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Trump Holds Event to Announce His Stance on President Obama's Birthplace. Aired 10:30-11a ET.

Aired September 16, 2016 - 10:30   ET

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

[10:30:00] DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Ron was making the point earlier that he doesn't think that this is going to sway any voters, certainly not African American voters, and that might be true at the end of the day. But there is a finite amount of time for Donald Trump to make his case, whatever case it might be, to the persuadable voters that are out there in all these battleground states. And what the Trump campaign, I can tell you, according to lots of sources, is most concerned about is that he is going to keep getting questions like he got from the Washington Post yesterday about whether or not he thinks Barak Obama was born in the United States. And until and unless he says, "Well yes, yes he was."

Or at least they hope - that's what they're hoping inside the trump campaign - then the messages that he's trying to put out - like yesterday, the plan that he put out about jobs, his economic plan, which was a pretty detailed plan, especially given the fact that we haven't seen a lot of detailed policy plans across the board from Donald Trump. This was one. And it was one on the top issue for voters. But we're not talking about that already now. We're talking about this birther(ph) question. So that's what they're hoping. They're hoping that it doesn't - that it, sort of, lowers the noise on this issue so that he can get the issues and the topics and the things that he wants to talk about out there at this late stage in the game. I think that is really the core thing. Whether he can do it and whether democrats are going to allow him to do it, that's a whole different question.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: OK. I'd like my panel to stay with me for just a minute. I gotta take another break. We'll be right back with more as we await Donald Trump presents behind(ph) that podium there.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:35:00] COSTELLO: All right, welcome back. I'm going to take you out to Regan National. This happened just moments ago. We see Hillary Clinton getting aboard her plane. She's going to go back home after she spoke in front of a Black Women's group luncheon today and blasted Donald Trump for his birtherism. She is going to go back home and I believe she is going to be participating in a fundraiser and then later tonight she's going to be on "The Tonight Show" starring Jimmy Fallon here in New York City. And there you see back in Washington D.C. we're awaiting Mr. Trump to be behind that podium, where supposedly he's going to make some sort of statement about President Obama's citizenship and whether the President was indeed born in the United States, which we all know he was. He was born in Hawaii. You know what? The much-anticipated first debate is just ten days away and it is expected to be epic, and it will be - it will be epic, actually if both candidates actually show up. Donald Trump says he will be on that state, but he again said he would prefer there be no moderator.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (RD) PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: So I said, "Let's not have a moderator." Remember the famous - you would remember this of course - Abraham Lincoln Douglas. Remember the Lincoln Douglas ...

JIMMY FALLON, COMEDIAN: Are you kidding me? I watch it all the time on YouTube.

TRUMP: No moderator. The concept of having us both sitting on stage, or standing on stage - I like standing much better - but standing on stage and just debating - you know, they used to do debates that way - I think would be fascinating for people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: All right. So Mr. Trump also told the Washington Post he wants to cherry pick who moderates each debate if indeed there is a moderator, and as of now there is. But he said this of Anderson Cooper, "He'll be very biased, very biased. I don't think he should be the moderator. I'll participate, but I don't think Anderson Cooper should be a moderator. CNN is the Clinton News Network and Anderson Cooper," he said, "I don't think he can be fair. A reminder, Anderson Cooper is quite tough on both candidates. Here's Anderson at the democratic debate in October.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: You were against same-sex marriage, now you're for it. You defended President Obama's immigration policies, now you say they're too harsh. You supported his trade deal dozens of times. You even called it the gold standard. Now, suddenly, last week you're against it. Will you say anything to get elected?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: All right, that's just one example. So let's talk about this some more. I'm joined again by Ron Brownstein, Errol Louis, Dana Bash, Brianna Keilar, and Gloria Borger. So, Errol, let's touch on this moderator thing. I mean, why does Mr. Trump keep saying this?

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I suspect he does not want a moderator to be in the room because we saw four years ago, Carol, what happens when the moderator steps in on any level, it was Candy Crowley, as a matter of fact, where Mitt Romney made a disastrous mistake by appealing to the moderator to do a fact check on the spot and turned out to be in the wrong. I don't think Donald Trump benefits by having lots of people who have lots of knowledge of policy, lots of knowledge of his past statements, ready at hand to introduce him to the debate. I think he would rather dispense with a lot of that and turn it into a personality contest. And so, I don't blame him for maybe not wanting a moderator there. Because, frankly, you know, given what we've heard from him in past debates and what we hear from him on the stump, it might seem like two against one. It might seem like two really well briefed people who have lots of deep knowledge of policy and of past statements and of history and of facts against Donald Trump, who takes his public appearances and his public statements in an entirely different direction.

COSTELLO: So, Dana Bash, you actually have moderated a debate. Why do you think Donald Trump is saying this?

[10:39:42] BASH: I think Errol hit a nail on the head and I was lucky enough to be a questioner with Errol at one of CNN's debates and he knows, and I know, I mean, I don't even think that Anderson Cooper needs defending, but because, you know, that's out there let me just say. I have been in the room with him during these debate prep sessions, never mind participating with him when he moderates, there is nobody more middle of the road than Anderson Cooper. And I think, you know, that Donald Trump is responding to things that he sees that he doesn't necessarily like, that are questioning what happens in campaigns, just like we question what happens in campaigns on Hillary Clinton's side. And Hillary Clinton's campaign doesn't always like when we - not just CNN but the media - do it in general. So I think that's just kind of the bottom line and at the end of the day, Donald Trump wants it to be the Donald Trump show, done the Donald Trump way. And when it comes to the Presidential Debate Commission, there is a very specific formula that has been done by this commission for lots and lots of years and you've just got to abide by it if you want to participate.

COSTELLO: OK. Well, let's return to the topic of the day, because, Gloria, at any moment Donald Trump will be behind that podium. We don't know if he'll say it right away, but he's been trying to build suspense up all morning. He again appeared on the Fox Network, this time on the Fox Business Channel, saying that he wanted to build suspense for some sort of big statement he was going to make. And we all assume it's going to be about President Obama and whether Mr. Trump now thinks he was born in the United States. What do you think will happen?

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, look. First of all, I believe this is showmanship. It is about showmanship, about getting attention to his hotel, and it is also about political expediency. And it is about understanding that this birther issue cannot be left out there. The Washington Post had a headline that the campaign clearly didn't like after he refused to say that he had changed his mind on whether the President was born in the United States. The question that I hope somebody asks Donald Trump is what intervening event has made him change his mind? If there is an intervening event. Because we know that up until pretty recently, he has been quite happy to say that he wasn't clear on the issue. He's been happy to say he forced the President to release his birth certificate, but you've been showing interviews all morning that show that he sort of has never come out and said this. So if he says it ...

COSTELLO: Well two days ago, he wouldn't admit that President Obama was born in the United States.

BORGER: Right, so what is the intervening event? Is the intervening event the fact that there was - as I suspect - that there was a Washington Post headline and an interview that is not good for him and that his campaign associates said to him, "Look, you have to do this." And the second thing I'm looking for hearing, as we were discussing earlier, is whether there is an admission of a mistake. That it was a mistake all along, and that he owes the President of the United States an apology because what he was trying to do was delegitimize his presidency. And you know ...

COSTELLO: So here's the thing, Ron. I'm going to digress, by the way.

(CROSSTALK)

BORGER: Exactly.

COSTELLO: I was just going to say, because, Ron, it would be my guess that Donald Trump isn't going to take questions from reporters at this event. He's been appearing on friendly forums like Fox News and the Fox Business Channel. He appears on Sean Hannity's radio show. He no longer goes on shows where journalists would ask him tough questions.

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, look. I feel like, you know, they can do better essentially talking to the base and rallying the base. I'm not really clear what an apology would mean at this point. I mean, there is simply no way to undo, even if he did that, which I don't think he'd do ...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A little sanity to an insane allegation.

BROWNSTEIN: Right, but what would it do? I mean, you cannot undo what he has done for the past, you know, several years, including, as we've all pointed out, long after the birth certificate was revealed. This was the issue that allowed him to emerge as a leader of the forces in the republican party that are most uneasy about demographic change and are the most drawn to arguments like President Obama wasn't born in the U.S. or that he is a Muslim. And that, you know, that was part, a kind of cornerstone, of the coalition that allowed him to emerge over a field of 17(ph).

And I think on both sides of this argument, there are going to be very few people who view this as anything other but political expedience. I think the people who believe that President Obama was not born in the U.S. are still going to believe that Donald Trump is one of them. And I just don't think he has the ability - this has been carved pretty deeply. And the broader point, real quick, is that the, you know, the broader point about it(ph) has been carved pretty deeply, consistently in polls 60 percent of Americans, including over 70 percent of millennials and over 70 percent of voters of color say that he is either racially biased or appealing to bigotry, and that is going to be very hard to undo in a press conference.

COSTELLO: Right. OK. I want to take my viewers inside the venue right now. Sara Murray is at the venue where Trump is expected to speak. So what exactly is this event? Because I'm kind of confused by looking at the people on stage.

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: Right, so it's a little confusing as to what this event is actually going to be. It was originally supposed to be a veteran's event and that's why you're seeing this crowd of people on stage. These are veterans, a number of them, obviously, Trump supporters. And we also have something that the Trump campaign that's not usually done for press conferences which is about half a dozen rows of Trump supporters before you see the rows of the press. Now it's like I said, it was originally going to be a veterans' event. It was originally going to be a press conference where members of the media were allowed to ask questions.

Now a lot of that has been thrown up in the air. Aids are not really sure if Donald Trump is going to take questions. And of course Dana Bash is reporting that the people close to Trump have been urging him to clarify his stance to disavow his birtherism and that they said he was likely to do that today. But I think the grain of salt we all take this with is this is something that's been an ongoing narrative around Donald Trump for the last few years, and so it's impossible to say whether he really does believe President Obama is born in the U.S. unless he comes out here and says it himself. So we're waiting to see if he will in fact do that today and then transition into the planned veterans' event as was scheduled and whether he'll actually take questions about his new stance on this. Carol.

COSTELLO: OK. Sara Murray, thanks so much. So, Brianna, let's say Mr. Trump does come out and he says President Obama was born in the United States, but he doesn't take questions from reporters. That won't stop reporters asking him about the birther issue, will it?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: No, they would want to follow up I'm sure and ask some questions, like Gloria said. But if he came out, Carol, can you imagine, and said, "President Obama is born in the United States," and is admitting that he is wrong. Now keep in mind, Hillary Clinton has set the bar pretty high. She said that he needs to apologize to the American people; he needs to apologize to Barak Obama. Clearly by the statement coming out of his campaign, I don't think he's going to go that far. But if he were to say he's born in the United States, that is admitting he is wrong. I'm trying to think of a time where he has said something, be it to the Khan family, you know, be it to a number of people - the disabled reporter that he insulted and the said, no, that's not what he was talking about, when he very clearly was. I can't think of a time when he's done this. So that in itself would be, I mean, pretty startling. Because we haven't seen him do it before, right? I'm trying to think of a time. I can't. I wonder if you can or if any of the other people can. I can't.

COSTELLO: No, and oddly enough, President Obama said something about this today in the Oval Office. He said he would be shocked by this. Actually, I'm going to let our viewers listen for themselves. Here goes. Here it is. Oh, we don't have it. OK we don't have it yet. So we're working on that, so bear with me. But this is what the president said. He said, "I never had any doubt where I was born." And he joked about it this morning. It's just kind of ridiculous, isn't it? KEILAR: Yes, and, you know, that's what he's saying. He's sort of - he's saying that. You know what is pretty - I was floored when I went back though and looked at the polls, Carol, about what Americans believe. I think, you know, we're looking at this. We've looked into this. We've read every fact check about this. We know, clearly, the president was born in Hawaii. But when you look at the polling, this was done last month by NBC News, seven out of ten republicans have at least doubts or definitely believe that President Obama was not born in the U.S.

Four out of ten republicans believe definitely he was not born in the U.S. Two out of ten, so one in five democrats have doubts or believe that President Obama was not born in the U.S. So even now, even though this has, as we would say, been put to bed, has it really? There are a lot of people who have doubts out there, even though the President has provided his short form birth certificate, his long form birth certificate. And this is something because of Donald Trump back in 2011 taking something that was fringe by any standard and propelling it into a very publicized conversation. He gave credence to it in a way that got many people thinking about it in that you can still see is pervasive in how they perceive President Obama today.

COSTELLO: Well, take us back, Errol, because I remember Donald Trump offering $5 million if the President would produce his birth certificate and then he was going to give the money to charity. I remember Donald Trump saying that he was going to send investigators to Hawaii, although as Brianna pointed out last hour, we don't know if he ever actually did that. But he said it over and over and over again, so.

[10:49:39] LOUIS: Yes. I mean, it was nothing but a stunt at best, but it was an ugly stunt and it seems pretty clear that he never sent any investigators. Or if he did, they didn't really turn up anything. I think the important question is, will he go beyond saying what he believes, which is not really relevant at this point. There's reality and then there's what Donald Trump is willing to acknowledge as reality, a fairly unimportant question. A much more important question is, will he tell his followers, who exist in such large numbers that they actually are registered in the polls, will he go and tell them, "This is foolishness, this is nonsense, he is an American citizen, the President is, always was. I was wrong to have sort of gotten involved in any of this conspiracy nonsense, and now we should talk about important issues, because there are only a few weeks before we are going to pick a new president." If he could do something like that, if he were pressed to do something like that, I think we could see some progress on an issue that otherwise is just an example of reality denial as a strategy.

COSTELLO: I don't think he's going to do any of that, because I'm again reading this Trump campaign statement that was put out last night. And, Ron, it clearly says, "Mr. Trump did a great service to the President and the country by bringing closure to the issue that Hillary Clinton and her team first raised." So I would say if Donald Trump mentions this at all, he's going to put it in those terms that "Hey, people had doubts, and I was just like, you know, doing something important because would you want somebody not born in the United States being the President of the United States? Of course not. So I put your fears to rest. I did a great service for the country."

BROWNSTEIN: Right, and as we've said before, there's simply nothing in that statement that is attached by any tether to reality. You know, this was done to delegitimize the first African American president. It wasn't done as a service to the country. It was not born in the Hillary Clinton 2008 campaign. It was something that Donald Trump amplified and pushed. That's why I'm just enormously skeptical that anything he says is going to matter very much to anyone on any side of this debate. I think that people who are critical of Donald Trump for pushing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARAK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Thank you very much everybody.

COSTELLO (voice over): Hold off, Ron. Here goes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, yes, you were born in America?

OBAMA: I, Jonathan, have no reaction and I'm shocked that a question like that would come up at a time when we've got so many other things to do. Well, I'm not that shocked actually. It's fairly typical. We've got other business to attend to. I was pretty confident about where I was born. I think most people were as well and my hope would be that the presidential election reflects more serious issues than that. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: All right, so, Ron, I'm sorry for so rudely interrupting you with President Obama, but we had that tape and we were really eager to run it. But you can see President Obama was on the verge of laughter.

BROWNSTEIN: Right. Right, and like I said, I don't think - I think wherever you were on this question, the vast majority, you know the majority of Americans will understand that President Obama was born in the U.S. The minority of voters who think that he was not, I think, on both sides virtually everyone is going to believe Donald Trump is doing this because of expediency, not because he has had some change of heart. Precisely I think because of the question that Gloria raised, correctly, what was the intervening event since he was questioning the birth certificate long after it was produced. The intervening event is that consistently in polls 60 percent of Americans, including 60 percent of college-educated white voters, said they believe he is racially biased or appealing to bigotry, and those are the voters between where he is now and where he will likely ultimately need to be to win this race.

COSTELLO: So, Gloria, does it matter that among the African American vote Donald Trump garners at the most three or four percent?

BORGER: Right. Well, republicans generally have not done well with African American voters, but I think Donald Trump understands, as Ron was saying, that he can't be dogged by this question because voters that are potentially persuadable don't want to vote for somebody they believe is intolerant or a racist or a birther. And so this isn't just about African American voters. It may be about younger voters and it may be about suburban moms and it may be about those persuadables. And if there are eight percent or so left, who knows, but I think that he doesn't want to continue to be dogged by this question. His campaign doesn't want to be dogged by this question. But again, I have to ask, what has made him decide to say this or change his mind about it? I would have to say that it is the state of the political race more than anything else. And the fact that he's doing it at his hotel this morning, which happens to be opening ...

COSTELLO: You mean he's doing it for - he's acting like a politician and doing it for political reasons?

[10:54:51] BORGER: Wait a minute, there's politics in a political campaign? I'm shocked.

BASH: It's so shocking. Gloria is 100 percent right that this is because of where he is in the campaign, because of who he has around him now, people who are showing him data and explaining to him that if he - not that if he doesn't say he's sorry or, you know, if he doesn't say that he believes that Obama was born in the U.S. that that will change the hearts and minds who think that, you know, that he's a conspiracy theorist or that think he's bigoted. But they're hoping that if he does this, they can talk about the issues that the voters who are persuadable care about. Period. End of story.

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: ... made that clear today that she's not going to let that happen.

COSTELLO: And they've got money to back that up.

(CROSSTALK)

COSTELLO: I want to ask Dana just one question about possible turmoil within the Trump camp. So clearly, Mr. Trump isn't eager to do this, because just two days ago he wouldn't tell the Washington Post he believed the President was born in the United States. And then suddenly this campaign statement comes out last night, right? So was there turmoil?

BASH: The answer is I think it's probably too strong to say there's turmoil. I think that there is understandable discussion about something that occurred before this campaign existed. I mean, this was Donald Trump back in 2011 before anybody who is working for him now in a political way - or most people I should say are working for him now in a political way - were a part of the Trump team. So there - this is clean up basically from a group of people who, a small group of people, who are trying to find the path to victory for him. So I think it's more that than turmoil at this point, but, you know, something else might come up as we're doing reporting on how this all went down. COSTELLO: And I also asked that question because, you know, you heard what Sara Murray said about this event. It was supposed to be to honor these veterans and now it's changed into something that no one is quite sure of, Errol. So could that be a possible sign that someone is pressuring Mr. Trump to do this today? Errol?

LOUIS: I don't think that anyone is putting pressure in a way that Donald Trump would do something that he would not otherwise choose to do. Everybody around him says the same thing, which is that he's not being managed, he's not being directed. He's calling his own shots. I think he has worked his way into a corner and I think that's what this event represents or whatever it is he's going to say, that he's pretty much been backed into a corner. There were too many statements. There were too many - too much footage of it, too many years went by when he didn't disavow it. It's now central to his campaign and now he's got to try to tell a whole bunch of people they didn't see what we've all seen. And, you know, good luck trying to pull that one off. The distressing thing, of course, is that we are a little over seven weeks away from election day and for this to be dominating any portion of the news cycle is a real defeat for the process and for the voters, really.

COSTELLO: All right, so people are clapping. That must mean Donald Trump is about to take the stage. So we're going to monitor this until Donald Trump starts talking about the issue at hand, which is the birther controversy. So wow, Gloria, have you ever experienced anything like - I know you've covered politics for a very long time.

BORGER: No, never.

COSTELLO: So, tell me what you're feeling right now as we're waiting for this?

BORGER: Well, I'm just - I'm curious about the language that Donald Trump will use. I also believe he'll probably, given his statement, try and flip inaccurately some of the responsibility of this whole birther movement onto Hillary Clinton and there is no truth to that. But that is what he has said in his statement. And we know that Donald Trump does not like to apologize or admit a mistake, so instead we have to just see how he talks about this birther issue. And whether indeed he says what his spokesman said last night that the public ought to be applauding him for discovering something that most people thought to be true in the first place. So we're going to have to just wait and see what his words are.

COSTELLO: All right, General Flin is now speaking, so you guys stick around. I'm going to throw it to the next show while we wait for Mr. Trump to take the podium. Thank you for joining me today, I'm Carol Costello. "AT THIS HOUR" with Berman and Bolduan starts now.