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Donald Trump Campaign Announces Amendments to Proposed Temporary Muslim Immigration Ban; British Prime Minister Meets with EU Leaders in Wake of Brexit Vote; Interview with Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired June 28, 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] SARA GANIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: -- retired last year from his job as an EPA Water Department enforcement officer, he said he was frustrated because blatant violations would go without punishment. Morrissey says even EPA employees don't trust what comes out of their tap.

ALAN MORRISSEY, RETIRED EPA OFFICE OF CIVIL ENFORCEMENT: So most of my colleagues have all chosen to install a water filter underneath our kitchen sink.

GANIM: But you're saying that people who work at the EPA are buying water filters because they aren't confident in the quality of their tap water?

MORRISSEY: Yes.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GANIM: One of the most shocking things we learned is that even the most notorious, egregious cases like the one in Flint, Michigan, not listed by the EPA as having violated the federal regulation. Now, I just have to say the EPA did respond to this late last night, this report. They said they're working closely with states which are the first line of oversight in drinking water systems and also said they say it's important to note that many of these water systems are working with the EPA to come back into compliance.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: And the EPA employees are buying the filters, fascinating. Sara Ganim, thanks so much.

We're following a lot of news. Let's get to it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You said countries will be blocked --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What he's saying it's time to implement an immigration policy that puts America first.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's come up with this new policy.

HILLARY CLINTON, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I've made mistakes. I don't know anyone who hasn't.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: House Republicans will release their long- awaited report on the Benghazi terror attacks.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It is kind of mind-numbing to really wrap their heads around the kind of bureaucratic mess.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The process of implementing the decision must now begin.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Nothing in the U.K. will change until it invokes Article 50.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Prime Minister David Cameron face to face with EU leaders.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Still so much to talk about with Brexit as we will be going. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to your NEW DAY. It is Tuesday, June 28th, 8:00 in the east. Victor Blackwell joins us this morning. Great to have you along.

Well, first, Donald Trump shifting on one of his most controversial proposals, that Muslim travel ban. Trump now says the ban should be based on geography, not religion.

CUOMO: Proposed in the wake of several terror attacks, how is team Trump defending the change, which they seem to say aren't really changes at all? CNN's Phil Mattingly joins us not to break it all down. Phil?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Chris, we've seen this start to happen over the course of the last couple of months, Donald Trump edging further and further away from that proposed ban on Muslims. Now it's explicit. His advisors telling CNN they're working to tailor that proposal even as they push back, Chris, as you said on the idea that it's a wholesale shift. At least in part this has been happening in fits and starts for months. Take a listen to Trump when he first announced the proposal in de December and then what he said in May.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

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

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The way everybody read it, it was across the table --

TRUMP: You have some exceptions. And ideally you won't have a ban very long.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTINGLY: A constant push and pull. And now what we're seeing is in many ways as one GOP adviser told me, a tale of two Trumps, a candidate who is unwilling or unable to let go of what got him so successfully to this point, a campaign that sees itself looking towards the general election, and an electorate that looks very different from the GOP primary voters Trump won over to get to this point.

And in that we've slowly started to see a more professionalized campaign. It's the building of a real fund-raising operation, of infrastructure, and, simple as it sounds, a travel strategy. Take a look at Trump's schedule today. A big economic speech in Pennsylvania, a stop in Ohio, two crucial swing states, Trump has said he can and needs to win. For all of the uneasiness and even outright opposition out there, this is more or less exactly what Republicans have been asking out of their candidate over the last couple of weeks. The question remains, how long will he stick to it? Victor?

BLACKWELL: All right, Phil, thank you so much.

For the first time since the historic Brexit vote, British Prime Minister David Cameron is in Brussels meeting with European leaders. CNN international diplomatic editor Nic Robertson is live in Brussels. Nic, good morning.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Good morning, Victor. David Cameron is just out of his first meeting with the European Commission president. He's now going into a meeting with the European Council President. In between those meetings he did say a few words to reporters, and he said he'll be here to tell them that Britain is leaving but he wants to do it in a constructive way. That's what he said, a constructive way.

[08:05:03] He will get a chance to talk to all the European leaders over dinner tonight. And there he will lay out why Britain had a referendum, why he thinks the outcome the way that it did, that he was disappointed in it. But in a way he will be trying to lay and set out a language here that tells these European leaders that they may have similar issues with their electorates in their countries. So you heard that from the Dutch defense minister earlier on today.

But the European leaders will be telling him very clearly we want you to get on quickly with the negotiations. We want the markets to settle down. We want the political uncertainty to go away. And by the way, don't think you can negotiate a new deal where you get access to all this free trade area in the European Union without taking in European Union workers in Britain. They have some very clear lines for him. Back to you.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Nic, thank you very much.

Joining us now, former British prime minister Tony Blair. It's very good to have you with us, sir, as always on NEW DAY, especially now given the timing. Give us your general assessment. Did you see this coming? Do you think that it's going to come out the way that benefits the people of the United Kingdom?

TONY BLAIR, FORMER BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: I think whatever happens, first thing to say is Britain is a strong country. It's a resilient country where creative people will come through and we'll prosper whatever now happens.

I didn't expect this to be the result. I thought we'd vote stay. Europe is incredibly important for Britain. Half of our exports go into the European market. So what's now going to happen is there's going to be a long process of negotiation trying to work out what our new relationship with Europe is. And I would caution thinking in very precise terms until we see how that negotiation pans out, because before last Thursday you would claim and counter-claim. Now you're going to see reality. So this is quite a real-time, real life experiment in what has been a very populist type of politics that gripped our country and delivered this result.

CAMEROTA: Speaking of reality, it seems as though some Britons are getting a dose of it today and there does seem to be a bit of buyer's remorse, that they may not have understood sort of all the nuances of this. This is a non-binding referendum. Does this have to happen?

BLAIR: I think even if it's constitutionally non-binding, it does have to happen. On the other hand, as I say, right now people don't know what's on offer. They know what they've got now. What they don't know is what they're going to be offered as the new relationship. Because, for example, Britain's a financial center, we absolutely need to be able to move across the boundaries within Europe in order to trade our goods, our services. We're going to have a big car manufacturing industry. So we're going to have to have a new relationship with Europe. And I think what will happen in these next months is that people will see what that really means. And --

CAMEROTA: If they don't like it, do they have to do it? Can't they just have another referendum and change this?

BLAIR: Some people are already suggesting that. I think it's very difficult to see how you do that. On the other hand, we're masters of our own destiny. We can do what we want to do in the end. But I think the only way that would happen is if it became very, very clear that there was a substantial change of mind amongst people had voted to leave. The vote was close, it was 52-48. It's not like 70-30.

BLACKWELL: You talked about the next few months. Let's talk about the chronology. The headline coming out of London is that there will be a new prime minister September 2nd instead of October, which we were told before. The Article 50, which begins the withdrawal, has not yet been invoked. Do you agree with the timeline that we're seeing at least for the new prime minister coming in this September, but still no implication of the Article 50?

BLAIR: I personally think it's sensible to take this steady. There's no reason not to. There's too much at stake. This is probably the most momentous decision Britain has taken since the Second World War. This is a pretty big thing to do, so why rush it?

BLACKWELL: With no informal talks before Article 50 is invoked, there still is that uncertainty.

BLAIR: That's true. It's, if you like, you've got to kind of calibrate between -- you could have certainty, but it might be a bad certainty. And you could have some uncertainty but in order to get to a better result.

And I just think I would just caution on believing this thing is going to settled very fast. It's true some of our European partners will want to say, OK, we need to get this over and sorted. But it's complicated. We've had four decades of commercial, trading, business, political security relationships built up inside Europe. So I can't tell where we're going to be in the next few months. But I can say that I think there will be a lot more real evidence as to what all this means.

[08:10:00] CUOMO: What's your take on the echo effect of Brexit on the American election? A big issue for you guys was immigration. Now, I know that there is a big suggestion that it was falsely presented by the Brexit side, that many in the U.K. didn't understand just how much control over immigration the U.K. already had, that the EU didn't really affect that. But it's playing here as well and we're seeing it play out with the Muslim ban that Trump had started with initially and now seems to be moving off of. What are your observations and what are your words of caution?

BLAIR: My observation is what's going on in your politics is exactly the same as what's going on in our politics, in other words, insurgent movements of populism left and right that can get a lot of traction very fast in the politics of the country. You could go to anywhere in Europe right now and have exactly the same situation.

And these populist movements become very powerful because they can take an issue, particularly an issue like immigration -- let's go back in history. This has always been an issue you can ride in a very strong way, and people genuinely feel strongly about because globalization is changing the world around them. They feel their community is changing. They think they've lost something, and they think they will gain something if you manage to keep out immigration.

Now, I mean, I happen to believe that the reality is what's going on in the world is the product of many, many forces not from government. It's just the way the world is today. It's coming closer together. Migration, technology travel, all of these things are changing the way that people live and work and think.

But I think what it does mean is that those people who are in the center ground and seem like kind of the establishment today have got to reflect very carefully. One, they've got to treat these concerns as real and not just dismiss them. And two, if they want to displace the anger, they've got to have some answers.

CAMEROTA: So if Britain could have done something differently to avoid being where it is today -- I know you weren't in favor, obviously, of Brexit. So if something could be have been done differently, should immigration have been slowed down? There was a big tide of immigrants coming in and people felt it was all happening too quickly, they were losing their footing. What do you think should have been done differently?

BLAIR: I think what might have been differently is actually strangely from Europe, because what happens when you join the European market is you have free movement of people just as you have free movement of people between states in the United States. So we have free movement of people between France and the U.K., between then eastern Europe which is just coming to the European Union that last decade or so. And, yes, people felt there were too many people coming.

I happen to think these guys make a great contribution to our economy. Actually they pay far more in taxes than they receive in benefits. But you have to accept this was a real concern. I think we could have met that concern in Europe by giving ourselves getter powers in situations where you have a big surge of numbers to try and avoid that situation. So I think there are -- and there may even be measures that we can think about doing now that take some of the heat out of that pressure for leaving Europe all together.

BLACKWELL: The work that you've done has studied the connection to radicalism, to terror. And we've seen over the last 24 hours a shift from the Trump campaign in this Muslim ban to a ban to specific countries. The list of countries has not come out, the characteristics have not come out or released by the campaign. Should religion be a part of the way that countries look at terror?

BLAIR: Well, not sort of per se, but obviously, you know, one of the problems with immigration today is within that immigration space there is a security anxiety. So in Europe, for example, today, you can't really talk about Syrian refugees unless you're talking about the anxieties that people have. But yes, the vast majority of proper refugees, you may have some terrorists and you may have a security problem enclosed in that. So I think you have to separate those two things out.

And the only thing is whatever policy you come out with has got to be a policy that doesn't alienate that large part of Islam that we need on side to defeat this. I spent a large amount of time in the Middle East. I see this terrorism, exactly where it's come from, where it's grown, and so on. If we want to defeat it, we've got to be very clear. Those people who are a security threat, we need to deal with. And if we have special measures that are necessary to deal with them, fine. But don't do it in a way that alienates the broad swath of decent, law-abiding --

CUOMO: What do you say to people who aren't buying that? That they'll look at Islam, and there's no reason to talk about the issue. In the United States it's Islam, and the growing belief, I would suggest, that Islam is inherently radical, that those who ascribe to the faith, if the really live it, they live it the way the terrorists do and that the people who you and President Obama and many leaders in this country are saying, don't throw all of these one

[08:15:00] plus billion people in with this small fraction of terrorists have it wrong, that the ideology is inherently corruptive.

BLAIR: Right and I think it's, you know, I've spent a lot of time studying this. My foundation tracks this terrorist instance and analyzes them day by day across the world.

What is absolutely true is that there is a perversion of the faith of Islam, an ideology based on it that has grown up really in the last five, six, seven decades. And you can track it very carefully as to how it's come about and how it's growing. But it isn't the true Islam.

And, you know, we've go to be really, really careful of this because otherwise, you end up stigmatizing an entire religion, whereas, you know, radical Islamism is undoubtedly a big challenge and a big issue and Islamist extremism is the threat that we face. But its principal victims in the world are actually Muslims.

And, you know, I know this being out in the Middle East as much as I am, the vast majority of people that do not want that type of extremism to define their societies or their faith. So, you know, this is where you need to be careful. I think you need to call it what it is, by the way. I mean, I think you've just got to be honest about it.

CUOMO: Which is?

BLAIR: It is a problem within Islam, but it's not a problem that should be used to denigrate the entire faith. And that's the distinction that you need because the only way you're going to defeat it is building alliances. And building alliances within Islam because let me tell you, all over the world today, there are people fighting back. And we need to be on side with them. They are our allies. They are the open-minded tolerant people who actually want a better future for themselves.

CAMEROTA: Wonderful to get your expertise, our Former Prime Minister Tony Blair, thank you so much for being here.

BLAIR: Thank you.

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you so much. We are following breaking news this morning. House Republicans preparing to release their long-awaited report on the Benghazi attack.

A portion obtained exclusively by CNN says intelligence showed an attack was possible and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should have realized those risks.

CNN Chief Political Correspondent Dana Bash is live in Washington with details. Dana, good morning.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning. And we're waiting, any moment now, we should see the 800 plus page report show up online and in our inboxes. But until then, we do have a portion of it that we've been given exclusively, talking about the events leading up to the deadly attack on September 11th, 2012. And it really does weave a narrative of a bureaucratic morass basically of a situation where this compound was kind of in no man's land and so it made it impossible for them to get the kind of funding and, more importantly, security that they needed in order to be safe.

One interesting new nugget from what we got was that Secretary Clinton had planned a potential trip to Libya in October of 2012 so months -- it would have been a month after these deadly attacks. And that part of the discussion of having Chris Stevens, the ambassador who was killed, go to Benghazi, despite how dangerous it was, was to prepare to give a, "deliverable" to Hillary Clinton when she got there.

But all of this is happening on the Republican side. This has been a -- This is a bipartisan committee but the Democrats said that they were shut out of the process of writing these reports. In fact, I just got an e-mail from a spokeswoman on the Democratic side saying that they only got the full report within the last 15 minutes, even though reporters like us and other news outlets were given sections of it earlier in order for us to digest it.

So they're pushing back on the idea that this is truly what the Republican chairman is going to say in about an hour or so, that he believes that this is a comprehensive narrative that explains what happened from start to finish without drawing a conclusion. Democrats say that's just not true and ironically, Trey Gowdy, the chairman is sort of caught in the middle here, it seems, because he also has people on the right, two Republican congressmen, who think that he didn't go far enough.

They issued their own report, Alisyn, talking about the fact that, very pointedly, they believe that the blame lies with Hillary Clinton, with the administration from their perspective putting politics and the politics of the election that was coming up ahead of explaining to American people what exactly happened.

CUOMO: And that is the simple task that has gotten very, very complex and drawn out. Dana, thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Of course, we've been talking this morning about this very sad news out of Tennessee this morning. Legendary basketball Coach Pat Summit is gone, according to a statement from her son.

Her health was deteriorating in recent weeks. Summit led the lady volunteers to eight titles in 38 years as head coach. She is the "winningest" coach in division one basketball history. Men, women, boys, girls, anyway you want to look at it, she holds the record.

[08:20:04] Summit announced her diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer's very bravely as Victor pointed out just in 2011. She succumbed to it at just 64 years old.

CAMEROTA: It's great to see that video of her in her heyday, you know, being so assertive and just whatever we knew her as.

BLACKWELL: We've got to imagine all the players and the assisting coaches and just the fans who were thinking of her today.

CUOMO: Generations and for her to bring Alzheimer's into the open the way she did, very brave and helpful as well.

BLACKWELL: Yes.

CAMEROTA: All right, Hillary Clinton, acknowledging that there is one issue where she has a lot of work to do with voters, trust. So what's her plan? We'll talk about that with someone rumored to be on her very short list for VP.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JIM JORDAN, (R) OHIO: Libya was supposed to be their shining foreign policy success story. They were so invested in this, they had to stay. And then 9/11/2012 happens. And there's a terrorist attack and they're 56 days before an election.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: That was Congressman Jim Jordan, a member of the Benghazi Committee, issuing blistering critique of the White House as the committee prepares to make its report on the deadly attack public.

Congressman Xavier Becerra is a Democrat from California, who is the chairman of the House Democratic Office. He has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. Congressman, thank you so much for being here.

REP. XAVIER BECERRA, (D) CALIFORNIA: Of course, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: There are these two dueling reports out today from this Benghazi Select Committee, one by the Democrats, one by the Republicans.

[08:25:03] But they share one important finding, and that is that then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did have the intel to know that Benghazi was a risk and at that compound, there was a danger zone and that she, for whatever reason, did not act more forcefully on that. What's your reaction?

BECERRA: Alisyn, as best I can tell from all the investigation, and this marks the ninth investigation. This one, done exclusive by Republicans because they wouldn't allow Democrats to participate even on the writing of the report. What we know is that the secretary did everything she could to try to make sure all of our embassies were as safe as they could be. She relied on the intelligence being provided to her and so ...

CAMEROTA: But this report says that the intel did say -- I understand but this report, even that issued by the Democrats today, did say that the intel was there, that they did know that the security environment was deteriorating in Benghazi.

BECERRA: Right. And that information did not get to all the people it should have to be able to make the best decisions for our people, our personnel in the various sites. And so what -- one of the recommendations I know that the Democrats are making from this investigation is to do a better job of connecting the information with the people who can make decisions. And also making sure we're making the right investments.

We've seen this Republican Congress cut the funding that we need to keep our various embassies safe. And so it's a matter of making sure you get the intelligence and you make the investments.

CAMEROTA: So the fact that these reports have come out now four months before the election, do you think that this will have an impact on Mrs. Clinton's campaign?

BECERRA: Well, I think that was the purpose Republicans had in mind, right? What we've learned from this latest, this ninth investigation is one, it's cost taxpayers more than $7 million. Two, it was always meant as, a Republican leader said at the very beginning, to reduce Secretary Clinton's poll numbers as she runs for president. But what we've learned in terms of actual facts is nothing more than we've -- what we've learned in the previous eight investigations.

And so, I think it won't make a difference and Republicans, while they may have tried to have it make a difference, are finding that they've used up a lot of taxpayer dollars in a partisan witch hunt.

CAMEROTA: As you know, Hillary Clinton struggles with trust issues. Voters sometimes doubt whether she is trustworthy. We know this from public opinion polls. Maybe it's based on Benghazi, maybe it's based on her e-mail issues. But either way, former Secretary Clinton addressed this on the campaign trail yesterday. So listen to what she said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON, (D) PRESUMPTIVE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: A lot of people tell pollsters they don't trust me. Now, I don't like hearing that. And I've thought a lot about what's behind it.

I understand people having questions. Now, maybe we can persuade people to change their minds by marshaling facts and making arguments to rebut negative attacks. But that doesn't work for everyone. You can't just talk someone into trusting you. You've got to earn it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: So what's the plan, Congressman, for her to earn that trust from voters?

BECERRA: Alisyn, I think you take a look at what happened for example in this latest Republican partisan investigation on Benghazi. For 11 hours, Republicans grilled the secretary, trying to get her to disclose something that hadn't already been known, kind of make her look bad. And for 11 hours, she stood there and took all these questions.

That is Hillary Clinton. She's tough, she's tested and she'll speak truth to power. And I think what you'll find is as more and more Americans have an opportunity to meet her, to hear her directly, speaking facts to power, I think what you'll find is that people will begin to trust her, especially when you compare who she's running against. Compare her against who she's running against. In this case, Donald Trump, who is very difficult to trust at all, given that he makes statements that he can't even follow up on.

And so, I think the public will give her a chance, and once they've figured out who the -- who Secretary Clinton is, they'll realize they've got a really tough cookie who can become a great president.

CAMEROTA: Well, the RNC, as you know, is trying to point out to voters the places where she has flip-flopped, they say, where she hasn't been consistent, including the TPP, the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership.

So listen to this ad that they have just put out and then you can respond.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLINTON: This TPP sets the gold standard in trade agreements to open free transparent, fair trade, the kind of environment that has the rule of law and a level playing field. And when negotiated, this agreement will cover 40 percent of the world's total trade and build in strong protections for workers and the environment.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Congressman, will that come back to haunt her that she was extolling the virtues there of the TPP and now she doesn't support it?

BECERRA: Alisyn, what's not mentioned is that those statements were made before the TPP had been concluded. She has been -- since had an opportunity to review the TPP now as negotiated and signed by the different parties. And what she has said is that it is not what she thought it could be. And so I don't think there's any problem.