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U.S. Officials: Russians Suspected Of Hacking DNC; DNC Chair To Resign Over Leaked Emails Showing Bias; Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren & First Lady To Speak At Tonight's Democratic National Convention; CNN Poll: Trump Leads Clinton After RNC Convention; How Does Tim Kaine Help Clinton? Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired July 25, 2016 - 07:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:31:00] CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Well, this is a big deal well beyond politics. The FBI is investigating a Russian hack of the Democratic National Committee's email system. Yes, all of these emails dumped through WikiLeaks raising questions about whether or not the DNC was trying -- was trying to box out Bernie Sanders. And now the new question is, are the Russians trying to influence our election?

Let's discuss. We have Errol Louis, CNN political commentator and political anchor of "Time Warner Cable News". Maeve Reston, CNN national political reporter and David Gregory, CNN political analyst and the host of The David Gregory Show Podcast. Good to have you all here.

You cannot make it up, OK? Forget about the document dumped right here on the eve of the convention, the first day, that paints Clinton in exactly the way she doesn't want to be painted. But it was the Russians, Errol, the Russians.

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Ah, the Russians all along, right? Some holdouts who want to, I guess, restore the Soviet Union. This is -- this is a headache every which way, you know, because I think what viewers will take away from this is that there's something shady going on. That there's something not quite right and it involves email. So, you know, sort of a letter perfect way to sort of derail the message that they want going --

CUOMO: Well, it's shady two ways. It's shady for the obvious reason, which is how do they feel about Bernie Sanders. Did that communicate itself into the actual process? There doesn't seem to be really much proof of that right now but the suggestion is there and that's all you need when you've got a 68 percent negative number in the poll on Hillary. But the Russians? Why would they be messing with the election and who are they doing it for?

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, there's no way of knowing. You know, there's no question that if the Russians did this they do want to meddle. They want to create mischief. Also, I think the Clinton campaign likes a little bit of a headfake away from the substance of the email when they're accurate, to say oh look, the Russians are doing this.

Whether they're doing it for Trump -- what we know about what Trump -- how's he positioned himself vis-a-vis Russia and Putin is that he's been sympathetic. His position, vis-a-vis NATO is an invitation for Putin to expand his visions of restoring the Soviet empire. So all of that stuff is fishy and it's just a fascinating subplot. Again, none of which detracts from, you know, how impactful the fact is of these emails.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: But, Maeve, is it going too far to say that the Russians would want Donald Trump as president so they are meddling because he has been, some would say, effusive about talking about Putin? He does it a lot. He's been more than sympathetic to him. I mean, he's called him a strong leader, much stronger than President Obama, and this is the Russian's saying thank you.

MAEVE RESTON, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER: Certainly a good fodder for conspiracy theories, for sure. I don't think that we know the answer to what the exact motives were here. We certainly need a lot more facts before we can draw those kinds of conclusions but it does, you know -- it brings Paul Manafort into the mix.

CUOMO: The word, why?

GREGORY: Yatsenko -- because he worked for Yatsenko,who is Putin's puppet in Ukraine.

RESTON: And so it will just bring attention, you know, back to Donald Trump's comments about Putin and others. So in some ways it helps Hillary Clinton in the sense that she can continue to argue like this is someone who's unpredictable and unsteady and we don't know what he would do with our allies and adversaries.

[07:35:00] At the same time, I think it's very suspicious that, you know, this blows up and we're no longer talking about the content of the WikiLeaks emails.

CUOMO: What bothers you most about the content? Make the -- what's the harshest indictment in there?

RESTON: Well, I think that just the fact that it has reinforced everything that Bernie Sanders' supporters felt the whole time, which was that the system was rigged against him. That people within the DNC were working against him, that they were not impartial. And just talking to some of those supporters over the last couple of days here in Philly, they -- none of them were surprised by the content of the emails. They said yes, this is what we were telling you all along.

So, yes, it will stoke some anger here and it will be really interesting to see what Bernie Sanders does to tamp that down to -- if it will come out.

GREGORY: And I think they are trying to tamp it down.

RESTON: Yes. GREGORY: I mean, he's been pretty good. I think what's interesting -- you remember back in 2008 when Hillary Clinton's pollster, Mark Penn, wrote a memo about how to go after Obama to create an otherness about him and a foreignness about him. How he was outside the American experience.

And now here, it's let paint Sanders, because he's not a religious Jew, as an atheist and let's try to use that in the south against him. Just to show that, if you had any questions, there's not all sweetness and hype in the Democratic Party.

LOUIS: You know, people can't pretend to be utterly shocked that folks working for the National Democratic Party actually have political opinions, have political backgrounds, have political alliances. So, to a certain extent you have to reduce some of this stuff, this dark conspiracy.

RESTON: He's on the phone now, maybe.

LOUIS: Well, I mean, you know, did they cover their tracks well enough? I don't know. I mean, in the --

GREGORY: Well, you're right. This stuff goes on.

CUOMO: Do you think they stole the election? Do you think they hindered him from a voting perspective?

LOUIS: Well, this is the thing.

CUOMO: Do you think it was material?

LOUIS: You can't find any place where any of these emails amount to, you know, three million votes and the loss of --

GREGORY: Well, they didn't do anything that they talked about in the emails.

CUOMO: But I'm saying, what's the way this story's playing right now?

LOUIS: Right.

CUOMO: I mean, we were trying to figure it out this morning coming into it. Everybody thinks it speaks to actions taken by the DNC that rooked Bernie Sanders. Stole the election from him.

GREGORY: But there's no evidence. I mean, he couldn't get African- Americans and Hispanics to vote for him in large, you know -- in large Democratic states.

CAMEROTA: I mean, the other day there was a suggestion in one of them that they should maybe malign his religion, as you were saying.

GREGORY: Yes.

CAMEROTA: Throw it out there that maybe he's an atheist. That won't work in West Virginia, they said. But then, there's no evidence that they actually did that. That somebody told -- that somebody publicly said he was an atheist.

LOUIS: I mean, these are rather subtle sort of messaging-type questions. I mean, when they don't want you on the ballot, if the party's working against you, you don't get on the ballot. All of a sudden there's lawsuits. All of a sudden --

CUOMO: Tell the RNC that. Donald Trump went from being that guy with them --

LOUIS: Right.

CUOMO: -- if these emails could leak on them, and now look at it.

GREGORY: But we keep saying -- but we do -- it is rigged against people like Bernie Sanders. And as I said earlier in the morning, Reince Preibus, I'm sure, wishes it was more rigged on the Republican side. He'd love some superdelegates to stop Trump and couldn't get them. But that part is true.

RESTON: He never played that.

CAMEROTA: Panel, thank you. Great to get your insights. Thanks for being here. There are some new poll numbers that we want to share with you that show Donald Trump pulling ahead of Sec. Clinton. And her trustworthy numbers, as we've been talking about, are worsening. They're quite high. Should the Clinton campaign be worried? Her press secretary joins us live, next.

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[07:41:45] CUOMO: All right, there's a lot going on and this Democratic National Convention hasn't even officially started yet. The gavel will go down at 4:00 and CNN will be there.

But what about this WikiLeaks? What about these emails that suggest the DNC had an animosity towards Bernie Sanders? Is this proof of what he's been complaining about all along? And we have new poll numbers that show the race has changed. And there's a number in there for Hillary Clinton that she's going to have to deal with this week.

Let's bring in Brian Fallon. He is a spokesperson for the Clinton campaign. It is good to see you. Good luck this week. Donald Trump weighing in on WikiLeaks, no surprise, but what he is saying may surprise you. Put up the tweet, please. Wait for it, wait for it, there it is. "The new joke in town is that Russia leaked the disastrous DNC e-mails, which should never have been written (stupid) because Putin likes me."

Brian Fallon's shaking his head when we first looked at this tweet. He said he's wrong again. How?

BRIAN FALLON, PRESS SECRETARY, HILLARY FOR AMERICA: Because there's a consensus among experts that it is, indeed, Russia behind this hack of the DNC. A couple of months ago when the hack was first reported it was a former top FBI official, the person that used to run cyber investigations at the FBI, Shawn Henry, that conducted that review and said this is Russia behind this.

There is this anonymous person named Guccifer who is going out and trying to claim credit, but all the experts say that this is the Russian government trying to interfere in a U.S. election. It's extremely --

CUOMO: Why do you think they'd do it? What's your theory of the case, Brian Fallon?

FALLON: Well look, I think we need to get to the bottom of this and there's signs that the U.S. government is taking this very seriously. Agencies in the government meeting last week, according to reports, to assess this threat.

And I think there's plenty of evidence for why Vladimir Putin might want Donald Trump to win this election. You've seen Donald Trump go out and express admiration for Putin. You've seen him go out and suggest that we pull back from our commitment to our NATO allies. Just last week, at the convention, he suggested that we wouldn't honor our commitment to defend some of the Baltic States that are under constant threat from Putin's Russia. So, there's plenty of reason to think that there's --

CUOMO: Right.

FALLON: -- some kind of affinity there between Putin and Trump.

CUOMO: We'll see what the FBI comes up with. Intriguing, but also distracting from the emails, themselves and not a good way to start the convention. It seems to prove what Bernie Sanders and his camp was saying all along. The DNC, it's rigged, they're against me. They're all about Hillary Clinton. Fair?

FALLON: Two things going on here. Number one, the emails themselves, can't defend them. What we've seen in terms of religion being thrown out there as something to go after Bernie Sanders on, completely unacceptable. That official has apologized. As we learn more we'll see if further action is necessary or warranted.

CUOMO: Will there be proof that Hillary Clinton was connected to these efforts?

FALLON: I don't think so, but there's a distinction to be drawn here between inappropriate emails being sent by DNC officials and a rigging of the nomination process. The two things are not the same, you can't equate them. The election process -- the nominating process was decided by the voters in the states, and by every standard Hillary Clinton won a decisive victory if you look at the popular vote, the states won, the pledged delegates.

And Bernie Sanders, himself, has acknowledged that she's the rightful winner of this nomination contest. That's why tonight you're going to hear from him in a primetime speaking slot, talking about how we have to elect Hillary Clinton.

[07:45:00] CUOMO: This is a big night. You've got Bernie Sanders there, you've got Michelle Obama, you've got Elizabeth Warren, that's big. They're no Scott Baio, but this is you trying to put a big footprint --

FALLON: We don't have "Charles in Charge" but we've got a pretty powerhouse lineup, I'd say.

CUOMO: And what are you hoping to achieve with these three?

FALLON: Well, I think these people are going to be uniquely qualified to tell a story about how Hillary Clinton is able to bring the country together. They're going to attest to her integrity and her commitment to building a nation that is stronger together. Last week, at the Republican Convention, we heard a lot of doom and gloom. We heard a lot of naysaying about the state of the country and, yet, we heard no solutions for how they were going to be --

CUOMO: But you saw the bounce he got. People are angry and frustrated.

FALLON: There's --

CUOMO: Trump spoke to that. What was called chaos, which was called doom and gloom resonated. He got a bump, six points.

FALLON: There's no doubt that there's anxiety out there and both campaigns are seeking to address it. But we think that we are actually the ones that are offering the solutions to help middle-class families get ahead. We actually have the jobs proposals to put our money where our mouth is in terms of how we're going to get wages rising in this country again. You didn't hear any solutions from Donald Trump.

And, yes, we're in a period of the race where right now there's going to be fluidity in the polls. Both campaigns are going to get a week of pretty unmitigated attention and all eyes on them, an opportunity to speak directly to the public. So you're going to see some movement in the polls but I think the fundamentals of this race remain true.

Donald Trump has historically high negatives, he's alienated huge swaths of the electorate. This race is going to be close to the end but we think we're in a prime position to tell a good story about Hillary Clinton and why she's in this race.

CUOMO: There's no question that Donald Trump has his negatives, there's no question. In this new poll, though, Hillary Clinton, 68 percent not trustworthy. This narrative, this reality that Hillary Clinton has a problem with the truth. How do you move that number? I've never seen a number that high before.

FALLON: Well, this was the entire narrative that you heard from the Republican Convention last week. There were very few speakers that actually attested to why Donald Trump would be a good president. The one unifying idea they had is attacking Hillary Clinton last week, so they were a one-note Johnny on that point last week.

We know that this is going to be a continued point that they stress over the next three months. We think the public is craving something more than that. They want an affirmative vision for what you're going to do for them, not just attacking the other person.

And in the end I think that the voters are going to decide that Hillary Clinton is actually the one that they can trust to be in their corner and fight for them. And I saw in that poll -- that CNN poll just out this morning -- more voters decided that they were less likely to support Donald Trump based on last week's convention than more likely to, so I think there's a complicated story to be told in that poll.

CUOMO: Brian Fallon, thank you for making the case.

FALLON: Thanks, Chris.

CUOMO: Appreciate having you on NEW DAY, always.

FALLON: Thanks.

CUOMO: All right. So, I'm I coming over to you now? Am I pretending that you're sitting next to me or I am pretending you're somewhere completely different?

CAMEROTA: Pretend that I'm sitting here.

CUOMO: All right, good, because sometimes when I toss to you it's supposed to be like we're not sitting together.

CAMEROTA: No, this time we actually are sitting together. He's with her -- Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine making his big debut on the campaign trail with Hillary Clinton. We have the pros and cons on Clinton's V.P. pick, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:51:55] CUOMO: Democrats want to talk about the state of the U.S. economy at the convention but the son of Republican nominee, Donald Trump, is suggesting to CNN's Jake Tapper that the country's unemployment rate does not reflect the real story.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, JR., DONALD TRUMP'S SON: These are artificial numbers, Jake. These are numbers that are massaged to make the existing economy look good, to make this administration look good, when in fact, it's a total disaster.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: Donald Trump, Jr. exercised over this issue. Let's bring in chief business correspondent, Christine Romans, here at the CNN Grill. Nobody knows the numbers like Christine Romans and CNN Money now. What do you make of the argument, my friend?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: I'm sad to say I've been looking at these numbers, Chris, for 20 years now. Nine million jobs have been created in the past four years and the jobless rate -- you can look at the chart -- it has dropped from above 10 percent during the Great Recession to 4.9 percent now.

It's not tampered with, it's all very transparent. That headline number, that 4.9 percent -- it is the standard, Chris. It is the standard economists and presidents of both parties use as an overall measure for joblessness. What is that number? It counts the people who are out of work and the people who are out of work and looking for a new job.

That, by definition, is what we're talking about here, the labor market. People who are looking for work or are working. The unemployment rate measures people in that labor market. It's all right there. It's all transparent. The Labor Department releases pages of tables and numbers every month and breaking those numbers down by jobless rate. The jobless rate by education, by race, by time spent unemployed.

Now, Trump has claimed, Chris, it's really 25 percent, not five percent -- or 42 percent. He has said it really is depression era unemployment. That is just not true. What is true? Millions of Americans are not even in the labor market anymore. That is true and you can see that in this number. This is the labor force participation rate. This is a number that has been moving down, down, down, down, about 62.7 percent.

Some of this is because of baby boomers. They are retiring. Ten thousand of them every day turn 65. Other people are at home with their kids. Some people are not looking for a job because it costs too much for daycare. Some people are on disability. Some people are going to college. Some people just aren't working.

The labor market is very big, Chris, but the unemployed -- the number of people who are unemployed -- not everybody who is out of the labor market is unemployed. So, you're going to hear these accusations and massaging the numbers. It's not a scandal, Chris, it's statistics and it's all right there.

CUOMO: It's not a scandal, it's statistics. Christine Romans, buttoning it down. Thank you very much.

ROMANS: You're welcome.

CUOMO: Appreciate it.

CAMEROTA: All right, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine is now, of course, under the microscope. What does he bring to the table? What does he bring to the Hillary Clinton ticket, given her sinking trustworthy numbers in our new CNN national poll? Here to discuss this is CNN political commentator, Carl Bernstein. He is the author of "A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton". Carl, great to have you here.

CARL BERNSTEIN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Good to be here.

CAMEROTA: So, you know, it's fun for us in the media to talk about the V.P. pick. We like to go through it all. Do voters care? Does Tim Kaine move the needle?

[07:55:00] BERNSTEIN: I think this is one of those times when the vice presidential candidate can make a difference. Kaine brings some real positives to her campaign, particularly his ability to win Virginia, perhaps, which is absolutely necessary. He can go into Florida, be helpful there.

His background -- he's the son of a working-class family -- can help him in the Industrial Midwest. And he's very comfortable as a progressive, even though he's more to the center of the Democratic Party, but he has --

CAMEROTA: Can you call him a progressive?

BERNSTEIN: Yes, you can -- look, this is a guy -- I covered -- at the time of the Watergate break-in, I was the chief Virginia correspondent of "The Washington Post" covering his father-in-law, a great, great, Republican progressive governor. And Kaine has this in his genes and he -- look, he believes -- not only believes in racial justice, he's fought for it.

He's been a civil rights lawyer, he's been a Jesuit missionary, and that tradition, as you know, in the Catholic church of great social teaching, et cetera. He's the real deal in terms of walking the walk, doing the work, and standing for good things.The problem is Hillary's negatives because of the server.

CUOMO: Have you ever heard of 68 percent --

BERNSTEIN: No.

CUOMO: -- saying that you're not trustworthy?

BERNSTEIN: No, and she's brought very much of it on herself because of what she did with the server which was indefensible, reckless, and might, indeed, have endangered the national security. I'm not one to give candidates advice. I've never done it.

But my guess is that there is something anecdotal that I'mpicking up, other reporters are, that people might want to see in Hillary Clinton some measure of contrition about this huge error that she has made of judgment. And what is not being said by Brian Fallon or, in fact, by Kaine, sitting down with her the other day, there's still pushback as if she is a victim of the right-wing -- vast right-wing --

CUOMO: But how do you own something like that? Give me a tip of what would work.

BERNSTEIN: I don't -- I don't -- I don't know how you do it.

CUOMO: That's the trick.

BERNSTEIN: It is the trick. But my guess is that the American people would be relieved to see Hillary Clinton do something that indicates introspection, which is somewhat foreign to her, and contrition. But how you do it, I do not know but this is a huge problem because there's only one issue which they're right about. You see the president coming here.

Donald Trump's fitness -- his unfitness to be the President of the United States is the single biggest issue in this campaign. She has to get off of her distrust and make that with the president, with Mike Bloomberg. You're going to see it. You're going to see a unified --

CUOMO: But that all pales to the WikiLeaks stuff, right? Who's coming out to say it?

BERNSTEIN: Convoluted -- I don't know the --

CUOMO: Now you have the Russians hacking emails.

BERNSTEIN: I don't know that it pales. I doubt that it pales. They -- look, watch what Trump did in that meeting with his supporters talking about Lee Harvey Oswald and Ted Cruz's father.

CUOMO: The "National Enquirer".

BERNSTEIN: But it was off --

CUOMO: He said it was the "National Enquirer". That they should win a Pulitzer.

BERNSTEIN: But it was off the deep end and that's the undercurrent that we're hearing and that some of the reporters are looking at right now which is not just his temperament, it's his stability. There is real questions about Trump's stability.

And what we saw in his convention was a mythological country, described in his speech, in which, you know, rapists, terrorists are taking over the country. Criminals, murderers, and a mythological Donald Trump -- the myth of Trump, the master builder. He has run a company and actually about 3,000 different companies are incorporated in the structure --

CAMEROTA: Yes.

BERNSTEIN: -- of what he runs. That fraud -- look at Trump University. Look at his business record.

CAMEROTA: That's not how voters see it. I mean --

BERNSTEIN: Well, you know --

CAMEROTA: -- all the new polls that we have out this morning, Carl, show that he did get a bump.

BERNSTEIN: Yes, of course, he did. It's a very effective --

CAMEROTA: But they responded to him, what he said.

BERNSTEIN: Of course -- of course, they did. He's a demagogue and it's a convention, and it's the job of the press to stay focused on the reality of both these candidates and what they've done in their lives, in their careers, and their records. And we are great at analysis, and we are great at covering debates,

and we are great at covering the horse racing polls. We are not great at going back day after day and looking at their records and both of them need to be examined that way every day by all of us up here.

CUOMO: Amen, Carl Bernstein, amen. Thank you very much. Appreciate you being here --

BERNSTEIN: Good to be here.

CUOMO: -- with us always. You make us better.

CAMEROTA: Thanks, Carl. We're following a lot of news this morning here from Philadelphia, so let's get right to it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (D-FL), FORMER DNC CHAIR: You have to keep saying it loud and proud -- I'm with her.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (D), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: What I'd suggested to be true six months ago turns out to be true. The DNC trying to undermine my campaign.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I'm going to get a lot of the Bernie voters, by the way.

SEN. TIM KAINE (D-VA), VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: You want a trash talking president or a bridge building president?