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Donald Trump Makes Controversial Statements about Video of American Hostage Release from Iran; President Obama Criticizes Donald Trump; Interview with Congressman Jim Renacci; Obama: U.S. Did Not Pay $400 Million Ransom to Iran. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired August 05, 2016 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00] POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: So Trump made those claims for two days in a row. He did in in Florida and then he did it in Maine at his campaign rallies. His campaign came out yesterday, issued a correction, but Trump doubled down even after that. Today, he is walking it all back. Our Jim Sciutto is live with us this morning in Washington with all the details. Good morning, Jim.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Poppy, you know, you look at the words here. I'm not so much it is as a correction as revisionism. Let's look at the tweet that Trump sent a short time ago on this video. It 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!"

Let's now listen to his comments that have been repeated over the last several days about what he saw, what he says he saw in that video originally. Let's have a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The 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 stark differences there. His comments there on tape compared to the tweet. One, he says there was cash coming off the plane, not just the hostages, as he said in the tweet. And also he said that Iran somehow shared this secret video with U.S. as opposed to what he now says and what his campaign had said yesterday, that it was just plain old b-roll, as we call it, that aired on television, and there is that picture of the plane right there, and those are some of the American hostages, prisoner who were released from Iran.

So you can say getting caught up in a small issue, as there is the bigger issue, the question we've been talking about these last couple hours as to whether there was a connection between this repayment of Iranian funds, this was Iranian money going back to the '70s, at the same time as those Americans were released. Does that amount if not technically to a quid pro quo, does it amount to a quid pro quo at least in spirit. And that's the larger question here.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Jim Sciutto, stick around.

President Obama unloading again on Donald Trump. The president dismissed Trump's claim that the November election will be rigged. He called that claim flat out ridiculous. CNN's Phil Mattingly joins us now with the details. Good morning, Phil.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, if anybody had any questions going into this week what President Obama thought about Donald Trump, well, the president has gone a long way and put a lot of effort into answering those questions, doing exactly that yesterday in a news conference where he criticized, critiqued, warned, and even mocked the Republican nominee.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

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

MATTINGLY: 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. It doesn't make any sense. I've never heard of somebody complain 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 you know, 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 got to start acting like

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

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MATTINGLY: And really, when you talk to Democrats who are familiar with how the president has been approaching the Donald Trump Republican nominee issue, there are two things they really point to. One is the clear political motive behind what we saw yesterday, guys, and that was he wants to, much like the Clinton campaign is doing, paint him as simply unfit for office.

[08:05:02] But there's also a personal motive here, and that is that he looks at Donald Trump, according to his advisors, as somebody who is dangerous and somebody who would be dangerous to the legacy of really the time he has put together over the last eight years.

HARLOW: All right, so Phil, stay with us. Let me bring back in our national security correspondent Jim Sciutto as well. A lot to parse through this morning, including all these new polls. But just to get to what Jim called revisionist history, which I think is the best way to describe it, Phil, do you think that this is coming, this about face is coming because finally he is listening to his team and he's seeing it in the numbers? He is seeing polls where he is as much as 15 points behind Clinton, and for the first time, listening to them? Remember, he didn't revise his response to the Khan family last week despite all of the drama that ensued, but now he is.

MATTINGLY: I would preface with I don't have specific reporting that advisors were the ones who told him to do this. But I do think that there is a recognition over the course of the last three or four days inside Trump's senior team, a senior team that I would note is actually fairly united despite all of the incoming fire they've been taking from the outside world, that Donald Trump needed to make some changes, and those changes were primarily on just getting on to message.

Now, this isn't new. People have been telling Donald Trump to do that for the last 13 or 14 months. What they impressed upon me and they impressed on a lot of people that in the rallies you are going to see, Donald Trump is going to be more on message. Donald Trump has been more on message, and I think on this issue specifically, because he repeated it over and over again, there was an emphasis on, look, let's just stop doing stuff like this. These are simple mistakes that can be corrected.

HARLOW: But he might be listening this time?

MATTINGLY: The numbers, the numbers are such a huge part of what his campaign has been all about. What has been amazing over the last three weeks has been kind of the rare window into Donald Trump being like, I don't understand why I'm not winning. He has actually said stuff like that. Or in Florida, I don't know why I'm not winning by more. This is a key 10-15 minute element of his stump speech that he can no longer talk about because the numbers aren't going in his direction. I think there's no question about it, that reality is certainly setting in.

BERMAN: Just to be clear, you don't get some kind of gold medal for admitting or revising what you're saying about a video that you made up that doesn't exist, Jim. I mean, you've been talking to diplomatic, Secretary of State and John Kerry, they almost don't know how to respond to this because Donald Trump invented a scene that never happened.

SCIUTTO: You don't want to overstate the trend. We're talking about a 24 hour turnaround here, and this is a campaign more than a year old. And keep in mind, it happens, I mean, you have Mike Morell, the former acting director of the CIA today writing in "The New York Times" that Donald Trump cannot be trusted with national security. There's this really remarkable line in this editorial saying that in the intelligence world, we would say that he has been recruited as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.

I mean, so you have, you know, connecting to a larger position, not just about whether a video exists or not, but to the bigger picture or questions here, how do you handle Russia, how do you handle Iran negotiations? So the question will be, is there a change not just on the factual issues, not making up a video anymore. Will there be a change, and this is something you hear from both parties, frankly, on the bigger national security and foreign policy and domestic policy issues?

BERMAN: All right, Jim Sciutto, Phil Mattingly, thanks very much.

SCIUTTO: I think that's what he is talking about, the pivot.

BERMAN: The pivot, we keep hearing it.

HARLOW: The word we use far too often. All right, guys, thank you very much.

Joining me now Republican lawmaker, Republican Congressman Jim Renacci of Ohio. He is supporting Donald Trump for president. Thank you for being here this morning. Let's just get you to jump right into that. This may be the first time that Donald Trump has walked back change, revised, what have you, a statement of fact. Are you happy to see it this morning?

REP. JIM RENACCI, (R) OHIO: Well, again, Donald Trump is a businessman. I was a businessman before I got into politics. It is tough when you get into politics and sometimes you do have to say some things or backtrack. I'm glad to see that he's, again, doing that. But I also believe he really just needs to get back on track, and on track is talking about what I hear every day with my constituents about jobs and the economy and national security. That is the key to this race. That's what he has to continue to talk about.

HARLOW: How far off track do you believe he has gotten?

RENACCI: Well, I don't believe he has gotten off track that far. Look, the media keeps picking on individual items he says and he does, and then they talk about those, and -- HARLOW: I mean, with all due respect, congressman, he said a video

existed twice in two days that never existed even after his camp said it didn't exist.

RENACCI: I understand, but --

HARLOW: That's not cherry picking by the media, is it?

RENACCI: But Hillary Clinton also said she didn't lie, and then we --

HARLOW: And we've covered it extensively.

RENACCI: I know. So that's what I'm saying. These are the issues. And what I really wish we could start talking from both sides is what the candidates are saying. We heard Hillary Clinton say the other day she is going to talk about infrastructure. I want to hear how she's going to pay for it. This is the stuff that drives me crazy. I am a business guy. I've seen the numbers in Washington. We can keep talking, but let's talk about how we're going to pay for it. Let's talk about how we're going to get the country back on track.

[08:10:06] HARLOW: So your candidate, Donald Trump, has at this point not agreed to endorse House Speaker Paul Ryan in his own race. And John Berman, my colleague, pointed out a fascinating mailer that went out. Let's pull it up on the screen, from Paul Ryan. "If we fail to protect our majority in Congress," talking about these down ballot elections, "if we fail to protect our majority in Congress, we could be handing President Hillary Clinton a blank check." That at the same time that he said this. I want to play some sound for you, Paul Ryan talking about whether his endorsement of Trump will stick forever if it is a blank check. Let's roll that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. PAUL RYAN, (R) SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: None of these things are ever a blank check in any kind of situation in any kind of race. But right now, I just think it is important that the voters, you know, he won the delegates, he won the thing fair and square. It is just that simple.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: How do you read that from Paul Ryan in the statement saying we would be handing President Hillary Clinton a blank check and saying basically he doesn't -- Trump doesn't always have my endorsement, if things change?

RENACCI: Well, first off, what I believe Paul Ryan is doing is he's acting as speaker, saying he wants to continue to keep the majority in the House of Representatives and not hand Hillary Clinton blank check or anyone a blank check. That's one issue. I'm appreciative that he is doing that.

On the other side, again, I think we're reading into this. Paul Ryan has endorsed Donald Trump, and I believe he'll continue to support Donald Trump. He's going to do that because he is looking at what Hillary Clinton is saying and he realizes that's not the direction that 70 percent of Americans are saying they don't want to continue to go down that road, and I know Paul Ryan believes that.

HARLOW: You don't see that as a swipe to Donald Trump after Trump not saying he would endorse Ryan? Sending out a mailer that says we would be handing a President Hillary Clinton a blank check?

RENACCI: I know Paul Ryan. I know that he wants to change America in the right direction. I know he knows that 70 percent of America does not like the direction we're going. You're talking about a campaign flyers and fundraising flyers. Fundraiser flyers are always going to use the opponent in them. that's the reason it's a fundraising flyer. But again, I'd really like to get back to those issues all the time. And if it is an issue about the direction our country wants to go, Paul Ryan knows the direction we need to go. He knows that 70 percent of Americans are not happy with the current direction and we need to change.

HARLOW: Right, and I think all the voters want to hear more about the issues as well, but one thing that Donald Trump has been very vocal on this week, outside of any issue, is rigged. He says that the election very well may be rigged. And Obama responded to that in a press conference yesterday, saying I'm not sure how you can say that this far out. What did you make of that when Donald Trump said this election may very be rigged, and what do you think he meant?

RENACCI: I'm still not sure why a sitting president continues to get into an election. I think he should continue to be president and do what he is doing and not worry about this election. When Donald Trump says those things, he is concerned that the electorate voice isn't being heard, and I think that's what he is trying to get at.

HARLOW: Do you think he is actually saying that the voting process will be unjust?

RENACCI: Well, I think what he is looking is the Democratic voting process, he is looking how Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sander, now, Hillary Clinton took the election because of these delegates, these super delegates, and it was rigged.

HARLOW: Even Bernie Sanders has come out and says that's not the case.

RENACCI: Well, I've got to tell you, I've had Democrats in Congress tell me that we should have a system with super delegates because that's how they make sure they get their individuals elected. So, again, it is interesting how we twist, we keep going down this road.

But the answer is, it is the electorate. We have to start worrying about the people, we've got to start worrying about their issues and their concerns and making sure their voice is heard. That's why they're so frustrated. That's why Bernie Sanders got so many votes. That's why Donald Trump has received so many votes. People are frustrated with the system, and the establishment.

HARLOW: All right, congressman, appreciate your time this morning. Jim Renacci, thank you.

RENACCI: Thank you very much.

BERMAN: All right, a cash transfer that did exist, a video of it that does not. Controversy over $400 million given to Iran the same day that hostages were released. Our Fareed Zakaria weighs in next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:17:57] BERMAN: President Obama is firing back at critics who suggest that $400 million payment to Iran amounted to ransom in return for the release of four American prisoners. The payment to Iran is reignited criticism of the Iran nuclear deal and everything that went on with it.

Here to discuss this is Fareed Zakaria, host of CNN's "FAREED ZAKARIA GPS".

You know, Fareed, this is an important discussion that has been reignited. You know, whether or not this is a new story, the idea the $400 million went to Iran, leave that aside, but the idea is, you know, if money should be given in return for hostages, that's an important decision.

FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN HOST, "FAREED ZAKARIA GPS": Yes, this is substance. And it is important that people understand the facts. First of all, this is Iran's money. This is money that the Iranians had paid to the United States to buy military equipment, and then once the shah's regime was stopped, we decided we weren't going to sell the new regime anything, so the money was left in the United States, and in branches of American banks around the world.

The second thing to understand is there were there separate negotiations set up by the Obama administration. One was about the nuclear deal. One was about the prisoners, remember, they also wanted some back from the United States, and the third was what to do about this money that had been left in the United States.

The Obama administration claims the three negotiations were not interlinked. Of course, they were interlinked. Of course, the Iranians were not going to make concessions in one silo if they didn't get something on the other silo, nor would we, if they agreed to destroy 98 percent of our uranium, they wouldn't have gotten -- you know, they wouldn't have gotten the money.

So, all of them were interlinked. I think it's fair to say, there was obviously a relationship between the hostages being released or prisoners being released and them getting the money, but it was part of a complicated negotiation with many points. I think our principal objective was to nuclear deal. Their principle objective was to get the sanctions lifted.

[08:20:03] But there were other moving parts here.

And the final point is, people keep saying we've never done this before. Nonsense. The original of the hostages were released when we similarly sent $3 billion back to the Iranians. So you know, I think that this is an important substantive issue, what should you do going forward. But on the whole, it strikes me, it was part of a complex deal in which there were quid pro quos, this was one of them.

HARLOW: Comparisons to Iran-Contra, Jeffrey Lord on CNN last night, a Trump supporter, said this is worst. Do you think comparisons to Iran-Contra are justified? And at the heart of all of this, isn't it about the safety of Americans to which have been taken since this deal was made a year ago?

ZAKARIA: No, it is completely different from Iran-Contra, because first of all, that was something happening in a totally underhanded way, lying to Congress about it. In this case, we knew this happened. The Obama administration explicitly --

HARLOW: We didn't know about the unmarked plane.

ZAKARIA: Right. And the reason we did that was on that issue, Obama is exactly right. The reason we did it in cash was --

HARLOW: Right.

ZAKARIA: -- we have sanctions in place and want do wire transfers. That would be a violation of American law.

The second thing to point out, again, the hostage issue, you know, as John was saying, this is a serious issue.

Look, the United States has a pretty good reputation on this. The European countries constantly negotiate and pay ransom for hostages in North Africa and Mali, places like that. We don't. When we do it, it is more of this complicated, attenuated conversation where you can't -- you can't quite make the case that we did a cash for lives deal.

Americans are taken hostage, you know, many fewer times than hostages from European countries. There is almost a business in North Africa of taking Europeans hostage.

BERMAN: So, you're willing to say there was a quid pro quo as parts of this cash and the hostages. There was not, however, a video of the quid pro quo. There was not a video of cash being delivered to Iran, despite the fact that for two days, Donald Trump said that there was.

This morning, he put out a tweet sort of revising it saying, no, no, no, I was talking about a video of something else, it was in Switzerland, not the plane carrying $400 million in cash going to Iran. You've been talking a little bit about Donald Trump, using colorful language, Fareed, and this sort of gets to this issue.

ZAKARIA: It isn't just get to that issue. If I can, I notice you have it here. Let me read the first line of the "Washington Post" column.

HARLOW: Your headline.

ZAKARIA: A few days ago, I was asked on CNN to make sense of one more case in which Donald Trump had said something false and then explained it away with a caustic tweet. He has done it again.

The thing that should -- that surprises me is that we are still surprised. This is what he does with everything. Every claim he has made in his life in some concoction of hyperbole and falsehood, and he is surprised when people call him on it. You know, the birtherism was complete nonsense. His book, he keeps talking about "The Art of the Deal", being the biggest business seller. It is not that. It is not even close.

Yet, for him, this is just part of the, you know, this is why I call it, and I'm not going to offend people's ear this is morning, it is B.S. He is a B.S. artist. He has done this his whole life. I suppose it is okay if you're selling condos or you're selling your name brand on ties.

But when you're doing it, running for the president of the United States, he is creating new rules, and how many times can we do fact checking on this guy. Because it is every -- everyday, he does one of these things. I think it is pathological, because it is so self- defeating. Rather than having the substantive discussion, John, that you wanted to have about it, here we are talking about one --

HARLOW: Video.

ZAKARIA: One more made-up thing that Donald Trump has said.

BERMAN: Fareed Zakaria, great to have you with us. Thanks so much.

HARLOW: The column is fascinating this morning. It is getting a lot of buzz already, "The Unbearable Stench of Trump's B.S.," "Washington Post." Thank you, Fareed. We appreciate it.

All right. Now to questions swirling around Donald Trump's wife, Melania Trump, and her immigration status. Are there inconsistencies in the timeline of when she came to the United States and when she started working here? Was she working here legally?

She is fighting back on Twitter. We'll tell you what she has to say, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:28:37] BERMAN: Donald Trump has made immigration a big issue in this campaign. He has always said the campaign has always said that his wife, Melania, followed the law to eventually become a U.S. citizen. But now, there are new questions from some about her timeline, this after racy photos were published from the 1990s.

CNN's Jessica Schneider has details.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The photos that raised a few eyebrows are raising questions about Melania's immigration history.

MELANIA TRUMP, WIFE OF DONALD TRUMP: I came to United States, to New York, in 1996.

SCHNEIDER: But these photos were snapped in New York City in 1995, according to the author of her recent biography. So, what difference does a year make? Possibly the difference between Mrs. Trump breaking immigration law or not.

TRUMP: I came here on visa. I flew to Slovenia to every few months to stamp it and came back. I applied for green card and then after a few years for citizenship.

I obeyed the law. I did it the right way.

SCHNEIDER: Trump insists she got her visa stamped every few months. If that's accurate, it would mean she had a visa, possible a tourist visa, that needs to be updated periodically. But that type of visa does not allow working in the United States. The type of visa that does allow work is called H-1B. Man who discovered her said he didn't sponsor her for an H-1Bone until 1996, a year after this racy photo shoot.

But there is a caveat.