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Trump Campaign Defends Controversial Deleted Tweet; Obama to Stump for Hillary Clinton in North Carolina; 215 Killed in Baghdad Truck Bombing. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired July 05, 2016 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Donald Trump is not apologizing for the controversial tweet.

[05:58:14] UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The imagery evoking anti-Semitic stereotypes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a pattern that, to us, is perplexing, troubling and wrong.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There is nothing anti-Semitic about Mr. Trump.

JOE JOHNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hillary Clinton will appear on the campaign trail with President Obama.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Can the president help her sliding poll numbers?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: The single deadliest terror attacks in Iraq since 2003.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Very blood, deadly last few days of the holy month of Ramadan.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think we're going to see, unfortunately, a lot more of this.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It would be surprising to me that ISIL is not trying to hit us in our homeland.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: America's most spectacular shows. New York, one million spectators lining the East River for a spectacular show.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Good to see those fireworks. They look spectacular. I didn't supposed you stayed up late and...

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, I heard them. They woke me up. I didn't see them.

CAMEROTA: My night also was abbreviated. So it's nice to see them and recap them this morning for you.

Good morning. Welcome to your NEW DAY. It's Tuesday, July 5, 6 a.m. in the East. Chris is off this morning. John Berman joins me. Great to have you.

BERMAN: Nice to see you.

CAMEROTA: So up first, Donald Trump on defense over that deleted tweet with a graphic that many saw as anti-Semitic. Trump slams, though, the dishonest media for this controversy.

BERMAN: Now this all comes as both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton head to the swing state of North Carolina today. And for Hillary Clinton, this is a crucial campaign first. Her first joint appearance on the stump with President Obama.

CNN has complete coverage of the 2016 race. We want to begin with Jason Carroll. Good morning, Jason.

JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, John.

More on that controversial tweet. Donald Trump weighing in on the issue. No apology from the presumptive nominee for offending Jewish groups. But we now know who inside the campaign was apparently responsible for the tweet.

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CARROLL (voice-over): Donald Trump firing back at critics who say the star shape in the tweet his campaign posted evokes anti-Semitic imagery, calling the attacks "false and ridiculous." Trump singling out Hillary Clinton's campaign, which called his tweet "blatantly anti-Semitic and part of a pattern."

In a statement Trump says, "The former secretary of state is trying to divert attention from dishonest behavior of herself and her husband."

But the Clinton campaign is not alone in condemning the image.

JONATHAN GREENBLATT, DIRECTOR, ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE: The Trump campaign has invoked bigotry and anti-Semitism, racism; and now it's hard to call it anything other than a pattern.

CARROLL: Daniel Scavino, Trump's former New York golf course caddy turned social media director for the campaign, now says he selected the star, not the Jewish Star of David, but as he called it a "sheriff's badge," explaining he found it "under Microsoft's shapes." Covina said in a statement the image was lifted from an anti-Hillary Twitter user where countless images appear and not sourced from an anti-Semitic site.

But CNN, through use of an Internet archiving site, found that the same graphic tweeted by Trump appeared ten days earlier on a message board filled with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and neo-Nazi ideology. GREENBLATT: It's an interesting question to ask: Why is your fact-

finding department focusing on fiction and how a major presidential campaign can be looking at racist websites or anti-Semitic sections of other online sources and using it to find content to share with the American public?

CARROLL: Trump deleting the tweet on Saturday, reposting the graphic, replacing the star in question with the circle.

ED BROOKOVER, SENIOR ADVISOR, DONALD TRUMP CAMPAIGN: These memes float around the Internet. Not every six-sided star is a Star of David. There's no anti-Semitism in Mr. Trump's body, not one ounce, not one cell.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CARROLL: And as you heard there, Trump supporters say Trump is not intolerant or anti-Semitic. They point out that his son-in-law is Jewish and that his daughter, Ivanka, converted, and that Trump has been a vocal supporter of Israel out on the campaign trail -- John.

BERMAN: Interesting, though, the first explanation from the campaign about how they found that tweet. All right, Jason, thanks so much.

On the Democratic side, a big moment for Hillary Clinton: her first joint campaign appearance with President Obama. The two will head to North Carolina aboard Air Force One, but this has Donald Trump asking who's paying for the ride.

CNN White House correspondent Michelle Kosinski We're live in Charlotte with more.

Good morning, Michelle.

MICHELLE KOSINSKI, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hi, John.

You know, as long as Hillary Clinton has been campaigning, as many times as we've heard President Obama deliver these veiled and not veiled slams against Donald Trump, this today will be the first time he's actually out on the campaign trail.

And Hillary Clinton will fly on Air Force One with him here to North Carolina. This is where she delivered a speech just two weeks ago where her campaign has been opening a half a dozen offices across the state. And where Donald Trump tonight will also be making an appearance but in Raleigh.

So that should tell you how important North Carolina is. It is a battleground state. It is a mix of urban and rural. It has seen growth in young, professional, educated people moving in who are also diverse, but it is also a place where, in 2008, Barack Obama won the election but lost in 2012 to Mitt Romney.

So today he will make the point that he wants all the undecideds and independents to go with Hillary Clinton, that she is the most qualified and that she represents the values that he does -- John and Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, Michelle, thank you for that.

Let's discuss both of these important stories. We want to bring in Washington bureau chief for "The Daily Beast," Jackie Kucinich; and CNN political commentator and senior contributor at "The Daily Caller," Matt Lewis. Great to have both of you with us.

Let's start with Trump. Let's start with everything that transpired over the weekend. So to recap, Trump's Twitter account tweeted out this attack graphic of Hillary Clinton, calling her the most corrupt politician ever; and it included this Jewish star, Star of David.

Then they changed it to a round circle, once there was some outcry about the star being used, but people saw this as an anti-Semitic graphic.

Trump then tweeted at 9:42 a.m. yesterday, "Dishonest media is trying their absolute best to depict the star in the tweet as the Star of David, rather than the sheriff's star or a plain star."

So, Jackie, what do you hear here? I mean, he is not apologizing, but he did want to respond; and it's clearly -- it got under the campaign's skin.

JACKIE KUCINICH, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, "THE DAILY BEAST": Well, he is responding to it, which is notable. That said, it's a little bit hard to believe that they -- that this didn't come from the site -- that they didn't find this star on, like, ILoveSheriffs.com.

[06:05:03] This was an image that was made by a racist Twitter -- Twitter user that frequently tweets out anti-Semitic and racist material.

So it just -- it just seems a little bit farfetched, and not to mention this has happened before. Donald Trump has retweeted users that have things like swastikas in the imagery and other anti-Semitic things. Why he's doing this, that's an open question. But the idea that this was something totally created by the Trump campaign. It's just that the facts aren't really bearing it out.

BERMAN: Thousands of people, by the way, now rushing to ILoveSheriffs.com this morning. Their subscription level going through the roof.

Matt Lewis, we did get an explanation from the campaign itself, finally, overnight. Dan Scavino, who runs social media for Donald Trump, sort of fell on his sword at least halfway. He said it was he who went and got the image. He said he found it from a Twitter account that bashes Hillary Clinton regularly. We don't know exactly what that account is. But Dan Scavino said it was him.

MATT LEWIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes.

Berman: Had the Trump campaign done this early on, had they owned up to it, had they given some kind of explanation three days ago, might this have quelled the whole controversy then?

LEWIS: Yes, yes. And when you're wrong, you should come out and say you're wrong and get it out of the way instead of keeping it alive. This is really Campaign 101, and -- but it's part and parcel of the larger problem. And obviously, very clearly, there are a group of anti-Semitics, of racists who support Donald Trump. That is -- that is one issue.

The other problem, though, is frankly campaign competence. Why are you going and borrowing other people's graphics? Why are you not creating your own?

And then why are you not sensitive to the fact that the imagery you're using has historically been associated with anti-Semitism? If you're a senior staffer, if you're a top adviser for a presidential campaign, you ought to know that, and you could steer clear of this. And then, if you do make a mistake, you own up to it immediately, get it behind you.

So they're making all sorts of mistakes that are helping keep this story alive and ultimately overshadow Hillary Clinton's problems.

CAMEROTA: And there you have it, Jackie. That's the problem, is that Hillary Clinton, by all rights, she should have had a bad weekend. The entire news cycle should have been about how she was interviewed for three and a half hours by the FBI, but somehow this eclipse -- ended up eclipsing that in the coverage; and that's an error that certainly Donald Trump didn't want.

KUCINICH: Well, yes. To Matt's point, this is sort of Campaign 101. When your opponent is hurting himself or herself, don't say anything. Keep your mouth shut, because she was doing a great job last week. Things weren't going great. And Trump just can't help but divert the attention, negative -- mostly negative recently, to himself.

In his statement, he said something that this was a distraction by Hillary Clinton supporters. You know, this is a distraction by Donald Trump's campaign, pure, simple. They did this to themselves.

BERMAN: And the first reactions I heard, by the way, they weren't from Democrats or Clinton people at all. Erick Erickson, "never Trump" people but Republicans nonetheless.

Matt Lewis today, this whole circus, both circuses move to North Carolina. Both campaigns going there. Hillary Clinton first goes with Donald -- not with Donald Trump; she goes with President Obama in their first joint campaign appearance. The president's approval rating fairly high for a second term president. He's at 52 percent right now.

What effect do you think it will have for Hillary Clinton to be side by side with President Obama in a state that he won in 2008?

LEWIS: Well, I just think it's crucial for Hillary Clinton. I think that she is not popular. She is not charismatic. She is not likable, and so the more that President Obama can be on the stump with her, on the trail with her, that's going to rub off a little bit. There's going to be some likability. He's got the charisma and, obviously, the ability to turn out base Democratic voters that Hillary Clinton may not be able to appeal to: African-Americans, young people, a lot of cohorts that might not be as excited to go to the polls for Hillary Clinton. She's going to need Barack Obama, President Obama out there a lot. This is just the beginning.

CAMEROTA: Jackie, Donald Trump fastened on something that his base and Republicans certainly care about, and that is who's paying for this? He tweeted out, "Why is President Obama allowed to use Air Force One on the campaign trail with Crooked Hillary? She is flying with him tomorrow. Who pays?" What's the answer to that?

KUCINICH: It's a really -- it's a really good question. And the -- Obama came out and said or his -- the White House came out and said this is something that's paid for by the DNC and relevant campaign committees, but you know, I have to say, it's up to us to go and make sure that that's the case, because this isn't -- this is an open question of how these things get paid for. So it's definitely worth following up on.

BERMAN: And this is something, you know, that -- these are questions that are asked whenever an incumbent president runs for re-election, you know, himself: who pays for it? It is a combination of the campaign, the DNC.

But taxpayers do put in for it. It's sort of a smart question for Donald Trump to be asking if he has -- even if it's done regularly, it's the type of thing that some voters don't love.

[06:10:00] Also maybe smart, Matt Lewis, is what Donald Trump has done with the whole veepstakes situation over the last several days. He's made it very public. Yesterday he just started tweeting out names, publicly floating, Tom Cotton, Joni Ernst, Mike Pence. He's campaigning with Bob Corker today. He is doing this in a much more public way than I've ever seen. I'm not sure whether it's to generate excitement, divert attention from other things, but you know, it is drawing attention.

LEWIS: Yes. No, it's very smart. And in our "American Idol"/"Celebrity Apprentice" world, it fits perfectly in that the Donald would sort of be floating trial balloons. And, you know, look, I think it works on a few levels.

No. 1, I think, obviously, he likes to generate news cycles. The press -- I mean, we love the veepstakes speculation.

The other thing, frankly, I think, is floating trial balloons. I think that you throw a name out there, and stuff comes out sometimes. And you can see what the reaction is going to be. I mean, if Sarah Palin -- I think they wanted to keep that pick a secret, a surprise. They wanted to sort of preserve the -- you know, the surprise, but maybe, had they -- had they floated the name, they would have either gotten some pushback and changed their mind or they would have gotten opinion leaders to sort of go public buying in on the idea, and then it would have been harder for them to walk away from. All around, I think this is a smart move for Trump.

CAMEROTA: How great if there was a call-in feature...

KUCINICH: My gosh.

CAMEROTA: ... where viewers could vote for the president. You know what? I'm just suggesting it. All right. Jackie, Matt, thank you, guys, much.

BERMAN: Bruno Tonioni [SIC] or whatever. I'm getting the name wrong.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

BERMAN: I want to know what he has to say about the V.P. selection.

CAMEROTA: Tony...

BERMAN: We'll get back to you on that.

All right. Shifting gears right now. The fight against terror. Iraqi officials say that 215 people are dead, another 175 wounded in the worst terror attack in Iraq in more than a decade. And now the Saudis are investigating another suicide attack near a holy site, that as Ramadan comes to a close. CNN's Ben Wedeman is live in Baghdad with the latest.

Good morning, Ben.

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, John.

The latest here is that last night the Iraqi authorities executed five members of ISIS. They weren't related to this massive truck bomb that went off on Saturday night, as you said, killing more than 215 people, and that is by no means the final death toll.

We shot some drone footage at the site of the bombing yesterday. And you can really get a clear idea of the extent of the damage. Now, the dame was caused by a refrigerator truck packed full of explosives, but it wasn't just from the blast itself but rather the fires that started afterwards that led to so many deaths in that instance.

Now, Iraq in addition to executing those five overnight, that comes to 37 members of ISIS executed by the Iraqi authorities in the last two months. There are a number more than 3,000 still on death row, waiting to be executed.

Now, as far as Saudi Arabia goes, yes, those were three shock attacks in that kingdom where normally security is quite high, one in Jeddah, one in the holy city of Medina, and one in Khatif, in the eastern part of the kingdom.

Now Saudi authorities are on high alert. We're in the final days of the holy month of Ramadan. And of course, keep in mind that ISIS vowed that this would be a bloody month. They've come true on that vow, John. CAMEROTA: I'll take it, Ben. God, those -- that video that you were

just showing, it's -- it's just shocking what the damage caused by that bomb.

Ben, thank you for that reporting.

We also do have some breaking news to tell you about right now. Police in Italy say they have arrested a homeless man in connection with the murder of an American college student. Nineteen-year-old Beau Solomon had just arrived for a study abroad program. Solomon's roommate reported him missing after he did not show up for orientation. Authorities found his body in a river. Police telling Italian media that robbery is a motive, since Solomon's phone and wallet were gone and thousands of dollars were charged on his credit card.

BERMAN: Terrible.

All right. Fourth of July celebrations across the country, lighting up the night sky. There was some rain dampening it. Thousands gathered in Washington, D.C., for a spectacular show over the National Mall. See the colors also lighting up the sky in New York City. That's the 40th annual Macy's fireworks show.

CAMEROTA: That's beautiful.

BERMAN: Not all the shows, though, went off without a hitch. Two barges set on fire in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Police say there were malfunctions about 15 minutes into the show there. So that got in the way of plans.

CAMEROTA: Scary.

All right. It is show time for Juno, the NASA space probe now officially orbiting around Jupiter. Watch this.

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(APPLAUSE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We have the tone for burn cutoff on Delta B (ph). Roger (ph), Juno.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Happy scientists. That's what happy scientists look like.

CAMEROTA: That is -- those are some partying scientists. They're wearing party hats there in mission control, getting confirmation overnight that a nearly five-year, 1.8 billion-mile journey to Jupiter did end in success. And now the real work begins, a 20-month mission studying the planet. If all goes well, Juno will give NASA the best view ever of Jupiter, which is the largest planet in our solar system.

BERMAN: At the end of the whole thing, the spacecraft is going to crash into Jupiter. They have to do that for some reason. They wanted to crash in; they'll get some more scientific readings there. It will be great.

Yes. That's a spectacular finish to a mission.

CAMEROTA: I didn't know if you were -- John was making something...

BERMAN: No. It crashes into the planet. We should do that after every show.

CAMEROTA: Well, we sort of do.

BERMAN: All right. Drawing to a close now.

Will the terror attacks around the world finally subside? Or will we see more bloodshed? Again, these just stunning and terrifying pictures from Baghdad show the scope of one of the latest attacks. More next.

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[06:20:05] BERMAN: It is the end of Ramadan, and it could go on record as one of the deadliest in modern history. ISIS terrorists unleashing a series of attacks this month, including the deadliest bombing in Iraq in more than a decade.

Here to discuss, CNN contributor and senior editor of "The Daily Beast," Michael Weiss; and CNN national security analyst and former assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Juliette Kayyem.

Michael, you put up a map of the attacks that have taken place in the last month and you see the scope of what's gone on here. And it's simply stunning. I mean, Orlando, Paris, Istanbul, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia yesterday. Yemen, Bangladesh. It's everywhere.

MICHAEL WEISS, CNN POLITICAL CONTRIBUTOR: Yes.

BERMAN: And this is just over the last month. I suppose let's start at the end here. You know, one day left of Ramadan. How concerned are you that ISIS will try to do something today?

WEISS: They will. You know, this is a saturation method of terrorism. Ramadan, they escalate because, let's be honest, security services tend to be on the more sluggish end of the spectrum. You know, everyone is fasting. Things tend to slow down in Muslim societies.

And I have to be honest, you know, the bombing in Medina the worst sort of anti-Muslim terror attack in Saudi -- modern Saudi Arabian history.

BERMAN: This is yesterday.

WEISS: The tomb of the prophet. The tomb of the prophet, OK? I've seen on social media, my Muslim friends, they are beyond anything else that's happened so far by ISIS. This is a step beyond. This just goes to show you, I keep mentioning this manual, their

little red book if you like, "The Management of Savagery." It's written by a guy called Abu Bakr Naji about a decade ago. This is the playbook that they are adhering to.

CAMEROTA: Let's just explain: anti-Muslim terror. What -- we don't get. We don't understand it here. So why is that their playbook?

WEISS: Well, first of all, you have to be Muslim to get into Medina. You're not allowed if you're not a practitioner of the faith.

For them to do this, though, they claim to be the custodians of Islam. They claim to be the upholders of the Seventh Century tradition of a very literalist doctrine of Muslim. Following up the tomb of the prophet...

CAMEROTA: Right.

WEISS: ... you know, Muslims, this has confounded them. It makes absolutely no sense. And that's because, you know, ISIS, although there is absolutely a messianic and chiliastic (ph) ideology -- this is ushering in the end times and all that -- there is also a very Machiavellian geopolitical strategy to this. They want to see the overthrow of these regimes and governments in the Middle East and also around the world. I mean, they're trying to influence the American election. They're trying to influence the French elections. They're trying to influence the British elections.

This is -- this is a global phenomenon. And it has a globalist ambitions that cannot be discounted. And far worse than al Qaeda. I mean, Al Qaeda I cannot see carrying out an attack like this in Medina. That would be for them too horrific.

BERMAN: Juliette, does this give you a different view of ISIS, their capability and maybe aims? Again, we see what that bomb in Baghdad did, the devastation we're getting a sense of now just how bad that was. That was just one attack. You look at the map, and this has happened at about ten places over the last month.

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: It doesn't give me a different view. I completely agree with Michael, though. The Saudi Arabia and Medina attack is -- it seems very different to me. Not just the perspective that Michael was describing about the religion itself. But I mean, if you're going to pick any place in the Middle East or the Arab world that a U.S. counterterrorism official might have confidence in in terms of their security efforts, quite Draconian, not democratic, a heavy-handed royal family, it is in Saudi Arabia.

So I had sort of a jaw-dropping experience yesterday. I don't want to say I've become immune to the Iraqs or the Istanbuls, but those are -- you know, those are a range of sophisticated attacks, some of them occurring by nationals, others as we saw in Turkey, likely people who have come through Syria but maybe anticipated at this stage Saudi Arabia does seem different. And I don't think tomorrow there's going to be sort of a white flag

and, oh, Ramadan is over, and we're all happy. This was, you know, part of a strategic effort over the course of Ramadan where we're entering, you know, election seasons in various countries. You look what happened in Iraq. The prime minister got booed when he visited the bomb site.

They like unrest and instability, and they are using violence to breed it just, you know, east and west of Syria. Doesn't matter where you are at this stage.

CAMEROTA: Michael, what does this mean for the U.S.? Is it harder for ISIS to plan those sorts of -- the kind that we just saw in Baghdad with that explosive truck here in the U.S.?

WEISS: Yes. Yes. No, what happened in Baghdad has been happening in Iraq for a decade. This is the worst in terms of the butchers build (ph). But using these vehicle-born IEDs, truck bombs.

2009, they set off about three of these things in front of, I think it was the finance ministry, the foreign ministry. You could see it left an enormous crater in the ground. That's how powerful the explosions are.

[06:25:07] Look, in the U.S., the threat continues to be the so-called lone-wolf or self-radicalized ISIS-inspired actor. That said, I can tell you, you know, I've heard chatter from ISIS defectors about a plot, an imminent plot in places like Minnesota, where they're trying to cultivate members of the Somali diaspora, who have historically been more loyal to al Shabaab, now are going over to ISIS, because they are the going concern there, the vanguard.

CAMEROTA: And they're trying to recruit them with an attack?

WEISS: With an attack. I mean, not necessarily these guys will go over to Syria. They don't have to. And they already have a capable network, because they've been here for decades. But the idea of pledge allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and then, you know, in Shallah (ph), you become operatives of ISIS.

BERMAN: Sobering. Sobering thoughts.

Michael Weiss, Juliette Kayyem, thanks so much. Obviously, you know, not just the United States but all countries on high alert over the next days and weeks. Our thank you to you.

All right. The Olympics coming up. Balance beams, judo throws, no problem for most athletes, but hula hoops? Apparently a huge problem. Olympic athletes facing just adversity of all kinds. That's ahead on NEW DAY.

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