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New Day

Milwaukee Protests; Trump's Plan to Fight Terror; FBI to Release Clinton Interview Notes; Protests Turn Violent. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired August 15, 2016 - 08:30   ET

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

[06:00:00] ANA CABRERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A police officer also hospitalized after a rock smashed the windshield of a squad car. The weekend of violence began on Saturday, with demonstrators torching several businesses, overturning cars and throwing rocks at police to protest the police shooting death of 23- year-old Sylville Smith. Smith was shot fleeing a traffic stop when police say he turned toward the officer with a gun in his hand. The officer's body camera capturing the deadly encounter. Milwaukee's mayor tried to address the festering anger about whether the shooting was justified.

MAYOR TOM BARRETT, MILWAUKEE: Without question, he had a gun in his hand. And I want our community to know that.

CABRERA: Governor Scott Walker activating the National Huard to assist police and declaring a state of emergency.

GOV. SCOTT WALKER (R), WISCONSIN: That I was worried about whether or not things would escalate.

CABRERA: Smith's family and friends holding a vigil marked by prayers.

CROWD: Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.

CABRERA: With his sister calling for peace.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Don't bring the violence here and the ignorance here.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CABRERA: Local police confirmed they made several arrests overnight. That's in addition to the 17 people arrested Saturday night. And as the Department of Justice here in Wisconsin continues to investigate the deadly shooting from over the weekend, there's still a lot of uncertainty about where this community goes from here, Alisyn.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: OK, Ana, thanks so much for all of that.

And we're following more breaking news for you at this hour. Police have arrested a suspect linked to the shooting death of an officer outside of Atlanta. The suspect is accused of killing Eastman Police Officer Tim Smith as he exited his car to confront the 24-year-old suspect. The officer, a father of three, was rushed to the hospital, but he died of his injuries.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, we're going to cover both of those stories more this morning, but let's turn to politics. Republican Presidential Nominee Donald Trump not keeping his plan to stop ISIS a secret anymore. He's going to give a speech about it today. Perhaps it will give him a break from his new target, the media. Trump is intent on tweeting and talking about how he is a victim of the press. CNN's Jessica Schneider joins us now with morning - more.

Good morning.

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Chris.

Donald Trump trying to get back on message after a weekend of media bashing. He'll turn to the fight against ISIS in a speech at Youngstown State University in Ohio this afternoon. A campaign official says he'll outline a three-pillar approach to combat ISIS, painting the fight as an ideological struggle on par with the cold war.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GOV. MIKE PENCE (R), VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: And he's going to lay out his vision and his strategy for defeating radical Islamic terrorism.

SCHNEIDER: Donald Trump turning his ISIS-centric foreign policy ideals -

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: We have to get ISIS.

We will defeat ISIS.

SCHNEIDER: Into a three-pillar policy proposal to defeat them.

SEN. JEFF SESSIONS (R), ALABAMA: He's going to talk out how you target your enemies and work with your friends. You don't overreach and destabilize countries like the Obama/Clinton administration has done.

SCHNEIDER: A senior campaign official says Trump will unveil several proposals today. He'll declare an end to nation building and consider any country willing to help defeat ISIS, an ally. A call that could include Russia, a country he originally wanted to back in the fight.

TRUMP: Russia wants to get rid of ISIS. We want to get rid of ISIS. Maybe let Russia do it. Let them get rid of ISIS. What the hell do we care?

SCHNEIDER: Two, Trump will propose suspending visas from any country with heavy terrorist activity and raise the bar for entry into the U.S. The officials suggests Trump's camp will formulate an ideological test for entry, including stances on issues like religious freedom, but no specific mention was made of the Muslim ban he called for just nine months ago.

TRUMP: Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.

SCHNEIDER: And, finally, Trump will promise to make a clear statement to the world that the U.S. is fighting a battle not just militarily and financially but ideologically, a point far from Trump's bombastic rhetoric of the past.

TRUMP: I would bomb the (EXPLETIVE DELETED) out of them.

We have to knock the hell out of them.

You have to take out their families. When you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families.

SCHNEIDER: The speech comes after Trump repeatedly used a false claim on the campaign trail.

TRUMP: I call President Obama and Hillary Clinton the founders of ISIS.

SCHNEIDER: And paraded his self-proclaimed expertise on the terrorist group.

TRUMP: I know more about ISIS than the generals do, believe me.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCHNEIDER: And Trump's policy speech today comes amid sagging poll numbers in key swing states and days of distractions. Everything from those controversial comments, calling President Obama and Hillary Clinton the founders of ISIS, to his rails against the media at a Connecticut rally Saturday. Of course, looking today to get back to that policy.

Chris and Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Jessica, thank you very much for all of that.

Joining us now to discuss it, CNN political analyst and Washington bureau chief of "The Daily Beast," Jackie Kucinich, and CNN political commentator and political anchor of Time Warner Cable News, Errol Louis.

[06:05:05] Great to see both of you.

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Good morning.

CAMEROTA: So let's look at the three tenants of Donald Trump's plan as Jessica just laid out. So he's going to build alliances based on willingness to fight terror, not on anything else. And, in other words, ally ourselves with Russia or whomever if they're willing to go after ISIS. Number two, suspend visas to countries the U.S. cannot appropriately vet. That's sort of like a morphing of the Muslim ban that he's been moving towards, any country that we can't vet people from. And then, three, define efforts this (ph) ideological struggle against radical Islam.

Errol, what do you hear here?

LOUIS: Well, what I hear here is kind of a mishmash. And the minute you try to sort of turn those broad principles into actual proposals, you'll start running into all kinds of problems. We have alliances. Those alliances have the force of law. Those were approved by Congress. You don't just sort of tear them all up and say, well, never mind, NATO, let's just pick and choose and grab a bunch of allies and see if we can fight against terrorism with them. So there will be some problems with that. There will be a lot of blowback, I think, from the professionals in the diplomatic and national security establishment. He's an anti-establishment candidate. He wants that fight. He's going to get that fight.

I think when it comes to ideology, what ideology are we talking about and how do you vet for ideology? These were questions that were raised the very first time he said he wanted to have a complete and total shutdown of Muslims coming into the United States. And then he adapted it and said, well, only ones who profess allegiance to jihad. Well, how do you do this? You know, lots of - anybody who has traveled in or out of this country knows that there's really no stage along the way. It's already a cumbersome enough process. But there's no point at which you're supposed to sort of go with a checklist and talk about your ideology or your religion.

CAMEROTA: (INAUDIBLE) why not, I mean he would say. He would say, why not? Maybe we need that.

JACKIE KUCINICH, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: That's also a part of it, that there might be a question asked. But again, what if they lie? I mean there really isn't -

CUOMO: But it's politically much more palatable to a broader audience than what he'd been saying about banning Muslims.

KUCINICH: But here's the other thing with the - with the idea that he's going to stop immigration from places where they've had Islamic terror, does - does that mean the U.K.?

CUOMO: Right.

KUCINICH: Does that mean France? Does that mean European allies? That doesn't - that's not something that's going to go over well.

CUOMO: Let's see if - let's hear if he says it today.

KUCINICH: Right.

CUOMO: Because I think one part that shows a - a growth, obviously, he got a lot of heat for saying he knows more about ISIS than the generals, you know, even in the world of hyperbole it was obviously afield too far, but that it is an ideological war. That's an interesting point for Donald Trump to make because the idea of bombing the "blank" out of ISIS is satisfying. But you're fighting an idea. You're fighting an idea that manifests itself in different countries, different populations based on really need of that desperation. That's different for him. It's a subtlety of what we're doing here that is new out of his mouth.

LOUIS: Yes. Well, that - and, look, there's a real possibility that he could - he could surprise us, right, because you're right, you cannot bomb the crap out of, you know, somebody -

CUOMO: Hate.

LOUIS: Right. Well, somebody - some kid sitting in his parent's basement looking at old videos that are online, right? I mean if that's where it's coming from. And we know, in fact, that there are people who are, quote, self-radicalizing within the United States who are, in fact, citizens.

KUCINICH: This doesn't deal with that at all. It doesn't deal with anything that happens internally. It's all assuming that the threat is coming in externally and not (INAUDIBLE) here.

CUOMO: But it may be a nod to the threat to Trump from this most recent spate of ridiculous statements. "The Wall Street Journal" put out a really heavy handed editorial. Let's put up a part of the language for you. But it was really the conclusion they came to that I think is going to have the most bite. "If the Trump campaign can't change its act by Labor Day, the GOP has no choice but to write off the nominee as hopeless and focus on salvaging the Senate." You know the down ticket races. "He needs to learn how to behave, stop blaming everybody else, decide if he wants to act like a president, or turn the nomination over to Mike Pence." What do you make of that?

KUCINICH: That seems like a little bit of a fever dream. I can't imagine turn - that they were going to turn over - you know what, we were kidding, we're just going to turn everything over to Pence. But Pence has been playing a really interesting inside game. Saying he's going to release his tax returns is the latest place that he's really kind of honing toward a traditional political message and -

CAMEROTA: And differing from his teammate, right.

KUCINICH: And differing - and differing from the top of the ticket, exactly. So it's been really interesting to watch the two sort of drill their own path really throughout the -

CAMEROTA: Yes.

LOUIS: And the frustration of "The Wall Street Journal" editorial board is shared by many. But I think probably Labor Day is a little too early. I think the next - well, the first debate in late September is going to be a clear defining moment where either this candidacy is back on track or those who have a problem with it are going to really start shouting, not just complaining and grumbling.

CAMEROTA: Jackie, let's talk about this new reporting from "The New York Times" this morning about Paul Manafort and his dealings in the Ukraine with Viktor Yanukovych. He was a consultant for Viktor Yanukovych. And apparently "The New York Times" and investigators have gone back and found these hand-written ledgers that are off-the-book payments that they claim amounted to something like $12.7 million for Paul Manafort, who, of course, is the chairman of the Trump campaign, from his dealings there with Yanukovych.

[06:10:13] Well, Manafort has responded to this and he says, "once again 'The New York Times' has chosen to purposefully ignore facts and professional journalism to fit their political agenda, choosing to attack my character and reputation rather than present an honest report. I have never received a single off the books cash payment as falsely reported by 'The New York Times,' nor have I ever done work for the governments of Ukraine or Russia."

Where are we with this story now?

KUCINICH: I mean, well, it's hard to think that Manafort's terribly worried about his reputation given who he's worked for in the past. I mean it's a litany of dictators and, you know, terrible human beings. So it's not really - that's not - I - I am surprised he's so concerned about that. That said, you know what this does, this muddies the water. They've made a lot of accusations against the Clintons and the Clinton Foundation and some of the people they've dealt with. And I think, at its core, this is - this goes to that argument. And, you know, look at your campaign chair. Look who he's dealt with. Look at - look what he's done. And I think it really - it really does undermine that attack by the Trump campaign.

CAMEROTA: Errol.

LOUIS: Yes, I - also, you've got a - I mean I want to go back and parse that statement from Paul Manafort. I just heard it for the first time. But, I mean, if I understand the article correctly, I don't think it was the governments that were funneling him the money. I think the accusation was that the parties that supported those who were in charge of those governments who were funneling the money.

We also know, and this, I think, is probably provable, that he was involved in some cash flow, some cash transactions to try and set up businesses using some of the assets or buying and then exploiting some of the assets of the same region. He's got a lot of explaining to do. I mean the -

CAMEROTA: Why do voters care about this, what he did in the past?

CUOMO: Well, be - they hear - what's the first - you could be right in that, they don't, right?

CAMEROTA: No, I mean -

CUOMO: He's not running for office.

CAMEROTA: (INAUDIBLE) for them.

CUOMO: The concern is that Trump decided to bring a guy in who's represented bad people in the past. You know, he has a loose nickname of being the master of the dark arts when it comes to politics.

CAMEROTA: Just a little cute nickname.

CUOMO: But, look - KUCINICH: (INAUDIBLE).

CUOMO: You're trying to move - were you trying to move money for Russian oligarchs? Were you working for this guy, Yanukovych, who was dismissed as a despot by many people?

CAMEROTA: But we knew this. It's really that just - there's these off- the-ledger payments, right, that (INAUDIBLE).

LOUIS: Right, well -

CUOMO: Right, but there, look, he's going to have cover to come out with a statement like this because they don't have him cold. They have a hand-written ledger. They don't have any proof of transfers into his accounts.

CAMEROTA: Yes. OK.

CUOMO: They don't have any proof of Manafort taking control of this money. And he's seizing the initiative on that. That's one of the burdens of investigative reporting, right? You know, we - us -

LOUIS: But the - but the next time he comes on and talks to you or any other journalist about, you know, crooked Hillary and all of these different problems with the Clinton Foundation, the next logical question will be like, well, Mr. Manafort, let's talk about what you were involved in. And, you know, let's talk about some transparency when it comes to you. And it raises the ultimate question that the Trump campaign has really not spent time on, which is, how would they be different? If they're saying crooked Hillary, she's no good, we can't put her in charge of this or that or the other, OK, fine, what are your plans? What are the structures? What are you going to do to make sure that no corruption of the kind that you are decrying ever gets anywhere near the White House? Paul Manafort is not the one, at least this week, to sell that message.

CUOMO: Well, one thing's for sure, Manafort does not get rattled about this. In his first interview when he came back on to the scene for Trump, he did it with us. And I went right after this very early on in the interview. He is not moved, he is not impressed by the reporting on this. He says he owns what he did in the past. He's a political consultant.

CAMEROTA: Guys, thank you. Stick around. We have more to talk to you about.

CUOMO: All right, other news, member of Congress will soon receive notes written by FBI agents who attended Hillary Clinton's three-hour interview with the bureau. Now what they wanted was transcripts. What they wanted was actual words. They're not going to get it, but is this going to be damaging and why? What could they have in their notes? We'll give you a closer look, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:17:52] CUOMO: All right, some new developments in the Hillary Clinton personal e-mail controversy. We have sources telling CNN that members of Congress are going to receive notes from the FBI's three- hour interview with Clinton.

Let's bring back Jackie Kucinich and Errol Louis to discuss this.

All right, so what's the law behind this? 302s, this is the only insider in the weeds thing I'll say this morning, I promise, 302s are the official FBI interview documents, right? That's what makes a lie to the feds a crime is that it's written down and it's seen as perjury in itself. They're not going to get the 302s. They're going to get the notes from people who are in the room. This is kind of a compromise. How does it play, Errol?

LOUIS: Well, my guess is that it will not quell the controversy. There will be some word somewhere in there that the Republicans will seize on because, remember, we heard from Comey himself saying, you know, she was careless, there was this, there was that. Anything short of an actual indictment, I think, is not going to satisfy Clinton's opponents. And so they will start complaining - I'm sure they have their talking points lined up in advance. They will find a word, a phrase that suggests some kind of a problem. They will blow it up into sort of a full-blown culpability and wonder why she hasn't been indicted and then you go from there to the lock her up chants that happen daily at the Trump rallies.

CAMEROTA: Right, this continues to have legs. I mean despite Director Comey coming out and saying this is not a prosecutable - that she was reckless, but it was not prosecutable in his opinion, that Republicans in Congress want to know what exactly she said to the FBI that she was not under oath at the time.

KUCINICH: Right, and they're going to match it up with what she said to Congress, with what she testified to the Benghazi committee. And as Errol said, if there's any kind of discrepancy there, you bet they're going to - they're going to seize on it. And will we see more congressional hearings? It's not impossible at this point.

CUOMO: There is a little bit of an undercurrent here also of a disconnect between Comey, which many people believe is unfair - Comey's one of the hardest hitters, if there is, in that business - and his field agents who were doing this case, that maybe some of them felt there was a case to be made and then he didn't. Will something be revealed in these notes that gives a nod to that? Now, that's a problem.

LOUIS: Well, that - that - that is actually what you would expect. I mean the field agents are, for a lack of a better word, cops. They look for and their main tool is crime, right? So that's what they're all - they're (INAUDIBLE) - that's what they're looking for.

[06:20:09] CUOMO: I was going to say optically. It's a - it would be a problem if you see overt evidence of that.

LOUIS: Well, that's right. If there is any evidence or even a suspicion of it, it might find its way into those notes. You know, now, Comey, of course, is not just sort of a political appointee who sort of understands how some of this stuff works, he's also an attorney. So he, you know, kind of puts it through a legal filter that maybe some of his agents don't. But I think, you know, look, for the political class, the Republicans, the Trump campaign, they cannot outsource this. They cannot have the - or expect to have the FBI do their work for them or even for their own campaign to do the work for them. It is going to be a question that is settled by the voters. There's really just no getting around it.

CAMEROTA: But there's an added wrinkle here. So beyond the e-mails, it has been revealed that some of the content of those e-mails do show what some people believe is an overly cozy relationship between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department. Some of Hillary Clinton's top aides, Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills, were talking to Doug Band at the Clinton Foundation and there was supposed to be a bright line between the two. And some of the e-mails reveal that there was not a bright line between the two and that's what some of the field office, FBI agents, wanted to pursue further.

KUCINICH: Right, and the Justice Department already took a pass. So there's a little bit of a dead end there already, unless, perhaps, they dig up something new that might, you know - but it does seem like that is a door that is closed at this point.

CUOMO: It's become a little bit of an odd political dynamic. If we could put up some poll numbers. Sixty-three percent of respondents to this poll of polls said - or in this survey of poll of polls said, I don't want to hear about it anymore. OK. But when asked, do you think Hillary Clinton is being honest about this, 27 percent said yes, which means they don't think she's being honest. So this is a problem. The question is, can she do anything about it, and can Trump's people do anything to make it any worse, Errol?

LOUIS: Well, I don't know if - she's not going to do anything about it. She's - you know, with less than 90 days, she's got a difficult path to victory. It doesn't involve talking about e-mails. As far as the Trump campaign, again, you know, those numbers to me suggest that the voters are making up their minds. They - they hear this. When you see these numbers about honest and trustworthy about Hillary Clinton, it means that people are absorbing the reporting. You know, I mean, a lot of the reporting about Cheryl Mills, about some of these connections between the State Department and whether or not they were supposed to be involved in Clinton Foundation activities.

This stuff is being reported. I think we are doing what we're - we, as the media collectively, are supposed to do. We are telling people about this. The polls are now giving us the feedback, saying, like, we hear you. We don't need to hear much more about this. We've made our decision. And, you know, it's up to the - the Trump campaign to try and exploit that politically, but I don't - I - I think -

KUCINICH: But will they be able to do that?

LOUIS: Well, I think they've got it. I mean they've got it. they've got the - they've got the complaints. They've got a populous, a voting public, that sees that when they say she's got some ethical issues, people get it. That doesn't necessarily translate into votes for Trump here again because they've got to explain what they would do different.

KUCINICH: (INAUDIBLE) -

CUOMO: Well, but he's - instead of doing that, he's doubling up. He's saying, I'm not going to get into the "why I'm better" part. I'm getting into the "you're worse." He's coming after the media and saying the reason that Hillary Clinton isn't going down is because the media. The reason that I'm in trouble and my polls are slipping is because of the media. It's not me. It's how they cover me.

This is an odd turn for a guy who's been made in large part by the amount of attention he got from the media, most of it not negative in the early days. We've juiced him to get into this race because we thought it would be exciting. He was given a pass on a lot of the stuff that came out of his mouth early on. And now he's a victim of the press.

KUCINICH: But you have to wonder if he had actually seized on some of these issues of Hillary Clinton instead of talking about whatever it is he's talking about, or if they were running ads in early swing states to any sort of - we don't know whether her numbers would be worse. They have failed to execute sort of a traditional campaign strategy when it comes to tearing down an opponent. No matter what he says, crooked Hillary, this is a branding attack that he does. You haven't seen the sort of full frontal assault that we've seen in other campaigns. So at this point we'll never know if that would have torn her numbers down even more than they are.

CAMEROTA: Jackie, Errol, thanks so much. Great to talk to you guys this morning.

All right, back to some of our breaking news. There's another night of violence in Milwaukee after a fatal police shooting of a black man. So what led up to that deadly encounter, and was this shooting justified? We'll dig deeper into all the details next on NEW DAY.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:28:49] CUOMO: For a second night in Milwaukee, violent protests, including a car set on fire that you're looking at right here, a lot less of those than there were the night before. This all started because of the shooting death of a 23-year-old at the hands of police. Now, police say that he turned toward an officer with a gun in his hand before they opened fire, and they say they have proof.

Let's discuss this situation with CNN political commentator and host of BET News, Marc Lamont Hill, and law enforcement trainer and former NYPD Sergeant Joe Giacalone.

Gentlemen, thank you for being here.

GIACALONE: Good to be here.

MARC LAMONT HILL, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Thanks.

CUOMO: Instructive in this situation is, is it about the shooting? Yes. Is this about other tensions in this community that's been going on? Yes. The sheriff there, Clarke, as you know, is now a national figure, well aware of the issues. I want to play you one excerpt of what he said in his presser yesterday. Here it is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHERIFF DAVID CLARKE, MILWAUKEE COUNTY, WISCONSIN: I keep focusing on the police. I keep focusing on the police. And I've said publicly before, stop trying to fix the police, fix the ghetto.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: Now, they say they have body cam video that the cops had on. He said they've reviewed it. They'll put it out at some point. This was not an abuse or an excessive force case. But then we get to what he just said there. And that plays to the larger dynamic. We're hearing the same things from that community we hear all over the country. What do you make of the situation?