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Trump Changes Tone on Muslim Ban; Benghazi Report: Clinton Should Have Realized Risks. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired June 28, 2016 - 07:00   ET

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

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESUMPTIVE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I've made mistakes. I know trust has to be earned.

[07:00:07] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: The House report on Benghazi to become public.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There doesn't seem to be a smoke gun. The report does conclude Hillary Clinton had the intelligence to realize how high a risk Benghazi was.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Donald Trump once again appearing to shift his tone.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESUMPTIVE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: We have exceptions and ideally you won't have a ban very long.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What we're seeing right now is kind of a window on Donald Trump on policy.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's always the possibility that the hostage taker is going to start harming the hostages.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: New questions about the Pulse nightclub standoff.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There were so many people choking on their own blood and bleeding out.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. Welcome to your NEW DAY. Alisyn and I are joined by Victor Blackwell again. Good to have you.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: All week. Good to be here.

CUOMO: We have a lot of news for you this morning. It is one of Donald Trump's most popular proposals with supporters. It's the Muslim ban. We're putting it in quotes now, because maybe it won't be called that any more. His team is preparing to walk back the ban in the proposed new era of what Trump is going to be in the general election.

So Trump now is shifting who he says the ban would apply to. And what will Donald Trump say in his speech today? CNN's Phil Mattingly joins us now to break it down. Hi, Phil.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Donald Trump now edging further and more explicitly away from that proposed ban on all Muslims entering the United States. His advisors telling CNN they're working to tailor the proposal even as they push back on the idea that it's some wholesale shift.

Now, at least in part, this has been happening in fits and starts for months. Take a listen to what Trump said when he announced the proposal in December and then what he said in May.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, FOX NEWS: But the way that everybody read it, it was across the table.

TRUMP: We have exceptions. But -- and ideally, you won't have a ban very long.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: Now, it's a constant push and pull. And now what we're seeing is, in many ways, as one GOP advisor, a quote, "tale of two Trumps." It's a candidate who was unwilling or unable to let go of what got him very successfully to this point. A campaign that needs to set itself up for a general election. And an electorate that looks very different than the one they had in the GOP primary.

Now in that, we've slowly started to see really more and more of a professionalized campaign. It's the building of a real fundraising operation, campaign infrastructure and simple as it sounds, travel strategy.

Now, take a look at Trump's schedule today. A big economic speech in Pennsylvania and a stop in Ohio. These are two crucial swing states that Trump has said he can and needs to win if he's going to win in the general election. Now, for all of the uneasiness and even outright opposition there is out there in the Republican Party, this is more or less exactly what they've asked for out of the candidate.

The question remains: how long will Donald Trump stick to this strategy? Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: All right. Let's try to get some answers, Phil. Thanks for that. Here to discuss is CNN political commentator and former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski; and former New York City council speaker and president and CEO of Women in Need, Christine Quinn. Great to have both of you.

CHRISTINE QUINN, PRESIDENT/CEO, WOMEN IN NEED: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Corey, why is Donald Trump backing off what was seen as a major tenet of his platform, a total and complete Muslim ban.

COREY LEWANDOWSKI, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think if you look at the rest of that clip he said that, until we can figure out what's going on.

CAMEROTA: So we have now figured out what's going on?

LEWANDOWSKI: I think we figured out what's going on. We have a problem with our immigration process. What we have is we have people coming into the country that haven't been vetted properly. We have the Syrian refugees right now.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

LEWANDOWSKI: What he's saying is it's time to actually implement an immigration policy that puts America first. And so what we should do is not ban people based on a religion but ban people based on the countries they're coming from. They're known terrorist countries. And before we let them into the country we do a thorough background check.

The important part to remember is when we had the San Bernardino killer come in, she came in on a K-1 visa, vetted twice by the State Department, and they couldn't look at her social media activity. And that's what allowed her to come here, unfortunately, legally but inappropriately and commit a terrorist act.

CAMEROTA: So we've figured that out. We've solved that problem, since the time that he did have a ban on an entire religion, the Muslim, ban, now that's now all been resolved?

LEWANDOWSKI: I think what he's saying is it's more important not just to look at what a person's religion is but where they're coming from. And you get those people coming from countries with known terrorist activities.

CAMEROTA: Of course. So why did he originally want to just look at somebody's religion?

LEWANDOWSKI: It's a reaction. You have to understand when you have a massive terrorist attack like we had in San Bernardino committed by a jihadist who has gone and said, you know, death to Americans based on their religion it's time to make sure that our immigration policy is in line so that Americans are first and not somebody else.

[07:05:00] QUINN: I think the key word in what Corey just said is it was a reaction. Right? And that's what we've seen with Donald Trump throughout most of this campaign. Not affordable (ph) plans, not policies, not a steady hand of leadership after a terrorist attack, but quick, knee jerk reaction.

And really, to all those Trump folks out there who voted for Trump in the primary, you thought you were getting this authentic guy. You thought you were getting this guy who wasn't like other politicians. But here he is, going in and meeting with Paul Ryan. Going in and meeting with Mitch McConnell. As his support said on this channel last night and then flip-flopping

his position, because at the end of the day, Donald Trump is about Donald Trump; and this is about winning. But not...

CAMEROTA: He's not exactly like other politicians. You can't certainly paint him with the same brush as other politicians. What Donald Trump does -- and maybe this is what Corey is talking about, is he does give voice to the anger that his supporters are feeling. It's a little bit like the Brexit vote. They want to be heard. They want the anger. But they'll figure out the details later.

QUINN: Well, look, that's not being a leader. That's not what we need in a president of the United States. It's absurd to say, between the announcement of a Muslim ban, which is completely racist and un- American, Donald Trump as a candidate figured out what many, many people -- military leaders, diplomats, immigration experts -- have been trying to figure out for years. It's absurd.

And what we're not going to hear in the speech today is the details of how he figured it out, what it is and how -- but let's also be clear here. We're all talking about this ban on people based on the country they're from as a lighter, softer proposal. I'm not convinced it is.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

QUINN: It's equally un-American to say, "You can't come here because you're from Pakistan, period."

LEWANDOWSKI: You have to remember a reaction is something that puts our country back into a safe mode. When our country is attacked as it was in San Bernardino, or it was in Orlando, Florida, there has to be something that allows people to go back and feel safe. And what he said on December 7 was "We're going to ban people from coming to this country so they can no longer kill Americans." What he's talked about.

CAMEROTA: A total and complete Muslim ban, including innocent Muslims of which there are millions and millions.

LEWANDOWSKI: There's 1.7 billion, but there's also 1 percent of those that are radicalized, which they claim to be. Seventeen million people that to want to come to America and kill Americans. That's their stated goal. That's 1 percent of people that are Muslims that decide that they are radicalized, who want to come here and kill Americans.

What we need to do first and foremost, the job of our government and job of the president is to keep the U.S. citizens safe. And if that means building a wall in Mexico to make sure illegals don't come in and kill more people like Kate Steinle, that's the job of our federal government.

QUINN: Corey, that's not what you're saying. What you're saying is what you said is after a crisis, America needs a reaction.

Wait, a minute. Nobody interrupted you. Two you said it's a reaction, that quick reaction to bring people together. So what you're saying in essence is, in fact, what he did.

He put out a policy that is un-American racist that he didn't have the details on. And now he's having to walk it back. America doesn't need quick knee jerk reactions in time of crisis. They need leadership that unites us, not pointing fingers at people because of their religion, a country that was, in part, based on coming here to find religious freedom because that's not leadership.

CAMEROTA: Not really details, Corey. I mean, it was seen as impossible. It's impossible to give people a religion test coming in.

LEWANDOWSKI: I think what you have is a major crisis in our country. Our leaders need to react, because if they don't...

QUINN: No, they need to lead.

LEWANDOWSKI: Our citizens -- our citizens don't feel safe. We saw that after 9/11. George Bush stood up at the World Trade Center and said we will remember this and we will...

CAMEROTA: So you're talking about an emotional gut reaction that's going to comfort people.

LEWANDOWSKI: Back and say we're going make it right. That's what leadership is. Whether it's a tragedy in West Virginia, when it's flooding people want to be safe. They want to be secure. They want the government to know they're going to take care of them.

CAMEROTA: Corey, just help us understand. Inside the campaign when there's a change like this, a shift, how does that work? Does Mr. Trump say guys, you know what? I think I might have gone too far, or does somebody say to him, I think you should walk this back?

LEWANDOWSKI: What happens, as what happens in every campaign, there's multiple discussion about policy points before they're laid out, discussion before today's speech is going to be laid out has been thought out and vetted, the discussion last week before he spoke about Hillary Clinton. That's done internally. Those ideas are brought to Mr. Trump...

CAMEROTA: But before he said a complete and thorough Muslim ban.

QUINN: That's right.

CAMEROTA: You had discussed that with him.

Many people had discussed it with him.

And now on the campaign, many people are in a meeting saying, "OK, let's not do that."

LEWANDOWSKI: Don't forget. When that ban took place, there were many people both on the left and the right who didn't think that that ban went far enough. They wanted to -- they wanted a complete ban of any immigration for a period of time for understanding until our immigration policy can be worked out. Now, that wasn't Mr. Trump's position, but there are many people who said, "We don't think he went far enough on this."

CAMEROTA: OK. So -- but it's group effort when something like this shifts. You all get together, and it's a group effort on what the new policy is...

QUINN: That's curious because I think it was last week; might have been the week before, we heard Mr. Trump say when he was asked about getting more advisors, "What do I need advisors for? Why do I need to talk to people who are experts?"

He actually refuted what Corey said. He's saying he didn't need more people. He didn't need international experts. So it's hard to take those statements by the candidate and reconcile them with what Corey is saying. I'm not saying Corey isn't telling truth, but they don't match.

LEWANDOWSKI: The foreign policy team is a symbol chaired by Senator Jeff Sessions and the best military advisors in the country have given him...

CAMEROTA: Who are they?

LEWANDOWSKI: Well, it's already on the website. There's a dozen names already listed there. You can go to DonaldJTrump.com to see that. But the former admirals, former generals. Think tank members. And those are the type of people that he sits down and has -- and has a conversation with.

Where is the direction our country needs go to make sure the military has all the resources necessary? And he relies on those individuals, because there's no person who is running for the presidency, whether it's Hillary Clinton or it's Donald Trump, that has the answer to every question. So what you do is you surround yourself with good people. Donald Trump has the ability. They've done it very well. Listen to all of the advocacy. And then what Donald Trump does is he makes a decision.

QUINN: So who -- what's real? What Donald Trump says when he says he doesn't need more advisors or doesn't need experts, or the actual structure? I think that's a critical issue for Americans. What is real? What is true about Donald Trump beyond the fact that it's all about...

CAMEROTA: That is the problem because when he says -- hold on, Corey. I do want to make this point. When he says a total and complete Muslim ban or something to that effect, should the American public say, "Oh, I take him at his word." Or "This will shift. This will evolve. This is just a reaction."

LEWANDOWSKI: Don't forget, it was seven months ago. And what you see now is through his transition team, he's putting more advisors together, because the basics of building a federal government or a billion-dollar enterprise is very difficult.

CAMEROTA: Of course. LEWANDOWSKI: We're finding those great surrogates, those great advisors. So the difference between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton is Donald Trump isn't looking to say, "Here are all the people who are advising me, and you have to listen to them." He wants to be the voice.

CAMEROTA: But you're saying when he has his first reaction, that when he has his first reaction, that shouldn't be taken as seriously?

LEWANDOWSKI: No, I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that the notion of a Muslim ban was discussed in its entirety on multiple occasions before it was ever announced to the public, and it was released on December 7 from a battleship in South Carolina for a very strategic reason. So this wasn't a kneejerk reaction. This was something that was very well thought out. It was something that was planned and outlined and executed properly.

QUINN: The venue of announcement isn't substance of policy that will keep America safe. Venus announcement is P.R. spin. It was one of the most racist policies we have heard recently in America, and by all accounts, was not thought out, was -- and was not vetted.

CAMEROTA: Hold on, hold on. Let me talk about what it shifted to now. Here's where we are today. Here's what Donald Trump said this weekend. People coming from the terror states -- and you know who I'm talking about -- when I talk about the terror states, we're going to be vigilante so you wouldn't believe it and, frankly, a lot will be banned.

So Corey, what does that mean, and who makes the decision what's a terror state?

LEWANDOWSKI: There's eight states that are currently listed on the terror watch. I think that's been clearly established through this administration, whoever they are, whether it's Pakistan...

CAMEROTA: And those people are vetted.

LEWANDOWSKI: They're not vetted is the problem. And what you have in addition to that is you've got Syrian refugees coming in. You've got Hillary Clinton's immigration policy is to bring a 550-percent increase in immigrants coming into the country.

CAMEROTA: Those numbers have been challenged.

LEWANDOWSKI: When Syrian refugees come into our country, if federal government takes those individuals and disperse them across our country, he doesn't even give the courtesy to the governors of the states they're putting them into to tell them who they are or where they're going. And the concern with that is we know nothing about these people. We can't do background checks. We have no information on them. And all of a sudden, they get into our country. Immigration Customs Enforcement loses these individuals. The next thing you know...

CAMEROTA: This is the fear that people have. And they've seen evidence of this, Christine.

QUINN: What you just stated about Secretary Clinton's plan around Syria's refugees has been refuted repeatedly by independent fact checkers. One, I think you cannot blame terrorism in the world on Syrian refugees. Many of them people who are fleeing for greater safety.

But let's -- wait, wait. When Donald Trump just a week ago stood or earlier this week in Scotland, on his golf course, touting his sprinkler system, he also said we need an immigration system where we all get to decide who's appropriate to come into our country.

I don't want, and I don't think America wants a man who at one time thought a ban on all Muslims is an appropriate way to decide who comes in and who doesn't. He's a man who's willing to say, "You, Muslim, get out of here." I don't want him deciding whether people are or are not appropriate. That's not the basis of our country.

CAMEROTA: Your last word.

LEWANDOWSKI: If we allow one terrorist into the country because we didn't vet them properly and they kill one American, then that's a failure of our government and it's one failure that we can't afford.

So if we want to take a step back and make sure that those Syrian refugees who are coming here are properly vetted, and then they come here and we tell the governors in the states where they're going to be who they are and what their background is, then that's the right step. But by not doing that, they are...

CAMEROTA: I mean, of course, we've got 18 months currently right now and the last two terror attacks we've seen from American citizens who were radicalized here.

LEWANDOWSKI: The woman came here on the K-1 visa.

CAMEROTA: And her husband.

LEWANDOWSKI: Her husband was American. She radicalized him. He was born -- his father was born in Afghanistan. He had -- he had tendencies where he thought he was actually the president of Afghanistan. He knew exactly what was his son was doing. And they should have been stopped before. He was born in the United States.

QUINN: That makes him an American.

LEWANDOWSKI: I understand. But his father wasn't. His father taught him these ways, and then he went and perpetrated the worst terrorist attack. If they -- if we didn't do a good job -- if we didn't do a good job bringing his parents in and making sure that they were properly...

CAMEROTA: They would have passed.

LEWANDOWSKI: Maybe they would. Maybe they wouldn't. The problem is our immigration system is so broken we don't even know who's coming in. and now they're killing Americans.

CAMEROTA: Last word Christine.

QUINN: We won't see in his speech today all of the details that go into the kind of policies Corey is talking. Very good. We'll see what happens. Thanks for the debate. Let's get over to Victor.

BLACKWELL: All right, Alisyn. Thanks so much.

Breaking this morning, what will also be at the center of the race of the White House this morning, House Republicans preparing to release their long-awaited report on the Benghazi attack. CNN exclusively obtaining a portion of the report which says intelligence suggested an attack was possible and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should have realized the risks.

CNN chief political correspondent Dana Bash live in Washington with the details. You have about 200 pages of this report. What's in it?

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right. Well, the report in total that we'll see later today is 802 pages, but we did review 200-plus pages, and it weaves a narrative of the Benghazi outpost as a bureaucratic no man's land, which made it unnecessarily hard to get funding and security, even and especially as it became more and more dangerous leading up to the deadly attack September of 2012.

Now, what we have seen does not show a smoking gun when it comes to Hillary Clinton's culpability. But the report does say the former secretary of state had intelligence to realize just how high-risk Benghazi was for her personnel.

Here's some other information that we see that's new in here, Victor. Ambassador Stevens wanted to make the Benghazi outpost a permanent U.S. consulate. And he learned that funding would be available to make that happen, but he had to secure it by the end of the fiscal year, which was September 30, which may have been why he was there at such a dangerous time.

Now new emails also indicate Secretary Clinton was planning to travel to Libya in October of 2012. It would have been one month after that deadly attack. So time was of the essence because a permanent consulate, according to emails and interviews, was described as a deliverable for her. And one other thing NBC News is reporting, based on what they have gotten, that a newly-revealed two-hour video conference the night of the attack, led by White House chief of staff and attended by Hillary Clinton went on, and officials apparently discussed the diplomatic sensitivities around what uniforms they should wear in any rescue mission.

And apparently, as the Marines prepared to deploy, they changed in and out of their uniforms four times -- Victor.

BLACKWELL: So we'll look forward to those details.

I want to get to this -- this tweet coming out from the Clinton campaign, already reacting to the report. This is from the campaign press secretary, Brian Fallon: "Far from honoring the four brave Americans that died, the Benghazi committee has been a partisan sham since its start."

The Democrats released their own minority report preemptively yesterday. That accused Republicans of political witch-hunt of Hillary Clinton. You have this excerpt, 200 pages. Does it took that way to you?

BASH: In this part, no. And Trey Gowdy, who's the chairman of the committee will insist later today that he draws no conclusions throughout all 800 pages, that the purpose was just to allow a narrative to be out there in the public, based on events, based on 81 new interviews and so forth, and to try to provide an accounting of what happened to prevent in the future.

However, two Republicans on the committee don't think that is sufficient. They wrote their own 42-page report where they do draw conclusions, political ones, saying that the secretary and the broader administration tried to sweep under the rug that this was a terror attack because it was about politics right before the 2012 presidential election.

[07:20:08] CUOMO: All right, Dana, I mean, what you mentioned in there, that one question of how does it get better for the next situation? That's an open question. We'll pursue that. It's what should be mattering most here. Dana, thank you very much.

We'll take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to get into this backlash that's growing over Brexit. Millions have signed a petition to vote again. Doesn't look like that's going to happen soon. So what can happen now, and what are the presidential candidates saying about this controversy? Next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLACKWELL: High-level talks in Brussels today as British Prime Minister David Cameron meets with members of the European Union for the first time since the historic Brexit vote. CNN international diplomat editor Nic Robertson is live in Brussels with the latest. Tense meeting ahead as some lines have already been drawn.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMAT EDITOR: Well, they have indeed, Victor. The first meeting with the European Commission president, a man who David Cameron actually tried to block from getting that position just a year or so ago, that has already begun. It began with a hand shake. And that's a good omen. They have ore meetings lined up.

[07:25:12] The day will end where David Cameron will sit down and have dinner with the other 27 European leaders. He'll explain to them what happened in Britain and what he thinks it means for Europe when British people want to exit, the reasons they want to exit, immigration, all those types of issues. What he's going to hear back from those European leaders is you can't

get into pre-negotiations, talks and don't think for a minute that you can negotiate with us to get access into our markets without taking our people across the border. So a tough day for David Cameron -- Chris, Alisyn.

CUOMO: All right, Nic. There's so many different layers. You've been covering them brilliantly. Let's deal with this discussion about the reactions, the reaction, right? That's what Brexit was, was reaction.

Now you have this petition for a second referendum. Close to 4 million signatures. Just a fraction of the overall vote outcome. Brexit vote. It doesn't seem like it will happen. I don't even think that Cameron wants it at this point.

But you have President Obama now coming out with his first comments on what it means that the U.K. is going to leave the E.U. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think that the best way to think about this is a pause button has been pressed on the project of full European integration. I would not overstate it. There's been a little bit of hysteria post-Brexit vote, as if somehow NATO is gone, and the Transatlantic alliance is dissolving, and every country is rushing off to its own quarter. And that's not what's happening.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: All right. Let's discuss what is happening, then and what's going to happen and what it means back here in this election. "New York Times" political correspondent Patrick Healy; and global affairs and economic analyst Ali Velshi. Gentlemen, good to have you on.

President had to weigh in. He had said things before about not wanting this to happen and why. Mixed result on that. But how much of this is about the calculation of what this means internationally. And then what does it mean as a reflection of the body politic here?

PATRICK HEALY, POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, "NEW YORK TIMES": President Obama represents certainly American government on foreign policy, economic policy. But he's also kind of a full-time surrogate for Hillary Clinton right now. And the extent to which he is reinforcing her message as Donald Trump is going to Pennsylvania today, and he's going to be talking all about Brexit.

I mean, these are voters who may not understand that nuances and details of Brexit, but they know that trade has frustrated them. Global markets aren't delivering for them. Absolutely.

And President Obama, he gets up there. He sort of makes these statements. He's as much, I think, trying to push counter message against Donald Trump as he is -- it's nothing that he can do about Brexit. Nothing he can do to encourage a revote. CAMEROTA: Let's talk about what's going to happen next. There's a

lot of confusion about how Brexit is going to unfold, particularly given this. There is this buyer's remorse.

There seems to be in Britain. And because two of the pillars they were promised for leaving the E.U. might not happen in terms of less immigration, and less money given to the E.U.

ALI VELSHI, GLOBAL AND ECONOMIC ANALYST: Yes. The ad was that they give 350 million pounds a week to the E.U., and then that would be spent on the National Health Service, which is a source of pride for people in the United Kingdom. And in terms of it's not 350 million. It's a lot less than that, because there's some money.

So A, that's not going to happen. B, the leave campaign says, well, really, we're not sure we can direct it to the National Health Service anyway. So again, that's a good message for people to remember, that campaign promises have to be really checked out.

And given how much we talk about immigration in this country, many people still don't know the nuances of how immigration in the United States works: who gets in, who doesn't? Why? What are the numbers.

Nobody really understands trade. E.U. is fundamentally a trade relationship, which is the most boring thing for people in the world to understand. Voters won't understand it there. They're not going to understand it here. There's one take away.

Whether you're in the United Kingdom or you're in the United States, if you are a wealthy, industrialized country that enters into trade negotiations with countries that are not as rich as you are, generally speaking, your manufacturing workers and your working-class people will suffer. And it's something they've never been able to square when selling these trade deals, which is so many trade unionists and a lot of hard-core Democrats in America don't want deals.

HEALY: And they suffer. But the fear is that when voters, let's say, in America are given the chance to sort of express those feelings on election day, they're going to do what a lot of voters in England now are having misgivings and second thoughts about. They're going to vote their feelings. A lot of them are going to say Donald Trump is talking about this.

And then the next day, Wednesday, the day after election day, are people going to be sitting up and saying, "Oh, now we want a do over."

CUOMO: There's one fundamental...