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Giuliani Talks Presidential Politics; Hillary's Acceptance Speech; Military Widow Speaks at Convention. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired July 28, 2016 - 08:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:30:12] CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: You just got a big dose of the case for Hillary Clinton. The case is, though, what about the other guy. What about Donald Trump? What about how a lot of voters see Hillary Clinton that is not favorable? Here to make the case is former New York City mayor and Donald Trump supporter Rudy Giuliani.

Always a pleasure to have you on the show.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Mayor, nice to see you.

RUDY GIULIANI (R), FORMER NEW YORK CITY MAYOR: Nice to see you. How are you?

CAMEROTA: Fine, thank you.

CUOMO: So we just had two friends of Hillary on to say the following -

GIULIANI: Right. Right.

CUOMO: Here's who she is. She is a workhorse. She is somebody who has always done for others. She is someone who has made mistakes, but ultimately is fighting the good fight. Donald Trump cannot compete with her pedigree or her passion. What is your case?

GIULIANI: Well, my case against her is, she was found by the FBI to be extremely careless in handling national security information. Seems to be a pattern. The DNC was extremely careless in handling national security information. She was secretary of state. You can't point to a single accomplishment. You can point to over throwing Gadhafi in Libya. Now we have ISIS in Libya and chaos. You can point to her re- setting the relationship with Russia and now Putin is pushing us all around the world. You can point to her agreeing to take the troops out of Iraq, hence we get ISIS. You can point to the fact that she agrees with the agreement with Iran, which is disapproved by 60 percent of the American people. And you can find a 65 percent disapproval rating in the latest poll.

Plus, she's never accomplished anything as secretary of state. There's no treaty. There's no agreement. There's just - I can honestly make the case that from the day she walked into office until the day she walked out, the world was more dangerous in every key area of the world under the jurisdiction of the secretary of state than before. Oh, by the way, I left out the South China Sea. China has challenged us in the South China Sea and she is sitting by and watching Obama reduce our military to pre-World war II levels.

CAMEROTA: You say that Putin is pushing us around. That's not how Donald Trump frames it. He seems to have been somewhat complimentary towards Putin's leadership. And as you know, yesterday, he seemed to invite Russia to hack into Hillary Clinton's e-mails. What did you think when you heard him say that?

GIULIANI: Well, first of all, I know what he meant when he said it, because I got a call from his campaign manager.

CUOMO: Was it your idea that he say that?

GIULIANI: No. He was telling a joke. When he got off the plane, he tweeted out, the e-mails should be sent to the FBI. He was joking around. Now, let's analyze this for a minute. According to Hillary Clinton, if she's telling the truth, which 65 percent of the American people believe she's incapable of, but if she's telling the truth, there's nothing on those e-mails that has anything do with national security. This is the stuff she destroyed.

CUOMO: Right.

GIULIANI: It's all about Chelsea's dress, her recipes.

CUOMO: Right. So what's the point there?

GIULIANI: The point there is, there's no national security implication to any of it. Second, it doesn't exist.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

GIULIANI: Third, I will - I will be willing to give you a 98 percent guarantee the Russians already have it.

CAMEROTA: But isn't the point that Americans don't know when Donald Trump is joking. When do we believe his words and when do we think he's joking?

GIULIANI: Oh, I don't know. If he tells me, I'm joking, I take him at his word he's joking.

CUOMO: But when you're running for president of the United States, I'll submit it this way, I do not think Rudy Giuliani makes that joke to the Russians when they are the number one inimical state to the United States.

GIULIANI: OK. So here's what you've done. You've flip it to an offhand comment by Donald Trump -

CAMEROTA: At a press conference.

GIULIANI: As opposed to - as opposed to Hillary Clinton, for years and years, putting a private server at her home, in clear violation of federal law, exposing thousands and thousands of secrets, and destroying - destroying 35,000 e-mails.

CUOMO: Can't both be wrong?

GIULIANI: What?

CUOMO: Both are wrong. You can say both are wrong.

GIULIANI: Yes, except one -

CUOMO: You don't stand up as a potential president -

GIULIANI: Except - except - except -

CUOMO: And make that kind of crack and you don't do what she did.

GIULIANI: Except one made a flippant comment for 30 seconds, and the other for four years as attorney general acted with extreme carelessness, which is gross negligence as secretary of state. We're going to put somebody in the White House who acted with extreme carelessness? Did you hear anyone last night defend her on that?

CUOMO: No.

GIULIANI: No. Did you hear anyone defend her on advocating for the removal of Gaddafi? No. Did you - did you find anyone up there defending her on the removal of the troops from Iraq? No. Did you find anyone up there defending her on re-setting the relationship with Russia? No. Last night was fantasy land in Philadelphia. They didn't touch a single, substantive issue. Because on the substantive issues, Hillary goes down. Plus -

[08:35:06] CUOMO: Well, but a convention is -

GIULIANI: Seventy -

CAMEROTA: Yes.

CUOMO: Mr. Giuliani, you know that you don't spend your time pointing out the bad spots of your candidate.

CAMEROTA: Yes, the RNC didn't do that either with Donald Trump.

GIULIANI: No. I did - I said -

CUOMO: Well, Ted Cruz did.

CAMEROTA: That's right. (INAUDIBLE).

GIULIANI: I'm sorry, I sure did. I said I've known Ted - I've known - I didn't say Ted Cruz.

CUOMO: No, you didn't.

GIULIANI: You don't want to know what I think (ph) about Ted Cruz. I said, I know Donald Trump for 29 years, and here are the good things about him and this is what he's for. And he's for being a lot tougher on ISIS. And he's for -

CUOMO: You didn't say here are the bad things about him. That's not what you do in a convention.

GIULIANI: No, but I defended him.

CUOMO: Absolutely. You stood -

GIULIANI: But they didn't defend her.

CUOMO: Well, they defended her -

GIULIANI: What I'm saying -

CUOMO: They just didn't address her negatives. They're different things.

GIULIANI: Yes, well, I defended Donald against his negatives. I took them on. By the way, she hasn't had a press conference since December 4th 2015.

CUOMO: That's fair criticism.

GIULIANI: Now wait a second.

CUOMO: That's fair criticism.

GIULIANI: Wait a second. Excuse me.

CUOMO: She doesn't address the media the way Trump does.

GIULIANI: Excuse me. Excuse me. I don't want to be - I don't want to be confrontational.

CUOMO: Yes, you do.

GIULIANI: You should be ashamed of yourself.

CUOMO: Why?

GIULIANI: As the press.

CUOMO: Well, how do we control whether she has a press conference?

CAMEROTA: Yes.

GIULIANI: You should every day be saying, where's the press? Look, if I were the mayor of New York and I didn't have a press conference for four days, big old press -

CAMEROTA: We do interview her. I mean we do have one-on-one interviews with her. We have had access to her.

GIULIANI: Oh, don't - that is a lot -

CAMEROTA: We have interviewed Secretary Clinton. GIULIANI: That's a lot easier than it -

CUOMO: And let me tell you, her people come at us about Trump -

GIULIANI: I did a press conference -

CUOMO: And his taxes and interviewing him about things and giving him too much time. Everybody complains.

GIULIANI: She should not be allowed to get away, running for president of the United States and not having a press conference for over half a year.

CUOMO: And people say he shouldn't be able to get away with saying this kind of stuff when he might be president of the United States.

GIULIANI: Well, OK.

CUOMO: There are criticisms on both sides.

GIULIANI: Yes, but at least he's open and transparent and he's not afraid - he's not afraid to answer any questions head on.

CAMEROTA: Taxes? How about taxes?

CUOMO: He hasn't released his taxes.

GIULIANI: She is - she is -

CUOMO: She always beats me to that question.

GIULIANI: She is the buttoned up candidate. She is the teleprompter candidate.

CUOMO: (INAUDIBLE) the taxes? What about the taxes?

CAMEROTA: Should he release his taxes?

GIULIANI: Rudy Giuliani would.

GIULIANI: Up to him. That's a personal question as to whether you would release your taxes.

CUOMO: Is it? How is it a personal question, not a transparency one?

GIULIANI: It's up to people. There's no legal - there's no legal requirement to do it.

CUOMO: And there's legal restriction against it just because he's being audited, if he is.

GIULIANI: That's what I'm saying. I mean, it's a personal question as to whether you release your taxes or not. Taxes are generally private. If he wants to release them -

CUOMO: Not when you're running for president. GIULIANI: Yes, they are, as a matter of law.

CUOMO: No, but I'm saying, everybody releases them in the modern era.

GIULIANI: That doesn't make it a matter of law.

CUOMO: Right. I'm not saying it's, you have to. I'm saying, should you?

GIULIANI: It's up to him. Let him decide whether he wants to.

CUOMO: You see no downside to that?

GIULIANI: I don't see any downside to it. I think what she did with e- mails is so much worse. People say - someone asked me the other day, would you rather have a politically incorrect president or Hillary Clinton? I said, I'd rather have a politically incorrect president than someone who was extremely careless in the handling of my national security information.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

GIULIANI: Do you know that no police officers, uniformed police officers, were allowed on the floor of that convention, and nobody in the media covered it?

CUOMO: I don't even know if that's true. Is that true, that they weren't allowed?

CAMEROTA: We'll - hand to God.

GIULIANI: I'll take an oath.

CAMEROTA: All right.

GIULIANI: Comes from a high official in the police department on the way in here.

CUOMO: I'll check it.

CAMEROTA: And we will look into that.

GIULIANI: In the way in here I asked the police officer -

CUOMO: I'll check it.

GIULIANI: And I said, were you allowed into the convention? I said no. He said how did you feel about it? He said, I don't want to be there anywhere.

CUOMO: I'll check it.

CAMEROTA: All right.

GIULIANI: They don't like cops.

CAMEROTA: Mr. Mayor -

GIULIANI: What - did you cover what happened in Baltimore yesterday?

CUOMO: Yes.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

GIULIANI: Yes. Did you - did you cover Hillary -

CUOMO: We had Elijah Cummings on.

GIULIANI: Yes, but did you cover Elijah Cummings apologizing for finding them guilty before they were found innocent? Did you cover Hillary finding them guilty before they were found innocent? Has she apologized to those cops yet?

CUOMO: She has not.

GIULIANI: Where do they go to get their reputation back now that a black judge has found them innocent?

CUOMO: But that's the - that's the process of justice, right, you try the case, you see what happens to the charges.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

CUOMO: We'll discuss this more.

GIULIANI: Yes, but then you apologize -

CAMEROTA: Rudy Giuliani -

GIULIANI: Well, you don't find somebody guilty before they go to trial. You know that.

CAMEROTA: Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

CUOMO: This is a longer - this is a longer discussion.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

CUOMO: We don't have the time for it right now.

CAMEROTA: You made the case. Thank you.

GIULIANI: This may - this may be why she failed the bar exam the first time.

CUOMO: Oh -

CAMEROTA: Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

CUOMO: I was telling you how he went out on this.

CAMEROTA: Yes, I know. It all comes down to tonight for Hillary Clinton. Can she sway voters with her convention speech and what kind of bump could she see coming out of Philly. We'll discuss all of that with our political all-star panel, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:43:01] CUOMO: This is a big night. Hillary Clinton is going to make history when she accepts her party's nomination.

CAMEROTA: Right.

CUOMO: What does she need to say? What will she not say? And what is she hoping for to get out of the voters?

Let's discuss with CNN political commentator Carl Bernstein, he is author of "A Woman in Charge," considered the definitive biography of Hillary Clinton, former Hillary Clinton press secretary Lisa Caputo, and former White House press secretary under President Obama, Jay Carney.

OK, here's the challenge, Carl. We just had Rudy Giuliani here, whose theme was very simple, I don't care what you say about Trump, she lies more, she's less trustworthy. Whatever he does, that's who he is. It's not as big a deal as her. What can she do tonight to take on the trust challenge?

CARL BERNSTEIN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: First of all, Mayor Giuliani is wrong. Donald Trump has shown himself to be a pathological liar through this campaign. And last night, Mike Bloomberg, who knows him well, set things up when he said, we need a sane president. I think we now have in the mix the question of Donald Trump's stability, beyond the fact that he's reckless, beyond the fact that he's a sham businessman. And those are the negative issues that this convention has developed.

And Hillary Clinton, happily for her, has had the greatest surrogates in the world to finally given a picture of the whole woman. That's why I did this biography. She's the most famous - somebody else said it, the most famous woman in the world. She's not really known as a whole person. She has to carry herself now. She's had Obama. She's had Michelle Obama. She's had her husband do it. She's had Cory Booker. They have been fabulous in defining her and she has been unable to do it herself.

So how can she now do it with some humility and with some sense of, this wonderful, amazing life she's had, including all of this service, who she is as a religious person, which very few people know about. She doesn't wear it on her sleeve. And perhaps to deal personally with why she has had these difficulties with the so-called distrust faction, including some difficulties with being truthful.

[08:45:21] CAMEROTA: Lisa, you know her as well as almost anybody, will she tackle the why I've had trouble with trust issues?

LISA CAPUTO, FMR. CLINTON WHITE HOUSE AIDE: I think she will talk about her life story. I mean she's - you're seeing a lot of the themes coming tough in the various speeches, that she's been a change maker all of her life. I think you'll hear a very biographical story, but she'll talk about her experiences throughout her life, but also the people who touched her life. People who had an impact on her life.

You're also going to hear a message, I think, of unity, optimism, much of what the president talked about last night. But she is going to get very personal, I think, about the influences, her mother, Chelsea. You're going to hear a very personal side of her. A side of her I know very well. Carl makes a point, not everybody knows it. She is a deeply religious person. Very grounded in her Methodist roots. Has an incredible work ethic. And I think you're going to see and hear from her tonight all of those different pieces of her persona to try and present more of a complete picture of who she is to the American public.

CUOMO: So what's the hope? If the person who's tuning in tonight is tuning in because they don't know if they can vote for Hillary Clinton because they're worried about the e-mail, they're worried about Benghazi, it's been out there, it's registering in the polls, how does telling the complete story help them on that part of the story?

JAY CARNEY, FORMER WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Because even though she's been on stage for so long, and she might be the most familiar woman in the world to Americans, that story about the rest of her life hasn't really been told. What people have absorbed largely when she's been in the political strum has been the negative. The - as you talked about, the issues around Benghazi, the issues around the e-mail server.

I think her goal tonight is not to try to compete with the extraordinary oratory we saw from President Obama or the first lady, Joe Biden. She just needs to - actually, humility will be her friend. If she goes up and says, you know what, I'm not that kind of politician. I'm the kind of politician who rolls up my sleeves and works hard and works across the aisle, which is something we desperately need and is woefully undervalued, I think - I think she'll get somewhere.

Look, she doesn't have to - Joe Biden didn't say it last night, I used to work for him before I worked for President Obama. He always says, you know, don't compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative.

CUOMO: The alternative.

BERNSTEIN: Yes, that's a great line.

CARNEY: And that's a huge advantage, obviously, for Hillary Clinton. She is, as President Obama said, you know, the most qualified person ever to win the nomination for any party to be president. More qualified than Obama was. More qualified than her husband was. And I think she doesn't have to win 80 percent of the vote. She just needs to persuade enough people that she's a safe choice to make sure she wins in November.

CAMEROTA: Carl, to your point, we've seen the titans of the Democratic Party turn out for her, the president, the former president, the vice president. Donald Trump did not have that advantage at his convention, but it's unclear on whether or not it mattered. He got a seven point bump after the convention. What do you think will she be looking at after this convention?

BERNSTEIN: I'm not good at predicting those things. But I think this has been a very successful convention in terms of showing another America totally at odds with the one that we saw in Cleveland. But also, let's talk about President Obama for a moment. First of all, he's the most popular politician in America. And we're going miss him. And for finally, I think, there is a sense that's been coming together here of celebrating his accomplishments, which are quite extraordinary. Whatever we think of individual things that have happened in this presidency, this - he's going to go down in history very well, I think. And he's going to go out there. He is fired up for this. And he's going to make a difference in this election. He's going to go to places.

You're also - Michelle Obama is going to be out there. This is going to be a concerted effort to show that what we saw in Cleveland is not the America that we want and not the president that we want. We want someone who is on view at this convention. This America. Yes, there are two Americas. I've said this election is also the Gettysburg of the cultural wars. And whoever wins this election, the country is going to be different for a long, long time.

CUOMO: You know, it's interesting, the convention took time to remember that my father was gone, his speech, 1984, that got the Democrats going was about Ronald Reagan said, we're a shining city on the hill. He said, we're a tale of two cities. Still true 32 years later.

CAPUTO: Yes.

BERNSTEIN: Well, it is.

CARNEY: Right.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

CUOMO: But it's a different question. That election back then, when you guys put up Mondale to no great effect, was about, well, who do we want to be? This is now, whom do we want to lead us? And both propositions are in the negative. Who's less bad is how it's coming up. You're saying the complete story is what Clinton presents tonight. How does that get her over this hurdle of the trust and of the negative, the negative?

[08:50:25] CAPUTO: Well, she's got to earn it, right? She's got to - she's got to earn it. And I think telling the story of her accomplishments, her experiences, the tangibles is very important for her to do. The American public needs to hear that.

The other thing she's got to talk about, and Jay alluded to this, is how she understands how to legislate. That's really critical. You have to govern by reaching across the aisle, knowing how to engage Congress, to legislate. She understands how to do that. She did it in the Senate. She also worked to do that as secretary of state.

But I think this notion of two Americas is an important one, because the country is looking for somebody to bridge the divide, to unite the country, to have solutions over slogans, to have an optimistic view versus a fearful view. And I think she's going to present that tonight. And I think that you'll hear a very credible case from her and from Chelsea Clinton about the kind of person she is, not just as a wife, but as a mother and a grandmother. And I think that's a personal side of Hillary Clinton who a lot of times carries that moniker of super woman. How does she do it all? I think you're going to hear a very personal story from Chelsea Clinton.

CAMEROTA: You three have done an excellent job of predicting a speech that has not been written fully yet, so thank you very much.

CUOMO: So they say.

CAMEROTA: So they say.

CARNEY: Right.

CAMEROTA: Very - thank you, panel.

CAPUTO: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Great to have all of you.

Democrats are hoping that these personal stories about Hillary Clinton will help make her more relatable to voters. One of those emotional stories, from a woman who lost her husband in Iraq. And she'll join us next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: Hillary Clinton's accomplishments turned into a major theme of the Democratic Convention last night. And those taking the stage included Jamie Dorff. She's a military widow who lost her husband in Iraq in 2004 during an operation to rescue fellow soldiers. And she says Clinton changed her life. Listen.

[08:55:11] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMIE DORFF, HUSBAND DIED IN IRAQ IN 2004: Before Hillary took office, the families of fallen soldiers received $12,000. And yet when you need to bury your best friend, when you need to raise a child on your own, when you need to rebuild your life from rubble, $12,000 doesn't go far. Hillary understood, so she did something about it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: And that woman, Jamie Dorff, joins us now.

Jamie, thanks so much for being here.

JAMIE DORFF, HUSBAND DIED IN IRAQ IN 2004: Hi. Thank you for having me this morning.

CAMEROTA: That's not easy to get up in front of tens of thousands, well, millions of people watching, and tell a personal story. How did it feel?

DORFF: It was very overwhelming. I mean, I was humbled, a little scared. I thought I didn't want to trip over my words, and I wanted to just really represent our gold star families.

CAMEROTA: And how did it come to pass that you were chosen to speak at the convention?

DORFF: Another spouse had FaceBooked me and asked me if I would be interested. And I said, yes, you can go ahead and release my name and number. And kind of a few weeks had passed by and I hadn't hear anything, so I totally forgot about it. And then out of the blue, they called me up and they kind of - we talked and interviewed and they're like, we really like you, we loved your story, and, literally, that's when the avalanche just went right down and it occurred.

CAMEROTA: Wow. Well, you really held up well under all of that pressure. You did a great job.

DORFF: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: So what is your story? For people who missed it, tell us about your husband.

DORFF: Wow. He was a helicopter pilot. He loved to fly. And like you mentioned, he was on a search and rescue mission on the Tigris River. And a boat had capsized. And on the way back, and on the first bridge, they just hit a cable and the helicopter went down. It was a low velocity. Both him and Adam both survived the actual accident. But they didn't survive the river.

CAMEROTA: I'm sorry. That's just a terrible, terrible outcome for the - these two who were doing something so brave. Why do you credit - have you met Hillary Clinton?

DORFF: No, I have not.

CAMEROTA: So you've never met Hillary Clinton -

DORFF: No.

CAMEROTA: And yet you give her credit. So why do you give her credit for helping you?

DORFF: You know, I give her credit because of the fact that during the time 12 years ago, you know, you just go tough this trauma, and you're not thinking. You're just in this void. And unbeknownst to me, I had someone looking out for me and other countless families after me, you know. She thought ahead that $12,000, you know, wasn't enough just to help us - I view it as, I was able to stay home with - and spend quality time with my daughter. And that extra benefit gave me the stability to start our healing process. And, you know, you don't think about those things. But she thought about it, you know, unbeknownst to me.

CAMEROTA: And do you feel that politicians in general don't understand people like you?

DORFF: In general, I think they do and I think they really want to help the people, but I think it's hard at the same time. I think the hearts are in the right place, you know. With so many differing opinions, and so many different thoughts and so many different ways, I think - I think it gets lost a little bit, you know. But at that time, she was able to do what she wanted to do and she pushed through it.

CAMEROTA: You have a daughter.

DORFF: Yes.

CAMEROTA: Who was three when her dad died.

DORFF: Yes.

CAMEROTA: Now she's a teenager. What was her response to what happened last night?

DORFF: She was so proud. I saw her texting, and she was saying, I am so proud of my mom and I'm so glad to be her daughter. It just - it lifted me up, you know, because we honored - we honored my husband and we honored her dad. And we also honored all the other families that have also lost loved ones in the line of duty.

CAMEROTA: That's high praise from a teenager.

DORFF: Yes, especially one that's your own.

CAMEROTA: Absolutely. And did she tell you that? I mean I know she texted it. Did she tell you directly?

DORFF: She did. She totally did. She was like, mom, I love you, and I am so proud of you. I mean she literally looked at me and I just was like - I cried. I was like, awe.

CAMEROTA: I know, you're making me cry, and I see how emotional it was.

Well, Jamie Dorff, thank you very much. What a beautiful story. Thanks so much for sharing it on NEW DAY and last night.

DORFF: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: It was great to meet you.

DORFF: Thank you very much. Same here. I appreciate it.

CAMEROTA: Thank you.

Thanks so much for joining us this morning on NEW DAY. We'll see you tomorrow.

NEWSROOM with Carol Costello starts right now.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, I'm live from the Wells Fargo Center, the site of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Good morning, everyone. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me.

[09:00:08] The final day gets underway and just hours from now the most important speech of Hillary Clinton's career.