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Obama On Putin Helping Trump:"Anything's Possible"; Signs Point To Russia In DNC Email Hack; Dems Convention Tackles Gun Violence & Racial Injustice; Priest Killed By Two ISIS "Soldiers" In Church Attack; Series Of Attacks In France & Germany. Aired 5:30-6a ET
Aired July 27, 2016 - 05:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[05:32:00] CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: The Russians are trying to mess with the election, that's scary. Is it also real? President Obama thinks it may be. He's refusing to rule out the possibility that Vladimir Putin is trying to influence the 2016 race and doing so to help Donald Trump. The president says "anything is possible."
CNN's Matthew Chance live in Moscow with more on what Obama is saying. Matthew, what do you see?
MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Chris, it's absolutely incredible, isn't it, that anyone, let alone the Russians, should be seeking to influence the presidential election or trying in this way to interfere in this way in American politics.
But U.S. officials are now saying they have strong evidence that the hackers who infiltrated the DNC systems and released all those emails were working on the behalf of Russian intelligence, and so it's absolutely incredible. The officials that CNN has spoken to say that at least one group known to be linked with the Russians could have been involved.
Now, as you mentioned, the White House has been reluctant to categorically point the finger of blame at the Russians at this point. President Obama, speaking on national television, certainly isn't ruling it out. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The Russians hack our systems, not just government systems, but private systems. What the motives were in terms of the leaks, all that, I can't say directly. What I do know is that Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed admiration for Vladimir Putin.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHANCE: Well, Trump, for his part, saying there's absolutely no credibility in the idea that he's working with the Russians in any way or is sympathetic towards them. He's ruled that out, saying this whole Russian allegation is simply an attempt by the Democrats to distract from the content of those damaging emails. Back to you, Alisyn.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: OK, Matthew, thank you very much for that reporting. Well, a powerful plea from Mothers of the Movement at the Democratic Convention. Nine black women who lost sons and daughters, and who now back Hillary Clinton for president. So how the politics of race is defining the presidential race. That's next.
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[05:38:45] CAMEROTA: The Democratic Convention putting gun violence and racial injustice in the spotlight last night. Nine mothers who lost their children to guns or excessive force by police united with a message.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GENEVA REED-VEAL, SANDRA BLAND'S MOTHER: I am here with Hillary Clinton tonight because she is a leader and a mother who will say our children's names.
LUCY MCBATH, JORDAN DAVIS' MOTHER: Hillary Clinton isn't afraid to say that black lives matter. She isn't afraid to sit at a table with grieving mothers and bear the full force of our anguish.
SYBRINA FULTON, TRAYVON MARTIN'S MOTHER: This isn't about being politically correct. This is about saving our children. Hillary is one mother who can ensure our movement will succeed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: All right, so here to discuss how effective these moments were and how race will affect the presidential race is our panel. CNN political commentator, KABC talk radio host, and Trump supporter, John Phillips. And CNN political commentator and host of "BET News", Marc Lamont Hill -- "BET News".
MARC LAMONT HILL, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, you don't watch it much.
[05:40:00] CAMEROTA: Well, I mean, I did have like dashes in there, but send me the link. OK, so how effective, John, did you think that hearing all these moms last night was?
JOHN PHILLIPS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, David Axelrod made a great point on CNN last night so I'm just going to rip him off and use it again this morning, which is they missed an opportunity to tell the whole story.
They should have had some of the widows of the police officers in Dallas or the widow of the police officer in Louisiana who, right before he was killed, posted an amazing thing on Facebook about the relations between police and the community. But for whatever reason, they decided not to go there.
I distinctly got the impression that if President Obama was doing it they would have gone in the Axelrod direction and I think it was a political decision not to. They have one of two choices to go down in this election. They can either try to excite the base and turn the base out like what happened in 2008 or they can go back to the 1996 Bill Clinton model, which is the triangulation, and try to place to the center. I think they're doing the 2008 model.
CUOMO: Now John, let me ask you something because this is the conversation that people don't really want to have. We have allowed this conversation to become about sides and it is so wrong and it is so anathema to America --
PHILLIPS: Sure.
CUOMO: -- it's so dangerous. But, what you're pointing out has to be equally true about what we saw last week, right? There was a reverse play last week. So now we've seen these two campaigns --
CAMEROTA: Emphasize blue lives matter.
CUOMO: Absolutely, absolutely, there's no question about it.
PHILLIPS: There was a murder theme, absolutely.
CUOMO: No, no, no, no. See, don't call it -- let's just call it what it is. That's what I'm saying.
PHILLIPS: Yes -- no.
CUOMO: That's what I like. I mean, last night you had the black mothers on there --
PHILLIPS: Sure.
CUOMO: -- talking about their kids and that Hillary Clinton will say their names. Last week, you had the cops up there saying hey, Donald Trump will stand for us. It's not about law and order, it's about different sides of this. How do we bridge it? What else did they need to do last night? What else needed to be done last week? Is this progress, what we're seeing?
HILL: I don't see them as opposite sides of the same coin. The distinction you make is absolutely correct but I think they're doing it for different reasons. I think when Donald Trump did it there was an attempt to sort of pander, but there also was a legitimate concern, I'm sure, with law and order and playing to the --
CUOMO: So tell people why this isn't pandering.
HILL: One, I think it's significant to have these black mothers on stage, simply because their children's lives do matter. I don't think Hillary Clinton's concern for police is being questioned right now. I think you're right, Barack Obama would have done something different, but there's been a consistent narrative. Barack --
CUOMO: But, if by implication, when you have the mothers and you don't have the police. Because we're in this fractured dangerous dynamic right now, isn't the implication that she's saying one matters more than the other?
HILL: I mean, it could be if someone decided to add that to the narrative but I don't anyone has questioned that Hillary Clinton --
CAMEROTA: They have, and here it is. The Fraternal Order of Police put out this statement last night. I mean, this is how they felt, Mark, you know? They said "The Fraternal Order of Police is insulted and will not soon forget that the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton are excluding the widows and other family members of police officers killed in the line of duty who were victims of explicit, and not implied, racism, and being on duty in blue.
It is sad that win an election Mrs. Clinton must pander to the interests of people who do not know all the facts, while the men and women they seek to destroy are outside protecting the political institutions of this country." So, the police do feel they were excluded.
HILL: Well, I meant more of the general public than a particular interest group like the police or, for example, the BLM movement. I was talking about the larger sort of public. I don't think people assume that Hillary Clinton doesn't care about police. I think that narrative has been a test for Barack Obama, fairly or unfairly, but I don't think that's been the narrative. I think Hillary Clinton has political space to do this.
CAMEROTA: Well, I guess the point is do they have a point? Why not have both on stage?
HILL: Well, I don't think it's unreasonable to have both but I do think, again, just like the Black Lives Movement, itself, there has to be room to be able to say that black lives matter without saying yes, but...
CUOMO: I don't know how to do it, though, John. Let's try and think this through because really that's our point. How are we helpful in this situation? You could either just reflect what is --
PHILLIPS: Sure.
CUOMO: -- right, or you can talk about what should be. How do you knit these two things together? If you have the cops up there with the blacks, OK -- if you do it that way, well that seems like dynamite. You know what I mean? That's saying oh, you're bringing the opponents on when that shouldn't be true, but that's how we keep seeing it portrayed.
PHILLIPS: But wouldn't that reinforce the storyline that she's trying to put out there? She's trying to say I'm the adult in the room. I'm the one that can bring all parties together. And if you're going to sell that -- if you're going to convince people that that's true, then you have to prove to them that you're an honest broker.
CAMEROTA: Mark?
HILL: I feel somber now. I mean, you guys raise a really interesting point. I still think I'm right, but I do think that it's really troublesome that you can't have police on without having them --
CUOMO: I'm not saying you can't, but look --
HILL: No, no, no --
CUOMO: You're from Philly --
HILL: No, no, I'm agreeing with you --
CUOMO: You knew lots of cops --
HILL: I'm agreeing with you, Chris.
CUOMO: I know, but I'm saying let's just give people a little bit broader content.
HILL: Yes.
CUOMO: I know you talk to police all the time. I'm sure you do, too, as well. They are so worried about this -- about how it's being us against them, us against them, and we have to do something to change it. But we've seen both campaigns now make a very definite move that I don't understand how it helps --
HILL: Well --
CUOMO: -- the conversation.
PHILLIPS: And that's exactly why if you're going to use a police officer and you're going to have a widow up there, why not have the police officer from Louisiana who happened to be black and happened to ride --
CUOMO: Why didn't they do it at the RNC because it's got to be the same answer that we have for here? Now you're suggesting it isn't, but I want to you ask you because you say well, no, with the police it was a law and order theme. Well, how it is any more noble what they did last week than what we saw last night, as your point of criticism?
[05:45:00] PHILLIPS: Look, it's good to support the police but it's also good to support due process. And I think each individual case has its own set of facts and each one should be judged.
HILL: Right, but they weren't litigating the cases up there. In fact, you know, if you saw --
CUOMO: Not all of them were police violence, either. Not all the cases with the mothers are about police violence. Some of them were just about gun violence.
PHILLIPS: Sure.
HILL: Right, and they make a case to the contrary, right, and that's the point. They're saying there's a problem here and we have to find something to do to repair it. Our lives matter, too, and Hillary Clinton's here to help us. CAMEROTA: Gentlemen, thank you. We appreciate having this conversation --
PHILLIPS: Thank you.
HILL: My pleasure.
CAMEROTA: -- here on NEW DAY. All right, much more Democratic Convention coverage ahead for you, but first, ISIS strikes again. Deadly attacks across Europe, they seem to be intensifying. Can the bloodshed be stopped or is this the new normal? We look at that next.
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[05:50:05] CUOMO: An ugly reminder of why this election has such high stakes is what we're seeing overseas. A place of worship in France, the latest target of terror. The bloodshed taking place at a church and during morning mass. A priest killed -- churchgoers, nuns held hostage. The two attackers say they were acting on behalf of ISIS.
Here to discuss, we have CNN contributor Melissa Bell. Now, she is a correspondent and international affairs editor for "FRANCE 24". We've leaned on you very heavily and often for the worst of reasons and, once again, an attack that really goes to the core of the battle that seems to be raging in the world. How do you see it?
MELISSA BELL, CORRESPONDENT, INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS EDITOR, FRANCE 24: It is another attack, as you say, Chris, but there have been so many over the course of the last 18 months here in France. We've covered some of them together. We think of the big ones, of course, but there have been 16 in all that have been linked to Islam extremism over the course of the last 19 months -- that's huge.
And beyond the big ones that make the headlines globally, here in France we're here every few weeks it seems -- we hear about another attack, a beheading. This time an attack in a church and this has really shocked France perhaps more than any of the other smaller-scale attacks that we've seen over the course of the last few months. Smaller scale, of course, in terms of human cost. We're not talking about the numbers that were involved in Nice or on November 13th, or at Charlie Hebdo.
One priest killed, Chris, but an 84-year-old man who'd been in service for 50 years dealing with births, deaths, funerals, marriages. In his community he was extremely well-regarded. He'd once been asked whether he would ever retire. Have you ever heard, he said, of a priest retiring? I will be delivering sermons until my last breath, and that's how it proved.
CUOMO: Well, very often, we see these acts of violence as an attack on their own. Extremist Muslims trying to take control of what their faith is. But this is the other end to many more troubling risks, which is Christians being under attack. Attacking a priest, obviously, a high symbol of that faith. What is the take on this constant theme of their attacking the way of life of the rest of the world?
BELL: There is that question of the church being attacked, Chris, and you're right to highlight it. We've seen Christians coming under attack in other parts of the world. I'm thinking of Nigeria by Boko Haram. Of course, in the Middle East, Coptic Christian churches in Egypt have been the particular focus of attack over the last few years.
It is the first time in France that we have seen a successful attack on a church and this adds to the sense of division. And, of course, what the French president keeps reminding the people of is that what ISIS seeks is to divide societies and this is the new form of pivige (ph) that it is attempting to create, that it is attempting to highlight.
