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New Day

American Swimmers Held in Brazil; Trump Changes Campaign Managers; State of Donald Trump Presidential Campaign Examined; Interview with Congressman Andre Carson of Indiana. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired August 18, 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: -- surrounding team USA swimmers. Two of them taken off their return flight from Rio and told they cannot leave Brazil.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Police there want to question them about star swimmer, Ryan Lochte, and the night that they were actually robbed, allegedly at gunpoint. Why? Inconsistencies in the accounts. Ryan Lochte, who is back in the U.S., supposedly changing some of his sorry.

For the latest, senior international correspondent Nick Paton Walsh, live in Rio with the latest. Good morning, Nick. What do we know?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Chris, baffling, frankly, that these inconsistencies in the few number of hours since these men left the nightclub early on Sunday morning could spiral now into an international incident with search and seizures being issues, passports requested to be seized, athletes taken off the plane they were supposed to be flying home on. A remarkable few days.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WALSH: 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 Ryan 12-time medalist Ryan Lochte. Just hours after the alleged incident, Lochte told NBC News --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 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 this guy pulled out his gun. He cocked it, put it to my forehead, and said get down. And I put my hands up. 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. The surveillance video obtained by "The Daily Mail" shows the swimmers returning to the Olympic village just before 7:00 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. It shows guys coming home at 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning and shows me they're happy 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)

WALSH: Here is one thing we're not able to really clarify. The judge in her court order says she thinks the men left the club around 4:00 a.m., whereas the tourist police chief talked about 5:45 a.m. And everyone is in agreement they pretty much ride back to the village at 7:00 a.m. So there's potentially anything between one and three hour window that police are now forensically investigating to work out what happened to those men in that period of time. I'm sure statements, the three in Brazil, Feigen, Bentz, and Congor, will be giving later on today potentially could provide a window of clarity onto that.

CAMEROTA: We'll be watching those statements very closely, Nick. Thank you so much for the reporting.

Now to the race for the White House. Donald Trump installing those two new top executives to right the Trump train. So what will actually change? CNN's Sara Murray joins us with more on the shakeup. Sara?

SARA MURRAY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn. Well, right now Donald Trump certainly does not feel like the race is going his way. He was ready for a change, and that is why he is reshuffling his top aides. Not everyone is convinced that this is the kind of change that Donald Trump needs to dramatically turn around his poll numbers.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

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

MURRAY: 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 corrupt system.

MURRAY: And playing up the outsider persona and bombastic style that catapulted him on 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 and he believes he still has a chance to win. But if he loses, he wants it on his terms.

COREY LEWANDOWSKI, FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN MANAGER: 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 Republicans are wary that the appointment of combative Breitbart executive Steve Bannon as the campaign's chief executive could drive Trump further from the establishment fold. Bannon, so divisive that he has been characterized by Bloomberg politics as the most dangerous political operative in America, something Trump's own campaign is touting. Bannon even nudged Trump not to bow to the political establishment on his radio show in May.

STEVE BANNON, TRUMP CAMPAIGN MANAGER: The Trump people want to know, for unity, are you not prepared to give up on 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.

[08:05:04] DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: 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.

MURRAY: As some GOP officials urged 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.

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

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MURRAY: Now, even as some sources tell us, the latest staff changes mean we will see Donald Trump unleashed, Kellyanne Conway is adding a dash of caution to that, saying this is not the end of teleprompter Trump. We're expecting him to prepared remarks tonight in North Carolina and Kellyanne says speeches will be coming up on immigration as well as education. Back to you, Chris.

CUOMO: One of the beautiful things about politics, there are always multiple answers to the same question. For instance, the shakeup, is going to help or hurt? You're going to hear the answer to both of those things. CNN political commentator and former Donald Trump campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, important to note, he is still receiving severance payments from the Trump campaign. Also joining us, editor of "The Weekly Standard" and Trump critic, Bill Kristol.

Let's start with the positive side of this, why it is a good thing. Why is it a good thing to have somebody like Bannon with the bare knuckled Breitbart style of taking it to the conspiracy, why is that a good thing for this campaign?

COREY LEWANDOWSKI, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think what you have with Donald Trump having a new team come into place is something that he feels comfortable with, which allows Donald Trump to be authentic, which is what got him through the primary process, and I's not someone who is rehearsed. Donald Trump's authenticity is what has gotten him here and what has resonated with the American people. And what you see with Bannon and Kellyanne Conway is understanding that authenticity is what is going to actually propel Donald Trump to the White House.

CUOMO: Bill, is it new? Roger Stone, who they say is advising him, Stone says a little more than he had been recently, he ain't new. Roger Ailes as an advisor, that ain't new. Kellyanne, she has been there, except when she was smacking Trump around working for Cruz. And many say that Trumpism was born out of Breitbart and what Bannon does there. How do you see it?

BILL KRISTOL, EDITOR, "THE WEEKLY STANDARD": Donald Trump isn't new. People have watched him for a year, and 62 percent of the American public has an unfavorable of him and I think, what, 75, 80 percent say as of now they don't think he is qualified to be president of the United States. That's the problem. It's a change election.

I went through the first Bush White House in '92. I thought the first President Bush did a pretty good job actually winding down the cold war and some other things. People wanted change. They were tired after 12 years of Reagan and Bush, and they accepted Clinton and 19 percent voted for Ross Perot. In a change election you have the wind at your back. That's always been Trump's huge advantage of being an outsider. I think Corey understood it. I don't like Trump, I don't like him, I don't think he should be president, but Corey understood that when he ran the primary campaign against Bush, against the other Washington insiders.

The trouble, he should, the Republicans should win a change election against Hillary Clinton, who, whatever her virtues or limitations, embodies the status quo. But Trump so far has not crossed the bar of being acceptable.

CUOMO: Will this help?

KRISTOL: No.

CUOMO: Why?

KRISTOL: Kellyanne is wonderful, but she is not going to be shaping the message. Trump is, and Bannon, who is now joined him, is apparently a senior person in the campaign, is running a website that is cooky. You know Hugh Hewitt, he does your show quite often. He is a respectable conservative, wants to be for Trump, is for Trump, tries to beat people like me, or at least persuade people like me, don't be so anti-Trump. And I said to you, what do you think, going back and forth, and I said what do you think of Bannon? Do you read that website, "Breitbart News"? He said no, I stopped reading it months ago because it's so unreliable, it's so crazy. And that's Hugh Hewitt who wants to be and is for Trump saying that one of Trump's senior people is running a website that's totally nuts.

LEWANDOWSKI: Here's what it is. The D.C. political class --

CUOMO: That's you, Bill.

KRISTOL: Thank you.

LEWANDOWSKI: -- who have made a living losing elections more than winning elections at the Republican Party, has come out and say Steve Bannon has never run a campaign. Steve Bannon isn't a Washington inside insider. Steve Bannon doesn't know how to do this. You go through the candidates who ran in the primary process and you look at their campaign managers, every single one of them lost. You are going to go back to whose campaign that the, quote-unquote, "establishment" would have been acceptable, and what does that do? That's not what the American people want.

[08:10:00] They're tired of that. They're tired of the Jeb Bushs of the world. They're tired of those people who have been in Washington for 30 years with no change. No more money in your pocket, produced Obamacare, $21 trillion in deficits. Those people are accountable for that. And so this notion that you need to bring in somebody new that is more acceptable to the D.C. political class is completely absurd, because that's not what the American people want. Maybe that's what they wants inside the beltway, but that's not what they want outside the beltway.

KRISTOL: He is so far outside the -- where exactly is Breitbart? I think they're in D.C., actually.

But leaving that aside, I agree people want change. That's the tragedy of the nomination of Donald Trump. He is the one Republican who is able to lose to Hillary Clinton, and he is going to lose to Hillary Clinton --

LEWANDOWSKI: He's not.

KRISTOL: People will not put someone in charge of the country --

LEWANDOWSKI: You have to remember, Bill, this is not a two person race. It is just like the 92 race. It is a four race now. And people tend to forget that. Gary Johnson and Jill Stein are in this race. I would say that Jill Stein should be participating in those presidential debates. She is a person who is going to take votes away from Hillary Clinton. You just had her here on the show. She is going to take votes away from Hillary Clinton. At the end of the day Donald Trump is going to win this elections because Gary Johnson and Jill Stein are going to take away votes.

KRISTOL: With all due respect, that's the recourse of a campaign that is going to lose is hoping third and fourth party candidates are going to magically change the equation. At the end of the day 38 percent of the American people think Donald Trump should be president. He's never gotten much above that number. He's not going to get much above that number in November. And the tragedy is people want change. On the issues, you have a good piece in "The Weekly Standard," on the issues people agree with the Republicans.

CUOMO: That's what Kellyanne was saying. She was saying if Donald Trump could shape more of this and have it be more about --

KRISTOL: But you still need to believe the guy is qualified and fit to be commander in chief, and people do not believe that now about Trump. Maybe the door is still a little open to persuade them. I'm not saying the race is over. Maybe the door is open to say, hey, don't believe everything you've seen for the last few weeks and months, I really many fit to be president.

CUOMO: But isn't one of the things you guys liked about him, and you guys as a defined term to mean any of the right Republican stripe in this regard, when he goes after Hillary Clinton, everybody on your side of the field is happy, aren't they?

KRISTOL: No, I never was, because the case against Hillary Clinton is easy to make. It does not require screaming and yelling. It does not require attacking Gold Star parents. It does not require attacking John McCain for having been a POW. It does not require demeaning reporters whose have disabilities. You know what, that doesn't help the case against Hillary Clinton.

I would make the opposite point. There's such a strong substantive critique to make, in my view, of the Obama administration, of and-a- half's performance as secretary of state, Donald Trump hurts the critique. ISIS, they failed, they did fail in getting out of Iraq and not dealing with Syria. That did lead to the formation to ISIS and to terrible things happening in the Middle East. When Donald Trump says Obama founded ISIS, he is the founder of ISIS, and he repeats it for two days, it makes it harder for rational people, conservatives, so make the serious substantive argument. Donald Trump is doing great damage to conservatism.

LEWANDOWSKI: First of all, Hillary Clinton has an 11 percent when you ask is she honest and trustworthy. That's a fact. That number has not changed. That includes Democrats as well as Republicans, she is not honest or trustworthy. We've seen that she does not handle classified information appropriately as defined by the FBI director. We've seen now there are continuous problems with her honesty, with her staff, pay for play. These things continue to perpetuate.

The American people are really smart. They're really smart when they say the rise of the outsider who is funding his own campaign and cannot be beholden to the Washington special interest class who has made money both on the Republican administrations and Democrat administrations, and nothing has changed. That's why Donald Trump is going to do well and win.

CUOMO: So Trump, who, as we all know, constantly monitors this show, and we like that. We wish he would come on and make the case himself, no disrespect to you. But it is always good to have the candidate be their own advocate.

He just tweeted that "I will soon be called Mr. Brexit." Does that help your feelings about him? If he encounters and winds up gathering that spirit of what we saw happen in Britain, would than a good thing from your perspective?

KRISTOL: No, not from my perspective. I was for Brexit. I know quite well some of the leading politicians who made the case for Brexit. Why did Brexit win, actually? There was a lot of unhappiness, a lot of discontent, a lot of desire for change, as Corey was saying.

Boris Johnson, serious people made serious substantive argument as to why this would be good for Britain and would not damage the alliance with the U.S. and not damage their relations with Europe, would not hurt their economy, et cetera. If you're going to -- especially if you're going advocate bold change, you have to be thought to be a serious, substantive person. Clinton in 92, we made fun of that book he put out and all the policy papers, but it ended up reassuring people. He had all kinds of problems in 92, but you could afford to go to Clinton as an agent of change. People do not now believe you can afford to put Trump in the Oval Office.

LEWANDOWSKI: That's not true. Look at ISIS. He laid out a detailed plan on ISIS on Monday. Last week was detailed economic plan. This week was a detailed policy plan on how to keep America safe and have a better homeland security program here as it relates to police. That was done. You'll see more details again today.

CUOMO: Corey, Bill, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: Is Hillary Clinton ready for Donald Trump 3.0 and what is expected to be intensified attacks on her record and her past?

[08:15:06] Up next, we talk to a congressman supporting Clinton about how she'll fight back, when NEW DAY returns.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: Hillary Clinton's campaign continues to be dogged by questions surrounding the ties between wealthy donors to the Clinton Foundation and requests for favors of the State Department.

Joining us now is Democratic congressman from Indiana, Andre Carson. He has endorsed Hillary Clinton.

Good morning, Congressman.

REP. ANDRE CARSON (D), INDIANA: Good morning. Thank you for having me.

CAMEROTA: So, Congressman, just even today, there are these conservative outlets, Citizens United, Judicial Watch, that continues to get their hands on e-mails or documents that show, while not a smoking gun, they do show that top executive at the Clinton Foundation were asking for favors or access from people at the State Department while Hillary Clinton was there.

What do you think of that connection?

CARSON: Well, I think there is always a slippery slope of sorts when you have donors who give, and then after they give, they make requests from bureaucrats or politicians. You never want to have the appearance of impropriety or pay-to-play, but when you're dealing with human beings, things happen and we get into this messy area.

[08:20:02] But I think what is clear is that Secretary Clinton, soon to be President Clinton, nothing has been found. To your point, there is no smoking gun. She'll be our next president. It shows over and over again, despite the assertions of others that she is someone who has great integrity. She is fit to lead our country.

CAMEROTA: I think your point is interesting. There are always wealthy donors who want favors, and they think that they'll be able to extract something, and then it falls to the people who should know better. I mean, the people at the Clinton Foundation, top executives, why were they even sending e-mails asking for access or a job for somebody, or to have a conversation between a wealthy donor and somebody at the State Department? Shouldn't they have known better?

CARSON: Well, I think we all should know better. I think sometimes our impulse to either pay back a favor or to do something for someone can get muddied, and in this era of e-mail exchanges, and it could give an appearance of some sinister plot when there really isn't one.

But I think there are always ethical considerations we should take into consideration. We make decisions. But at the end of the day, we're all human being, and we should all be mindful about the ways we approach things.

CAMEROTA: It sounds like Donald Trump's campaign will continue to try to seize, they have been trying to seize on this, and will continue to do so. We, as you know, his campaign had a shake-up yesterday. Kellyanne Conway is named as the new campaign manager.

We just had her on NEW DAY, and she talked about what she sees the task going forward. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KELLYANNE CONWAY, TRUMP CAMPAIGN MANAGER: I'll tell you what Donald Trump needs. He needs people who are like him in this sense. You have to be unapologetically unflinching, unafraid of Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton and all that Clinton campaign means, because we feel like -- we feel like we're up against a major machine here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Are you worried as a Clinton supporter that there will be ramped up attacks now with his new -- the new people at the helm of his campaign?

CARSON: Well, I think that Mr. Trump's campaign apparatus has shown a kind of boldness and meanness, and if he is ramping things up to Trump 3.0, that means that he will probably be meaner, bolder, more insidious, and more direct in terms of his insults against the Latino- American community, Muslims, and other folks.

And so, him making a switch and adding more people onto the campaign who are like him, concerns me deeply. One would think that he would be at least introspective enough or objective enough to have people like any good CEO would do who have a difference of opinions, who can add to his intellectual repertoire as it were to make him better and more balanced. But that's not the case. I think his impulse is to have people who look like him.

So, we know the old parable of the emperor without clothes, we're seeing that unfolding as we speak.

CAMEROTA: Congressman, I want to ask you quickly about the issue that has become real flash point in this campaign, and that's the plight or threat of Syrian refugees. This picture has gone viral of a 5-year- old boy in Aleppo pulled from the rubble after an airstrike. And you just, you know, it's heartbreaking. You can see how injured he is, and how disoriented. He is in the back of an ambulance here, covered with the aftermath of this air strike.

You know, there are people who say obviously that Syrian refugees pose a threat because you cannot properly vet them. If their house has been destroyed, they do not have identification on them. What do you say about the people who are worried about vetting refugees?

CASON: I think the United States, FBI, homeland security, and other agencies has the most rigorous vetting process, 18 to 24 months than any other nation in the world. And so, our vetting process is extremely thorough. I think that the American people should be comforted in knowing that we have a process that is very refined. We're constantly making adjustments. But it is very refined and very thorough.

CAMEROTA: Congressman Andre Carson, thanks so much for being on NEW DAY.

CARSON: What an honor. Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Chris?

CUOMO: All right. So Breitbart's Steve Bannon is now the CEO of Donald Trump's campaign. Who is he? Why does he matter? What could he mean, both positive and negative?

[08:25:01] We have somebody who knows Bannon and Trump very well. You're going to get an introduction to one of the most important and unknown men in conservative politics, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: In a shake-up of Donald Trump's campaign, Steve Bannon emerges, a new name on the scene for many of you. The executive chairman of the conservative website, Breitbart, he has been appointed the new CEO of the Trump campaign.

So, who he is, and why he is making so many people so nervous?

Joining us now is David Bossie. He is the president of citizens United, the organization behind the Supreme Court case on campaign spending, long time friend of Bannon and Kellyanne Conway. Actually introduced Bannon and Trump years ago, I believe.

He is now the head of Make America Number One Super PAC.

Mr. Bossie, what a pleasure to have you on NEW DAY.

DAVID BOSSIE, PRESIDENT, CITIZENS UNITED: Well, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

CUOMO: So, let's talk about your friend Mr. Bannon in this context. He has conservatives nervous, political insiders nervous about what this means for the campaign. How can you allay their fears?

BOSSIE: Well, I think the proof is going to be not in the pudding, but in the eating, as a senator used to say.