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New Day

Donald Trump to Lay Out Foreign Policy Concerning ISIS; Interview with Senator Jeff Sessions; Protests Erupt in Milwaukee over Police Shooting. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired August 15, 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] ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Of course.

NATALIE HAWKINS, MOTHER OF U.S. OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALIST GABBY DOUGLAS: It is actions. It is how you treat one another. It is how, you know, how you interact with people online, you have responsibility.

CAMEROTA: Of course. And it is making the sacrifice to bring home the gold for the U.S., of course. Well, Natalie Hawkins, thanks for sharing this. We know it has been a personal struggle for you and Gabby and we wish you the best going forward. Thanks for being with us.

HAWKINS: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: We're following a lot of news this morning. Donald Trump preparing to layout his plan to fight radical Islamic terrorism. Let's get right to it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Violent protests in Milwaukee.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People are throwing bottle and rocks.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're all in this together. What's going to create the change?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stop trying to fix the police. Fix the ghetto.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's going to lay out his vision and his strategy for defeating radical Islamic terrorism.

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If it weren't for them, you probably wouldn't even have ISIS. He is a terrible, terrible president.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's going to talk about how you target your enemies and work with your friends.

TRUMP: We're going to open up those libel laws, folks, and we're going to have people sue you like you've never been sued before.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hussein Bolt targeting a third consecutive gold medal, and he didn't disappoint. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Simone Biles just won't quit, striking gold for

the third time in Rio.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And Kayla Harrison making judo history for the second time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, welcome to your NEW DAY. It is Monday, August 15, 8:00 in the east. And up first, Donald Trump set to unveil his plan to fight and defeat ISIS. Now, the speech is an opportunity for him to do what many supporters and his party wants him to do -- stay on message of what matters to the American people.

CAMEROTA: Today's speech comes as Donald Trump is blaming the media for his campaign woes, maintain that the media is not treating him fairly. CNN's Jessica Schneider joins us now with more. Jessica, what is the latest?

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Alisyn, 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 VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. MIKE PENCE, (R) VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: He is going to layout his vision and his strategy for defeating radical Islamic terrorism.

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

TRUMP: 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 about 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 will 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 Trump has long pointed to as a possible partner.

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: Trump will also propose suspending any visas from any country with heavy terrorist activity and raise the bar for entry into the U.S. That bar could include an ideological test, according to the Trump campaign official. The test would question visa applicants on their support of U.S. values and seek to weed out any supporters of radical Islam. But no specific mention about Muslim ban Trump called for 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 make a clear statement to the world that the U.S. is fighting a battle not just military and financially, but ideologically, a point far from Trump's bombastic rhetoric of the past.

TRUMP: I would bomb the -- out of them.

(APPLAUSE)

TRUMP: 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 trial.

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: Trump will make clear in his speech that the U.S. won't be, quote, "remaking the Middle East into one democracy after another at the point of a gun," and he'll continue to hammer on his criticism of the Iraq war. Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: OK, Jessica, thanks so much for that preview.

Let's discuss this and so much more with Republican senator from Alabama and chairman of Donald Trump's national security advisory committee, Jeff Sessions. Good morning, senator.

SEN. JEFF SESSIONS, (R) ALABAMA: Hey, good morning.

CAMEROTA: OK, so tell us specifically what we're going to hear from Donald Trump this morning that will be new.

SESSIONS: I think he is going to be direct and unvarnished. He is going to layout the threat that we have from ISIS, which is a group that wants to hold territory, plant a flag, and actually have a nation state.

[08:05:06] They want to expand worldwide and take over the whole world. They've got to be confronted. They have to be defeated. There is no doubt about that. But it is going to be a long-term ideological battle. He's going to talk about how to do that, how to call on our allies.

One expect from the Middle East recently told us the greatest way to expand terrorism is to create instability around the world, topple governments. That's where they grow. And that is an absolute fact. So he is going to attack the Obama and Hillary Clinton policies that have created instability in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and have created bases for ISIS in all those areas. So in a way, their policies, destabilizing their countries, did in fact create and nurture ISIS.

CAMEROTA: And I do want to get to the comments about President Obama being the so-called founder of ISIS in one moment. But one more detail about what he is going to announce today. We have heard, our CNN reporting has talked to an official familiar with the material, who says that a Trump administration would seek to bar the entry of any people who harbor anti-Semitic, antigay, or other views that don't mesh with the U.S. values. How would a Trump administration determine who is anti-Semitic or antigay?

SESSIONS: What we do when we admit people is we bring them in and we can interview them and should interview them and ask for background material. I don't think there is anything wrong with asking questions concerning whether not they can adhere to the constitutional order of the United States.

How you do that, we'll have to wrestle with the right way to do it legally and according to our history and our values. But we're not required to interview two individuals, one of whom has a hostile view to the United States, and another one a very positive view, and we admit the hostile one and not the positive one. Those are things that you can legitimately ask and should do so in a proper, carefully thought-out way.

CAMEROTA: OK, let's talk --

SESSIONS: We admit 100,000 people a year from the Middle East. That's the fastest growing area in the world. We've had now at least 40 refugees charged with terrorism. The numbers have grown in 13, 14, and 15. President Obama is now admitting 10,000 refugees from Syria this year by September 30th. Hillary Clinton wants to bring in 65,000.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

SESSIONS: We cannot vet those, even the 10,000 today. We need to slow down on that. Trump will be clear on that.

CAMEROTA: Senator, let's talk about Donald Trump saying that President Obama is the founder of ISIS. Do you agree with that statement?

SESSIONS: Oh, that's just a device to communicate to the American people the enormity of the error they may when they said they're going to topple the Syrian government, that we're protecting Christians and other minorities, bad as they were, and we've created chaos there. We withdrew all our troops out of Iraq, which it borders Syria. And that allowed ISIS to pour into Iraq. It would never have happened with just 15,000 troops in a supporting role. The military opposed that. So this is a colossal series of errors that has allowed ISIS to grow.

CAMEROTA: OK, so in other word, what you're saying that calling President Obama the founder, that was just a rhetorical device.

SESSIONS: That is exactly correct. I would use that word. That's the word I was looking for. It's a rhetorical device to communicate responsibility to put the hat on the person responsible. Withdrawing all troops from Iraq was one of, maybe the colossal error of the 21st century. We have given away a whole chunk of Iraq that our soldiers fought so bravely for.

CAMEROTA: Donald Trump said he was being sarcastic when he said it. That seems to concur with what you're saying, that it was a rhetorical device. Senator, how do we know when Donald Trump speaks what a flourish and what is the truth?

SESSIONS: Well, everybody knows that Clinton and Obama didn't meet the plot the foundation of ISIS. So yes, he stirred things up with that comment. You can say it was smart or not smart. But in a way, it had a fundamental truth to it that huge errors by our administration allowed ISIS to come on the scene in a powerful way. We've also got 6,000 troops and ISIS members in Libya, which Hillary Clinton overrode, Secretary of Defense Gates and the military, and toppled that regime, and now we have chaos, a million refugees there, and Benghazi arising from it.

[08:10:06] CAMEROTA: But Senator, what you're saying now, that everybody knows that that was just being sarcastic and just a device, is different than what his running mate thinks. Here's what Nike Pence said this weekend about Donald Trump's claim about the founding of is. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE PENCE, (R) VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I think he was being very serious, and he was making a point that needs to be made, that there is no question that the failed policies of President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the wider Middle East created a vacuum within Iraq in which ISIS was able to arise.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Senator, you can understand the confusion. His running mate says he was very serious. You say he was joking or sarcastic. How do we know -- you said it was a rhetorical flourish. How do we know?

SESSIONS: Well, if I'm unclear, I agree with Mike Pence. He was exactly correct. And that's what I intended to say.

CAMEROTA: Wait, wait a second. Senator, he was saying Donald Trump was deadly serious when he said that the president was the founder of ISIS.

SESSIONS: He was deadly serious in a rhetorical way that the failures and misjudgments of Obama and Clinton led to the surge of ISIS, and I think that's true and correct. I think it's almost undisputable.

CAMEROTA: Was he deadly serious when he said President Obama was the founder of ISIS?

SESSIONS: While he was serious in a rhetorical way.

CAMEROTA: Unserious way?

SESSIONS: I think it was a legitimate way to say that. People can disagree. But I understood immediately what he was saying, and I think most Americans do.

CAMEROTA: Senator Jeff sessions, thank you for being here to try to explain --

SESSIONS: I thought I did.

CAMEROTA: Thank you, senator. We appreciate you being on NEW DAY. Great to see you. Let's get to Chris.

CUOMO: It's what you say and how you say it. That's the politics. All right, thank you very much for that, Alisyn. We'll take a little break. Second straight night of violence in Milwaukee. Police confirming one person shot and an officer injured as protesters hurled bottles and rocks. Now, we all know this chaos came about as a result of Saturday's deadly police shooting of an armed black man. There is no break right now. I'm wrong. It is CNN's Ana Cabrera live in Milwaukee with more.

ANA CABRERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Chris. It is calm now, but things are very much unsettled still in this community, and the National Guard remains on standby. It was activated by not deployed overnight as the local authorities managed to eventually get things under control. Protestors say their unrest really is about years of oppression and racism many in the African-American community have felt here, and this weekend's shooting was simply a flash point.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CABRERA: Protests and violence erupting again in Milwaukee, demonstrators firing shots.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lot of shots, a lot of shots right now.

CABRERA: Throwing objects.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It looks like the gas tank just popped. CABRERA: And setting cars on fire. At least one person was shot and

rushed to the hospital. 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.

TOM BARRETT, MAYOR OF 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 Guard to assist police and declaring a state of emergency.

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

CABRERA: Smith's family and friends holding a vigil marked by prayers, with his sister calling for peace.

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

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CABRERA: Milwaukee police tell us they made multiple arrests overnight in addition to the 17 people they arrested on Saturday night. And now that Milwaukee and the Wisconsin Department of Justice are continuing their investigation into that deadly police shooting. There is still a lot of uncertainty about where the community goes from here and what kind of change will take place. Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: Right. And don't bring the violence here, that is a powerful message from the sister. Ana, thank you very much for all of that.

Well, members of Congress may receive notes as early as today from Hillary Clinton's interview with the FBI over her use of private e- mail. We discuss what that means next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Vice-President Joe Biden will be hitting the campaign trail for the first time with Hillary Clinton, just hours from now. The duo stumping in Biden's Pennsylvania hometown. They are hoping to win over blue collar voters there.

CNN's Athena Jones is live in Washington with more. So what's on the agenda, Athena.

ATHENA JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Alisyn. There's probably no better place for Biden to be making his debut on the campaign trailer than Scranton, Pennsylvania. It's where he was born. He spent the first decade or so of his life there.

So he's a popular figure in Scranton. This is important for him to reprize his role as the wooer of white working class voters. It's a role he has been playing since he joined the Obama ticket back in 2008.

And of course, his appeal to the working class is going to be important in a state like Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is one of the rust belt states that Donald Trump is really hoping to put into play, and so that blue collar appeal will be important.

We should remind our viewers, of course, that Pennsylvania, hasn't voted for a Republican for president since 1988. President Obama won here in 2008 by ten points, by five points in 2012.

And it's about a 10 or 11 point lead right now that Hillary Clinton has opened up for herself in the state of Pennsylvania according to the latest NBC/"Wall Street Journal"/ Marist poll.

We know that the president argued at the convention that Hillary Clinton was the best prepared candidate to be president. No other candidate has been as prepared by her.

[08:20:02]Biden is going to make kind of the flip side of that remark, of that argument, saying that Trump -- there has never been a nominee as ill prepared as Trump is to be president -- Chris.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: One thing is for sure, there has never been a race like this. Plenty of politics and policy to talk regarding the Clinton campaign.

There is new headline, the FBI could release to Congress, the notes of Hillary Clinton's interview with the bureau over her private e-mail use as secretary of state. What could those notes reveal? What do they mean to the discussion?

Here to discuss, Maryland Congressman Chris Van Hollen, who is current running for Senate and has endorsed Hillary Clinton. I want to talk politics and policy with you, sir, this morning. Thanks for being on, Congressman. Let's talk about --

REPRESENTATIVE CHRIS VAN HOLLEN (D), MARYLAND: Great to be with you, Chris.

CUOMO: -- the heart of the matter is what do you think could be revealed in these notes that would compromise the Clinton campaign further?

HOLLEN: Chris, I don't think you're going to find anything more in the notes. Obviously we'll find out soon enough. But the Benghazi hearings have turned over millions of different hours, they've gone through millions of materials.

We've had the FBI investigation of the e-mails, and I don't think there is going to be anything more to be found. And I think the focus needs to be on economic policies and what the country, which is exactly what Hillary Clinton is doing today in Pennsylvania.

And I think you're going see the trump campaign continue to unravel, especially in light of the new CNN poll that shows that Hillary Clinton is actually above Donald Trump when it comes to dealing with the economy for the first time.

So that's going to be the continued focus of the Clinton campaign on things that the American people care about.

BLACKWELL: But part of that is convenience, right. You want to ignore the trust issue because it doesn't work in the campaign's favor, and yet it does count. It counts on the level of people's trust, not just to the person, but of the system that they would be operating.

I think the concern is you had a division want the FBI, speculative, by the way. This is the theory that's motivating a lot of these lawmakers that want the notes. FBI field agents wanted to make a case against Clinton. The brass, the top of the FBI, did not. Maybe we'll see that disconnect in the notes. Do you buy that speculation?

HOLLEN: Chris, I really prefer not to deal in speculation. Think we should deal in facts. The Trump campaign has lived on conspiracy theories for a very, very long time. He launched his political career on the birther stuff, and then accused Ted Cruz's father being in JFK assassination.

I think we're all better off when we deal with facts. As you indicated, this will be released soon and people will see what's there. I mean, this has been turned over a million different ways.

Which is why Secretary Clinton and Vice-President Biden are today focused on economic policy issues and if you look at the differences between the two candidates economic plans, you can understand why Hillary Clinton is much stronger now with respect to economic policy, because Trump has got all these tax breaks that help people like, guess what, Trump.

Although we don't know to what extent because he hasn't revealed his tax returns. But his tax proposal, as you well know, it has been analyzed by independent groups, helps people in the 1 percent at the expense of everybody else. That's g/going to be the focus of the discussion in Pennsylvania and other places.

BLACKWELL: All right, let's talk about the policy. What do you see in her plan? Yes, she does argue that Trump has a tax structure that would be better for the upper echelon than hers. The criticism of her plan, it costs too much. Billions and billions of dollars that will bust the deficit, and there are deals that she may not be able to strike anyway, because it is asking from so much from a stingy Congress. What do you say?

HOLLEN: Well, what I say is if you look at the Clinton plan, she talks about paying for important investments in education, in debt free college, by closing the many, many tax breaks that currently benefit people at the very top of the income scale. We're talking about millionaires, billionaires. We're talking about people who --

CUOMO: Right. But Chris, everybody always says they're going to close the loopholes and it never happens. You know what I mean, so why would we have confidence in that?

HOLLEN: Well, I think if you take this case to the American people and you win a big election, you're going to have the mandate to come to Congress and say the American people said we've got to finally close these tax breaks.

I mean, if you look at the current structure, 17 percent of the benefits of all these tax breaks go to the top 1 percent of income earners according to Congressional Budget Office. Hillary Clinton says that's outrageous. That's not fair.

[08:25:01]We're going to get rid of some of those tax breaks for folks at the very top, but we are going to invest in jobs and higher wages for the rest of the American people. And that is something that I think people will respond to, and you're already seeing that in the CNN poll.

CUOMO: You know, one of the attacks against Democrats in general is that you take people's money and then it goes into the government and who knows where it comes. One of the metaphors for that is the estate tax.

Now of course, I think it's over 99 percent of the country would not be affected if you were to reduce or remove the cap on estate taxes, so you're really just targeting the super wealthy. But why do that?

Democrats want to do it. Republicans in general do not. Why do that, when you know, basically you're taking money that people already earned for themselves and for their families. What's the virtue in that?

HOLLEN: The purpose of that, Chris, is to be able to invest in opportunity for everybody in the United States. As you indicated, the only people affected by this are people who have estates over $10 million.

So let's just be clear what we're talking about. You have Republican presidents like Teddy Roosevelt, who would be rolling in their graves to hear republicans talking about how we need to provide people who already have millions of dollars with a head start, a super head start, when it comes to the next generation.

The estate tax provisions are already very generous. The first $10 million in a couple's estate faces no tax at all. And so in an era when you're talking about trying to make investments to grow the economy, to modernize our infrastructure, to make sure that we can compete in the 21st Century and students have the skills they need.

And they don't graduate from colleges with huge debts, my goodness, it seems reasonable to ask couples who have estates over $10 million to at least continue paying the current estate tax, rather than getting rid of it entirely.

So I'm really glad you raised that issue because I think it is another example of where Donald Trump is trying to help people like Donald Trump.

CUOMO: Chris Van Hollen, thank you for making the case for Hillary Clinton on NEW DAY. Appreciate it.

HOLLEN: It's good to be with you. Thank you.

CUOMO: Alyson.

CAMEROTA: Donald Trump waging war on the media. Is that a red herring or are we the enemy? Our media analysts dissect that, next.

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