the Clinton Doug Band guy, who worked for the foundation context Huma Abedin and gets the ball rolling that way. So, a lot still to be learned.
Jeff Zeleny, thanks.
The panel is back. Also joined this hour, "Washington Post" political reporter Philip Bump. How important is this because it certainly plays into the narrative that Donald Trump and Mike Pence have been hitting hard?
PHILIP BUMP, "WASHINGTON POST" POLITICAL REPORTER: Right. No, that's exactly right. I mean, one of the things that Hillary Clinton didn't want to have happen is to have the tone of the campaign shift. We saw right before the conventions that the FBI came out and was talking about her e-mails and her numbers sank as a result of that. She doesn't want to see that happen again.
I will say, though, that in terms of how bad things could be for Hillary Clinton, this is a fresh story, I think this is probably not that bad over the long run simply because it's the Clinton Foundation, there's a lot of -- there are really a lot of gaps in that A.P. story in terms of who she met with and what the relationship was.
And, you know, I mean, I think that Donald Trump would be in a great position here if he himself hadn't started taking contributions because one of the things it shows is how sausage is made in D.C. It's an ugly process. It's always been ugly process. Donald Trump would be much stronger on this if he could also say, "I'm not even taking money."
COOPER: Well, also, I mean, Phil -- sorry, Paul, you guys look so much alike. And I said this to Kellyanne Conway, I mean, Donald Trump gave -- by the foundation or puts more than $100,000, or at least 100,000 to the Clinton Foundation, so was he also -- if it was pay- to-play, it seems like was that part of why he was giving money.
PAUL BEGALA, PRO HILLARY SUPER PAC ADVISER: Right. And Kellyanne told you well, his motives were pure, but these others weren't.
[21:09:59] And I read the A.P. story. Now, let them campaign fight with the A.P. over the methodologies, not my business. 12 of the 40 paragraphs in that story, though, were devoted to Hillary meeting with Muhammad Yunus. Now, I know about him half of my life because he's a friend of Bill Clinton back when -- Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas. Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize. He won the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He won the Congressional Gold Medal. By the way, Bill Clinton ...
COOPER: No, but that's what the Clinton campaign has come forward and said, look ...
BEGALA: But it's 12 out of the 40 paragraphs in the story. I'm not cherry picking, Anderson. It's the plurality of the analysis of the A.P. This is a man who has probably done more to alleviate extreme poverty in the world than anybody alive today. I'm glad ... COOPER: Well, certainly, those people she was meeting who, you know, had a visa problem ...
BEGALA: Yes, but so what? What's wrong with that? So what?
COOPER: That's what voters decide.
BEGALA: No, but I mean, people have visa problems. What the hell.
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: ... meeting with the secretary of state. I mean ...
BEGALA: Let me make a broader point. When -- this is a new thing. This is why Clinton people get angry and say this is a double standard. When I was helping to run Bill Clinton's campaign against George Bush Sr., George Bush Sr. started the point to like foundation. Every single day, he named a point of like promoting that foundation. He thought it was great. We didn't research it. We didn't attack it. By the way, journalists didn't look through it either.
When Bob Dole was running the Senate, his wife was running the American Red Cross, a wonderful foundation. She did a great job. Why did we not criticize it? Well, because the Bushes are good people and the Doles are good people, but the Clinton s, they are scum. So, the Clinton s always get the presumption of criminality and venality and it really makes me an angry. It's completely unfair.
CHRISTINE QUINN, CLINTON SUPPORTER: And look, if you think about the concept, who are the kind of people who give to the Clinton Foundation? International and national philanthropist who were concerned with the State of Affairs, the health, HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, earthquakes of folks around the world.
COOPER: But you could ...
QUINN: Who meets with the secretary of state, those same kind of folks.
COOPER: A critic will also say that, look, there is a social component to the Clinton Global Initiative. It's rubbing elbows with Bill Clinton, with Hillary Clinton ...
QUINN: And doing good for the world.
COOPER: Well, yes, but there, you know, there's plenty of organizations you can do that and not ...
QUINN: He was effective as the Clinton Foundation in their short period. They've always been rated in the top levels ...
COOPER: I agree.
QUINN: ... of the non-profit ratings. And again, the people she -- and Paul's right, the campaign is right on the A.P. validity and the way they did the reporting which is for it, but also, I'm just not surprised that a secretary of state met with international philanthropist. It make sense to me as the kind of people who with -- our secretary of state should be talking with.
JEFFREY LORD, TRUMP SUPPORTER: The essence of the problem here is her judgment. And I just find it remarkable after all of the controversies that she has had and President Clinton has had throughout their entire career, she gets a plain slate as secretary of state. And four years later, she's embroiled in e-mail controversies and controversies about the Clinton Foundation. That is because she has poor judgment whether it's a server in her basement or whether it's the mix between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department. That's a bad thing to do. On its surface, you should say we've got to have some sort of separation here or we can't be doing it. We shouldn't be putting servers in the basement. That's a judgment question and that is what voters are going to be looking at.
COOPER: Tara, James Carville was on the program last night and he said, "Look, you know, people are make a big deal about this, apparent conflict of interest and people are going to die because of this because of the, you know, nine million people or so get low-cost HIV drugs or free HIV drugs because of the work of the Clinton Foundation and others."
TARA SETMAYER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Right.
COOPER: So, what do you say to him?
SETMAYER: Well, I think that that's really hyperbole. People are going to die. I mean, that's typical Democrat talking points that everyone's always -- it's always somebody is going to die.
Look, the Clinton Foundation they have partnerships with NGOs and all kinds of other charities all over the world. I'm sure someone could pick up the slack. I don't think that there -- that all the partners that they work with are not going to pick up the slack to make up for the Clinton Foundation no longer being in existence because -- like Ed Rendell, the former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania said only a week ago that there -- that it would need to shut down because it has an appearance of impropriety and then he had to walk that back because I guess the campaign didn't like that because you can't square, well, how come it didn't look like there was an appearance of conflict of interest when she was secretary of state, but there will be if she's president. So, that (inaudible) back and say, "Oh, well, she has to keep her distance from it."
I mean, the Clinton Foundation as the National Review said that it is ethically insufficient. There were lines that were blurred in between the Clinton Foundation -- the Clinton Global Initiative and the State Department. And every week now, we're seeing more and more people who have that incestuous relationship with the Clinton Foundation and the official business at the State Department and it's what everybody thinks is pay-to-play in Washington. This is a perfect example of it.
COOPER: We've got to take a quick break. We'll have more with our panel about this, also Donald Trump's shifting immigration policy, how some his supporters may react to the changes. It seems to be in works. We'll continue watching this event tonight with an eye out for any remarks he makes about immigration or any other headlines.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[21:18:30] TRUMP: I will fix the problem. We will fix it.
COOPER: Well, we continue to monitor Donald Trump and what he himself called a softening on his immigration policy. And then the last hour, you heard his new campaign manager talking about whether constitute (inaudible) planning push all the way the nomination and beyond.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We have a law, right? You're supposed to come in legally. I would get people out and I would have an expedited way of getting them back into the country so they can be legal. They're illegal immigrants. They got to go out. They got to leave.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But how do you do it in a practical way. You really think you can ...
TRUMP: You know what? At some point, we're going to try getting them back, the good ones.
You're going to have a deportation force and you're going to do it mainly.
ERIN BURNETT, CNN'S "ERIN BURNETT OUTFRONT" ANCHOR: Are you going to be sending in officers, a force of people into people's homes to get them out?
TRUMP: We're going to be sending people in a very nice way. We're going to be giving notice. We're going to be saying you have to go.
We have at least 11 million people in this country that came in illegally, they will go out. They will come back, some will come back, the best, through a process. They have to come back legally.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Back with us is Jeffrey Lord, Trump supporter, joining us also, Clinton supporter Maria Cardona and GOP strategist, Ana Navarro.
So, Ana, first of all, do you -- I mean, do you think this is a change in policy because it certainly sounds like it. He's no longer talking about 11 million -- all 11 million got to leave and the good ones come back. And what about Hispanics? He currently has what, like 26 percent to Hillary Clinton's 50 percent. Do you think this can actually help him?
ANA NAVARRO, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: That -- I don't know what it is we're hearing because frankly we've heard very little from him on the issue.
[21:20:01] He was supposed to give a policy speech on Thursday, he's now pushed it back to a -- to be determined date. I think what you are watching is a testing of the temperature of the water. They're putting in one little toe at a time. And what you are seeing is a very positive influence from Kellyanne Conway who knows this issue, knows that the way he have handled this issue is a political looser, not only for Donald Trump, but also for the Republican Party. And she has been doing her very good job of baby- sitting this bull in the China shop that she inherited.
But I have a very hard time reacting to Donald Trump's policy when we haven't heard him articulate it. What we have heard is, you know, I think balloons -- trial balloons being thrown by Kellyanne and by other members of the folks (ph). When we've hear him say it, then we can react to it.
COOPER: Maria.
NAVARRO: But I also will tell you, Anderson, it's been 15 months and, you know, this isn't like that movie "Men in Black" with Will Smith, where they have that little (inaudible) where you erase the memory, you press it then you erase the memory. You know, Latinos remember, immigrants remember, all of Americans remember. This man has based his campaign on bashing immigrants, on bashing Hispanics for 15 months. No, we're not going to get election time amnesia.
COOPER: Jeffrey, is this a trial balloon?
LORD: I don't know, obviously, whether it's a trial balloon or not. I mean, I just don't think that he is changing the direction of his policy. And I think, you know, my friend, Ana ...
COOPER: But saying -- let me -- he's not saying 11 million have to leave anymore. That's a big change. He's still, in your opinion, tough on immigration, still tough on building a wall ...
LORD: Right.
COOPER: ... and Mexicans are going to pay for it.
LORD: Right. But he still wants to have a tough immigration policy.
COOPER: Yes, but 11 million people, which is a huge number of people, no longer going to have a deportation force.
LORD: We'll see what he says on this. And if that's a change, then that's a change. But I don't think it's a change of the ultimate policy objective.
COOPER: OK. Maria, who do you think this is aimed at?
MARIA CARDONA, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: It's certainly not aimed at Latino voters because Latino voters and I think most common sense sensible Americans who do agree with Comprehensive Immigration Reform and some sort of pathway to citizenship or legalization they're not going to unsee or unhear the last 128 days especially the first day when he came out and announced his presidential, calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals followed that by a deportation force, which he said several times and deporting families, whole families that needed to go back to their home countries and some of them perhaps be brought back, who knows how, but in a humane way.
You know, he also talked about Judge Curiel. That was also seen as a very racist bigoted comment towards Latinos.
So, that's only, I don't think it has been -- it will be geared towards Latinos. I think that he has given up on Latinos. He certainly not going to get the threshold of the 44 percent that he -- that any Republican candidate will need in order to win. I think it's geared toward these independent more Republican leaning suburban college educated white voters which he has now losing to Hillary Clinton and if he doesn't gain ground with them, Mitt Romney won them and still lost the election in 2012.
COOPER: It is interesting, Jeffrey, because, I mean, Donald Trump is obviously spent a lot of time sailing, you know, when he called the failed policies of President Obama.
LORD: Right.
COOPER: Last night on O'Reilly, I want to play what he said about immigration but also a reference to president -- oh, actually we don't have the sound bite. He said that what people don't know is that Obama got tremendous numbers of people out of the country, Bush the same thing. A lot of people were brought out of the country with the existing laws. I'm going to do the same thing.
I mean, it's sort of interesting to hear him now saying actually President Obama did get a lot of people out of the country and he's essentially going to follow in his footsteps.
LORD: Yeah. I mean ...
COOPER: You weren't advising him on that I suppose.
LORD: No. No. He didn't take my call for that.
COOPER: He seems -- he should be calling that one. OK.
LORD: I just think again that he -- as all the politicians do, the good ones, the ones who win, they keep the ultimate objective in mind and it's like sailing, I mean, come back from vacation, you go this way, you go this way, you attack one way or the other, but the ultimate objective is to get here.
COOPER: But it's weird not to -- why -- what I never understand is why can't a politician just say, you know what, yeah, I did change -- this is a change because I've evolved on the issue, I've learned something, I've been listening, I've been ...
LORD: Right. And correspondingly, and I'm not saying this to you, but I mean, I know the sort of media storm that's going to come around this is this is the kind of thing that drives people out there in the countryside crazy because they think the media picks on some morsel and just goes nuts with it all the time. I had ... COOPER: Right. But this isn't a morsel. I mean this is kind of the whole like chunk of cheese.
LORD: I had somebody ...
NAVARRO: The whole enchilada.
CARDONA: Yeah.
COOPER: I was going to say that, but then I thought, you know what, I'm not going to say that.
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: You can say that Ana if want to, but ...
NAVARRO: Listen, Anderson ...
(CROSSTALK)
NAVARRO: ... his entire Hispanic outreach have been eating a taco bell.
COOPER: What's your Twitter page, Ana? I want her Twitter address.
LORD: I had somebody say to me, stop me in a store in Pennsylvania yesterday, and say to me "If Donald Trump sneezed, CNN would spend four days saying that he's damaged the environment."
[21:25:08] Now that, you know, that's the kind of perception out there. Not just about CNN but the media writ large and that where I see this kind of situation is going.
CARDONA: But, you know what, I think is also another huge pickle for Donald Trump and his campaign and why people like Jeffry Lord and Kellyanne, who I think wants him to go one way and Donald Trump himself has not gone there. So, we'll see.
The majority of Republican voters during the primary season who voted for him, voted for him primarily because of his draconian stance on immigration reform, because he was talking about deporting them all, because he was talking about building the wall ...
COOPER: Yeah, because there were a bunch of other Republicans on that stage who are not going that far.
CARDONA: Yes. Absolutely.
COOPER: In fact ...
(CROSSTALK)
NAVARRO: You know what's absolutely striking is that ...
COOPER: Go ahead, Ana. NAVARRO: ... look, since day one this immigration issue, the theme of build a wall has been the pillar on which he has built his campaign. We are now two and a half months out from Election Day. We are about a month and a half out from absentee ballots going out in the state with a lot of Latinos like Florida, and it is up until now that he's going to issue an immigration policy speech and he can even issue it because he's not even quite sure what he's going to say.
You know what I get the sense of when I hear Kellyanne Conway, who I have great respect for and like very much, is that she's got this imaginary candidate in her head, right? She says we're going to talk about issues. We're not going to talk about personalities. It's been Donald Trump who has made it a personality contest. She says we're not going to -- we're going to talk about issues, we're not going to hurl personal insults. It's been Donald Trump whose hurled personal insults at absolutely everybody. So, I have a hard time reconciling what Kellyanna is saying ...
COOPER: Right.
NAVARRO: ... and her imaginary candidate and the Donald Trump that we have seen for the last 16 months.
COOPER: We've got to leave it there. We are monitoring this Donald Trump rally tonight. Oh, I should point it out, he did just talk about building a wall, but again, we're listening for any more clarification or what he says actually about those 11 million undocumented workers. More with the panel as well as we continue.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[21:31:12] COOPER: Donald Trump has repeatedly has questioned Hillary Clinton's mental and physical stamina and there are bunch of unfounded claims about her health floating around, particularly on the internet. Clinton responded to those claims with a big dose of humor on "Jimmy Kimmel Live".
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JIMMY KIMMEL, "JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE" HOST: Are you in good health?
HILLARY CLINTON, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, this is has become one of their themes. Here, you take my pulse while I'm talking to you.
KIMMEL: OK.
CLINTON: So make sure I'm alive.
KIMMEL: Oh, my God, there's nothing there.
CLINTON: There's nothing there. I don't know why they are saying this. I think on the one hand it's part of the whacky strategy, just say all these crazy things and maybe you can get some people to believe you and on the other hand it just absolutely makes no sense.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: As may know, Donald Trump is actually two years older than Secretary Clinton. So, what do we actually know about his own health, not a lot actually, but what we do know is it's sort of unusual. Donald Trump released a letter from his doctor last year, a grandiose few paragraphs from what is surely the world's most hyperbolic gastroenterologist claiming Trump would be, "the healthiest individual ever elected." And that his, "strength and stamina are extraordinary."
It doesn't really sound like a medical document, but I'm surely no doctor. So, let's check in with our doctor, chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Thanks for joining us.
So, Trump would be "the healthiest individual ever elected the presidency." What evidence did the doctor give to support the claim?
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: There was no evidence, Anderson. And I think it's probably one of those things that's unknowable. I was really struck by that as well. You mentioned that doesn't sound like a medical document. Nobody writes like that really from -- when you look at the medical notes in the charts usually it's much more factual, much more objective supported by test results. I, you know, I don't know what to really make of that. We know his age, we know a few sort of relatively minor facts from that letter but not much more.
COOPER: So, the total medical information that we do have about Donald Trump's health is this four paragraph letter. What else jumps out from it?
GUPTA: I think, you know, I think a lot of it really had to do with the language and how little in terms of actual data.
So let me give you a couple of exams, I wrote this down. First of all, at some point, the doctor says there's only positive results that Donald Trump has exhibited. Only positive results.
Now, you probably know, Anderson, I think most people do that in medicine if a test is positive, that's actually not a good thing. That means that you found something that you probably don't want to find.
COOPER: Right. There's a lot of tests you would not want to be declared positive for.
GUPTA: Right, a positive result. And that's just one of those things in medicine. So, you think a doctor who would write this wouldn't sort of refer to something as having positive results.
Also, he uses the term astonishingly excellent. Again, the hyperbole is really remarkable. Usually, again, we try and support that was some sort of objective data. There is some data, they look at the normal blood pressure, they talk about the fact that he takes a daily aspirin and take a statin drug, but at no point do we know his cholesterol, we don't know what the risk of heart disease is. Those are real questions that should have real answers. But there are just these little hints of things without objective data.
COOPER: What about the doctor himself, what do you know about him?
GUPTA: You know, it's interesting. We've done a little bit of digging into it. And again, this letter, as you point out, is quite something to look at, it's filled with grammatical errors, typos, probably things like that. But even with his title he refers to himself as a fellow of the American College of Gastroenterology. That's GI medicine. We called them. He hasn't actually been a fellow there since there '95. So over 20 years ago he was a fellow.
He talks about the fact that he's a member of the Division of GI at this particular hospital. He's not listed as a member there. He does have admitting privileges at this hospital but he is not actually a member of the division that he says he's a member of.
So, again, I don't quite know what to make of that.
[21:35:00] I -- this -- certainly, you know a letter like this about a presidential candidate is going to get scrutinized quite a bit, so I -- why are these lapses, why are these frank inaccuracies in the letter, I just don't know.
What I can tell you as a doctor, going back to your original question, you always want more information whether you're a doctor or a journalist, there's just not that much here.
COOPER: All right. Sanjay, thanks very much.
GUPTA: Yeah. Thank you.
COOPER: Coming up, we'll be taking a look more at Donald Trump's speech tonight speaking right now in Austin, Texas. Also Gary Tuchman talking to voters in Austin asking them, particularly African-American voters, about Donald Trump's comments about what do they have to lose by voting for him. More ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
COOPER: Donald Trump has been reaching out to African-American voters. He's obviously got a long way to go in terms of polling. Recent polls show him with only about 2 percent supporting that demographic nationally. Tonight he continues to appeal just "give Donald Trump a chance." Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I say this to the African-American community, give Donald Trump a chance. We will turn it around.
[21:40:01] We will make your streets safe. So when you walk down the street, you don't get shot, which is what's happening now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Gary Tuchman is in Austin with African-American voters who have been watching Trump's speech together tonight. He joins me now. Gary?
GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Anderson we're about 30 minutes away from the venue of where the speech is, with 20 African- Americans citizens here in the Austin, Texas area. Professionals, activists, teachers, lawyers, mothers, fathers, volunteers, nine of them are Democrats, six registered Republicans, five independents.
I want to ask you all, first of all, how many of you are supporting Donald Trump for president? We've got two people. How many are not supporting Donald Trump for president? Most of the people here are not. Question I want ask you, he just said a short time ago, "I say this to the African-American community, give Donald Trump a chance." You are willing to give Donald Trump a chance? What is your name?
MARILYN JACKSON, REPULICAN SUPPORT: Marilyn Jackson.
TUCHMAN: Marilyn, you're a registered Republican?
JACKSON: I am.
TUCHMAN: What do you think of the speech so far?
JACKSON: Well I'm still trying to hear it well. It's kind of hard to hear with a lot of people. But, so far, I mean it sounds like a traditional politician, but I'm still listening to some of the points that he's saying.
TUCHMAN: He said "I will be the greatest jobs president that God ever created, believe me." Do you believe him?
JACKSON: Well, I put my trust in God, but we'll have to see. I believe that he can bring it about but we'll have to see.
TUCHMAN: So you like what he says about the African-American community, he's talked about a lot but he hasn't gone to the inner city to talk to the African-Americans yet?
JACKSON: He hasn't. He's brought up some points that are very, very valid regarding African-Americans, crime and death rates and things like that. I mean, he does say he will make it better. We'll have to see. All politicians say some of the same thing and we still have to see.
TUCHMAN: OK. This gentleman right here. I've seen you chuckling a couple of times at some of the things he said. He aren't really -- sorry. There's a table here. My poor photographer almost tripped on it. Are you OK? OK good. OK. I want to ask you. You've been chuckling. How come you've been chuckling so much?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Because he'll make a good point and then he'll take it way too far, and that's the biggest issue we have with politics right now is that you have people go ahead that feel like they have to play to an extreme and it make some important points. But I think most of the people in this room, he talked about these issues, they'll we agree with what the issues are but when you're going too left or right it become absurd. TUCHMAN: When he talks about African-Americans being shot in their neighborhoods when they walk down the sidewalks, is that insulting?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Absolutely. I mean I realized that that's something that is happening in our communities, but I think it's insulting because he's using it for political points. He's trying to score political points with African-American voters when he's made not outreach African-American voters. He's been running since June 2015.
TUCHMAN: Have you been shot?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, sir.
TUCHMAN: Has anyone here have been shot? Anyone here at all? We have 20 people. Sir, you are a Republican supporting Donald Trump. Have you been shot?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, I haven't.
TUCHMAN: Does it insult that he says that. If it's literal or fugitive, but does that insult you that kind of statement?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, it doesn't insult me at all. I haven't been shot. My father was killed when I was 16. He was murdered and no one was ever arrested.
TUCHMAN: As part of the point, he's probably trying to make, right?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One of the things that disturbs me about the speeches is I'm not that impressed by the speech.
TUCHMAN: But you're a Trump supporter?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I am impressed that he actually mentioned education which is something that is important and dear to all of us which I haven't heard any other candidate mention at all.
TUCHMAN: Are you still planning on voting for Donald Trump?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I sure am.
TUCHMAN: Thank you for talking with us. So you can see 20 people all from the same area here in Austin, Texas but with some different opinions. Anderson, back to you.
COOPER: Gary thanks very much and please thank them all for sticking around to talk to us tonight.
Back with our panel for a quick reaction. But Tara, you've been pretty tough on Donald Trump in terms of the way he has gone about this and some of the words he's used. It's interesting tonight to hear him say give Donald Trump a chance although I always find it fascinating when politicians talk about themselves in the third person, like when does a human decide, you know what, I'm going to start to just talk about myself. Let me talk to Anderson Cooper. But Anderson Cooper wants to ask you what do you think -- you know, I don't -- didn't hear him tonight say what have you got to lose. Is there a difference?
SETMAYER: I think that he is again -- this is the influence of the new regime of the campaign where they realize that it was a mistake the language that he used last week. It was terribly condescending, still he has yet to announce where -- when he's actually going to go in front of a black audience and speak about these things. He needs to do that.
Now it's being reported that they're planning a trip to Detroit possibly with Ben Carson who is going to give him a tour of Detroit and maybe go to a school or something like that. They have to do this because just the rhetoric thus far has been so insulting. You just saw the visceral reaction by people of color and honestly, since last week, when he made those comments the campaign has been basically whitesplaning away. Donald Trump's appeal to African-American, that's not going to cut it either. Where is Donald Trump's African-American outreach director, where's Omarosa, is that what she's paid to do? We haven't seen a peep of her in a couple of days. Where's the outreach effort coming? They're depending on the RNC for field operations. They don't have any of that out there. This is not typical.
[21:45:05] COOPER: Andre, do you want to see Donald Trump talking to an African-American church of any group?
ANDRE BAUER, TRUMP SUPPORT: Absolutely. We are in ever evolving world. Just tonight, I got word the state of South Carolina Democratic Party is going to do away with the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner because they both known slaves. Been going on since 1830 and the party has decided today nor I just got, they're going to do away with it.
So, we're always trying to change and evolve and Donald Trump is. You know, clearly he's done things in the past that made him a better person. He was on the cutting edge of letting people in Mar-a-Lago.
SETMAYER: That is not true.
BAUER: He worked with people.
SETMAYER: No.
BAUER: He worked with people with color for years.
SETMAYER: That's a horrible talking point. I disputed this last night. The reason why -- stop using Mar-a-Lago as an example, all the sudden Donald Trump he used Martin Luther King now. Cutting edge of civil rights, the reason why he sued the Palm Beach area for that was because he was trying to make changes in that club and the people in Palm Beach looked at him as new money and they looked down upon the things he was trying to do there. So he used the Black and Jewish membership issue as leverage to get what he wanted.
(CROSSTALK)
COORPER: Can he make inroads with African-Americans? QUINN: I don't believe he can because whether you say something slightly nicer, the facts go back to everything he has said and completely condescending way and the facts are this is a man who was sued for housing discrimination. This is a man who has ...
COOPER: Which was settled without him ...
QUINN: But nonetheless, the fact ...
(CROSSTALK)
BAUER: ... lives in a segregated neighborhood in 1974. I mean think about how far back you're talking too.
QUINN: The DOJ case was one issue. You have a man here who has defaulted on small business owners, many of them people of color. You have a plan that offers nothing significant to the African-American community and you have Donald Trump saying I want to limit violence. I don't want people to be shot when he's been endorsed by the NRA and won't support any gun measures that would help get guns off our street. There is nothing here.
BAUER: Anderson, we got every Democrat talking point out there, but the guy is reaching out trying to show that he has a plan.
QUINN: He's reaching ...
COOPER: He's saying he's making effort.
BAUER: But it hasn't been working in the way under the last leadership and he's saying, "Look, let's try something" ...
COOPER: Paul, you don't believe he's reaching out?
BEGALA: I don't believe he's stupid enough to think that he's going to get African-American votes. He's a smart man. He's trying to reassure and reach out to moderate whites to say I'm not a racist. The problem is he's got a lot more votes from the David Duke crowd than he has in the African-American community. That's bothered a lot ...
COOPER: We've got to take quick break. From the presidential campaign to the front lines to the fight against ISIS, Iraqi forces inching closer next big battle ground in Iraq. Mosul they made some big gains in recent months. Arwa Damon takes us there.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[21:51:40] COOPER: Well, ISIS, as you know, has been a big focus in the presidential campaign to fight the terror group and how to keep American safe from terrorism.
The Iraqi Army of course is a big part of the fight right now and the city of Mosul is the next big battleground. Iraqi military officials said they will liberate Mosul from ISIS by year's end. Right now, they are inching closer. Our Arwa Damon reports tonight on the games that are made in the just recent days.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Under apocalyptic skies blackened by thick smoke is Qayyarah, the next target for Iraqi forces. ISIS used to move around 100 oil tankers of crude a day out of these fields. Now set aflame by ISIS fighters to decrease visibility from above.
We are some 65 kilometers or 40 miles south of Mosul, lands Iraqi forces have not stepped in since ISIS took over more than two years ago, their corpses left to rot in the sun. And the commander tells us that ISIS appears to be weakening.
GENERAL NAJIM AL-JABOURI: Before as I told you the majority of fighters attacking us were foreign fighters. Now they put some foreign fighters with local fighters. Now, I think they have lack on the foreign fighters.
DAMON: On display weapons troops found in residential homes, among them homemade mortar tubes and mortars larger than anything have at their disposal. Another significant gain in this area, the Qayyarah air base, the third largest in Iraq much of it destroyed by ISIS fighters as they withdraw. Leaving, we are told, explosives under pile of the dirt on the run ways that need to be cleared. This will be a vital forward base for the Iraqis and potentially U.S. forces.
Families wearily haul what they can. Stumbling away from the fighting.
UNDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translation): They took half of our men. They forced them to fight for them. They killed my father.
DAMON: Tears for all that they lost, loved ones gone in the war that few can fully comprehend. The lives they knew and loved disintegrated years ago. To the southeast of Mosul, the Kurdish Peshmerga have pushed their front line forward as well. The Peshmerga defensive berm snakes its way along the east and north. The village is controlled by ISIS visible in the distance.
Here, too, they have noticed ISIS weakening, showing us how ISIS moves within nondescript building like this.
The Peshmerga fighters did initially dropped down and take a few steps into what appear to be some sort of tunnel. But rather than take their chances, they decided to withdraw and seal off the entrance.
The choke hold around Mosul is tightening and the government's pledge to liberate the city by the year is still the goal. The battle there with over a million civilians will potentially be starkly different from the ones out here. That success will be defined and land gained, not lives destroyed or lost.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Arwa, it's really some extraordinary reporting. What's the latest you're seeing on the ground?
DAMON: Well, we just left Qayyarah a few hours ago and the Iraqi security forces have managed to move in and capture according to some army commanders, the oil refinery there.
[21:55:13] So they are making gains within the city but what remains of biggest concern is according to the army commander, these 10,000 families that they believe are stuck inside and we do know that ISIS has a history of using civilians as human shields.
And what we're really seeing on the ground there is just a fraction of the challenges the army is going to be facing as it moves into Mosul and also the potential devastating plight of the population that remains trapped inside Mosul. The population, Anderson, is estimated to be from 1 to 1.5 million people.
COOPER: It's just incredible. Arwa, thank you so much. More news ahead. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:00:03] COOPER: Well, that does it for us. Thanks for watching.
"CNN TONIGHT" with Don Lemon starts now. See you tomorrow.
