Return to Transcripts main page
New Day
Hillary Clinton Criticizes Donald Trump on Foreign Policy; Murder-Suicide Takes Place on UCLA Campus; Dramatic 911 Calls Released in Gorilla's Death. Aired 8-8:29a ET
Aired June 02, 2016 - 08:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[08:00:00] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our primary goal right now is to review all of our security procedures.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My son is down with the gorilla.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He's dragging him from one end to the other. Oh, my God.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He's dragging my son, I can't watch this.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I will never forget it, it was absolutely horrific.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo and Alisyn Camerota.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to your NEW DAY. It's Thursday June 2nd, 8:00 in the east. Ana Cabrera is with us this morning. Great to have you here.
Up first, the insults and the attacks continue in the race for the White House. Donald Trump in a take no prisoner mode after enduring an intense day of scrutiny regarding Trump University. Trump ripping hunk, Hillary Clinton, insisting the former secretary of state has, quote, "no actual talent."
CUOMO: Clinton said insults are not enough, and then she had a whopper for Donald Trump, saying he is a fraud. And today she says she's going to show the difference between the two on foreign policy in a major speech. She says she's going to outline what her staffers call the difference between policy and puffery.
Let's dig into what that could mean. We have the 2016 election covered the way only CNN can. Jason Carroll starts us off live in Los Angeles. Jason?
JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you, Chris. Trump and Clinton squaring off on a number of issues, including foreign policy. Expect to hear more attacks from both candidates as they hit the road here in California. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Hillary Clinton, she lies.
CARROLL: After a day of intense scrutiny over his controversy-ridden Trump University, Donald Trump hurling a barrage of assults against Hillary Clinton.
TRUMP: Hillary is not a talented person. One of the worst secretaries of state in the history of our country. She is not qualified because she has bad judgment.
CARROLL: Trump trying to get ahead of a Clinton speech today where she criticizes his foreign policy proposals, including one where Trump suggests arming South Korea and Japan with nuclear weapons.
TRUMP: They sent me a copy of the speech, and it was such lies about my foreign policy that they said I want Japan to nuke. I want Japan to get nuclear weapons. Give me a break.
CARROLL: That policy one he's actually called for multiple times.
TRUMP: North Korea has nukes. Japan has a problem with that. They have a big problem with that. Maybe they would, in fact, be better off if they defend themselves from North Korea.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: With nukes?
TRUMP: Including with nukes, yes.
CARROLL: Clinton unleashing her sharpest attacks yet against the presumptive nominee, relentlessly slamming him as a fraud.
HILLARY CLINTON, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: He is trying to scam America the way he scammed all those people at Trump U.
CARROLL: The Democratic frontrunner capitalizing on newly released testimony from former staffers of accusing Trump University of unethical, misleading, and dishonest conduct, a fraudulent scheme that preyed on the elderly and uneducated to separate them from their money.
HILLARY CLINTON, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Trump and his employees took advantage of vulnerable Americans, encouraging them to destroy their financial futures, all while making promises they knew were false from the beginning. Donald Trump himself is a fraud.
CARROLL: President Obama also bringing the heat against Trump.
BARACK OBAMA, (D) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He just says "I'm going to negotiate a better deal." Well, how exactly are you going to night? What magic and with do you have? And usually the answer is he doesn't have an answer.
CARROLL: Trump, unsurprisingly, vowing to hit back. TRUMP: He's going to start campaigning. Well, if he campaigns, that
means I'm allowed to hit him just like I hit Bill Clinton, I guess, right?
(APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CARROLL: And Ana, it's strange that he says "allowed to hit him" when quite frankly he's been doing that all along. He hits the president at just about every single one of his rallies. So there's nothing new there.
In terms of those allegations about Trump University, Trump's campaign basically dismissed those allegations and Trump's legal team released the names of several people who say they were satisfied by everything that they received from Trump U. Ana?
ANA CABRERA, CNN ANCHOR: Jason Carroll, thank you.
Hillary Clinton planning to hit back today, campaigning hard in California. She's going to be there the next five days trying to bring home a victory next Tuesday, but she's not focusing her attacks on her primary opponent. Today she'll deliver a major policy speech focused largely on the dangers of Donald Trump's foreign policy plans. CNN's Chris Frates with more on this angle this morning. Good morning, Chris.
CHRIS FRATES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Ana. You're exactly right. Hillary Clinton is really set to slam Donald Trump once again today in what her campaign is billing as a major foreign policy speech. It's designed to cast Trump as a lightweight and a security risk. Clinton's campaign says she'll paint Trump as unfit to be commander in chief, arguing his policies, things like banning Muslims and questioning NATO, are dangerous. And yesterday on the campaign trail, Clinton gave a little preview of what to expect.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[08:05:13] CLINTON: Donald Trump has disqualified him completely.
(APPLAUSE)
CLINTON: He has attacked our closest allies. He has said let's pull out of NATO. He has praised the dictator of North Korea. He's advocated more countries getting nuclear weapons.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
FRATES: This will be Clinton's first major policy chief since Trump became the presumptive GOP nominee, so she's really going to focus her fire on Trump. And politically the speech is aimed at several key audiences. She's trying to win over never-Trump Republicans who are part of the national security elite and GOP women who question Trump's temperament. And she's also trying to eat into Trump's lead among white men. And aides say Clinton will contrast her experience on the world stage with what they say is Trump's constant trash talking of America. And Clinton will lay out what she believes the next president must do to keep the country safe and prosperous.
Chris, back to you, my friend.
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Chris, it will be interesting to see some policy being discussed and some contrast being drawn. We'll wait for that.
Let's talk about what the implications are of all this in the news with Donald Trump's national campaign co-chairman and policy advisor Mr. Sam Clovis. Sam, good to see you.
SAM CLOVIS, TRUMP NATIONAL CAMPAIGN CO-CHAIRMAN: Good to see you, Chris.
CUOMO: So let's check the boxes here this morning with what's in the news and get your response. We just had Tom Friedman on, very impassioned. He said he wishes we had better choices but we don't. He's come up with the metric for the impact of mendacity, which lies will hurt you most, and he says he's seeing Clinton as a less of a liar, I guess is what you'd call it. Here's a clip of his sound. I want your response.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TOM FRIEDMAN, "NEW YORK TIMES" COLUMNIST: The fact is we have someone running for president who in my experience has done the least amount of homework, serious deep thinking and study, on the biggest issues facing the country. And one of the manifestations of that is precisely this. He'll blurt something out, and someone comes along says North Korea and Japan. And then you get the opposite. That's a manifestation of someone who hasn't done the original homework in the most minimum way.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CUOMO: Sam Clovis, your response?
SAM CLOVIS: Honestly, you know, I watched with great interest your interview with Tom. I've seen Tom many times and seen him in public, and I am not going to sit here and cast aspersions on a celebrated book writer and columnist for the "New York Times." I think Tom is entitled to his own opinion.
I thought a lot of the things that he offered were based on false premises, and talking about a lot of things, and I would argue that with him directly if we had the opportunity to talk over coffee.
I honestly don't that think this is about whether or not we have someone who has not done their homework. I've been with Mr. Trump on countless occasions. I know how much in-depth he goes. I do think that there are opportunities for him to go out here and say things to get people stirred up and to get people to think.
We wouldn't be talking about immigration reform in this country today honestly and directly if it were not for Mr. Trump. We wouldn't be talking about review of our trade agreements without the dialogue from Mr. Trump. We wouldn't be talking about reviewing our alliances with NATO and our support for Israel if it hadn't been for Mr. Trump.
And I just to give you a quick example. I met with a group yesterday, and I won't go into who they were, but they are eastern European people representing an eastern European country that were absolutely, totally disarmed and dismissive of how weak the United States has become in foreign policy. And they're looking to Mr. Trump as a person who if he delivers on what he says will be exactly the kind of person to reestablish the strength of this nation not only in United States but across the world.
CUOMO: So let me play you a piece of sound that Friedman was pointing out to that shows an inconsistency that troubles him about the ability to marshal America's power. Let's play the sound about Japan.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: They said I want Japan to nuke. I want Japan to get nuclear weapons. Give me a break.
North Korea has nukes. Japan has a problem with that. I mean they have a big problem with that. Maybe they would, in fact, be better off if they defend themselves from North Korea.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: With nukes?
TRUMP: Including with nukes, yes, including with nukes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CUOMO: Now, you understand that is an obvious inconsistency or is there an explanation for that?
CLOVIS: I think it's the context of the second conversation there is the fact he was asked a hypothetical. And I think a lot of this is in the context of what the campaign has offered up many times, that the United States simply today without the strong economy, we simply don't have the reach and the global reach that we should have, and sometimes other countries are going to have to do things that they may or may not have had to do in the past to defend themselves because we simply can't be there all the time until such time as we can get our economy back up to speed and we're able to extend the umbrella of the United States security blanket on the rest of the world.
[08:10:21] CUOMO: Understood, Sam, but either you believe Japan should have nukes or you don't.
CLOVIS: Well, he was asked a hypothetical, Chris. Be careful, Chris.
CUOMO: You can ask me a hypothetical if you want, if I don't believe Japan should have nukes my answer will be no, no matter what the hypothetical is.
CLOVIS: I think what he was saying is under the circumstances it may be necessary for countries to arm themselves appropriately. And whether we want to have that to happen is not really the same as saying if under those circumstances, if it's in Japan's interest, perhaps they ought to do those things. That's the nuance here that I don't think we're getting at.
CUOMO: I understand the nuance. It's important. And that's why I have you on.
One of the other things that is more simple, less nuanced, let's say. A big spear during the primaries for Donald Trump has been you were for the Iraq war and I wasn't. He used it probably a hundred times in the primaries.
CLOVIS: Right.
CUOMO: There are now questions about -- is that true? We know after the war started and later on Trump said he was against it. This is a man who is on the record all the time certainly back then in 2000. We haven't been able to find anything where Donald Trump said he was against the Iraq war while it was being debated. Is there something that can be provided by the campaign, because wouldn't you argue that's not subtle. That's not nuanced. That's about whether it's true or false.
CLOVIS: Honestly I can't address that, Chris. I don't know.
CUOMO: But it matters, right?
CLOVIS: I suppose it could matter. But I do think his that his position he has stated is very accurate and there is a lot of evidence that support the fact that he was against the war once the war started.
CUOMO: At the time?
CLOVIS: I was against the war after the war started myself. I just left the military. I had a son in the military who was over there fighting, and I became very adamantly opposed to the war after it got started because I didn't see a path to victory. I didn't see a way for us to extract ourselves. And I honestly couldn't see why the blood and treasure of this country was being poured in a dark hole in another place when we didn't have any clue what we were doing with our kids.
CUOMO: All highly reasonable, especially when you had blood on the line, and I'm sorry you had to go through that, you know that, Sam. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about something he said that matters to people and it was about a timing issue as well.
But Sam Clovis, we always welcome the proof on that, and I always appreciate the explanation of the positions.
CLOVIS: Chris, as always great to be on with you, and I'll see you again Monday.
CUOMO: I hope so. Take care, Sam. Alisyn?
CLOVIS: Yes, sir.
CAMEROTA: OK, Chris, classes resume this morning at UCLA, a day after a murder-suicide on campus. Authorities are still trying to determine what led up to the fatal confrontation. CNN's Stephanie Elam joins us live from Los Angeles with the latest. What have you learned, Stephanie?
STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Alisyn, it was a tense couple hours on the campus of UCLA as students were preparing for finals only to be told that they had to lock down and stay in place while police looked for an active shooter.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LANCE GIROUX, VICTIM'S FRIEND: It's hard to even fathom it, to have your son grow up without a dad is rough.
ELAM: Loved ones grieving over the shooting death of UCLA Engineering Professor William Klug. Klug was a husband and a father of two, the coach of his 10-year-old son's little league team.
GIROUX: Never a negative word, always positive. Kids loved working with him because he was such an easy coach to work with.
ELAM: The professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering was inside the same building where he taught his classes Wednesday morning.
SCOTT WAUGH, EXECUTIVE VICE CHANCELLOR AND PROVOST: It was a normal day on campus, upwards of 25,000 students.
ELAM: Shortly after 10:00 a.m., hundreds of police, SWAT officers, and the FBI stormed the Los Angeles campus after reports of three gunshots coming from one of the school's engineering facilities.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'd suggest going back that way.
ELAM: The campus on lockdown, police shutting down streets and paralyzing parts of the city.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: People are crying, people are nervous, they're shaking.
ELAM: Inside, terrified students scrambled to hide.
SALMA AL-MALIKI, UCLA STUDENT: I closed the doors with keys and barricaded the doors and turned off the lights.
ELAM: Some unable to lock the classroom doors, barricading themselves in and tying cords and belts around the handles.
WAUGH: Our primary goal right now is to review all of our security procedures. ELAM: Security cameras capturing the SWAT team sweeping campus
buildings only to find the bodies of Professor Klug and another as yet unidentified male, a murder/suicide.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
[08:15:00] ELAM: The campus is reopening today in classes except for in the engineering buildings but they say they'll have students working back towards finals which begin on Monday and then graduation, which will happen on next Friday, Chris.
CUOMO: All right, thank you very much. Appreciate it.
Over to you, Ana.
CABRERA: A terrified mother frantically calling 911 moments after her child fell in this gorilla habitat at the Cincinnati zoo. We have just released recordings that paint heart stopping images as she helplessly watch this is 450 pound animal take hold of her son.
Let's get to CNN's Jessica Schneider live in Cincinnati with more -- Jessica.
JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Ana, we have seen the video and now we're hearing the panicked phone calls. The most urgent call coming from the mother of that three-year-old boy who told the 911 dispatchers she could barely stand to watch.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MOTHER: Hi. My son fell in the zoo exhibit at the gorillas. The Cincinnati Zoo, my son fell in with the gorilla. There's a male gorilla standing over him. I need someone to contact the zoo, please.
SCHNEIDER (voice-over): The mother of this 3-year-old calling 911 amid helpless horror and attempting to console her son from afar.
MOTHER: OK -- be calm! Be calm! Be calm!
DISPATCHER: How old --
MOTHER: Be calm. He's grabbing my son.
I can't watch this. I can't -- I cant', OK, I can't watch.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, my God!
SCHNEIDER: Six 911 calls from the scene depicted desperation of everyone standing above the gorilla moat. Bystanders watching powerless for ten tense minutes.
CALLER: The baby is still in the water and the gorilla had it, but it had -- it slammed it against the wall earlier.
DISPATCHER: OK, can you -- is any of the zookeepers next to you right now? CALLER: Oh, God. Oh God. He's got his pants. He's taking the
baby.
DISPATCHER: OK, ma'am, listen to me. .
CALLER: He's taking the baby. He's taking the baby into the cave. Oh, my God.
SCHNEIDER: This caller describing something we can't see on video. Harambe taking the toddler even farther into his habitat, possibly part of the danger prompting the dangerous animal response team's decision to shoot and kill Harambe.
One eyewitness explaining exclusively to CNN what she saw.
EYEWITNESS: It was a child who cannot endure him running across the rocks and grabbing him by one foot. It was absolutely horrific. And no mother should ever have to watch that.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh my God!
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SCHNEIDER: This investigation now still unfolding. Cincinnati police working with the prosecutor's office to probe the parents and the family to find out how this all happened -- Chris.
CUOMO: Jessica, thank you very much. Appreciate that.
Hillary Clinton said to outline her foreign policy in a major speech today and also portrayed Donald Trump as a national security nightmare. We're going to get perspective from General Wesley Clark. What matters to America's safety? Next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[08:21:35] CAMEROTA: Hillary Clinton said to deliver a major speech in California contrasting her foreign policy with Donald Trump's plan that she calls dangerous.
Let's bring in now, former NATO supreme allied commander and senior fellow at UCLAa's Burkel Center for International Relations, Retired General Wesley Clark. He supports Hillary Clinton.
General Clark, thanks so much for being here.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK (RET), FORMER NATO SUPREME ALLIED COMMANDER: Nice to be with you, Alisyn.
CAMEROTA: Let's compare and contrast Hillary Clinton's foreign policy plans as she has laid them out thus far with Donald Trump's and I'd love to get your insight. Let's put up Hillary Clinton's on the screen for you and everyone else to see.
She says this is to defeat ISIS. So, let's start there. She would take out ISIS strongholds in Iraq and Syria with more air strikes. She would dismantle the global terror network by cutting off funds among other things. She would strengthen U.S. and allies defense against external and homegrown threats, in part by dealing with disruption of their digital outreach.
OK. Let's look at Donald Trump's strategy to defeat ISIS. He would cut off the revenue stream that ISIS takes in from oil. He would launch more unpredictable attacks. He said he doesn't like that we telegraph our plans to ISIS to defeat the terror group and he would commit more air power.
Those are not really radically different plans, General. Where do you see the difference?
CLARK: Well, I don't see that that's exactly what Mr. Trump has said. What he's said is he would consider killing the families of terrorists. He would implement much more extreme measures of interrogation that would include torture and it's not clear he's ruled out ground troops.
He said a lot of different things at a lot of different times and he doesn't stand by what he says. So, the fundamental difference, the most basic difference is that Hillary Clinton has a reliable, consistent geo-strategic approach to protect America. Not just from terrorists but to maintain America's role in the world, which has brought peace and security since World War II.
What Donald Trump has is pot shots. He has slogans. He has barroom talk.
CAMEROTA: Yes.
CLARK: He says one thing one time and something else another time. It's not really a policy and we don't really know what his policy is, but what we do know is that our nation's allies are very concerned by what he says because it's not reliable, it's not consistent and it actually promotes the kind of foreign policy concerns that are potential adversaries, Russia and China, are also promoting.
CAMEROTA: Well, and yet, general, the American public seems to like what Donald Trump is saying about ISIS. Let me show you the latest Quinnipiac poll just out. Which presidential candidate would be more effective handling ISIS, Donald Trump gets 49 percent to Clinton's 41 percent. He has this way of boiling down his promises into sort of a very satisfying sound bite which is, we're going to get ISIS, we're going to win.
CLARK: Yes. Well, I think Hillary Clinton has said the same thing. I don't think what you're getting in the polling is an adequate reflection of how the public feels about their foreign policies.
But I would also tell you this, Alisyn, that we have to be careful when we're looking at public response to foreign policy. You may remember before the Iraq war, something like 80 percent of the American people believed we should have that war. Sixty percent believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11. [08:25:03] Now, we know that in both cases, public opinion was no good
guide to foreign policy, so we have to be careful working public opinion in foreign policy.
CAMEROTA: Yes.
CLARK: Presidents need public support but they can't base a foreign policy on polling.
CAMEROTA: Yes, I hear you.
Let's talk about Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state because her critics say her time was characterized by some big failures. They cite, of course, Benghazi. They cite the situation, the aftermath in Libya of the removal of Gadhafi and then it destabilized the region. They talk about the genesis of ISIS. They talk about Iraq falling apart.
What do you think were her successes as secretary of state?
CLARK: Well, I think first of all that she established, along with the president, obviously, because the foreign policies are actually President Obama's. The secretary of state implements it but it's President Obama's decision.
They reestablished American credibility in the world. They reduced our exposure to harm in the Middle East. They tried to stabilize Afghanistan. They initiated the shift toward greater retention in the Pacific to counter some of China's more threatening moves in the South China Sea and elsewhere.
They captured Osama bin Laden, killed Osama bin Laden, rather. And so, there were a lot of successes here. As far as Benghazi, let's talk about Benghazi. There was a complete turmoil in North Africa during that period, brought on in part as a consequence of climate change, in part as a consequence of U.S. actions in Iraq under the Bush administration and in part of rising expectations.
And what they did, President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton, is managed that change. Yes, they did intervene in Libya because Gadhafi was threatening innocent people there.
CAMEROTA: And did they have enough of a plan for the aftermath?
CLARK: Well, you never know in something like this. I would like to have had a better plan. But, you know, we stood by in Rwanda in 1994 when there wasn't a plan and 800,000 people were killed.
We had a plan in Kosovo, it worked. Hillary had and President Obama had access to all of that. They had the experiences with it. They did the best they could under the -- with the time constraints that they were faced.
CAMEROTA: Yes.
CLARK: So I think it's really too soon to second guess this because is complicated by ISIS and complicated by tribalism.
CAMEROTA: Absolutely.
CLARK: But I don't think you can say anything other than she was an extremely effective and well-respected secretary of state. I think she did a great job.
CAMEROTA: Look, all of these things are very complicated and it is hard to boil them down to slogans and we'll be very interested to hear what Secretary Clinton says about her foreign policy today. General Wesley Clark, thanks so much for your insight.
CLARK: Thank you, Alisyn.
CAMEROTA: Let's get to Ana.
CABRERA: Stay with us, because when we come back, we're going to break down the Trump legal fight over his now defunct Trump University. We'll debate strategy for both the prosecution and defense. Our CNN legal minds join us next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
