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Was Trump Inciting Violence With Comments?; U.S. Women's Gymnastics Team Crushes Competition; Polls: Clinton Leads Trump In Most Battleground States; Why Voters Feel Country Is Headed In Wrong Direction. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired August 10, 2016 - 06:00   ET

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

[06:00:01] JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: And good morning to you, Brianna. You know, the campaign really pushing back hard on this. Trump says that no one who was in that room yesterday thought he was trying to incite violence in any way

Once again, what Donald Trump says and what he says he means stirring up quite a bit of controversy.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CARROLL (voice-over): Donald Trump on the defensive again.

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: There can be no other interpretation. Give me a break.

CARROLL: Blaming media bias for the fire storm over this quip at his campaign rally.

TRUMP: Hillary wants to essentially abolish the second amendment. By the way, and if she gets to pick -- if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although, the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know.

CARROLL: Trump doing damage control, claiming he was calling on the political powers of Second-Amendment voters to make their voices heard, not advocating violence toward his rival.

TRUMP: This is a political movement. This is a strong, powerful movement, the Second Amendment. You know, Hillary wants to take your guns away. She wants to leave you unprotected in your home.

CARROLL: Clinton's campaign quickly denouncing Trump, saying he is dangerous and a presidential candidate should not suggest violence in anyway. Other Democrats echoing the same sharp rebuke.

Senator Chris Murphy calling it an assassination threat. Elizabeth Warren slamming him as a pathetic coward who can't handle losing to a girl. And Gabby Giffords who survived being shot in the head says Americans must draw a bright red line between political speech and suggestions of violence. Republicans blasting Trump as well.

GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN, FORMER CIA AND NSA DIRECTOR: That's actually a very arresting comment. If someone else had said that outside the hall, he'd be in the back of a police wagon now with the Secret Service questioning him.

CARROLL: Trump blaming the desperate media for trying to distract from what he calls Clinton's anti-Second Amendment stance, even though Clinton has never called for abolishing gun rights. The NRA and running mate, Mike Pence coming to Trump's defense.

GOV. MIKE PENCE (R-IN), VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Donald Trump is urging people around this country to act in a manner consistent with their convictions in the course of this election. People who cherish the Second Amendment have a very clear choice in this election.

CARROLL: Trump has taken heat for violent rhetoric on the stump before.

TRUMP: I'd like to punch him in the face. Knock the crap out of him.

CARROLL: Speaker of the House Paul Ryan once again issuing a tepid defense of Trump.

REP. PAUL RYAN (R-WI), HOUSE SPEAKER: It sounds like just a joke gone bad. I hope he clears it up very quickly. You should never joke about something like that.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CARROLL: Well, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani coming to Trump's defense, basically saying that this was clearly a case of media bias, nothing more. Certainly got the attention of the Secret Service.

Shortly after Trump's comments, the Secret Service sending out this tweet, saying, "The Secret Service is aware of the comments made this afternoon." That was retweeted some 27,000 times.

Also this morning, New Yorkers are waking up to this headline coming from the "New York Daily News," which reads "This isn't a joke anymore." "The Daily News" calling for Trump to abandon his campaign, calling for the GOP to abandon Trump.

It should be noted, though, Brianna and Chris, as both of you know, "The Daily News" never a fan of Donald Trump -- Brianna, Chris.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Appreciate it, Jason. Let's get after this right now. CNN political commentator and political anchor of Time Warner Cable News joins us, Errol Louis, CNN political analyst and Washington bureau chief for "The Daily Beast," Jackie Kucinich, and "Washington Post" reporter, Philip Rucker. Thank you for being here this morning.

Errol, we've all had time to digest this. Isn't the simple proposition that you can't be sure what Donald Trump meant when he said it, and that is the problem, his intentions aside.

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: That link to the fact that he never fully explains or apologizes for the outrageous comments. If you can't be sure, and he won't explain and won't apologize and he's got surrogates, by the way, who give you four or five, a menu of different options.

Some say it's a joke. Some say it's misinterpreted. Some say it's media bias. They kind of leave it out there and let everybody figure it out for themselves. What that does, among other things, is give everybody permission to put their own interpretation on it.

So "The Daily News" takes it one way and someone else takes it another way, and his followers say it's all media bias, and we end up with confusion instead of a focused message.

CUOMO: Should we play it again?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: I think we should.

CUOMO: All right, so here's what he said. We'll discuss your interpretation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Hillary wants to abolish -- essentially abolish the Second Amendment. By the way, and if she gets to pick -- if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although, the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Jackie, what do you think? I heard Michael Hayden say something that was pretty interesting, which was you're not just responsible for what you say, you're responsible for what people hear.

[06:05:08]And it seems that some politicians abide by that and afterwards even if they feel like they've been misunderstood, they apologize because they know that it could have been taken the wrong way. There seems to be a different standard here, and we're seeing that over and over.

JACKIE KUCINICH, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: And that's the problem with what he's said. I mean, this isn't a country without violence against politicians over the years. So if you're in a position like Donald Trump, you have an extra responsibility to watch what you say.

I think that's why you see some Republicans not comfortable with Donald Trump. In addition, you see these national security Republicans coming out yesterday talking about Donald Trump is dangerous.

What he said last night, you can't say things like that. It's not political correctness at this point. It's basic safety and responsibility. You have to take these things seriously because of the position that he's running for and frankly the position he's currently in.

CUOMO: Phillip, what did you make of our friend at "The New York Times" creating an analogy between what Donald Trump was doing on the stump and what was done (inaudible), how he was painted the political right there as being a traitor and you know, putting Nazi garb and eventually he was assassinated. The point being words can become very dangerous.

PHILIP RUCKER, REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": It is dangerous. I mean, Donald Trump is not out here entertaining a crowd. He's out here as a future president, as a possible commander-in-chief for this country. He has millions of followers who will do whatever he says and listen to whatever he says and believe in him.

There's almost a faith out there at these Trump rallies. For him to make a comment like this, whether he intended it to come across a certain way or not, really doesn't matter. The fact is he made these comments and millions of followers are listening. That creates a really dangerous environment in this country, in this campaign.

KEILAR: How is this worse than some of the other things he said, Errol? He said, you know, I could shoot people on Fifth Avenue, is that what he said, and I wouldn't lose supporters?

LOUIS: Well, that's right. In fact my first reaction when I heard it and I saw the fire storm begin, I was thinking, this is like the fourth or fifth worst thing I've heard him say. I thought it was much worse when people were being beaten at his rallies and then when approached about it in the calm light of day, a day later, he said maybe the guy should have been roughed up.

I thought that was awful. It continues to be awful that at virtually every rally his followers chant "lock her up, lock her up." We should keep in mind as well that the underlying discussion that he was involved in when this all started was based on a falsehood.

Hillary Clinton has never said she wants to abolish the Second Amendment. You don't abolish constitutional amendments anyway.

KEILAR: If you know that that's something he's been saying for a long time, that she's against -- not just against Second Amendment rights, but he's been alleging she wants to abolish it --

LOUIS: Abolish a constitutional amendment right, which cannot be done.

KEILAR: -- it gives a little more context to what he was saying. I think if someone isn't listening to his speeches all the time, you can also hear his remarks a little differently.

LOUIS: But it becomes this endless process of trying to fact check, interrupt, make clear to people, and then, of course, he himself won't do it. That's the fundamental irresponsibility I think that really people should be concerned about is that hours after the fact he'll tweet something out.

As opposed to looking into a camera and saying, look, this is important, people are misinterpreting me, the media is unfair to me. Here's what really going on.

CUOMO: That's the test that Errol is laying out there that I think is a real proposition for voters with Donald Trump, Jackie, which is does he get it? Does he get what leadership is about? He is very good at branding and at blaming and at doing different things that are politically helpful in a campaign. I think that's a big reason that we see him where he is as the Republican nominee.

But that he doesn't get that saying abolishing the Second Amendment is impossible. He doesn't get that knowing your opponent's record matters. This all spawns from what Hillary Clinton was talking about with the Heller decision, about D.C. and having handguns, and it wound up cementing the individual right to weapons here, which was a long evolution here in jurisprudence.

Nobody wants to hear anything about that. They don't want to know anything about that. They just want the conclusion. When you mix a faulty premise, which is what he's doing characterizing Clinton's position, and incendiary talk, you have political dynamite. Either he doesn't care or he's not aware. Isn't that the proposition for voters?

KUCINICH: Yes, I think it's -- I don't know. I'm not going to crawl inside Donald Trump's head here.

CUOMO: You must. Get in there and tell us what's going on so we can move on from this and get back to policy.

KUCINICH: You know, it is hard to say that he's not aware, right? Donald Trump's a smart man. It does seem like he's boiling it down to the most basic explanation, instead of saying, oh -- it's not fodder at a rally.

[06:10:04]And it's not a very good applause line, or boo line, as to say, oh, she might put restrictions on the Second Amendment. No, it's much more -- it has more of effect if you say she's going to abolish Second Amendment.

Whether or not it's not true. Of course, it's not true. Errol is right. You can't do that. But again, I just don't think Donald Trump cares.

You know who does care is someone like Mike Pence, which is why he's constantly coming up behind Donald Trump and saying, oh, but what he meant was, no matter what the topic is it seems like right now.

CUOMO: But there's a test for him too. You know, Mike Pence is a guy who has some cachet within his party as being an integrity guy. People can always quibble with politicians' positions, but how many times can Mike Pence explain --

KEILAR: Becoming routine.

CUOMO: -- and intentionality that maybe it's a false defense. Maybe Trump doesn't care if you take it as, you know, oh, do something terrible or not. For Pence to defend him, that means he thinks he knows what Trump means with all these things. How could he know if nobody else does?

KEILAR: All right. And we're going to have more with our panel. You guys stick around. We have so much to talk about. Errol, Phil, Jackie, thank you.

We want to turn now to the Olympic Games. What a big night, right. This was all about the gold for the red, white, and blue. Michael Phelps making history again. Katie Ledecky clinching her second victory. The U.S. women's gymnastics team crushing their competition. It wasn't even close.

CNN sports anchor, Coy Wire has this all covered live in Rio. What an amazing day and evening, Coy.

COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR: We can't have enough adjectives to describe. You said it. Crushing, amazing performance by the U.S. women's gymnastics team, earning that gold. Let's take a look, guys, how the medals are stacking up. We'll always keep you tuned up here on NEW DAY.

USA leading the way, 26 in total. China in second with 17. Japan is in third with 14. Russia has 12. They're right there. But we have to talk about America's sweethearts, led by Simone Biles, winning by a jaw-dropping margin, proving without a doubt to be the best gymnastics team in the world.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WIRE (voice-over): Taking their place in Olympic history, the U.S. women's gymnastics team securing team gold. Simone Biles catapulting her team to victory. She's now arguably the best female gymnast in U.S. history.

Team Captain Aly Raisman captivating the audience with a flawless floor performance. Young Laurie Hernandez dazzling on the beam. Madison Coshion (ph) and Gabby Douglas boasting two of the highest scores of the night on the uneven bars.

These incredible ladies revealing their team name to the world. It'll be the last time a five-member gymnastics team will ever perform at the Olympics.

Michael Phelps adding two more golds to his collection. He now has a whopping 21 in his Olympic career. The world's most decorated Olympian clinching two victories Tuesday night, first in the men's 200-meter butterfly, winning it for a third time in his career, dominantly reclaiming the number one spot after losing to rival South African swimmer Chad Le Clos in 2012.

A short time later with his second gold of the night, the U.S. men's team cruising to their fourth consecutive gold medal in the 4x200 meter freestyle relay.

It was also another big night for 19-year-old superstar Katie Ledecky, triumphant in the women's 200-meter freestyle, landing her a second gold medal here in Rio. Ledecky has never lost an individual final at a major international competition.

(END VIDEOTAPE) WIRE: All right, guys, 20 gold medals up for grabs here in Rio on day five. So what are we going to watch today? You have the men's gymnastics individual all-around competition.

Plus, we got to keep our eyes on the pool, the women's 4x200 meter relay. Could we see Ledecky grab another medal? If she's part of that team, we shall see.

Brianna, the 100-meter freestyle for the men also featuring defending champ, Nathan Adrian. That'll also be one to see.

KEILAR: It's going to be another amazing day, I mean, the gymnastics, just phenomenal. Even knowing that it was sort of a foregone conclusion, it was still fantastic to watch.

CUOMO: I love seeing America do well when it comes to swimming and gymnastics, it's all about the grind. It's about the grind. It's not like basketball where you can say, well, we just have the best athletes. It's the grind. You want to put in the work. You want to put in the time. That's what the pool and that gymnastics is about. Boy, did they look great.

KEILAR: Sure is. We'll have more from Coy Wire coming up here.

Coming up in NEW DAY, we're also going to talk with the most decorated Olympic gymnast in U.S. history. We're talking about Shannon Miller. She's going to give us the skinny on the final five's big night.

CUOMO: All right. We're talking about hard work in the Olympics, and we're going to get t| that as well in this election.

[06:15:02]Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are grinding it out in the battleground states. You know them, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa, big prizes in the race for the presidency. You've got to put in your time. You've got to be on message. Who is on top in those states, next?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Two sets of new battleground state polls show Hillary Clinton building on her lead over Donald Trump, except for the biggest prize, Florida. Clinton locked in a statistical tie with Trump in the sunshine state 46-45 in this Quinnipiac University poll.

And in Ohio, Quinnipiac has Clinton with a four-point lead over Trump. The NBC/"Wall Street Journal" poll has Clinton ahead by five points.

In Pennsylvania, a very different story. Clinton with a commanding lead, ten points in one poll, 11 points in the other poll. That is a whole lot of numbers.

[06:20:04]So what does it all mean for the Clinton and the Trump campaigns? Joining us now, we have Ron Brownstein, is a CNN senior political analyst and a senior editor at "The Atlantic."

OK, so Ron, you look at all of those polls, all of those numbers, what does that tell us about where the state of this race is right now?

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, the key state of the ones you mentioned is Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is part of what I call in 2009 the blue wall, those 18 states Democrats have won in at least the past six consecutive elections. It's probably the loosest brick in the blue wall.

If Donald Trump can't contest Pennsylvania seriously, that gives Hillary Clinton probably 242 Electoral College votes pretty safely in the bank. She is doing very well in diverse white collar states of Colorado and Virginia where they've been able to pull their ads.

You ad those two and New Mexico, which is not part of the blue wall but which is not really contested anymore, you're there. You're right at 269 at that point. Any other single state would give you an Electoral College majority.

Donald Trump needs to win Ohio and Pennsylvania, and probably Florida to have a chance at winning this. The polls show him, as you saw, behind in Ohio and significantly behind in Pennsylvania.

CUOMO: Now Ron, as you like to say, when you get into these tight battleground state, that's when election moments matter. Arguably, we had one yesterday. Donald Trump on the stump talking about the Second Amendment.

He is going after Clinton for wanting to abolish the Second Amendment, which is of course impossible. It's a constitutional amendment. But also Clinton would argue a gross misstatement of a position on the Heller case and what restriction should be on the Second Amendment.

Then he says, well, maybe Second Amendment people, maybe you can do something about it. He says the media is going after him wrongly and it's bias. Other people say it was a suggestion of assassination. What did you hear and what does it mean?

BROWNSTEIN: I didn't hear it to be quite as threatening as some others did. I understand that there have been so many inflammatory comments from Donald Trump, especially with a kind of escape hatch of plausible deniability about what he really meant, that it is understandable that people would taking it that way.

And I really think beyond the question of violence, Chris, I think there are really two key points about this. The first one is this goes to exactly the kind of criticism of Trump that you heard from former CIA Director Michael Hayden and the 49 other Republican national security officials who said on Monday in this extraordinary letter that they would not support him.

Which is the idea they feel that he is simply not disciplined enough, that he's too reckless to execute the job of president, particularly in national security.

I think this goes to that core concern about his temperament among many of those white-collar suburban voters who, by the way, are the reason he's trailing so badly in Pennsylvania. His big deficit among college whites, especially compared to other Republicans.

The second point is leaving aside this issue of whether he was inciting violence or not, those remarks about the Second Amendment, that kind of absolutism on gun control, really reflects a kind of doubling down on a strategy of mobilizing nonurban, non-college, culturally conservative voters at a time when he is really struggling in these big populous suburbs.

You know, Mitt Romney won three-quarters of the counties in America and he lost by 5 million votes. How did he do that? He lost 86 of 100 largest counties by a combined 12 million votes to President Obama.

Donald Trump is not on a path to improve on that. If anything, you're likely to see that widen even further with him doing better outside of urban areas but facing potentially even bigger deficits, insurmountable deficits in some states in the metropolitan areas and gun control would be one of the reasons why.

KEILAR: Ron, both candidates have been characterizing themselves. Bill Clinton certainly characterized his wife as a change maker. Part of this is because you look at this polling about whether you think the country is on the right path.

I know you think that the picture there -- because when we look at, for instance, this poll about how are things going, 46 percent say well, 54 percent say badly, but that's not the whole picture, right. You're looking at the president's approval rating to tell us even more.

BROWNSTEIN: I think the president's approval rating is a better predictor of the vote. The problem with jumping too far on the right track, wrong track question is lots of people say the country is on the wrong track for lots of different reasons.

In the ABC/"Washington Post" poll that came out Sunday, almost half of Democrats and half of liberals say the country is on the wrong track presumably many of them for assortment of reason including the idea that Republicans were blocking President Obama.

The fact that Obama's approval rating is now at 50 percent or above in most polls is probably the more relevant number historically. If you look again at that ABC/"Washington Post" poll on Sunday, 89 percent of the people who approved of Obama said they were going to vote for Hillary Clinton, 85 percent of the disapprovers said they would vote for Donald Trump.

It is almost certain that you'll have an over 80 percent correlation on Election Day. If I had to follow one number on an attitude toward the country and how it affects 2016, it would be that approval of the president.

[06:25:11]That has been rising, I should note, particularly among these college educated, white voters, who right now loom as the biggest obstacle to Donald Trump and the White House because he's significantly underperforming other Republicans among them, even as these latest battleground states show him regaining his strength.

He's back to 60 percent, Brianna, among blue-collar whites in basically all three of those states in the Quinnipiac polls. That's coming back together for him.

The problem is the suburbs of Philadelphia, the suburbs of Columbus, the I-4 corridor in Florida, the suburbs of Denver, Northern Virginia, places like that where he's running well behind previous Republicans. That is a growing segment of the electorate, while the blue collar side is somewhat steadily declining.

KEILAR: Historic shift that we're seeing there. Ron Brownstein, thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

BROWNSTEIN: Thank you.

CUOMO: That's why we call him the professor.

KEILAR: The prof.

CUOMO: All right, so a big topic, a big story line in this country has been policing in Baltimore. Now, the protests are largely over, but that doesn't mean the story is, a scathing Justice Department report just came out. It accuses the city's officers of bias and excessive force. Now, the question becomes, what can be done about it? We have a closer look ahead on NEW DAY.

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