Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

Two U.S. Swimmers Prevented from Leaving Rio; Will Trump Shake- up Help or Hurt Trump Campaign? Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired August 18, 2016 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: He can hire and fire anybody he wants. He is still the same man.

[05:58:09] DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I am who I am. I don't want to change.

GOV. MIKE PENCE (R-IL), VICE-PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: He's the genuine article, isn't he?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's no shake-up.

KELLYANNE CONWAY, TRUMP CAMPAIGN MANAGER: I think he's having a great week.

JILL KLEIN (G), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I will have trouble sleeping at night if Donald Trump is elected. I will also have trouble if Hillary Clinton is elected.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Ryan Lochte. Three of his teammates robbed at gunpoint.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They pulled us over. They pulled out their guns, cocked it and put it to my forehead.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Two American athletes stopped from leaving the country.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Investigators questioning inconsistencies in the swimmers' statements.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It is a stunning story that has taken over these Olympic games.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to your NEW DAY. It's Thursday, August 18 at 6 a.m. in the East. And we do begin with breaking news, because two Team USA swimmers have been pulled off a plane and stopped from leaving Brazil. Police want to know more about the night Ryan Lochte and three teammates say that they were robbed at gunpoint. CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Why is this going on? Because of

inconsistencies that are emerging in their accounts of what they say happened that night. Lochte is back in the U.S. He landed in North Carolina, and now he's changing some of his details. How? What does it mean? Let's get right to CNN senior international correspondent Nick Paton Walsh, live in Rio with the latest.

Good morning. What do you know, my friend?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Chris, staggering. Gunnar Bentz and Jack Conger, two of those four swimmers, actually physically on the plane when they were taken off it by Brazilian authorities.

Now they, along with a third of the four men in this, James Feigen, will, we understand, be giving more information to Brazilian authorities at some point today about what has become an international incident almost, and that's the small number of hours they went through when they left a nightclub in the early hours of Sunday morning.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WALSH (voice-over): American swimmers Jack Conger and Gunnar Bentz pulled off their plane and ordered not to leave Rio. The Olympic duo detained after a Brazilian judge ordered them to give official statements because of discrepancies in their claims that they were robbed at gunpoint on Sunday night, along with teammates James Feigen and 12-time medalist Ryan Lochte.

Just hours after the alleged incident, Lochte told NBC News...

RYAN LOCHTE, OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALIST: They told the other swimmers to get down on the ground. They got down on the ground. I refused. I was like, "We didn't do anything wrong. So I'm not getting down on the ground." And then the guy pulled out his gun. He cocked it, put it to my forehead, and he said get down, and I was, like, put my hands on my head and I was like "Whatever." He took our money. He took my wallet.

WALSH: Lochte is now back in the U.S., unlike his teammates, now conceding to NBC last night that his initial statement was a dramatic mischaracterization of what happened.

This surveillance video obtained by "The Daily Mail" shows the swimmers returning to the Olympic village just before 7 a.m. on Sunday morning. The judge says it shows them seemingly unshaken and joking around after the alleged robbery. Lochte's lawyer tells CNN, "That video shows me nothing. I t shows guys coming home at 6 or 7: in the morning and shows me they're happy that they're alive."

Among the inconsistencies, the judge says Lochte told police there was one robber while Feigen says there were more. Brazilian police are now asking their taxi driver to come forward to verify their claims.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CUOMO: All right, Nick.

WALSH: A startling series...

CUOMO: You're right. This is really a startling series of events that came out of what seemed like a very obvious situation.

Now, helping the notion of these guys may have been robbed is what happened overnight. Another athlete has come forward saying that they were a victim of a theft at the games, as well. Now, obviously, one has nothing to do with the other. Everybody who knows anything about Rio knows there is a lot of this type of crime, but what's your take at this point?

WALSH: Well, a British athlete's come forward and said, yes, that they were also robbed. Unclear if it was also at gunpoint. But we've been hearing these accounts for the last months, frankly, as athletes began to arrive here.

This is a city with a serious petty crime problem. And they put a gridlock down here of military protecting Copacabana, you know, this area. Chris, it's a bubble, frankly. It's very hard for anything to go here. But if you venture out of those bubbles, yes, this is Rio. Bad things could happen.

What's so extraordinary is, you know, these men could well have been the victim of the armed crime they talk about, but somehow, the way the story has been handled and also the reaction of Brazilian authorities, who let's be honest, have a slight role to play here in trying to reassure people that there aren't men disguised as police officers running around and robbing people at gunpoint. The Brazilian authorities have been quite so stringent in their reaction. We now have these two, frankly, conflicting accounts. A bizarre instance.

CUOMO: So the question will be, well, if what the swimmers say happened didn't happen, does that mean nothing happened, something else happened? We'll have to wait and see.

Nick Paton Walsh, thank you very much. We'll continue to cover this throughout the morning as we get more information.

CAMEROTA: All right. Let's turn now to the 2016 race. With just 82 days to go until election day, Donald Trump hoping to turn around his campaign with these new leadership changes. One thing is clear: Trump will be doing it his way.

CNN's Sara Murray joins us now with more. Sara, a lot has been happening in the past 24 hours.

SARA MURRAY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely right. And Donald Trump felt like it was time for him to make a change. He is reshuffling his top aides. But not everyone is convinced that this is the change Donald Trump needs to dramatically turn around his standing in the polls.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KELLYANNE CONWAY, TRUMP CAMPAIGN MANAGER: The advice I would give him is to be authentic, because that's what Americans appreciate.

MURRAY (voice-over): Donald Trump's new campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, suggesting Trump is going back to basics.

CONWAY: People do want change. They are tired of the very corrupt system.

MURRAY: And playing up the outsider persona and bombastic style that catapulted him to the nomination, instead of sticking to the script to appease the Republican establishment.

Sources tell CNN that Trump has grown frustrated with the direction of his campaign, that he believes he still has a chance to win, but if he loses, he wants it to be on his terms.

COREY LEWANDOWSKI, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: You have with Donald Trump a person who wants to be true to himself. That got him through the primary process, by being true to himself.

MURRAY: But some establishment Republicans are wary that the appointment of combative Breitbart executive Steve Bannon as the campaign's chief executive will help turn Trump's lagging polls around. Bannon nudged Trump not to bow to the political establishment on his radio show in May.

STEVE BANNON, RADIO HOST: The Trump people want to know: for unity, are you not prepared to give up what they backed you on from the beginning? Because when they hear Paul Ryan talking unity, what they feel is going to be a collapse of what you ran on and a collapse of what they backed you on.

TRUMP (via phone): My folks have absolutely nothing to worry about. That's the way it is. I mean, I won in landslides based on what I was saying and based on my ideas and themes and my statements, and my policies. So I'm not going to go into a room and go right back to the old stuff that's not working.

[06:05:11] MURRAY: As some GOP officials urge the RNC to abandon Trump and shift resources to down-ticket races, others warn that the party needs to continue supporting Trump in order to hang on to vulnerable Republican seats in congress.

All as Hillary Clinton appears to relish her rival's latest reset, insisting it won't change his fortunes in November.

CLINTON: He can hire and fire anybody he wants from his campaign, but he is still the same man who insults Gold-Star families, demeans women, mocks people with disabilities, and thinks he knows more about ISIS than our generals.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MURRAY: Now, even though some sources say this change is going to mean Donald Trump is unleashed, he's even more bombastic than he has been the last couple months, Kellyanne Conway is adding a note of caution to that, saying she still wants to see Donald Trump talking about policy, whether it's Obamacare, whether it's how to fight ISIS. So this may not be the end of teleprompter Trump.

CUOMO: All right. Why don't you just stay right where you are? It would be awkward for you to walk up and leave right now.

Let's bring in with you CNN political director David Chalian; and CNN Politics executive editor Mark Preston.

All right. So David, everybody's had a chance to take a breath, and now we can look at this with a little bit more of a clear eye. The idea that Bannon is coming in, Breitbart is coming in as some type of new insurgent element to Trump is a false premise, right? I mean, there's much reason to say that what Trump is, what has been effective for Trump, was born at Breitbart. They were some of his early protectors. And if anything, Trump using the invective, using the insults, has muddied the waters of what Breitbart does very well, especially when Bannon is on his game.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Yes, listen, I mean, I think that the Breitbart, you know, whole presentation of the campaign so far represents the values and the point of view of the fervent Trump supporters we see show up at rallies. There's no doubt that there's a nexus there. So I do think...

CUOMO: Outsider, kill the machine, Republican and Democrat, and take deep dives on who Hillary Clinton really is based on what she is and what she was.

CHALIAN: Right. Upend the establishment and take the fight to Hillary Clinton every day. That is -- that has been what Breitbart has, the organization, has sort of injected into the campaign. And that is what Donald Trump sort of rode throughout the entire primary season.

So you're right that that's not brand new. What is giving some people reason for saying, "Hey, let's watch what the impact of this will be," is because those aren't necessarily the things that you want to do at all costs, if anything else, 83 days out from the election.

But as Sara just put in the very wise note of caution at the end from Kellyanne Conway, can't stress enough how happy all sort of factions of the party were with Donald Trump's performance on Monday and Tuesday. Very on message, law and order, national security speeches.

CUOMO: But he seems them as a bunch of losers.

CHALIAN: Yes, but it's not just the establishment folks. It's not just that. He -- he was on a message that could work for firing up the base, as well as potentially bringing in some people from the middle.

CAMEROTA: OK. So given all that, that they were happy with the teleprompter, law and order speech, what is going to change now with Bannon and Kellyanne Conway at the top?

MARK PRESTON, CNN POLITICS EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Well, a couple things. Right? Kellyanne Conway is well known, and in many ways, well-liked by the Republican establishment. She understands analytics.

Could she perhaps be somebody who is going to be by Donald Trump's side day in and day out and perhaps try to rein him in? Because as we know, whether he does it at a rally or if he goes on social media, sometimes he can go off the rails. And when he goes off the rails, that is what is very concerning to establishment Republicans and, quite frankly, many people in his campaign who are used to running traditional campaigns.

Having said that, it's not just Bannon, right, that we have to be looking at right now. There are two other folks that are part of this campaign, whether they're informal or formal. One of them is Roger Ailes, right, the former head of FOX News, and the other one is Roger Stone, who has been with Donald Trump forever. And these two gentlemen are hard hitters. They know how to play hardball. Bannon knows how to play hardball.

What I don't think -- and I think this was the initial reaction yesterday, just in general, from the media -- is that I don't think that Bannon is just going to go out there in a shotgun way and just start throwing everything they can at Hillary Clinton. He's very smart. He's strategic. The question is what are the three or four things that they are going to focus on and try to make it stick to Hillary?

CUOMO: This is a home run for Bannon. I mean, for Breitbart, they have arrived. This is what they've wanted from their inception. Not so much when Bannon was with Andrew Breitbart. May he rest in peace. That was just more about seeding deep narratives to us. But now they've wanted a stake. They've wanted to say, "Move over, you establishment people. You're a bunch of losers." Now here he is.

MURRAY: Right. And Breitbart put out a very celebratory press release about Steve Bannon's new role yesterday, but this is also why establishment Republicans are a little bit nervous.

[06:10:08] When Paul Manafort was calling the shots, they felt pretty secure that at least Paul was trying to nudge Donald Trump, you know, kicking and screaming, into this establishment lane. Steve Bannon isn't going to do that.

I mean, the question is, does Steve Bannon push Donald Trump to really prosecute a case against Hillary Clinton on things like Obamacare, on things like ISIS, on various policy areas where they see some weaknesses, or as some establishment Republicans are worried, is it going to be conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory from a presidential candidate who was one of the original birthers?

CAMEROTA: David, Michael Cohen, the Trump executive V.P. of the campaign, or the Trump Organization, I should say, was on with Brianna Keilar on CNN yesterday. She was trying to ask him about the flagging poll numbers that have gone down for Donald Trump. Michael Cohen's response was basically earmuffs. So listen to this. Watch this exchange.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: You say it's not a shake-up. But you guys are down. And it makes sense...

MICHAEL COHEN, EVP, TRUMP ORGANIZATION: Says who?

KEILAR: Polls.

COHEN: Says who?

KEILAR: Most of them, all of them.

COHEN: Says who?

KEILAR: Polls. I just told you. I answered your question.

COHEN: OK. Which polls?

KEILAR: All of them.

COHEN: OK.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHALIAN: I can't get enough of it. It's one of the great moments.

CAMEROTA: Of live television.

CHALIAN: Yes.

CAMEROTA: So I guess they're just going to ignore the polls and say, "What polls? Nothing to see."

CHALIAN: I'll tell you who's not ignoring the polls, Donald Trump. We know this. We know that the candidate is completely obsessed with his poll numbers, as by the way, as most politicians are. I don't think that's unique to Donald Trump. But we know how closely he reads and understands the polls.

And by the way, if the polls were going in another direction, I don't know that we would have seen the shake-up that we've seen this week. They're obviously making a change because it hasn't been going well. So obviously, Michael Cohen is being a loyal lieutenant, a combatant...

CAMEROTA: Willfully blind.

CHALIAN: ... with all the facts. Yes. Because you can't find polling right now -- a poll came out in the state of Indiana yesterday where he's 11 points up. But you know, the Clinton campaign is not really playing there. So you can't find a poll in a state that he needs to win over to add to what Mitt Romney had where he's up right now. CUOMO: But in most cases, the margins are lean, Sara, right? I mean,

and 83 days out. We have a clock yet? Eight-two days out until the polls open. A lot of things can change, especially if this gamble, which is, is the negative baked in with Hillary Clinton already, or is there room to deep dive more on that? If that's true, if you can take more from her, Trump just brought in the right guy to do it.

MURRAY: And it's worth noting that when I talked to Kellyanne Conway about the polls yesterday, she had a little bit more of a polished answer than we got from Michael Cohen, essentially saying, "We're not panicking, because these are the numbers in August, not the numbers in October."

And she said if you look at Hillary Clinton's unfavorables, they're very high. Obviously, Donald Trump's are, too. But if you look at the percentage of voters who want change in November, that's also very high. And so this is our moment to sort of capitalize that.

And she was saying, "We need to remind voters that this election is not a referendum on Donald Trump, but this is a choice between Donald Trump and between Hillary Clinton." And so if you truly are a change voter, their challenge is to make the case to them that Trump is actually the better option than Clinton.

CHALIAN: I think that's what's been so frustrating for people inside the campaign, because this is an argument Kellyanne has been making all along. Make it a referendum on Hillary Clinton. But it hasn't been. It's been more of a referendum on Donald Trump of late, and I think that was their biggest concern.

PRESTON: I think the biggest thing, a successful presidential campaign is a three-legged stool. Right? The first leg is your base. Right? You have to keep your base.

The second leg is you have to keep those who are within the base but have a little bit of concern about you. And the third leg is the undecided voters. And the problem for Donald Trump is, is that he hasn't convinced everybody within his party to be with him, and he certainly, if he hasn't been there, he hasn't been able to get the undecided voters.

CAMEROTA: All right, panel, stick around. We need your wisdom in the next segment, as well, as we talk about Hillary Clinton coming up in our next hour. We will be speaking with Trump's new campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway. We have a lot of questions for her. And in our 8 a.m. hour, we'll get insight from Trump's former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski.

CUOMO: So how is Hillary Clinton going to deal with what Trump's new strategy may be, and what will she give him in return? A little bit of context here: more questions about the State Department and favoritism to Clinton donors. This is the seed of what the new Trump plan will try to plant. Let's see how it goes.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[06:18:57] CLINTON: For anyone waiting for Donald Trump to suddenly become more responsible, remember what a great American, Maya Angelou, said. When someone shows you who they are, believe them. There is no new Donald Trump. This is it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: That was Hillary Clinton blasting Trump after his campaign shake-up. So how is she preparing for the onslaught of attacks about her past that Trump is expected to now intensify?

Let's bring back our panel. We have David Chalian, Mark Preston, and Sara Murray.

So David, what -- clearly, the Clinton campaign has been enjoying these past three weeks, while Donald Trump has made some missteps. But now things might get more serious with the addition of Steve Bannon from Breitbart. What are they doing to prepare?

CHALIAN: I think the Clinton campaign always believed that they were going to be in a real brawl at some point in this campaign against Donald Trump. And so I think now they are preparing for the fact that the fall might be that.

Now, take that whole Bannon and Breitbart mentality into it, and maybe some uncomfortable issues are going to start getting injected into the campaign...

CAMEROTA: For sure.

CHALIAN: ... the way that they were hoping to avoid but not necessarily not preparing for.

So I do think, in talking to folks in Brooklyn, this is not completely unforeseen. That doesn't mean it's going to be any easier for them.

CUOMO: There are also -- it doesn't have to mean the low road. It doesn't have to mean ugly. You could argue that that's what Trump has been, but that's not what Breitbart at its best -- there's no question, you know, as a frequent victim of that website, I can tell you they often go low and cheap. But at their best, Mark Preston, what she just said about Maya Angelou, is also true about her. Somebody has shown you who they are. Believe them. That is the narrative that Trump, if he harnesses the power of the deep dive, is what they can do to Hillary Clinton.

"Look at this foundation." It's never ended. It's always, you know -- it's always one after the other. That's what they could do. The question is would Trump be disciplined enough to stay on that tack?

PRESTON: Right, you know. And to that point, I think in many ways, Trump has muddled his own message from day one of the beginning of the general election campaign. And that being that, instead of there being such a focus by Republicans or by Donald Trump strictly on Hillary Clinton, it's been what is Donald Trump saying today? What is happening to his campaign? Can you believe he made this comment? Did you see what he did at that rally? Which has created this whole white noise around the campaign, which is very hard, then, for the Hillary Clinton stuff to break through.

Having said that, though, there's still a lot of days left in this campaign. And if there's is a focus, if there's a renewed focus by the new leadership of the campaign to focus on just a handful of issues, then this could be very effective.

CAMEROTA: OK. So let's talk about some of those things that might dog Hillary Clinton and have thus far. That is, of course, the e- mails, but the substance of what was in the e-mails. So there are these newly released documents. They were obtained by Citizens United, the right-wing conservative group, obtained by CNN. And they purport to show a connection between these brothers, the Chaguri -- Gilbert Chaguri and his brother Roland -- Ronald -- and the State Department and whether or not there was favoritism. So is that what -- is "there" there? Is there a smoking gun there?

MURRAY: I think the trick to prosecuting these attacks against Hillary Clinton is not to get into the weeds of exactly who -- which brothers got what and through which funnel. Like, the point that Donald Trump needs to make, if he wants to cast her as someone who's untrustworthy, is this is pay to play; this is quid pro quo. This is the Clintons, another example of the Clintons playing by their own rules, whether it was at State Department, whether it was at the Clinton Foundation, when she was secretary of state, and just hammer home that case.

Now, obviously, Donald Trump has shown that he's willing to play fast and loose with the facts. So it almost doesn't matter to him whether there's any "there" there. I think there is enough instances that will raise questions in people's minds, and her numbers on trustworthiness are so bad already, that if they decide they just want to hammer her on this, they certainly can bring her poll numbers down.

CUOMO: Also, there's something to look at here. We're talking about bringing in these new people, of what the potential upside is. OK? There's also a potential downside, because Breitbart has become such an enemy, not just of the electeds of the GOP, but a lot of the conservative types don't like them either.

Erick Erickson, who's of course the firebrand conservative radio guy -- put up the full screen on what he said: "Bannon coming onto the Trump campaign is a doubling down on crazy." And then once they put up the full screen -- they're probably not -- "It means that the Trump campaign has not really learned any lessons, does not really recognize its message, is not a winning message, and is just going to go out in a blaze of conspiracy theory and bitterness."

You were saying he hasn't solidified his base yet either. You have people who want an outsider. OK, he's probably going to get most of them with his own party. But this group matters, too. And if they see this as him going full crazy, to use Erickson's word, that's a problem also. CHALIAN: Yes. And again, I do think we have to be careful about

extrapolating too much what we think Donald Trump will do day in and day out on the campaign trail because of staff changes at the top of his campaign. That being...

CUOMO: These are not ordinary staff.

CHALIAN: They are not.

CUOMO: Ailes, you know -- Ailes is not staff, but if Ailes is more motivated on it, Bannon is no ordinary guy who wouldn't come in here if he was going to be a patsy.

CHALIAN: No doubt. And by the way, part of this is to free Donald Trump up to do this as a more happy warrior than being constrained in a straightjacket into a format of the campaign that doesn't make him comfortable. Because having a happy candidate matters.

But this is exactly what Mark was getting at. He -- we are not at the place -- Donald Trump is not yet at the place where the Republican Party is solidified enough that he can simply just add and get to 270 electoral votes. He still has this double mission. He still has to get the Republican Party to a higher level of support for him and then add. Usually, you take care of the first thing, your home-field advantage, through the convention, and you focus on the fall. He did not yet do that. So that's still a mission for the fall.

[06:25:07] CAMEROTA: My favorite part of the Erick Erickson bite is the last sentence that we omitted, which is, "We are now moving beyond a Dumpster fire. We're more at Chernobyl." Doesn't sound like it's going in the direction that Erick Erickson wants it to go.

PRESTON: Right. And certainly Erick Erickson is a "never Trumper" in many ways, you know. Will you stop hugging, you two?

CUOMO: That was a slick move. She took my papers, and now I don't know anything.

PRESTON: Erick Erickson never liked Donald Trump. He was never going to support him anyway. That is the problem. The fact is, Donald Trump, unlike Hillary Clinton, even though there are some Democrats that are upset with Hillary Clinton, has been able to solidify the Democratic Party. We're not seeing that on the Republican side. That right now is the biggest challenge for Donald Trump. It's not trying to get more conservatives, ultra conservatives to come to his side. It's to try to get all of the Republicans to come to his side.

CAMEROTA: Got it. Panel, thank you for your wisdom. Great to have you here.

CUOMO: If I might.

CAMEROTA: Oh.

CUOMO (LOOKS THROUGH GLASSES): Preston, still beautiful. Still beautiful. All right. So we're covering a lot of news this morning, and it's not just politics. Historic and catastrophic flooding still going on in southern Illinois. Now, this wasn't triggered by a hurricane, and yet it is being called the worst national disaster since Superstorm Sandy. This is Louisiana. I don't know what I said, but it's obviously Louisiana. I was up late last night. This has not been getting as much attention as when a big hurricane comes through, but it could last longer and be worse than what we've seen so far. We'll tell you why in a live report next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)