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Candidates Talk Making America Secure; Firhting Terrorism in the Streets. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired July 15, 2016 - 07:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:30:35] CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Soon after the horror in Nice, we heard both candidates for president quickly condemn the attack. That's not a surprise. But how they did it and what seems to be their attitude towards how to combat this threat does matter. We have both parties' national conventions just days away. And many are going to ask this fundamental question about how will each lead against this threat of terror.

Joining me now to make Clinton's case, former New York City council speaker and president and CEO of Women in Need, Christine Quinn. Christine? I want to play for you what Trump said and what Clinton said, and we'll take it from there.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESUMPTIVE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: This is war. If you look at it, this is war coming from all different parts. And frankly, its war and we're dealing without -- with people without uniforms.

HILLARY CLINTON, (D) PRESUMPTIVE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: It's a very different kind of war. And we could be easily misled. We've got to be smart about this, not. You know, not get pushed or pulled into taking action that doesn't have the positive effects it needs to have.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: Here's the suggestion. Trump seems more forceful, more ready to get after it and get it done. And that's why poll show that if you talk about foreign policy, Clinton gets a bump. If you talk about fighting ISIS specifically, Trump gets an even bigger bump. What's your counter?

CHRISTINE QUINN, VICE CHAIR. N.Y. STATE DEM. PARTY: Well look, I think these - they're both right in the sense that this is a war. It's a war very different than any one we've ever had to fight before. As we saw last night it continues in ways that are different every time an attack seems to happen just almost battle of.

But the nature of what we're up against, the complexity of it, the deep-seeded nature of it, the idea of it, you know, in addition to the violence of it, that's going to take somebody who actually has a deep understanding of who our allies and our enemies are of foreign policy, and somebody with this kind of a war more than any before. Who is strong, tough and has a steady hand.

Donald Trump, there is no question. Is good at railing against what he thinks is bad. In this case, actually rally against an evil. But his bombastic responses, his shoot from the hip, his lack of any real world or international knowledge, that's dangerous in this time.

CUOMO: But sometimes it becomes simple. They want to kill you, kill them first. That works for the American voter right now. The complexity that you're suggesting, many will suggest got us where we are today and Clinton is as responsible in anybody because she was part of the administration. She's the one who often brags on her resume of having traveled all over the world to create the current condition, which stinks.

QUINN: There's no question. And Secretary Clinton has been a leader in this regard that part of winning this war is killing our enemy. I mean we've seen those unbelievably impactful pictures of her, you know, in the situation room with the president, with the vice president making some of the most important takedowns of major terrorists in this country's history. But this isn't going to be fast, and it's going to be complicated.

And yes, there were mistakes made by Republican administrations as it relates to the war in terror, and maybe more could have been done by the Democratic administration.

CUOMO: Trump didn't make any of those mistakes. That's -- he's coming into this with a clean slate.

QUINN: He may or may not. He didn't make any of the steps or moves that took us to where we are. He didn't make any mistakes, you could say that.

CUOMO: And he says he was against the ones that were made. He was against the Iraq war that started all this, in many people's interpretation.

QUINN: Well, two things. He didn't make any mistakes. He didn't do anything. He didn't make any mistakes because he's never been on the world stage. He's never had to make a decision to send men and women into battle. So if you've never done anything of relevance to keeping the world safe, you can have a perfect batting average. He's never been in the batter's box.

CUOMO: But where is the advantage to having been in there and but created that help create a situation that stinks versus a guy who wasn't there and didn't do anything?

QUINN: I already said this in second but also, his record on the war, we've seen he's actually his flipped and flopped. And he doesn't have this pure vision. He has on that record, what we've seen him having so many others. Putting his finger up in the air and when it was ripped he seemed to be right on one side, that's where he was. He seemed to be right on the other side, that's where he went.

[07:35:07] Look, we have to understand that the situation we're in can't - there isn't one decision or one person who's responsible for it. But what we do know is that Secretary Clinton has made important contributions that have notwithstanding all the unspeakable horrible tragedy that's happened recently has actually made the country safer. It made the world safer. And she has the knowledge to get us over the finish line in this.

Do you really want somebody whose international perspective is based on the success of his golf courses, not on understanding who our allies are, how we beat this on the ground, and how we beat this in people's minds.

CUOMO: Last point. Where does your confidence come from that you said Hillary Clinton has the knowledge to get us over the finish line? What finish line? There are more attacks all the time. It's getting worst. This has metastasized. There's a cancer into a form where a person which has diseased of mind or of spirit can get a gun, which is always going to happen no matter what you do or don't do in the case of Washington, D.C., and get in a vehicle and do what we just saw in Nice. What finish line? What is she going to get us over? It's getting worse, not better.

QUINN: The attacks are certainly happening more rapidly this summer. I mean there's no question about that. But I know because of her life's work, because of her intelligence, because of her strong and calm outlook in these moments - in these moments you need leaders who are going to lead. Who aren't just going react in a way that feeds the desire of folks to be more angry.

I know based on her leadership successes, her international successes, her relationships that she will get us to the point where we win the war on terror.

Now, that's not going to happen tomorrow, Chris. It may not happen, you know in her first year. But I know she can get there. What I know also for sure is that Donald Trump has no experience, no knowledge, and we all know. Does not have the temperament to lead not just this country but let's be honest, the world, to the place where we have to get where we have defeated terror in its killing sense.

And also if you talk about earlier in the show in the deep-seeded minds of people who see this as an opportunity for their families, that's complicated. Donald Trump knows how to rant and rave and pick on people and call them names. That's going to make us less safe, going to antagonize the enemies, put us in more danger not more safe.

But you're right. It's not going to be quick. But we need a leader who can hold us together not rip us apart. And we know Donald Trump is all about ripping America apart.

CUOMO: All right, Christine Quinn, that's the case from the Clinton perspective. Appreciate you making it on NEW DAY. Let me show you some picture here as we go to break again. We're waiting on French President Francois Hollande. He's obviously getting into a car right here. We believe that he's going to meet with some of the victims at the hospital of what happened in Nice. And then, he's going to speak. When he does, we will bring you his comments live. Coming up also on the show, after this break, Donald Trump's Campaign Chairman, Paul Manafort, he was hired to do a job, and it looks like he got it done.

The convention should be clear sailing for Trump. How did he do it? We'll figure it out.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Well, the terrorists in the France terror attack overnight, they used a truck to carry out this rampage, but around the world, just think about the last month. We're seeing attacks in restaurant, concert halls, at airports.

We're going to talk to the former head of the CIA about how terrorists are evolving their ways of carrying out these attacks. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:41:51] HARLOW: Eighty-four people are dead, 18 more in critical condition after a truck rammed into spectators watching Bastille Day fireworks on Nice's famed promenade.

And now we have seen major attacks like this on the promenade, at airports, at restaurants, at nightclubs. How can officials keep up with the evolving method of these terrorists?

To talk to us about that, Jim Woolsey, former director of the CIA, thank you, sir, for being with us.

Let's just think about it, right? Bangladesh, they held hostages in the restaurant. In Istanbul, it was the airport. Last night in France, it is Nice's beautiful promenade. The evolution of the terrorist tactic is key here when you talk about fighting the enemy. This guy had one gun and one truck and that's it.

JIM WOOLSEY, FORMER CIA DIRECTOR: It's relatively easy to kill people in democracies or relatively free societies where crowds can gather and you don't have, you know, policeman or secret agent standing around and the huge number.

HARLOW: But that's the thing. France does have a huge number of police on the streets right now.

WOOLSEY: Not enough to stop terrorism. Whether it's a truck or chemical weapon that they've got in from Asad or whether it's explosives, they can kill dozens of people at a time, doing what they've been doing now for years. And we are not doing anything effective to really stop them.

CUOMO: When you say, sir, that we're not doing anything effective to stop it, there is a contrary notion that things could be much worse because of the simplicity of these actions as were discussing before. We came back on T.V. it doesn't take a lot of sophistication or guidance to do this kind of things, especially what this murderer just did in Nice.

So why has the U.S. had so many fewer of these attacks if it's not figuring out some way to deter most of them?

WOOLSEY: Well, although we all criticize our law enforcement, it's actually by world standards quite good. And we have close coordination between CIA and FBI. We have local police departments that have people who have done a really good job. New York, I think, under Giuliani was probably a very good example of how to run a policing operation so that you minimize the chances of terrorist attacks. But you can only minimize, you can't do away with.

And as long as we're a democracy or France is a democracy, the Islamists are going to be able to run operations such as they did.

HARLOW: What about the intelligence sharing factor? When Chris and I were in France in November covering that horrific attack, I kept hearing over and over again there's been a complete breakdown in communication and intelligence sharing between E.U. countries, and that was key when you looked at the Brussels connection to that Paris attack.

Is this an indication that it hasn't gotten any better? Because this guy didn't have a terrorist wrap sheet at all. He had petty crime, you know, background, that's it.

WOOLSEY: Well, some of the European countries are not real vigorous. I mean in Belgium, for example, they wouldn't ever arrest anybody after 9:00 p.m. they close down the shop at 9:00 p.m. our people in law enforcement and intelligence work really hard together. We work with some countries like Britain very effectively, others less so.

[07:45:14] But even if you held everybody up to an American standard of thoroughness and technical sophistication and so forth, all of the intelligence and law enforcement operations, you still would be vulnerable to things like what happened in Nice.

CUOMO: So, you get the question of, well, what do you do? We want to be safer. We don't like the proliferation of attacks, if you want to put back up the map of how many there have been in the recent times here.

Now, the reason that map is notable, for what it shows and what it doesn't show. There are hardly any in the United States. So, now we're trying to figure out how to do better going forward. Do you believe that Islam is the problem? We just heard Newt Gingrich, very smart guy, say, "We should test every Muslim in this country to see if they believe in Sharia, and if they do, then we should deport them."

Do you believe that Islam in the main is the problem, and do you believe that a religious test would be the answer?

WOOLSEY: Well, I knew slightly had dinner with him a couple of times the late Abdurrahman Wahid, former president of Indonesia. It's hard to be more supportive of religious liberty than Abdurrahman Wahid unless you're Thomas Jefferson. He was amazing. And that side of Islam in Indonesia, for example, has a long tradition going back centuries of religious liberty. That's not the tradition that grew out of the Arabian Desert, which is what is - which dominates the mosques and so forth in the United States as well as in Europe in the Mideast.

But it's not a hopeless situation but it's tough. And when I talk about taking firm action, what I would suggest is that first we've got to destroy ISIS in its own lair.

When we in the Clinton administration moved against Serbia, President Clinton authorized hundreds of air strikes a day. We're going with 10 or 20, something like that, in what's going on in Syria and Iraq now. You can't win that way. You have to take out your enemy. We shouldn't be just sort of sitting there in front of Mosul saying, well, maybe one day somebody will take it.

HARLOW: And the question becomes the will of the American people to escalate it that much, important conversation.

We'll have you back. Jim Woolsey, thank you so much, former CIA director.

To politics, Donald Trump says, "This is war, after the terror attack in France." Newt Gingrich is calling for, as Chris just said, the questioning of every single Muslim in American and asking them what law do they believe in. Do they follow Sharia law? If so, he says deport them. It is a discussion, and important one to have.

Trump's campaign manager, Paul Manafort with us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:51:26] CUOMO: I'll show you some live picture from France right now. We've been monitoring the situation with French President Hollande. He has left the airport. He's on his way to the hospital. He's going to meet with some of the injured there. There are a lot of kids who were hurt in this situation. We also heard reports that kids were killed.

The president is going to go. He's going to meet with the wounded. He is then going to speak. When he does, we'll bring it to you live.

Back here in the U.S., that situation reverberating into our race for president. There's no question about it. But there are a lot of different battles going on.

Donald Trump responded to this attack by saying this is a war. He denounced radical Islamic terrorism and he is holding to banning immigrants from countries that he says are connected to terror. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESUMPTIVE GOP PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: This is war. If you look at it, this is war, coming from all different parts. And frankly, its war and we're dealing without -- with people without uniforms. We better get awfully tough and awfully smart and vigilant, very, very quickly because our world is becoming a much, much different place.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: Trump also postponed his scheduled announcement confirming his vice-presidential pick, Governor Mike Pence. So let's discuss what's going on and what this all mean to the campaign effort from his campaign chairman, Paul Manafort. Paul, good to see you.

PAUL MANAFORT, DONALD TRUMP'S CAMPAIGN CHAIRMAN: Good to see you again.

CUOMO: Before we get to that, and there is certainly a lot of business at hand. I have to ask you, how did you do it? You got brought in here to do a very specific job. Create a clear path for Trump at the convention. Nobody thought it was possible. They thought even if he won the votes, there was going to be a problem. You came on this show, your first interview with Trump and said it's not going to be a problem. We'll get it done. Let's put up the tweet you put out yesterday. A tweet that many people never thought that we would see, which was you saying, "Anti-Trump people get crushed at the rules committee. It was never in doubt. Convention will honor the will of people and nominate."

It was in great doubt. How did you get this done?

MANAFORT: It was only in your doubt. Look, in politics, you have to watch what's going on, not listen to the chatter. And when I got involved in the Trump campaign, it was clear to me that Donald Trump had tapped into the anger and fear that was running through America.

Now, we may not be so dominant in New York or California, but you travel the country, and you feel it. He travels the country and he felt it. And when I looked at where he was in the campaign when I first got involved, he had achieved the incredible victories. And the crew strategy which was a smart strategy and made a strategic mistake which I saw once I got into the campaign. They hadn't performed well enough in the southern primaries, so that they couldn't use their strategy to close out a first ballot victory of Trump's.

So what was important for me to do to help Donald Trump was make sure that his message was able to be strategically focused, in places that he wasn't just winning the elect -- the state of primaries, but he was winning them in the right way.

CUOMO: All right, but I get it. I get what you were doing with the messaging to help yourselves in the primaries, but I'm saying when you went to people who nobody knows better than you do, within the GOP, the people who run that party, who run it both, whether they're in party apparatus or they're on elected official. When you went to them and said, Trump's going to win this. Don't try block him at the convention. I know you were getting resistance.

How did you pave the way to where you are right now to where supposedly the never Trump movement is done at the convention?

MANAFORT: Making things -- it makes it a lot easier at conventions when you actually win the primaries. And he did that. We had the delegates there. A lot of the noise that you've been hearing for the last month and a half ...

CUOMO: About unbinding delegates.

MANAFORT: About unbinding delegates, there were very few delegates saying that it was the malcontent who lost, who were that we weren't even delegates to the convention. When I did my analysis of the delegates to the convention, we had three different types of delegates. We had Trump delegates that had been elected.

[07:55:12] We had delegates who had been elected or other candidates, and we had unbound delegates. Many of the delegates for the other candidates, once Trump won, moved over to support Trump. They're party people. They had their preference, but most of them, as usual in primaries, went over to the winner.

So there's a -- and then you had these unbound or uncertain delegates, which became a shrinking majority as Donald Trump was out there unifying the party.

And so, the delegate process was never the issue. It was the noise from outside of the delegations. And what we did yesterday in rules, I mean it was really not only the right thing to do, it was the moral thing to do, but politically it was easy to do because the delegates to these rules committee were saying, "OK, what are the issues. Should we unbind the delegates, should we tell the record number of Republican who have voted in the primaries, you don't matter." Well, even people who weren't supporting Trump were on that committee said, "No, you can't do that ...

CUOMO: Dangerous proposition.

MANAFORT: And then the other part was vote your conscience. Well, you had to do -- you had your chance to do that on primary day in your state. This wasn't the time in the convention. So we crushed them. I mean, as I'm telling people today, never Trump is never more. I mean they're just gone.

CUOMO: All right. So now let's talk about the state of play. I figured that Trump was postponing this announcement for today for obvious emotional reasons. You know, you have Nice going on. Be sensitive to it. Don't make it about a purely political proposition. But then he goes on Fox last night and he says well I haven't made my final, final decision. Our reporting has bet its Pence. Is it not Pence, or is it Pence?

MANAFORT: Donald Trump will announce who it is. But the postponement today was because he thought that what happened in France yesterday was so tragic. He emotionally reacted to it. I mean ...

CUOMO: That makes sense.

MANAFORT: It really bothered him to see that carnage and he felt the pain of the people there. And he said it's just not right to do something self-serving and political the day -- the morning after.

CUOMO: Right. I totally get it. MANAFORT: So he said I want to postpone it.

CUOMO: That makes sense. But the -- I haven't made my final, final decision, well that's different because you've got Pence in a bind. Because he has got to announce whether or not if he is running for governor today, so if it's not Pence, you put them a -- you don't like this. You don't like this, this question.

MANAFORT: Now you take something that makes absolute sense and makes it into something else.

CUOMO: It does until he says I haven't made my final, final decision. But is that just him a little bit of brinksmanship in terms of, you know, keeping us waiting?

MANAFORT: Well, it mean until he announces it, it's not final. That's true. But, you know, he announced a change because of something that had nothing do with politics. Today, what he'll be doing is announcing when he'll make the decision. I expect there will be an announcement of his choice before we get to Cleveland.

CUOMO: Before we get to -- so over the week it then has to be?

MANAFORT: Yeah.

CUOMO: Not today?

MANAFORT: That'll be discussed. I mean, I don't think so. Because I think he thinks it just inappropriate to do it today.

CUOMO: And you're not worried about compromising Mike Pence's opportunity to run for governor?

MANAFORT: Donald trump, whoever he selects, and whoever he says as a selection will honor his word. That's who is.

CUOMO: All right. Tim Tebow, is he in at the convention or no? Because we heard he said that himself, he's not. But we heard from you guys that he is.

MANAFORT: The convention on arrangements does the inviting. You know, we're not involved with that. We were involved in making sure that the program had the strategic framework that we want. Making sure the people we want to speak were invited to speak. But we're not the administrative agents of the convention as a whole apparatus set up for that.

I don't know what happened between the announcement of Tebow and the -- an invitation. But I do know that we have a lot of people that want to speak. We have too many people who want to speak. The idea that people are not wanting to speak is just not true. In fact, we, you know, we have some of the major political candidates, like Ted Cruz, like Governor Walker, even Marco Rubio is sending a video. He wanted to send the video but he -- because he is clocked in his own primary election in Florida. So many of the opponents of Trump, many of the leaders of the Republican Party are speaking, but also, this is a different convention. It's different, because we don't want it to be about the establishment. We want it to be about change. And so, a number of the speakers are people like Tim Tebow, ordinary Americans.

CUOMO: Right.

MANAFORT: And the people who know Donald Trump well because we wanted people to understand the whole picture of who Donald Trump is. Not just a candidate.

CUOMO: So you're not sure if it's going to be Tebow or not?

MANAFORT: I mean, I don't know if what these arrangements are that's done.

CUOMO: All right. Let me ask you one thing while I have you here. Newt Gingrich just went farther than Trump ever has when dealing with Muslim-Americans. Trump's most recent iteration of his position on immigration with respect to Muslims is, if they come from a country that is connected to terrorism, I want to take a second look. Maybe we ban them all together. He's working that part through.

Newt says if you're here in America which mean you could be a citizen, we're going to talk to you about whether you're a Muslim or not. And we're going to talk to you about whether or not or not you embrace Sharia or not. If you embrace Sharia, if you think that's OK, we're going to send you back. Is that something that Donald Trump would endorse?

[08:00:06] MANAFORT: You'll have to ask Donald Trump. But I was very happy to hear you explain correctly Mr. Trump's position for the first time in a long time.

CUOMO: Hold on. Have I ever gone it wrong?

MANAFORT: I was --