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Will Trump Debate Clinton This Fall?; Former GOP Congressman Supports Clinton; GOP Report: ISIS Intelligence Overly Optimistic; Trump Accuses Obama Of Being "Founder Of ISIS"; Cold War Rivalry Making Waves In The Olympics. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired August 11, 2016 - 07:30   ET

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

[07:30:00] JOHN PODHORETZ, EDITOR, "COMMENTARY MAGAZINE": It's just this is who he is and he's obviously -- as we all say, he's never going to change. And the problem is that what he's doing -- it's not a problem if you think he shouldn't be president, but what he's doing is not working. And so, I think he's doubling down on things that are not working.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: John Podhoretz, a great resource. Great to have you on NEW DAY, look forward to having you again.

PODHORETZ: Chris.

CUOMO: Thank you very much -- Brianna.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Chris, crossing over, former Republican congressman Chris Shays is the latest to split with his party to support Hillary Clinton and we will find out why, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:34:40] KEILAR: Another Republican breaking with his party to support Hillary Clinton. We're talking about former congressman Chris Shays, who wrote on Op-Ed for cnn.com about his decision, saying in part, "I know some Republicans dislike President Obama and have such a strong dislike for Hillary Clinton. They are willing to vote for a man they know does not have the temperament, knowledge, or experience to be president. In fact, I think many Republicans know Donald Trump could cause great damage to our country and the world at large and still plan to vote for him. But not me."

Former Connecticut congressman Chris Shays joining us now. And tell us about your decision. How did you come to this conclusion that you were not going to -- not only are you not going to support Donald Trump, but you are going to support Hillary Clinton.

FMR. REP. CHRISTOPHER SHAYS (R), CONNECTICUT: Well, first off, I was a strong and am a strong supporter of John Kasich. He was my first choice, my second choice, my third choice, but now my conclusion is that Hillary Clinton is my choice. If you had told me I would have said that three months ago, I would have been really surprised.

So I watched the conventions. Republicans had a very dark convention. It was almost like a lynching, you know -- guilty and lock her up. And I thought this isn't the party of Ronald Reagan and it ain't the party that I joined.

And then I watched the Democratic Convention and Hillary did all the things that reminded me why I liked her. I worked with her on the 9/11 sicknesses of these incredible people who were cleaning up the debris and trying to save lives.

And she came into our hearing -- I was chairing the National Security Committee and we were in New York. She came in the hearing, sat next to the other House members, asked me one or two questions, and then spoke. She was willing to work with House Republicans and Democrats and she wasn't partisan, she was solution-oriented.

The biggest problem we have in this country right now is our government is not working. And our founding fathers formed the Constitution to help a diverse group of people find common ground. She'll do that.

KEILAR: How many people do you think are in a similar situation to you, though? Do you think there are a lot of Republicans who are going to make this switch?

SHAYS: I think there are a lot of Republicans that know that Donald Trump is not qualified but they represent districts where a lot of Republicans -- a lot of Republican candidates know he's not qualified and they are in districts where a lot of Republicans, in particular, and maybe some of the affiliated voters are supporting him, and I would be really angry if they didn't support Donald Trump.

KEILAR: You said that's not the party I joined when you're talking about Republican Party. Hillary Clinton sort of famously said -- she's said repeatedly because she was at one point a Republican, as a young person.

SHAYS: Yes.

KEILAR: She said I didn't leave the party, the party left me. I wonder if you feel the same way about the Republican Party right about now. John Kasich had a lot more similarities, I thought, with some of the Democratic candidates than he did with many of the Republican candidates.

SHAYS: You know, the one similarity he had is he wanted government to work. He's a fantastic governor in Ohio. And it's almost like when Ronald Reagan came in he believed in small governments like Republicans do, but that got morphed into not liking our government and then it got morphed into we don't want government to work if it's bad.

And this one quick story. I asked a senator who was a House member -- he just got into the Senate -- the youngest senator -- I mean, the newest. And I said how do you like being there? He said I love it, I can kill anything. The Senate -- one senator can stop anything. And so Republicans are not using government to do good things, they're just trying to just not have it do anything. How do you repeal regulations? You need a law. You need to work with both sides to repeal what you've done.

KEILAR: You make the case that Donald Trump is dangerous.

SHAYS: He is dangerous.

KEILAR: Why do you feel he's dangerous?

SHAYS: Well, first off, he's ignorant of the world and he's ignorant of what he says. He's casual about nuclear weapons, about our adversaries. He's giving our allies the impression that we may not be there for them. Words matter, particularly for a president and for, like, the head of the Federal Reserve. If they cough, the market goes up or down. And he doesn't have a principle that heads him in a good direction.

KEILAR: Did the Clinton campaign reach out to you on this?

SHAYS: No.

KEILAR: I know they've been courting some Republicans.

SHAYS: No. I knew John Podesta and I had a friend. I said tell John I'd like to offer my support and he got back to me and put me in touch with someone.

KEILAR: But you have not always been supportive of Hillary Clinton. You had some pretty harsh words for her over the years.

SHAYS: I have.

KEILAR: This is a bit of an about-face.

SHAYS: It is a bit of an about-face, candidly. I sat back and said OK, what do you like about her, what don't you like? I like the fact that she's smart, intelligent, hard-working. I like the fact that she knows the world community, she knows the Congress, she knows the White House, and she knows the American people. I mean, she's been around a long time out in the community. That's what I like.You know, I don't like the fact that she pushes things to edge. The Clintons do that.

KEILAR: To the line.

SHAYS: They do, and it's hurting her. I mean, she should win this thing with no close second.

KEILAR: Former congressman Chris Shays, thank you so much.

SHAYS: Thanks.

KEILAR: We really appreciate you being with us -- Chris.

[07:40:00] CUOMO: All right, another issue that's going to come up in this election, and it matters, is the intelligence assessments on ISIS and al Qaeda. Where they overly optimistic? That's what a Republican-led Congressional investigation -- they're report just concluded. Is that accurate and if so, what does it suggest? We have a national security expert weighing in next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:44:00] CUOMO: All right, so here are the facts. A new Republican-led Congressional report says that U.S. Central Command was overly optimistic about the war against ISIS and al Qaeda. The report says members of CENTCOM ignored senior analysts and intelligence community predictions in favor of ones that simply looked better.

Mike Rogers know about intel. He is a CNN national security commentator and former Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. We should note that he has recently volunteered to advise the Trump transition team and has signed a nondisclosure about his advice to the campaign.

Mike, great to have you on the show, as always. I want you tell me what you've told the campaign. No, I'm kidding, but I do want to ask you, Mike, in light of --

MIKE ROGERS (R), CNN NATIONAL SECURITY COMMENTATOR: Chris, can I make one thing clear, first?

CUOMO: Go ahead.

ROGERS: There's a -- most Americans, I don't think, are even aware of this. There are two things. There's a campaign that runs and then a transition team that runs that are very, very different. Hillary Clinton has a transition team and so does Donald Trump. They're in the same building in the federal office and it's important because one candidate is going to win.

[07:45:00] America's going to choose a candidate and when that happens you need the best team possible surrounding either president to go in and make sure that our national security is safe and you take the reins of government. So there's two separate entities. One is a transition team, one is a campaign, so I don't advise the campaign.

CUOMO: Understood and appreciated.

ROGERS: Yes.

CUOMO: Hearing Donald Trump say that Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Clinton are the co-founders of ISIS and that ISIS honors Obama, do those statements make any sense to you?

ROGERS: Well listen, in a campaign nothing makes sense to you anymore, but I will tell you this. One of the things that happened is decisions have consequences, or lack of decisions also have consequences, so that unilateral pullout in Iraq really was the fuel for ISIS to develop. And it didn't -- you know, ISIS is not a product of any administration, George Bush or Barack Obama.

It is radical Jihadism that is what's causing the problem and at the time it was still affiliated with al Qaeda. That power vacuum in Iraq allowed al-Baghdadi to get out of jail -- he escaped with 1,500 or so of compatriots. They went to Eastern Syria and that's how ISIS started.

But then there was a whole series of non-decisions. Well, we're going to let that go, we're not going to engage. And they grew and they got stronger and they got more brutal and they held land. And we all know that terrorists who hold land have the opportunity to plan operations that strike the United States and Europe. And that's that series of events that I think people are, I think, ramping up the rhetoric that it's, you know, that they praise Obama. They don't like any American. But I do believe that those decisions caused ISIS to get stronger in Eastern Syria and Iraq.

CUOMO: So what's your take on the basis for those decisions -- what we just saw in this Republican Congressional report? Do you believe its assessment that the people who are advising the administration picked the most rosy scenario they could to justify inaction?

ROGERS: Well -- and I got to see both sides of it. So, there's the defense intelligence and the tactical intelligence side that you get, as a commander, CENTCOM, in Iraq. Then you had the civilian intelligence, the CIA and other agencies who would put their products together to provide the assessment.

And I will tell you, as chairman, at the time, there were differences of opinion. The civilian side -- the CIA was saying this is a pretty bad group, it's likely to get worse. The military commanders, I think, were looking at it from a military position thinking I think we've got this, I think we can do this. I do think they were overly optimistic, clearly. That certainly has proven out.

Was it intentional or not, I find it hard to believe that senior military officers were intentionally misleading anyone. I do believe that they thought that they could handle this thing in spite of what the civilian side intelligence services were saying.

CUOMO: Is there any proof that this was manipulated by the White House or that this was all just going on within the military, not about political motivation?

ROGERS: Well, here's the thing on that, Chris. I think that presidents have the option, or at least the people feeding in their national security council -- in some cases -- in this case, likely pulled the things that they found most favorable. I do believe that happened. I don't think they made it up.

I think they found what they wanted to and that's what was presented to the president. Would lead him to say that he's -- you know, this is just a J.V. team. I think they want -- a whole group around them wanted to believe that and so that's what they told them. And that led to some really God-awful decisions that led to ISIS now being in two dozen countries operating. We have troops now -- ground troops in Libya trying to push them back.

Every state in the Union of the United States has an ISIS investigation through the FBI offices there. I mean, it is a huge problem. These aren't casual mistakes that we should just slough off, these are serious, serious, serious decisions that were completely wrong and, I think, have led to the explosion of what we now know as ISIS operations around the world.

CUOMO: Last question, do you think they have it right now?

ROGERS: Yes and no. I think, finally, we're engaging. I do think we need to ramp up-- our special capability forces have the ability to tag along with some of these military units that are operating in Eastern Syria and Iraq. It's still going too slow. You have to have that disruptive moment to ISIS to make sure that they understand, the world understands, we're not putting up with it and we will find you where you do your command and control, you do your propaganda.

We haven't done that yet. We can do it, we have the capability to do, we just keep flirting around the edges. And I think the administration is trying to push the ball into the next president, whoever that is, because they don't want to deal with it. It's hard, it's not easy, but the longer it goes the more deaths you're going to see in Europe and the United States.

CUOMO: Mike Rogers, appreciate the perspective, as always. Thank you.

ROGERS: Thanks.

CUOMO: All right, so -- also, Mike Rogers has many different jobs. Another one that he has is he is hosting a CNN original series called "DECLASSIFIED". Please watch it Sunday night at 10:00 p.m. It is very good -- Brianna.

[07:50:00] KEILAR: It is a great show, Chris. Drama bubbling up in the Olympic pool as American gold medalist Lilly King fails to advance to the 200-meter breaststroke final, but her Russian rival did. Did this rivalry take its toll on King? We'll discuss that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: We're seeing some Cold War rivalries that are kind of reemerging in the swimming pools of Rio between American Lilly King and Russia's Yulia Efimova. Well, King has been very vocal about her Russian rival's past drug offenses and King just failed to advance to the 200-meter breaststroke final.

Here to weigh in on the feud and the doping scandal, CNN sports correspondent Coy Wire and CNN sports analyst Christine Brennan. This really, Christine, has taken a bit of a dramatic twist.

CHRISTINE BRENNAN, CNN SPORTS ANALYST: It has, Brianna, and I think the conversation is fantastic. The bottom line here is the International Olympic Committee has avoided this -- let the Russians in. Whatever you think of that issue, doping in sports, Coy, is just huge. This is a major problem, it's not going away.

So the International Olympic Committee doesn't do anything about it, doesn't start the conversation, but a 19-year-old Indiana University sophomore does. Bravo to Lilly King. Whatever you think about it, this is a conversation that had to happen and this young kid did it and I think she'll be remembered forever because of that. [07:55:00] COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Yes, and you bring up a great point. She's so young, getting the job done. And I relate this to the NFL and some of the rules they have. You get caught -- you know, I played nine years in the league and you see these guys get suspended for sports performance-enhancing drugs, right, and they get busted.

You get a first time, you get your hand slapped. Second time, you get some more games. You get a third time -- I mean, you keep getting opportunities. And as clean athletes, I know we used to get so fed up. If you want a no-tolerance rule make it so that there is zero tolerance. You do it, you're gone.

So here, as you mentioned, 271 of the Russian athletes, two-thirds of them, allowed to still compete in these games. Some of them, including Efimova, had been banned from doping in the past so it's great to see these athletes seeming to use their collective voices to say hey, enough is enough here. We need to do something about this.

BRENNAN: Coy, it will be interesting to see if someone like Michael Phelps, who has spoken out in favor and supporting Lilly King -- if he makes this a cause. If Michael Phelps starts to take this issue on the IOC is really going to pay attention.

WIRE: Sure.

CUOMO: Well also, give us a little bit of context here, you know, doping. To a lot of people that will man just -- what are we talking about, steroids? But what is the range of different types of manipulation that are of concern, Christine?

BRENNAN: Well, Chris, as has been reported, the Russians have taken this to a whole new level and this is not -- by the way, I know people are saying what about Lance Armstrong? What about Marion Jones, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire. Yes, the U.S. has given a lot of doping cheats to the world -- certainly we have.

The difference here is that it's not state-sponsored. What the Russians did, Chris, if we were going to put it in U.S. terms it would be one of Obama's Cabinet secretaries -- one of the president's Cabinet secretaries running a doping program for five years in conjunction with the FBI and the CIA, the U.S. Olympic Committee, and the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency involving hundreds and hundreds of American athletes. That's what the Russians did and that's why it was so egregious. And it think that's something that we kind of lose in the conversation.

WIRE: I mean, they were literally, Christine, as you know, taking these performance-enhancing substances, putting them in cocktails mixing them with alcohol and giving them to their athletes to go out there and compete on a world stage and then covering up the tainted test results. That's what was going on. The state-backed program, unprecedented in any Olympic Games, so that's the context we're talking about here, Chris. This has never happened before or been seen -- as we have seen some individual cases throughout the years.

KEILAR: Are people talking about in the stands?

BRENNAN: Well, certainly at swimming where the swimmers are booing, especially Brianna, and I think that's important. The swimmers know. As your point, Coy, about the NFL, the athletes -- the athletes know. They know who's cheating. They've known since 1976 where Shirley Babashoff was calling out the East Germans and, instead, being called "Surley Shirley" by the U.S. media. They were just not -- they were not prepared yet, those reporters, to acknowledge that we were in the steroids era in sports. That's 40 years ago. Now, the difference is everyone is listening to Lilly King --

WIRE: That's right.

BRENNAN: -- and those athletes are booing and the boos have been cascading down. And at the moment -- by the way, I feel bad that she's getting that, too. The bottom line is if the IOC had done its job she wouldn't be here and then she wouldn't have to be receiving this treatment.

CUOMO: So --

WIRE: I think Lilly King is going to be part of that impetus for great change that is needed. I asked Conor Dwyer, roommate of Michael Phelps here, two-time gold medalist. Earlier in these Games -- he was part of that relay team that got a gold here these Games. Earlier in the Games he finished bronze behind Sun Yang of China in the 200-meter free.

I asked him about this, Chris and Brianna. I said you know, your teammates are speaking out, you finished behind someone who's been banned for doping in the past. How does that make you feel? And he said you know what, it stinks, but the people in power made the decisions they made. We have to deal with it. But he says he can only hope that we continue to use our collective voices and weed out all the doping that we do see in these Games.

CUOMO: Coy, Christine, thank you very much. Hopefully, Lilly King not advancing doesn't mute this conversation. Hopefully, more people that wind up advancing and getting medals talk about it. It's an important conversation. Thank you very much, my friends. We'll check back with you in a little bit.

KEILAR: It does need to happen. And we are following a lot of news today. Let's get to it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Hillary wants to abolish the Second Amendment. Nothing you can do folks, although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is.

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Words matter, my friends.

RUDY GIULIANI, FORMER MAYOR, NEW YORK CITY: I saw it, I heard it, I know what it meant.

TRUMP: Our Second Amendment is under siege. DAN RATHER, JOURNALIST: The rhetoric is the candidate.

TRUMP: It's called pay for play. The media is almost as crooked as crooked Hillary Clinton.

CLINTON: Friends don't let friends vote for Trump.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: American swimmer Lilly King taking a stand against her Russian rival and all drug cheats.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: With a modern day Cold War playing out in the pool.

KEILAR: Katie Ledecky winning another gold.

WIRE: The Americans continue to be like a plethora of Poseidons.

CUOMO: Will Team USA's winning streak continue?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo and Alisyn Camerota.

CUOMO: Good morning, welcome to your NEW DAY. It's Thursday, August 11th, now 8:00 in the East. You have Brianna Keilar and Chris Cuomo here with you.