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Trump Walks Back Iran Video Claim; Obama: Trump's Rigged Election Claim is 'Ridiculous'; Obama: 'We Do Not Pay Ransom'. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired August 05, 2016 - 07:00   ET

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

SCIUTTO: -- exclamation point. Now, just for sake of fact, let's play his actual comments yesterday, which was a repeated story, in effect, about what he saw on that video. Let's have a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[07:00:11] DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: A tape was made, right? You saw that with the airplane coming in? Nice plane. And the airplane coming in and the money coming off, I guess, right? That was given to us, has to be, by the Iranians. And you know why the tape was given to us? Because they want to embarrass our country. They want to embarrass our country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: So two glaring misstatements of fact there. One, he did say in that statement yesterday in public that the plane had money coming off it, not hostages, as he says in the tweet. But he also says that this tape was somehow given to us by the Iranians. And again, now in the tweet he says not given to us by the Iranians but something that he saw on television.

So the question here, John and Poppy, is this tweet an admission of guilt in effect, or not guilt but inaccuracy? Or is he, in effect, recreating the reality here, saying that "I was never talking about money coming off that plane. I was always talking about the hostages."

But it seems to me looking at that tweet that what he's saying is that, "Well, no, no, I wasn't talking about money. I was talking purely about hostages." We'll leave that to the chattering classes and the rest of us to decide going forward.

HARLOW: Yes, Jim, and that's what his campaign came out and said yesterday. He was talking about B-roll of the hostages in Geneva, not the cash. But then he doubled down on the cash video just a few hours later.

All right. We're going to parse through it this hour. Thank you, Jim. Appreciate it.

Meanwhile, President Obama blasting Donald Trump for saying that he fears this election could be rigged. But he said he will follow tradition and give national security reports to both Trump and Clinton.

Our Phil Mattingly is with us this morning. He has the details.

Good morning, Phil.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Poppy.

Well, we can pretty much called this week the weak where all pretense about President Obama's true feelings regarding Donald Trump were completely dropped. And that was on display yesterday in a news conference where he warned, he scolded, he critiqued, and he mocked the Republican nominee.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Of course the elections will not be rigged. What does that mean?

MATTINGLY (voice-over): President Obama outright ridiculing Donald Trump's warning to supporters that the presidential election could be rigged.

OBAMA: If Mr. Trump is suggesting that there is a conspiracy theory that is being propagated across the country, that's ridiculous. That doesn't make any sense. I've never heard of somebody complaining about being cheated before the game was over. If Mr. Trump is up 10 or 15 points on election day and ends up losing, then maybe he can raise some questions. That doesn't seem to be the case at the moment.

MATTINGLY: Trump firing back on Twitter, saying, "President Obama should ask the DNC about how they rigged the election against Bernie."

But Obama didn't stop there, the president doubling down on his charges that Trump is unfit to be commander in chief, questioning whether he can be trusted with the nuclear codes.

OBAMA: Just listen to what Mr. Trump has to say and make your own judgment with respect to how confident you feel about his ability to manage things like our nuclear triad.

MATTINGLY: The president conceding that, no matter what happens in November, he will help his replacement.

OBAMA: If somebody wins the election and they are president, then my constitutional responsibility is to peacefully transfer power to that individual.

MATTINGLY: On the campaign trail, Trump insists it's Hillary Clinton who lacks the judgment after her private e-mail controversy.

TRUMP: Hillary Clinton, furthermore, can never be trusted with national security.

MATTINGLY: Despite the nasty campaign rhetoric, President Obama says Trump should receive national security briefings afforded to nominees but warned him to watch his words. OBAMA: If they want to be president, they've got to start acting like

president, and that means being able to receive these briefings and not -- not spread them around.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MATTINGLY: And John, in talking to Democrats familiar with the president's thinking, you really saw two different issues on display yesterday.

First is the political. Absolutely buying into the Clinton campaign's clear strategy to paint Donald Trump as temperamentally unfit to sit in the oval office.

But also, White House advisers saying it's personal. He looks forward for the next four years and looks at his legacy and has great concern, they say, about what Donald Trump would bring to the office and to that legacy -- John.

BERMAN: All right. Phil Mattingly, thanks so much.

Joining us now to discuss, Republican Congressman Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania. He is the vice-chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations; also, a Republican decidedly not endorsing Donald Trump.

Congressman Dent, thank you for being with us this morning. I really appreciate it. I want to ask you about this breaking news just over the last few minutes. Donald Trump seeming, for maybe the first time, to back off something he has said on the stump.

[07:05:07] Just a few minutes ago he tweeted about the video that he's been describing at length on the stump about what he had previously claimed was money being unloaded in exchange for hostages.

Now he says, "The plane I saw on television was the hostage plane in Geneva, Switzerland, not the plane carrying 400 million in cash going to Iran."

Is this the type of honesty, this the type of pivot, this the type of change in Donald Trump you would liking to see? Are you happier about that or more concerned about a candidate who just yesterday would describe at length something he saw on a video which does not exist?

REP. CHARLIE DENT (R), PENNSYLVANIA: Well, first, John, thanks for having me on the show.

I'm glad he clarified that statement, but the underlying issue still remains the same, which is that this was -- in my view, this was clearly a ransom payment. This was a, you know, a $400 million payment in exchange for hostages. The never-ending Iranian appeasement project continues unabated, despite what Donald Trump may have said about what he saw. Glad he clarified it.

But the fact remains that Iranian behavior has not changed. Three more Americans have been taken and one legal permanent resident, a green card holder. This is very, very disturbing behavior. The Iranian regime's behavior remains the same. And I think that's the lesson we've all learned here.

BERMAN: And that's a message that you've been talking about the last 24 hours. The Republican leadership, as well. And Donald Trump has been pressing it, too. But are you concerned he's not the right messenger when he includes, up until a few minutes ago, you know, word of a video that does not exist?

DENT: Well, certainly that's not helpful. Obviously, when we talk about these matters, we should try to be as factual and accurate as we can. The fact that he reversed himself on that, I think, is actually good news, that, you know, he acknowledged a mistake.

BERMAN: You knew last January when the president announced the culmination of all of this, it was announced at the time that there was a cash transfer involved. You did know then that money was being sent to Iran, isn't that correct?

DENT: Yes, we had -- we were aware of that -- a $1.7 billion deal. We were not aware, I believe, of the $400 million -- the $400 million cash transfer. That was not divulged to us, as far as I know.

And it's pretty clear to me that this was a quid pro quo. The administration likes to deny that it was a quid pro quo, but even the Iranian press report said this was clearly a payment, this was a ransom payment in exchange for the hostages or the prisoners. That was their take on it. And it's...

BERMAN: David Sanger back then did, January 17, 2016, did include that $400 million was going. I think what is new is the exact timing, that it arrived on the same day that the hostages were released.

DENT: Correct.

BERMAN: And again, I mean, the administration says it wasn't a quid pro quo, although as you point out, they don't directly answer the question, would the hostages have been released, had the money not be transferred.

DENT: Well, it was obviously -- it was obviously a quid pro quo. And the administration says this money is supposed to be used for infrastructure. We all know this money is going to be used to fund Hezbollah and -- and other foreign ventures in Syria and elsewhere. We all know that.

And by the way, money is fungible. So can I say that this precise money was used to fund that? Well, Iranians have access to other monies, too. But the money is fungible. To deny that this was a quid pro quo, I think, really flies in the face of the facts and the timing of this whole -- of this whole exchange, which is of course, deeply troubling to so many of us.

BERMAN: Congressman, I want to talk about politics right now and the polls. National polls...

DENT: Sure.

BERMAN: ... a slew out in the last 24, 36 hours showing Donald Trump down as much as 15 points in one national poll.

In your home state of Pennsylvania, a new poll from Franklin and Marshall has Donald Trump trailing by 11 points. There's a competitive Senate race there. Your friend Pat Toomey. You know, you're up for re-election. You know, always in a competitive district, as well. How much of a drag, or is Donald Trump a drag on the ticket for you in Pennsylvania?

DENT: Well, I've always felt in my case that I have to run -- I have to run my own races. I've always run with -- sometimes there's been trouble at the top of the ticket; sometimes there's not. So I have to run my own campaign. So does Senator Pat Toomey, who I think is going to do very well.

So clearly, when the top of the ticket is not doing well, it can have -- it can have an impact down ballot.

And again, you're right. The numbers are -- are spreading, and I think it's in part because of, you know, some of the antics we've seen in the campaign over the last -- over the past week or so.

So I would say to you that, you know, we're going to have to run very hard here. Candidates like myself and Pat Toomey, we have to develop our own brands and we have to sell our own message, because it's clear that the -- you know, we're on our own in this election.

BERMAN: Paul Ryan sent out a mailer yesterday, a fundraising mailer that's getting a lot of attention right now. I want to read you the script of it, because it's interesting.

He says, "If we fail to project a majority in Congress, we could be handing President Hillary Clinton a blank check." Again, that's a fundraising pitch from House Speaker Paul Ryan: "We could be handing President Hillary Clinton a blank check."

[07:10:08] Is that an admission from the speaker that he thinks this race is just about over?

DENT: Well, I don't know what -- look, it's a fundraising piece. The speaker's intent is clear. He wants to maintain the House majority. He wants to remain speaker. He wants to maintain a majority in the Senate. That is his goal. That is my objective. We must hold the Congress, regardless of what happens at the top of the ticket.

We could be dealing with a President Clinton or a President Trump. I don't know what's going to happen in that election. Obviously, it doesn't look real good right now for the Republican nominee. But that said, we need to maintain a check against the executive branch of excess, regardless of which party controls the White House. And as of now, we don't know who it's going to be.

BERMAN: Mike Hoffman, congressman in Colorado, Republican, has started running ads where he basically says, "I don't like Donald Trump." Is it time for members in tough states to start running directly against him?

DENT: That's up to each member in whatever particular congressional district they're running in. Some members will have to put greater distance between themselves from the top of the ticket than others. And Mike Hoffman is a good man, very hard-working member from a really tough district. And so I think he's going to exercise the best judgment that he knows.

Look, in my case, you know, all I can say is that, you know, I've made my statement, that I have my disagreements with Donald Trump because of all the incendiary comments, the lack of policy specifics, lack of general policy knowledge that have, you know, compelled me not to endorse or support his candidacy. Of course, I'm not supporting Hillary Clinton under any circumstances, but I will tell you that each of my colleagues, particularly those in the marginal and swing districts, will do what they must to win re-election. And I suspect many of them will put some distance between themselves and the top of the ticket.

BERMAN: Congressman Charlie Dent from Pennsylvania, thanks so much for being with us, sir.

DENT: Thank you.

BERMAN: Poppy.

HARLOW: All right. Coming up, President Obama blasting critics who say the U.S. paid ransom to release U.S. prisoners in Iran. We're talking about that $400 million exchange. Will his answers quiet the controversy? Likely not.

Also ahead, a couple that narrowly escaped death running from a plane that burst into flames in Dubai right on the runway. You remember the video. We will speak with two of the passengers who escaped that plane and survived to tell about it, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[17:16:21] HARLOW: President Obama striking down critics who say that the United States paid, quote/unquote, ransom for four American prisoners held in Iran.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: We announced these payments in January. Many months ago. There wasn't a secret. We announced them to all of you. Josh did a briefing on them. This wasn't some nefarious deal. We were completely open with everybody about it, and it's interesting to me how suddenly this became a story again. We do not pay ransom for hostages.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Let's discuss this. CNN political commentator, former CIA counterterrorism analyst Buck Sexton is with us. CNN chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto is with us. And CNN political commentator and contributing editor to "The Atlantic," Peter Beinart.

Jim Sciutto, let me begin with you. You reported on it then. You're reporting on it now. He says -- the president says basically you, the press, are making too much of this. But as you've reported, his own Justice Department was very uncomfortable with the optics of a plane filled with cash flying the same day, dropping it off that a plane was going the other way with hostages to Geneva. His own Justice Department.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: No question, you have the optics there. The money going the same day. Now, the president will say -- and this is true -- one, it was Iranian money. It was part of billions of dollars in frozen assets going back to the '70s in this case. It wasn't U.S. money going there, one.

Two, separate negotiation tracks. One for the hostages, a separate one for these funds. So that's true.

But when it happens on the same day, not only is it an optical; it's also a question, and it's a fair question. The president gave his answer, but we can ask the question. Would those hostages have been released on that day had the U.S. not delivered on those funds, which the Iranians have been demanding for years and years. That's a question.

HARLOW: But Jim, didn't...

SCIUTTO: That's one to be debated.

HARLOW: Didn't a U.S. official tell our Elise Labott yesterday -- and I quote -- "It's unknowable," if it would have happened if the money didn't come?

SCIUTTO: She did. She asked him that question. She said, "Listen, you know, you can say these are two separate negotiation tracks, which they were, but can you tell us, are you confident that those Americans would have been on that plane, had the U.S. not arranged that payment on the same day?" And that answer there, "It's unknowable," makes this a substantive question.

BERMAN: Peter, two things can be true at the same time. It can be true that the president said that money was going to Iran, which he did say, and Josh Earnest did brief. And it was written about in the "New York Times." That can be true.

It can also be true that the hostages would not have been released without that money. It could be that there was a quid pro quo, correct?

PETER BEINART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It's possible. So let's imagine this. Let's say that they would not have been released if we had not given the money on that day. Did the Obama administration make the right call?

I think they did make the right call. If they had not made that call, the U.S. was going to end up paying not only that money but probably more money down the road.

Remember, this had gone to a special international tribunal. The A.P. has reported that the Obama administration was going to lose, which meant we were going to pay significantly more money than ultimately in this settlement, and we wouldn't have gotten the hostages. So we were going to have to pay more money anyway and would have gotten nothing, I think this looks like a pretty good deal.

HARLOW: Buck Sexton, to you.

BUCK SEXTON, COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: When you look at the timeline that this was operating under, the notion that this was a coincidence, which is what the administration initially said, it just doesn't pass the smell test. There's no way that they had negotiations going on and the left hand wasn't aware what the right was doing. There was going to be this money transfer on this day. Given how...

[07:20:07] HARLOW: I don't think they're saying the left hand wasn't aware of what the right hand was doing. What they're saying is the -- this was not a quid pro quo. These were negotiated.

SEXTON: No, I understand what they're saying, but that's nonsense. The idea that these two things somehow were coinciding just because they did is crazy.

The day of the exchange of the cash and the day of the hostages coming back were obviously related, because it looks bad. We're all aware of this. As Jim Sciutto was just saying before, it raises a question. Why not avoid raising the question in the first place? Why not say, "We'll get you your cash. Let's wait a little bit. This looks bad."

If the reason is because the Iranians wouldn't have done the deal, as Peter is saying, then that is, in fact, a ransom.

PETER BEINART, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: It's not though. It's not a ransom, because it's their money. When you give people their own money, it's not a ransom.

SEXTON: No, it is a ransom. Because first of all, they're not going to hold us upside-down and shake the change out of our pockets. We could have continued on and gone to this tribunal and fought this longer.

The administration saying it would be costly and difficult. They decided -- but they decided to give them this sum of money because they thought it was a better deal. That's all on the administration's side of the ledger. They wanted to do this, because they wanted to get the rest of the deal in place.

They thought it would look particularly strong and good. And so they made this concession, along with a whole bunch of others, including, of course, the initial prisoner swap. But this idea that the timing is coincidental is nonsense. The administration should just own up to it. They should say, "Look, we wanted to release this extra cash, because it was a sweetener to get the deal done." At least be honest with the American people about it, and then we can make our own judgments about whether this was what should, in fact, have been done.

HARLOW: On CBS this morning, Jim, I just want to jump in, because we have some new sound from vice-presidential candidate Tim Kaine who was pressed about this issue and what he would do if in office on something like this on CBS this morning. Let's play it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TIM KAINE (D-VA), VICE-PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Perception is one thing. Reality matters more. We got hostages home, and we took a legal claim that was a legit claim and bargained it down to a fraction, and we paid that claim off.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So as vice president, you would agree to that same deal? If you were vice president, you would let it happen?

KAINE: I should negotiate any legal that we had, and I'd try to get the best deal we could, and I'd also try to get American hostages home.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Let me ask you this. He says perception is one thing; reality is another. When it comes to dealing with foreign actors, whether it be rogue nations or terrorists, isn't perception in some cases reality if they think they can take hostages and get money if they perceive that to be the case? Isn't that dangerous?

SCIUTTO: Well, that is the issue here. And that's the reason why the U.S. policy is and has been not to negotiate with terrorists over hostages, because -- because the point is if you do that, it would tempt more hostage-taking down the line. That's the policy.

Now, the question is, you know, over time, through the decades, when you deal with either difficult non-state actors or state actors, presidents have made decisions to deal with some pretty nasty characters.

During the soviet times, there were hostage exchanges where the U.S. released nasty characters, right, to get Americans freed. You look at Israel. There were times when Israel has -- has released some dangerous Palestinian militants to get Israelis released, right, at that level?

So these things have happened before. The question is, when does it cross that line to being something that tempts further hostage taking? And that's -- you know, that's a fair question.

HARLOW: So Peter Beinart, to that, does this make Americans less safe? If you think back to comparisons that some are making to Iran- Contra and saying look what happened in the wake of that, Hezbollah taking more Americans hostage in Lebanon, could we see the same thing here? Does this embolden Iran, as Jim said in the last hour, taking Americans after the nuclear agreement was made? Does this make Americans less safe? BEINART: No, I don't think so. Again, because Iran was on the way to

getting a significant payoff anyway. Probably a bigger payoff than they would have gotten in this case. And I think the larger...

HARLOW: Not about the money, the perception.

BEINART: We'll see, but I think if perceptions are based on reality, if they're not based on reality, there's not a lot we can do about that. Right?

I think the larger -- the larger reality here, and again I think one of the reasons that people are going so hard after this is because they cannot -- what they can't claim is that the Iran nuclear deal is not working out. Right? The Iranian nuclear deal -- the Iranians have met all of their obligations, according to the IAEA. Ninety- eight percent of the enriched uranium is gone. Two-thirds of the centrifuges are gone. They've put concrete into the plutonium reactor. They've agreed to the toughest inspections of any country on this massive, massive debate we were having a year ago about the Iranian nuclear deal. The Obama administration has actually been vindicated.

BERMAN: A year in. There's a lot more time.

BEINART: I heard you. I hear you.

BERMAN: Got to be short.

SEXTON: Of course. The Iranians have already taken additional American hostages after this whole thing has happened.

BEINART: They've been doing that for years and years anyway.

SEXTON: But one, we have a deal now, which you're saying is a fantastic deal, which you would think would thaw relations. They would stop Iran.

(CROSSTALK)

SEXTON: Let's let me finish for a second.

[07:25:17] And also, on top of that, as you say, we're one year into a deal with 10- and 15-year horizons. It's preposterous to say that it has worked the way it's supposed to work when you look at Iran's.

This is something we're going to have to be looking at for a long time. And I think it sets the stage, the long-term stage for a much stronger, much more dangerous Iranian state, which has always been the objection. No one thought they were going nuclear after year one, and they are still seizing hostages.

BERMAN: That's it. Gentlemen.

Thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

A tweet is making a lot of noise this morning. Donald Trump now admits he never saw video of Iranians taking millions of dollars off a plane, as he claimed more than once. So is this a sign of change from Donald Trump? We have an all-star political panel to discuss, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: Welcome back. Donald Trump walking back a claim he repeatedly made on the campaign trail this week. He said, and you heard it multiple times, that he saw a video of Iranian officials unloading cash off a plane in exchange for U.S. prisoners.

Just this morning, Trump tweeting this: "The plane I saw on television was the hostage --"