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Melania Trump Delivers Speech at Republican National Convention;; Interview with Haley Barbour. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired July 19, 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] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: So let's get to that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(APPLAUSE)

MELANIA TRUMP, DONALD TRUMP'S WIFE: Everyone wants change. Donald is the only one that can deliver it.

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We're going to win. We're going to win so big.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is Donald Trump a messiah? No. He's just a man.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I blame Hillary Clinton personally for the death of my son.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Lock her up. That's right.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's no black America, there is just America!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I would like to make something very clear -- blue lives matter in America!

(APPLAUSE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Donald Trump will make America great again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. Welcome to your new day. It is Tuesday, July 19th, 8:00 in the east. Alisyn and I are in Cleveland at the Republican National Convention. The Trump campaign is having a tough morning. They had a great night. But now they're having to respond to fall out after it appears portions of Melania Trump's speech were plagiarized from Michelle Obama's 2008 speech.

CAMEROTA: And then you couple that with what happened next. Trump's campaign chairman called those allegations absurd right here on NEW DAY. He said it's crazy, and he pointed the finger at Hillary Clinton for creating a stir.

So we have every angle of this story covered, starting with CNN's Phil Mattingly inside the Quicken Loans Arena. Phil, what's the latest.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn. The Trump campaign not apologizing, not even acknowledging, in fact, going on offense. If you paid attention the last year, this is playbook for them, but it really underscores a problem that they have. Melania Trump was expected to be the headliner last night and the message throughout this morning, giving personal anecdotes about her husband, humanizing him, compared to maybe the bombastic Trump you see on the campaign trail. Instead, the campaign has a major headache to deal with.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MATTINGLY: The similarities are startling.

MICHELLE OBAMA, U.S. FIRST LADY: You work hard for what you want in life.

MELANIA TRUMP, DONALD TRUMP'S WIFE: That you work hard for what you want in life.

MICHELLE OBAMA: That your word is your bond, that you do what you say you're going to do.

MELANIA TRUMP: That your word is your bond and you do what you say and keep your promise.

MATTINGLY: Melania Trump's big moment on the national stage overshadowed by an unexpected moment, Trump delivered a speech with plagiarized passages of Michelle Obama's speech from the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

MICHELLE OBAMA: We want our children and all children in this nation to know --

MELANIA TRUMP: Because we want our children in this nation to know --

MICHELLE OBAMA: That the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work hard for them.

MELANIA TRUMP: That the only limit to your achievements is the strength of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.

MATTINGLY: And that's not all.

MICHELLE OBAMA: That you treat people with dignity and respect even if you don't know them and even if you don't agree with them.

MELANIA TRUMP: That you treat people with respect.

MATTINGLY: Under a firestorm of criticism online, the Trump campaign issuing this statement overnight, saying, quote, "Melania's team of writers took notes on her life's inspirations and in some instances included fragments that reflected her own thinking." But the statement doesn't acknowledge the allegations of plagiarism, mention who helped Mrs. Trump write her speech, or explain where those fragments came from. In an interview shot before her big speech, Melania seems to take most of credit for the content of her remarks.

MELANIA TRUMP: I wrote it with as little help as possible.

MATTINGLY: Donald Trump's apprentice-like entrance to introduce his wife on stage yet another moment that has everyone talking about this unconventional convention.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MATTINGLY: Guys, it is important to point out Melania Trump's speech behind me last night was very well-received among the convention's delegates. And that's no small thing at all. She rarely appears on the campaign trail and never really speaks. But, again, the problem the Trump campaign faces this morning is they're not talking about Melania Trump's very personal speech. They're talking about the plagiarism issue. I ran into one GOP official earlier this morning, asked him how he was going. He said, oh, just great, totally wanted to talk about plagiarism all day today. Sarcasm, obviously. But just another example about Donald Trump maybe stepping on some of the Republicans messages. Still, the campaign has made very clear, and you guys saw it a couple hours ago, they are not backing down on this issue any time soon.

[08:05:09] CUOMO: No question. We're driving the cycle of understanding on this right now, Phil. But let's also be very careful to define it. This is not about Melania Trump. She had a good night. She did something that was very difficult and she did it very well and helped her husband in the process. Those were the reviews on the floor where we were and those were the reviews online and everywhere else.

The story now is what seems to be obvious cribbing was very obviously and deceptively dealt with by the Trump campaign. Campaign manager, the chairman of the campaign Paul Manafort largely responsible for the success of Donald Trump in getting to this point at this convention, that was never supposed to happen, says there was no cribbing, and what's going on here is Hillary Clinton attacking a strong woman for standing up for herself. Now, let's just deal with the speech part once and for all. Here is what Melania said and here's what Michelle Obama said.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PAUL MANAFORT, DONALD TRUMP CAMPAIGN CHAIRMAN: There's no cribbing of Michelle Obama's speech. These were common words and values, that she cares about her family, things like that. She was speaking in front of 35 million people last night. She knew that. To think she would be cribbing Michelle Obama's words is crazy. This is once again an example of when a woman threatens Hillary Clinton how she seeks to demean her and take her down. It's not going to work.

CUOMO: All I'm saying is the language is strikingly similar. I'm not making a big deal of it. I know everybody's talking about it this morning. But I don't think it's an allegation. It's not some suggestion without proof. I think it happened. I don't understand why the campaign doesn't just own it and say people borrow phrases, that's what happened, and move on. That's what ironically Obama did in 2008 when Clinton said that he cribbed from Duval Patrick. He said, yes, you're right, I did it.

MANAFORT: No. He did do it. That is correct. But in this particular case there was a process certainly of collaboration. Certainly there's no feeling on her part that she did it. You know, what she did was use words that are common words. To expect her to -- to think that she would do something like that knowing how scrutinized her speech was going to be last night is just really absurd.

MICHELLE OBAMA: Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values.

MELANIA TRUMP: From a young age, my parents impressed on me the values --

MICHELLE OBAMA: You work hard for what you want in life.

MELANIA TRUMP: That you work hard for what you want in life.

MICHELLE OBAMA: That your word is your bond, that you do what you say you're going to do.

MELANIA TRUMP: That your word is your bond and you do what you say and keep your promise.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CAMEROTA: We have a lot to discuss with our panel. We have here CNN Politics Executive Editor Mark Preston, CNN Political Director David Chalian, and CNN political analyst and host of "The David Gregory Show" podcast, David Gregory. Gentlemen, great to have you here. David, I want to start with you, David Chalian, that is. So where are we with this? It might not have been a big deal, what happened with the plagiarism of the speech, but now Paul Manafort has strictly denied it, called anybody who thinks there was any possible plagiarism crazy.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: That's not going to be the last response from the Trump campaign on this, I can pretty much guarantee that because I don't think you can sustain, when you watch that videotape side by side, you're not going to be able to main that position all the way through. And quite frankly it's not an entirely fair position to Melania Trump either. And I think that is going to be a cause of friction inside the campaign because she who, as Chris was saying, gave a really good speech last night, good performance, went up there and did something she does not normally do. She attested to her husband all those things. She's going to want this up as cleanly as possible so that they can move on from this. Otherwise she gets dragged into this even though clearly she's not responsible --

CUOMO: Dragged in, true. They put her in a bad position, whoever cribbed it and wrote it and did it. Paul Manafort saying she doesn't have any feelings that she did any plagiarizing -- I'm sure she doesn't, because it was done for her. But I'm surprised today if she doesn't come out herself. This is a very smart, very independent person who does not want to be framed the way the campaign may wind up framing her as a byproduct.

CAMEROTA: But is she allowed to do that?

CUOMO: She's allowed to do whatever she wants. She's allowed to do whatever she wants.

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: The candidate, I'm sure, is not very happy about what's happened here. The fact that Manafort told you that she does not have a feeling that she plagiarized indicates they had a conversation about it.

CUOMO: So he can't say I didn't know anything about it.

GREGORY: So the pattern here is that the Trump folks are denying the obvious or lying about the obvious even if it's not something that would ultimately be that consequential.

[08:10:02] This is now taking night one, and everyone is talking about it and everybody is reading about a huge example of campaign malpractice in an otherwise good speech using, yes, common language. Now you've got Governor Chris Christie in a position saying, well, 93 percent of the speech was actually her own words. It's kind of absurd. And I keep saying this is an area they can control. This is their convention. It's their message. She is a star of this campaign team as a potential first lady.

MARK PRESTON, CNN POLITICS EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Unforced error, an absolutely unforced error. And this is where the cover up is actually worse than the crime, because in many ways what she did last night when she delivered that speech by plagiarizing, she plagiarized feelings. She didn't plagiarize facts. It's not like she went out there and stole facts and used it to portray herself as somebody who is a loving mother and a loving spouse.

But what we saw here is denial, denial, denial. We saw this at 1:00 a.m. last night when the first statement came out or a little after 1:00 where they denied it. We saw this morning a couple of hours later where they looked at you incredulously, Paul Manafort said, what are you talking about?

CAMEROTA: But this isn't the first time that we've seen this. This has happened throughout the campaign. We would have video of there being violence at a Donald Trump rally, and Donald Trump would get up there and say there's no violence whatsoever at my rallies. People would say you mocked a disabled reporter. He would say, I never mocked a disabled reporter, though we had video of it. This is what they've been doing. Does it change now that we're here at the convention and people are now paying attention, David?

CHALIAN: I think the biggest difference here is this is dealing with the spouse. This is not the candidate. This is a family member. These are the folks inside the campaign you really try to protect as best you can from the daily to and fro from the back and forth of all the other controversies you're citing. And because it involves Melania, I think there's going to be an extra burden inside the campaign to just try to get this as cleanly removed from their plate as quickly as possible.

PRESTON: It's worth noting, Chris, you said that you think Melania Trump will come out today. And I think that that is absolutely true, because as all of us that have covered many presidential campaigns know that the spouse, who might not publicly be out there, privately is often driving the trains. And to your point, she is a very strong. She's a very smart woman, and now she has been tagged with this idea of plagiarism that really wasn't on her shoulders.

CUOMO: And let's just be very clear for something just for context, and I know I keep saying it, but it bears repeating. This is not about Melania Trump. I think she gets an A-plus for effort last night.

CAMEROTA: Now it's not because of the deal. At first, it was like, huh, how did this happen. But now it's moved on.

CUOMO: That's right. And even then, there was a writer involved. I guarantee it. And I don't mean that as a criticism.

This is what it is. You denied it, OK? And Manafort is a pro. I mean, he's an entire conversation in terms of himself, his successes and also his negatives that he brought into the campaign. But then he turns it into Hillary Clinton. That's tactics. Good for you. I then ask him about John Kasich and why they go after the popular governor of Ohio in his home state, why? He says I didn't do that. I read him his quote, and he says I didn't do that. I then ask why would Trump call into FOX News during Pat Smith's emotional thing. That's odd. I never heard of that before. He loved the speech. How?

CHALIAN: He didn't know the candidate was calling in.

CUOMO: He didn't know. Manafort said I didn't know that Trump was going to call in, not that he didn't know that he did call in. And he said but he loved the speech. How do you love a speech that you're on television during the same time?

GREGORY: You're hammering Hillary Clinton for being dishonest and untrustworthy, and you're not telling the truth about even the small things, so you cut into your strength. The majority of voters who don't think that Trump is qualified to be president, and now this is their convention, are people going to be more likely to think he's qualified or less likely?

CUOMO: The rally cry on the floor last night was clear. It was Clinton can't be trusted. She lied about the e-mails, she lied about Benghazi.

GREGORY: And they'll probably get that. But at some point if all of these things are problems, immigration, you know, ISIS, lying in office, a corrupt political system, Trump has to be the answer at some point. And this is another example of him being anything but the solution. That's what he's got to be thinking about, because he's also going to be judged by the people who are around him. How would he govern? If you've got a Paul Manafort around you, handling it like this, when you're confronts by facts as president, are you going to send your press secretary out and say, what you just saw it, well, that didn't happen.

PRESTON: You know what's crazy about this is they should have owned this week. There should have been no errors. There should be unforced -- there should have been four days of them talking about how Donald Trump would be a great leader to lead the United States. And wow what are we doing? We're talking about them taking what, you know, is a screw-up and just putting it into a major problem.

[08:15:01] CAMEROTA: So prediction this morning what's going to happen? Is the speech writer going to be fired, and then they'll be some public announcement? And then will it go away?

CHALIAN: Well, I don't know the answer to your question.

CUOMO: I say the answer is yes.

CHALIAN: I would guess.

CAMEROTA: Chris knows it even without facts.

CHALIAN: I would guess the speechwriter is going to be identified and there would probably be some repercussions for this. I don't know, the speechwriter will be an outside the campaign person, or inside the campaign person, so I don't if they'll be able to get fired. But there's no doubt that we'll identify the speech writer and there will be repercussions.

But just Mark said was so key. These -- you got to remember -- these two weeks, these are their cleanest shots at talking to the American people about their vision for the future why they should be elected. This is it. It's not muddied as much by what the opponent is saying and dealing with the incoming every day. This is it, a clean shot between now and November. They don't get an opportunity like this again.

And now that day one, 25 percent of the convention is done, and we're talking about this, that is a problem.

CUOMO: The silver lining is though, you cannot underestimate -- yes, yes, it's an exaggerated view of us being on the floor, this is a GOP convention. They're preaching into converted. But their audience is tens of millions. And you can't underestimate the value to the GOP case that Clinton can't be trusted. I heard her name more than I heard his on the floor last night.

So, is this the same thing as what they're going after Clinton about? No. Only in spirit. But it's something they didn't need to do and they need to quickly fix it.

CAMEROTA: Panel, thank you very much. CUOMO: All right. So, what's going to happen? Alisyn presented the

question, now, we present it to you as we're going to the break. Will Donald Trump apologize for the speech controversy? Apologize is not a word we have heard him use in the campaign to date.

Up next, former Mississippi governor and former RNC chair joins us with his thoughts.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:20:26] CUOMO: What a night, what a morning.

Melania Trump gave a big speech last night. Rave reviews. Then came out the idea that parts of it were lifted from a speech that Michelle Obama gave in 2008.

All right. Not such a big deal. Still a good speech. But then the Trump campaign comes out and says that's not true. His campaign manager comes on and says, by the way, this is probably Hillary Clinton going after Melania Trump. What?

This is a pattern of being unapologetic. What does it mean to the campaign going forward?

Let's discuss with a man who understands politics much better than any of you ever will, former Mississippi governor and former RNC chairman, Haley Barbour, joining us.

Governor, it's good to be here.

HALEY BARBOUR (R), FORMER MISSISSIPPI GOVERNOR: Thank you, Chris, thanks for having me.

CUOMO: So, this should have been easy. Melania Trump gave a good speech. Parts of it came from Michelle Obama. You go after the writer. You say it's not a big deal and you move on.

They didn't. They said it's not true. Then they said what they said about John Kasich was not true, even though I read him a quote. Then they said that, oh, Donald Trump loved the speech of Pat Smith which was very moving. But he was on the phone with FOX News at the time.

These are small mistakes but they're mistakes a campaign doesn't need to make when it's making the case against its opponent for being a liar.

BARBOUR: You know, it's interesting to me. I have no idea how the speech was done, what was put in the speech. What was interesting to me is did the campaign intend for this, because everything that Melania Trump said that Barack Obama's wife had said are things that she's Barack Obama would do and he didn't do.

You know, he was going a uniter. He was going to bring us together. He would always tell you the truth like you could keep your doctor if you like your doctor and if you could keep your health insurance if you like your health insurance. I have no idea what they're doing, but to me, it's funny if people

would recognize the things they both said, they hope Trump would actually do it.

CUOMO: Maybe what Michelle Obama more true when Melania Trump says it about her husband. Good. Good case to make. Good spin on the situation, well done.

However, the sin here is not the crime. It's not the cribbing, to use another word. It's how you dealt with it as a campaign.

If this had happened in your situation, you're governor, somebody gives a speech to you and parts of it were lifted. They come to you and say, hey, part of that speech was lifted.

You would probably apologize, I would think. Would you not, Governor?

BARBOUR: I probably would say it's a nothingburger and go on about it.

CUOMO: You'd own it. I can put it side by side right now and nobody's going to say they're not the same phrases.

BARBOUR: I actually saw y'all run some of -- that's how I saw what Mrs. Obama said. Turns out to be things that President Obama didn't do.

CUOMO: That's one way you could do it.

BARBOUR: I don't know what they were doing. They may have been smart in order to say Obama said this, didn't do it. Donald Trump is going to actually perform that way.

CUOMO: I get it. That's a case to make.

BARBOUR: We need some uniting in our country. The country is the most divided it's been in my lifetime. Very harsh. And it's not good for the country. We need to work together more.

Here's a president that goes around Congress in unprecedented ways. Just unbelievably unprecedented ways.

And so, I hope Donald Trump will come out of here with people saying what Melania Trump said about him getting things done, telling the truth, you could count on him -- I hope that we'll look back a year from now and say, you know, she told us it straight.

CUOMO: You're from Mississippi. You know the politics of the south. You know the realities of the south. You know what's going on in Louisiana.

Donald Trump's response to it was to acknowledge the problem. He didn't give unifying language about it. He said this is really bad, it's going to get worse, people are really angry, there's outrage, we're divided. Is that what we need to hear from our next president? BARBOUR: Let's say, first of all, people are -- this whole election,

unusual election, both parties. Bernie Sanders gets 40-something percent of the vote in the Democrat primaries when this was supposed to be a cake walk, a coronation. So, in both parties, we've seen the anger and candidly the fear of a lot of people coming out.

And we're in a place right now where people are voting in an election where the two most negatively perceived candidates in the history of polling and I would imagine in the history of American politics are the two nominees of the two parties.

[08:25:19] CUOMO: They're both upside down positive to negative rating.

BARBOUR: That's right. And beyond that, you notice after Comey announced the FBI decision. And every poll, a majority of Americans said they thought Hillary Clinton ought to be indicted. Indicted. I've been doing this 48 years, I never dreamed we'd be having a presidential election where a majority of the people thought one of the candidates --

CUOMO: But don't you have to ask why did they think that? The FBI director doesn't think so. He came out and said no prosecutor would make this case. So, where -- why did they think that?

BARBOUR: But the point is you talk about how people are reacting to things. The American people are -- 2/3 of Americans think the country's going to wrong direction. That means a whole lot of Democrats, a whole lot Democrats.

You know, I wish 65 percent of Americans were Republicans. But they're not. It's less than 40 percent.

CUOMO: Your entire campaign, the whole primary season was the country's going the wrong way, everybody's terrible, foreign policy is terrible, the economy is terrible. It's not a surprise that people are going to have an echo effect on that, right? You're saying that leaders need to bring us together. We're not hearing that here yet.

BARBOUR: Bernie Sanders campaign was generally (INAUDIBLE)

CUOMO: Same exact thing. Fair point.

BARBOUR: It's not right to say it's partisan.

CUOMO: No, no. True.

BARBOUR: People are very --

CUOMO: That was Bernie's campaign as well and it was very effective. Not as effective as Donald Trump because he's here at this convention and Bernie Sanders isn't going to be the nominee.

But you're right about what the country needs, Governor. We need to have our leaders help this country come back together again. I've been out there and there's some concerns. There's no question about it.

Thank you for being with us, Haley Barbour. I hope you enjoy the convention. I'll see you soon.

BARBOUR: Thank you, Chris, for having me.

CUOMO: Absolutely. It's good to have you.

So, it was one of the most rousing lines at the convention, so far. Remember, we just had one night. But it's a theme that's resonating around the country. Blue lives matter. It came from a Milwaukee sheriff taking a strong stand for police, a standing ovation after the most recent tragedy we've seen, three officers being gunned down in Baton Rouge.

We're going to get a reaction next from a Louisiana senator. What did those words mean? What needs to happen next?