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Donald Trump tries to gain leverage with new revelations about Hillary Clinton's emails. Aired 6:00-6:30a ET

Aired August 23, 2016 - 06:00   ET

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

[06:00:01] JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Donald Trump once again attempting to capitalize an ongoing scrutiny of Hilary Clinton's e-mail and the Clinton Foundation, in his strongest language yet, accusing his opponent of fostering a pay for play culture when she was secretary of state.

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESUMPTIVE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: The amounts involved, the favors done and significant number of times it was done require an expedited investigation by a special prosecutor immediately, immediately, immediately.

SCHNEIDER: Trump claiming the FBI and the Justice Department whitewashed Clinton's e-mail scandal.

TRUMP: Does it has proven itself to be really sadly a political arm of the White House.

SCHNEIDER: This charge coming as a judge orders the State Department to review an additional 15,000 e-mails and other documents. The former secretary of state did not voluntarily turn over. A development Clinton brushed off, Monday night.

HILARY CLINTON, (D) PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Jimmy, my e-mails are so boring.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah, mine aren't.

CLINTON: I mean, I'm embarrassed about that, they're so boring. And -- So we've already released, I don't know, 30,000 plus, so what's a few more?

SCHNEIDER: Trump continuing his outreach to Black and Hispanic voters, raising eyebrows with his tone, yet again.

TRUMP: What do you have to lose? I will straighten it out. We'll get rid of the crime. You'll be able to walk down the street without getting shot. Right now, you walk down the street and you get shot.

SCHNEIDER: Clinton's campaign blasting Trump's overcharge of the black community, accusing Trump of "Doubling down on insults, fears and stereotypes that set our community back and further divide our country."

This appeal to Hispanics coming as Trump's campaign continues to attempt to clarify his stance on the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants after postponing a big policy speech.

TRUMP: We'll going to get rid of all of the bad ones. We have gang members, we have killers, we have a lot of bad people that have to get out of this country. We're going to get them out. And the police know who they are.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He will deport those who have absolutely committed a crime, been convicted of a crime.

SCHNEIDER: This change coming after Trump advocated for mass deportation for months.

TRUMP: They're going back where they came.

SCHNEIDER: As for Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee forced to address unfounded conspiracy theories over her health.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go online and put down Hillary Clinton illness, take a look for the videos for yourself.

CLINTON: I don't know why they are saying this. I think on the one hand, it's part of the wacky strategy, just say all these crazy things and maybe you can get some people to believe you.

On the other hand, it just absolutely makes no sense.

SCHNEIDER: Can you open this jar of pickles. This has not been tampered with.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHNEIDER: And Hillary Clinton set to release a small business plan today outlining a standard tax deduction for small business owners, also an expansion of health care tax credits.

V.P. candidate Tim Kaine will host a round table with small business owners in Colorado today. Chris and Alisyn.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, thank you for the reporting.

Let's bring in CNN National Politics Reporter, MJ Lee, CNN Political Analyst and Washington Bureau Chief for the Daily Beast Jackie Kucinich and CNN Politics Editor Mark Preston.

OK, so MJ, this harkens us back to the early days of Clinton investigating when there was a special prosecutor and independent counsel appointed.

Let's leave to the side the idea that Trump can't call for somebody like this. This is done by branches of government, somebody maybe Congress, the judicial branch. Let's put that to the side. He can't call for one of these. What's the play?

MJ LEE, CNN NATIONAL POLITICS REPORTER: Well, no, this was a very strong rhetoric that we saw from Donald Trump last night. Now remember, this is coming after it was revealed that he's going to be postponing a major policy speech on immigration that was supposed to come later this week. I think clearly we are seeing a strategy from Donald Trump sort of focussing in on Hillary Clinton and her e-mail issues. And this is an issue that is very sort of vulnerable for Hillary Clinton and that Trump has really struggled to get the candidate to really focus in on ...

CUOMO: But what's the play? Because he calls for the independent for -- he can't make one happen. The people who would make one happen nor don't seem disposed to do that, so what does he get out of this?

LEE: Well, that certainly, you know, the next morning here we are sitting around the round table talking about this, talking about the fact that he raised this issue and that he clearly has concerns about the way that this investigation has been handled. This is a concern that a lot of Trump supporters and people who have reservations about Clinton's feel. So I think when they hear Donald Trump talking about this, it sort of gets them worked up.

And certainly as he's trying to win over independent voters and not just the folks that already support Trump and expand that base, this is a strategy that I think does help him in the long-term.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: More over, Jackie, isn't it also that if he says the DOJ isn't capable of doing investigations impartially, the FBI is not capable, the media is shady, the election will be rigged. All of these plants the seed of doubt in our government institutions and in our democracy and only he can be trusted?

[06:05:08] JACKIE KUCINICH, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, right. This is not off brand for Donald Trump at all because there is this sort of -- this is mistrust of government that he has consistently said over and over again throughout this campaign, you make reference even to the election process itself. He sort of set up this, the system is rigged huge last night. He was talking about you need to watch and make sure there's not voter fraud going on to his supporters.

So, the idea that the Justice Department and the FBI also cannot be trusted is very much inline of what Donald Trump has been saying all along.

CUOMO: So the reasonableness of what he's asking for isn't as relevant, Mark, as what it stokes and what he has going for him is that there is some there, there. There's certainly concern about the deeper implications of what's going on with Hillary Clinton's e-mail, the work at the foundation.

And now the buzz word of the day, 15,000, these documents that the State Department has to review, how do you see that number?

MARK PRESTON, CNN POLITICS EDITOR: Well, I mean, first of all, it's huge. We don't necessarily know what's in these documents. But the fact of the matter is these documents did not surface when they first handed over the first cash of e-mails to be looked at, that being the Clinton campaign to the State Department to have them vetted and looked at to see what was personal and what was not personal.

But what it does is what we've seen Donald Trump do in the last three to four days is actually run a traditional campaign. What he is trying to do deflect away anything that might be negative about him and focus entirely on Hillary Clinton.

And honestly, Chris, I think this might be one of the first times in this campaign that Donald Trump hasn't stepped on his own message. It takes a step back. Doesn't say anything too inflammatory and allows the glare, media glare to focus on Hillary Clinton and the problems and troubles that she's having. And in this case it's with the e- mails.

CAMEROTA: MJ, we have a couple examples of what's in the e-mails that once again suggest that the Clinton Foundation and State Department -- there was not a fire wall between them. And in fact top executives of the Clinton Foundation Doug Band, continued to ask for favors of the State Department.

Here's an example from the crown prince of Bahrain. The crown prince of Bahrain was going to be in town. Doug Band from the Clinton Foundation reached out to Huma Abedin, Hillary Clinton's top aid and he says -- crown prince of Bahrain "In tomorrow to Friday asking to see our -- to see her," meaning Hillary Clinton, "Good friend of ours." Doug Band says.

Huma Abedin responds, "Offering Bahrain crown prince, 10:00 a.m. tomorrow for meeting with Hillary Rodham Clinton. If you see him, let him know. We have reached out through official channels."

So again, is this a smoking gun or should -- or would be head of the State Department be interested in meeting with the crown prince of Bahrain?

LEE: Right, I mean, no doubt about it that this is a big political headache, especially coming at this point in the election.

I think what this e-mail goes to show, at least for the voters who are open to being persuaded that somehow the Clintons are not on the level that somehow they have conducted themselves in public life, willing to sort of bend the rules privately to perhaps meet with folks that are asking for a meeting with, you know, Clinton when she was at the State Department. I think these e-mails sort of confirm that, at least for the folks who are willing to be persuaded that there was something there. You were saying, Chris, that maybe there was a there, there.

I think there are plenty of people who want to be persuaded after making their minds about whether or not to support Hillary Clinton.

And frankly, I think that Hillary Clinton actually has an easy way out for a long time in this general election so far Trump -- as Mark was saying, has stepped on his own message, his own message so much when he could have been talking about the Clinton issue. He was getting into a fight with a gold star family or, you know, saying something that seemed to incite violence against Hillary Clinton.

So all of these things, I think have really kept Trump off of this issue, which he should be talking about every single day.

CUOMO: Well, I mean, look, in truth, we're giving Trump a little bit of a pass too. He had one of his ugliest twitter spasms over the last couple days that we've seen in terms of personal attacks on going after people and what he's insinuating.

But look, the less we talk about that, the better. I'm all for that.

Jackie, the reality is, this is how it works in the government. So Trump is raising a very salient issue, pay for play. Anything that you want to call it without making it a felony is what happens in government all the time. The question becomes if he stokes this fire, what is he suggest that will make it go away? How is he not another piece of evidence of this system? He says all the time that he played this game as much as anybody. So where does this lead?

KUCINICH: Well, he is saying that she's a criminal. So he's trying to say that this is a felony. And of course there hasn't been any -- that wrong doing found in this situation. But he is saying, I'm not part of this system. You can trust me because I've been forward with you. Yeah, of course I played by these rules. But I'm telling you I do it.

[06:10:02] It's sort of he's the -- he's over sharing rather than saying he has something to hide because that's been one of the messages Clintons is that, you know, that they are one of the things he's been saying about the Clintons is that they hide things. They're not being on the level. They don't play by the same rules. And he's being -- it sort of a reverse psychology. He's being so open and honest about it that people think that he is just, you know, saying what's on his mind and being completely honest with them.

But as you mentioned that Donald Trump that we've come to know over the last couple months is still out there, it's almost like one of those factories we've had one day without an accident. I think we're -- with that with the Trump campaign right now. We'll see how long he can keep those streak going. But it has -- so far it's Tuesday and it has been a good week for him.

CAMEROTA: And I'll stick around. We do want to talk about Donald Trump reaching out to the African-American community or trying to Hispanic community. We'll get to all of that momentarily.

Meanwhile, we do have other news to tell you about right now because this federal judge in Texas temporarily blocked the president's transgender policy at schools nationwide.

The judge granted the preliminary injunction sought by group 13 states led by Texas. The ruling prevents the U.S. Department of Education from acquiring school districts to allow transgender students to choose which restrooms and locker rooms to use. The federal government will likely appeal this.

CUOMO: We have more heart breaking details revealed in that gator attack at the Disney World resort. You remembered killing 2-year-old Lane Graves. New report says the boy's father did desperately try to pry the gator's jaws open, jumping on its head, punching it after the gator grabbed his son by his head.

The report calls the June incident a predatory event. It reveals two guests warned Disney employees there was an alligator near the beach. Authorities say they are confident the gator that attacked was among six caught and killed after the incident.

CAMEROTA: As you know, police in Rio say that Ryan Lochte, the Olympic swimmer was not robbed. But Lochte just lost a ton of endorsement money, Speedo, Ralph Lauren, two other major sponsors cutting ties with the disgraced American swimmer. This comes after Lochte's false claim that he and three Olympic teammates were robbed at gun point in Rio. Lochte admitted over the weekend that he, "over exaggerated the story."

CUOMO: So, Donald Trump, part of his new plan is to court minorities aggressively, African-Americans specifically. He's asking for their vote. But how is he doing it? Is telling blacks that they have nothing to lose the way to get their vote? What will this tone do that could turn voters off? We have an expert analysis ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[06:16:49] TRUMP: It is a disaster the way African-Americans are living in many cases. And in many cases the way Hispanics are living. What do you have to lose? I will straighten it out. I'll bring jobs back. We'll bring spirit back. We'll get rid of the crime. You'll be able to walk down the street without getting shot. Right now you walk down the street and you get shot. Look at the statistics.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: All right, that was Donald Trump trying to reach out to minority voters again last night at the rally.

Let's bring back our panel to discuss it. We have MJ Lee, Jackie Kucinich and Mark Preston.

So, Mark, Donald Trump needs help with minority voters. Let me pull up the polls right now of why he continues to reach out to them or attempt to reach out, because the polls are not looking good, as you've heard.

This is the McClatchy-Marist Poll. Clinton gets 89 percent of African- American voters at the moment. And Donald Trump is down at 2 percent after even Gary Johnson and Jill Stein.

CUOMO: One hundred percent increase from this poll.

CAMEROTA: That's right. So he has a chance, you're saying.

So here, this is the NBC Wall Street Journal poll, famously giving him 1 percent. Do we have any sense, Mark, of how this is going over? That this -- what do you have to lose? You walk down the street and you get shot message that he's sending out?

PRESTON: Right. I mean, look, it's dropping like a lead balloon. Where Donald Trump needs a lot of help is with his messaging to African- Americans and to minorities in general.

Instead of talking about being a businessman, somebody who's created a lot of jobs, he is out there and he says inflammatory comments that really angers folks. What's interesting too, is that Donald Trump who is known for stretching the truth a little bit when he is talking, suggested that after four years in the White House he will get 95 percent support of African-Americans. Let's just put that into context.

Barack Obama, the first African-American president got 95 percent of African-American voters to support him when he was first elected and then he got 93 percent in 2012. There is no way Donald Trump would even come close to that.

This is a bigger issue for the Republican Party, which, you know, to their credit had been trying to work at reaching out to African- Americans and Hispanics. But is having their own internal problems doing so. And then of course from Donald Trump goes out there and uses inflammatory languages instead of perhaps talking about job creation and, you know, trying to revitalize inner cities, it's a losing message.

CUOMO: Well, he's talking about job creation. Jackie, I guess the political sin here would be that he's painting all African-Americans as living in the ghetto.

Now, he did say in many, many cases, you know, he didn't say all, but this is as Mark refers a messaging issue. How so?

KUCINICH: I mean, this is not going to work. The other thing is he's not even going into African-American communities. Look at those crowds. It's all white people. He's talking to crowd -- to rooms full of white people African-Americans. Saying African-American over and over and over again in the speech is not outreach. It's just -- it's bluster.

[06:20:05] And using stereotypes to do it, certainly isn't going to win him any friends.

CAMEROTA: Meanwhile, MJ, there's another strategy that's curious that Donald Trump and his campaign have put out. He was going to give immigration -- a speech on immigration this Thursday to clarify whether or not he does believe in, you know, deportation, bans of, you know, deportation officers, sending home all 11 million plus undocumented immigrants, he's canceled that. He's also canceled the rally that was scheduled in Las Vegas on Friday as well as a later one in Portland, Oregon. What's going on?

LEE: Yeah, it's hard to overstate how not normal it is for a presidential nominee to cancel or postpone a major policy speech. We know for sure that his campaign or the candidate himself they're showing signs of potentially softening his rhetoric when it comes to immigration. We saw Kellyanne Conway, his new campaign manager telling our Dana Bash over the weekend.

She was asked directly, does he still support the deportation for us. And she said, "To be determined."

Now, this is obviously so striking because immigration has been so poor to his campaign and his message. I think this suggests that he is working to tweet the language, working to perhaps make his primary message better fit general electorate. This campaign knows very well that this hard line immigration views really do not work well for the general election population.

CUOMO: You want to hear what he's ...

CAMEROTA: Yeah, just last night he tried to explain where he is with deportation that he was on arise. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I'm going to do, if and when I win, is we're going to get rid of all of the bad ones. We got gang members, we have killer, we a lot of bad people that have to get out of this country. We're going to get them out. And the police know who they are. They are known by law enforcement who they are. We don't do anything. They go around killing people and hurting people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: All right, so let's talk about what he's doing here. As we all know, that is the current state of law, Mark, is that, you know, felons are supposed to be removed no matter what's going on, especially when they're already illegally in the country. But is this just as simple as, "Hey, this policy you have of building the wall and kicking out a faith, and all that, it doesn't work, we have to reset." Is that what's going on in the campaign right now?

PRESTON: Yeah, and look, I mean his policy prescriptions are very simple in what he says, "I'm going to build a wall." That's going to stop people. We're going to go out, we're going to take the bad people, we're going to send them back over the wall, they're not going to get back in.

Well, I mean that's OK to say that, but that's just not the reality of how things work.

First of all, he talked about deporting 11 million people, logistically that's impossible to do. Financial would be impossible to do as well. So he is softening his rhetoric right now perhaps to become more in line with most of American. Quite frankly, probably with most Republicans as well who don't see this as a viable option.

But Donald Trump now is going to walk this very, very fine line where he is going to continue to appear very strong in the idea for safety and in deportation because he has to keep the base that got him there. But at the same timed he has to try to open the door to try to get the Republicans who still have concerns about him and the Independents who still haven't made up their mind who they're going to vote for.

CAMEROTA: Jackie, he is not backing off on the idea of building the wall even if he is somehow softening the stance on deporting all 11 million. So listen what to he said, once again, last in Akron, Ohio about the wall.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Immigration security. We need to protect American jobs. We need to protect American safety.

We're going to build a wall, folks. We're going to build a wall. We're going to build a wall. Don't worry. We're going to build a wall. That wall will go up so fast your head will spin. And you'll say, you know, he meant it. And, you know, what else I mean, Mexico is going to pay for the wall.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: The crowd loves it, Jackie.

KUCINICH: Keeping the dream alive. But that's one thing that Donald Trump can't -- no matter, you know, whether or not it's possible, whether or not it would work.

I can't imagine him dropping the wall as part of his platform. It really is what -- forgive the pun -- built up his support in the beginning.

So and I think anyone expecting at least that part of Trump's speech to go away, it's not going to happen. And you have to imagine it's going to be part of his immigration speech when it does eventually happen.

CAMEROTA: Got it. Panel, thank you very much for all of that insight.

CUOMO: So what do you think? If Donald Trump softens his position on immigration, is he just like everybody else?

Tweet us @newday or post your comment on facebook.com/NewDay.

[06:25:00] CAMEROTA: President Obama headed to flood ravaged Louisiana today.

Critics say the visit comes way too late. So what kind of reception will the president get? We have a live report from the disaster zone next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: All right, you need to see this, Iraqi police removing an explosive belt from the waist of a would be child bomber under the influence of ISIS. In the video you can see the officers carefully cutting the belt off the boy after he was detained in the town of Kirkuk. There are reports the child is 11-years-old.

Authorities think he was sent from the ISIS stronghold of Mosul. Child attackers are on the upswing here.

CAMEROTA: That's incredible video to watch.

Russia and Iran say that Moscow is done for now, launching strikes from an Iranian air base against targets in Syria. The unprecedented deployment of Russian war planes raised concern among U.S. military commanders. Russia insists it is targeting ISIS.

The U.S. officials say most of the air strikes have been against U.S. rebels, fighting forces loyal to Syria's president.

[06:30:01] CUOMO: President Obama heading to flood ravaged Louisiana today to see the catastrophic devastation firsthand.

Meanwhile, people who live in the flood zone are returning home to salvage what they can and do what they do too often there, rebuild.

CNN's Nick Valencia ...