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Donald Trump Calls for Special Prosecutor to Investigate Clinton Foundation; President Obama to Visit Parts of Louisiana Devastated by Flooding; "Trump Revealed": WAPO Journalists Dig Into Trump's Past. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired August 23, 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: Clinton is also dealing with 15,000 recently discovered e-mails and attachments that a judge wants released to the public as soon as possible. We have every angle covered for you starting with CNN's Jessica Schneider. Tell us all the latest, Jessica.

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Alisyn, that federal judge rejecting the State Department's proposal for an October 14th release, saying the e-mails must be made public much sooner. This just as Donald Trump is once again hitting Hillary Clinton on her e- mail scandal, calling for an independent, expedited investigation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SCHNEIDER: Donald Trump once again attempting to capitalize on ongoing scrutiny of Hillary Clinton's emails and the Clinton Foundation. In his strongest language yet accusing his opponent of fostering a pay for play culture when she served secretary of state.

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The amounts involved, the favors done and the 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: 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 voluntary turn over, a development Clinton brushed off Wednesday night.

HILLARY CLINTON, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Jimmy, my e-mails are so boring. I'm embarrassed about that, they're so boring. So we've already released, I don't know, 30,000 plus. So what's a few more.

SCHNEIDER: Trump also continuing his outreach to black and Hispanic voters, rising eyebrows with his tone once 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, you get shot.

SCHNEIDER: Clinton's campaign blasting Trump's overture to 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 clarify his stance on the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants after postponing a big policy speech.

TRUMP: We're 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. The police know who they are.

KELLYANNE CONWAY, TRUMP CAMPAIGN MANAGER: He will deport those who have been absolutely committed of 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.

RUDY GIULIANI, (R) FORMER NEW YORK CITY MAYOR: Go online and put down "Hillary Clinton illness," take a look at 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 whacky 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.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can you open this jar of pickles?

(LAUGHTER)

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCHNEIDER: So Hillary Clinton laughing off those health rumors. She's also tailoring her message today to small businesses, outlining a standard tax deduction and an expansion of healthcare credits. VP candidate Tim Kaine will talk about those plans at a round table in Colorado. Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: OK, Jessica, thanks so much for all of that. Let's discuss it. We want to bring in our panel, CNN political commentator and former executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus Angela Rye, CNN political commentator and Trump supporter Kayleigh McEnany, and CNN political commentator and former member of George W. Bush White House staff Margaret Hoover. Ladies, great to have you here.

Margaret, let's talk about this new cache of e-mails previously undisclosed at least to the public, 15,000 e-mails and attachments. The Clinton campaign doesn't really know what these are. They think that they may have been designated as personal which is why they hadn't been turned over earlier to the State Department. Where are we with this new information emerging?

MARGARET HOOVER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Look, the problem has always been for Hillary Clinton an optics problem and a perception problem. Politics is perception. And while there have been no definitive proof points that pay to play existed or that she is corrupt, all of this sort of haggling you hear on the right, her problem is that this continues to feed this narrative that the Clintons were too cozy. Maybe they crossed the line or got very close to the line of what is appropriate for people in publicly held positions and then their own private wealth creation.

CAMEROTA: So Kayleigh, since there's no smoking gun that has been revealed, why does this rise to the level of calling for a special prosecutor?

[08:05:03] KAYLEIGH MCENANY, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: First of all, there was supposed to be a wall between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department. There was not. Instead there was a revolving door. We've seen time and time again between a Lebanese billionaire donating, getting access. We just saw The Bahrain prince donating, getting access. There's this revolving door and a lot of significant legal questions that come with that.

Why does it merit a special prosecutor? A special prosecutor is merited any time there's an appearance of impropriety. I think the fact that the head of the Clinton Foundation, Bill Clinton, met on a plane with Loretta Lynch, certainly makes it rise to the level of impropriety or an appearance of impropriety. I think the fact that the FBI recommended to the Justice Department to look into this and the Justice Department said no, FBI, you don't know. We know better than you. I think all of that merits an appearance of impropriety and therefore a special prosecutor.

CAMEROTA: Angeles, before I get to you, I know you wanted to jump in there.

HOOVER: The concern I have with Donald Trump continually asking for more supervision, first of all, of course it's diverting. Look at Hillary, don't look at me. She's doing that, too. Both of them are trying to win by putting attention on the other. The problem is Donald Trump is going around the country saying our institutions are rigged, nobody can have a fair shake in this election. So why is he going to have any more faith in a special prosecutor's decision than he does in the FBI director?

CAMEROTA: OK, you've heard both sides. For the voters and the viewers out there, do they need more answers than what director James Comey of the FBI was able to give them?

ANGELA RYE, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think James Comey was very clear about not only his condemnation of Hillary Clinton but why also it didn't go far enough to reach the level of any type of prosecution. I also think that it's rich that Donald Trump is calling for a special prosecutor to look into e-mails when voters just want to look into his tax returns. So I think it's quite interesting that someone is calling for transparency when he hasn't been transparent at all. All he does is go talk loud at rallies, at debates he's talked loud, he's bullied, and he still has not been transparent at all. Just because you talk a lot doesn't mean you're saying anything.

MCENANY: Donald Trump doesn't have a legal obligation to turn over his tax returns.

(CROSSTALK)

RYE: So even Alisyn said there are members of her team and other people at the State Department, officials at the State Department who said that these must have been deemed personal. So because you all have decided without looking at them that they're work-related --

CAMEROTA: We don't know yet.

RYE: That's my point.

MCENANY: The FBI director has said there were thousands of work related e-mails that were not turned over. She violated the Federal Records Act. You can deny it on the left if you like but the FBI director contradicted you.

CAMEROTA: OK, I want to talk about something that just happened on NEW DAY. As we talked about, this campaign has required a full-time fact checker to be burning the candle at both ends because so many facts and figures are thrown around and sometimes in real time it's hard to check them.

So we just had Senator Jeff Sessions on. He made a claim about why Donald Trump is reaching out so vociferously now to the black and Hispanic community about jobs. And here's what he said, the number of jobs that are declining, it turns out it is not true. But let me play for you what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JEFF SESSIONS, (R) ALABAMA: We've had a steady decline in wages. Wages declined again the first half of this year, 1.1 percent second quarter of this year. Part of that is an excessive labor flow, part of that is a failure of our trade policy to protect American high-paying manufacturing jobs and we're losing them steadily. So the combination of illegal and illegal flow of immigrant labor and the decline of manufacturing has hammered American workers. Donald Trump is the only person that's talking clearly about that and the only one in years that talked about that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: So CNN just fact checked the numbers that Senator Sessions there is used, and what they found is just last week new numbers came out from the Labor Department. It shows an increase in both monthly and year over year wages, up two percent. Not down 1.1 percent. It is up two percent. But this is, Margaret, what Donald Trump is sort of basing his appeal to minority voters on, which is you're all losing jobs, you're all living in poverty.

HOOVER: It's interesting because this argument that he's using for African-American voters and Latino voters frankly isn't so different from the argument that worked for him in the primary. For white, working class voters, the plurality of which voted for him in the Republican primary, this was the argument. It was an economic argument. I can protect your jobs. There was clear economic malaise that he tapped into and channeled. And I think since it worked for him in the primary, I think he's trying to extrapolate and export it to a general election.

Of course, yelling at people that they're unemployed and have no jobs is not necessarily the best way to reach out. I think also the rhetoric needs to be matched with action. So there's more that Donald Trump is going to have to do than citing false statistics.

[08:10:03] CAMEROTA: Sometimes he doesn't use the most precise language I think we know. But what his message was, Angela, was what do you have to lose? If the past eight years haven't worked for you and you're living in an inner city and you feel besieged by violence, then Democrats haven't worked for you, a Democratic president hasn't worked for you, Democratic policies have worked for you. Vote for me.

RYE: So I think there are several things that are wrong with this. Number one, he assumed that black people or brown people feel that the last eight years haven't worked for them. He's not basing that in real fact. He's basing that in over-generalizations. I think the really challenge is his campaign slogan is make America great again. When many of us hear that, that frustrates us, that angers us, because we're trying to figure, what year are you talking about where America was so great?

CAMEROTA: Some people don't want to go back.

RYE: Absolutely. I think it's a real challenge.

CAMEROTA: Kayleigh, let me give you the last word. What do you think about whether or not this is an effective strategy for black and Latino voters?

MCENANY: Well, I think the numbers don't lie. Tavis Smiley, a liberal black commentator, has said that the Obama administration has failed the black community on every economic indicator. That being said, 90 percent of Donald Trump's speech was not, what do you have to lose? It was, what do you have to gain. He talked about the African- American community, how much they've given us. They fought in every war. They lifted the national conscience. They're small business owners. And his policies are the best or this community, school choice, trade policies. That was 90 percent of Donald Trump's speech.

You can focus on the one sound bite, and 90 percent of his speech --

(CROSSTALK) HOOVER: The hardest part of the "what do you have to lose part," especially from a white Republican on the side, hearing Donald Trump say that, it's like, you guys and I weren't old enough to live and survive the segregated south, but he was. The African-American community especially in this country, especially in recent history has had a very difficult time. And so to suggest that simply one person can right all those wrongs, it is at best historically --

RYE: He's not acknowledging them, Margaret. He doesn't even properly acknowledge them. So if you don't even realize what actual history says and how that impacts communities, you can't help that community.

CAMEROTA: Panel, thank you very much. Great to have all of you here.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, so today President Obama is going to get to see Louisiana's catastrophic flooding firsthand. His visit comes as people who live in the flood zone are being allowed back home to see what they have left. CNN's Nick Valencia is live in hard hit Denham Springs just outside Baton Rouge. Nick, what's the situation?

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Chris. We're about five hours away from U.S. President Barack Obama touching down here in Louisiana. He's expected to tour east Baton Rouge Parish, heavily affected areas over there, here in Livingston Parish, perhaps the hardest hit area throughout all of this major flooding. Heavy rains about ten days ago brought major flooding in rand around Baton Rouge. And we got a sense of how bad it is here.

Homes are just now drying out. Homes like that of Todd Critchel (ph) who has lived here for 32 years through hurricane and severe weather, but nothing, he says, as bad as this. Up to seven feet of water in his residence alone. He says perhaps what hurts him the most is he lost a family bible that dates back to the 1800s, a couple classic cars, some other prized possessions. But he is really just now beginning to get a scope of the damage.

Back to President Obama's visit here, he has received tremendous criticism, even an op-ed in the local newspaper, for not cutting his vacation in Martha's Vineyard last week short. During that time we did see a trip from Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, secretary of state, former secretary of state and current Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton also expected to come here, no specific plans given just yet. Right now, though, people here focusing on the cleanup. Schools remain closed. Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: Nick, thank you so much for the update from there.

There's a political fight in Florida over funds to combat the Zika virus. Governor Rick Scott said that Miami-Dade County is getting an additional $5 million in state funding. That's on top of the $26.2 million it got from the state in June. Meanwhile Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz is urging the Republican controlled House and Senate to pass a funding bill meeting the president's nearly $2 billion request. That funding was struck down along party lines six months ago. CUOMO: In today's NEW DAY new you, the FDO approving the first of its

kind screening test to assess brain function after TBI, traumatic brain injury, or immediate post-concussion assessments and cognitive testing. All of this is designed to help doctors properly evaluate head injuries and possible concussions.

The adult test for people that's 12 to 59 years in age, that runs on a laptop. The pediatric version runs on an iPad and can be given to kids as young as five. Remember, just a few years ago, people wrote off this entire area of science. Now they're just starting to know what we don't know.

[08:15:00] CAMEROTA: Right. It sounds like that would be really helpful to help assess what the brain injury is as well.

There's a new book compiled by the "Washington Post" journalists and it takes a close look at who Donald Trump is and just where he came from. We will speak with the book's authors next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: Donald Trump responding to a new book giving an in-depth look into his past from his ancestry all the way up to the convention. It's called "Trump Revealed, An American Journey of Ambition, Ego, Money and Power."

It compiles the work of more than two dozen "Washington Post" reporters and researchers. Joining us now the co-authors of the book, senior editor of the "Washington Post," Marc Fisher, and investigative political reporter for the "Washington Post," Michael Kranish.

Gentlemen, thank you very much. He responded. Surprised? Of course, not. Here's a tweet about your book, "The "Washington Post" quickly put together a hit job book on me comprised of copies of some of their inaccurate stories. Don't buy it, boring!"

[08:20:10]Well, our publisher has already I'm sure sent a nice big huge fruit package over to his office in thanks for this lovely tweet.

CUOMO: So here's something we're dealing with, which is there is a supposition of unfairness in criticism. Criticism is now equated with bias in what we're dealing with in this election. How do you take that on in the book?

MARC FISHER, SENIOR EDITOR, "THE WASHINGTON POST": It's not criticism. It's reporting. Reporting looks into every aspect of a life. When someone is running for president -- and this is the first candidate to run for president since Dwight Eisenhower who has not previously held political office.

And so Americans need to know before they go to the polls, who is this man? What makes him tick? Where did he come from? What does he really believe? What's at his core? That's what we set out to do in a very compressed time with a couple of dozen reporters looking at every aspect of his life and looking at it fairly and with rigor. CUOMO: You know what's interesting or one of the things actually, Mike, that's interesting and how you did this was there does seem to be a through thread from childhood in terms of what he was around, what he wanted, what he was exposed to and how it manifested itself in the man we see today. How so?

MICHAEL KRANISH, INVESTIGATIVE POLITICAL REPORTER, "THE WASHINGTON POST": That's right. He did talk to us and other reporters for about 20 hours about this book. Despite his tweet, it's not a collection of stories. It's a full biography. We really tried to give him a full even treatment.

You do see patterns in his life. He said last week, I don't want to pivot because people need to see the real me. What we find really is that he has been a great practitioner of the pivot. He changed party registration seven times.

So he has pivoted a lot on positions and party affiliations and this is something that he has mastered really because he wanted to run for office. He talked about running for governor, for mayor of New York City.

And we asked him what do you say to people who say you don't have core beliefs given your changes? He responded, well, I was a business person. I needed to keep friends in government.

So we look at it through that prism and the question today is, are the pivots who he really is or is where he ended up today the person he is?

CUOMO: You know, one of the interesting things about this book is somebody who has investigated Trump in the past is that we often get tangled up in questions you can't answer about him, how much money he has. You actually deal with things you can answer in this book, which are motivational things. You get to it. What do you think people will learn, Marc, about what his motivations are in this election because they come under so much scrutiny?

FISHER: You know, he's a complex man. There's a caricature of him as this simply guy, who is just a plain spoken, man of the people. He's actually a pretty complicated character. I think he is a man who was brought in a cold and distant home.

He's someone who has been searching I think for love and companionship throughout his entire life. He obviously has an enormous unbridled ego. I think part of that comes from this idea where he did grow up in this distant family.

His father was a real estate developer here in New York. He fell into the same business but had a very distant relationship until that time in his mid-teens when he was able to go in and spend time with his father and learn the family business.

And that's what he is all about, that work, his father told him from an early age you can't be a nothing, you have to be something. He has taken this and blown it up into this need to achieve at the biggest level in every platform.

CUOMO: Mike, how formative in his public persona was this Roy Cohen relationship, this idea of being under the wing of a guy who would fight even whether or not there was any point in it, Roy Cohen was a fighter to the end. And the idea, that mentality to Donald Trump that this is what you do, when offended, offend back. When you are attacked, attack twice as hard.

KRANISH: Well, I think one of the keys to understanding Donald Trump is that in 1973 the federal government sued Donald Trump and his father and their company for not renting to blacks. The government found out through testing that the Trump company would turn away blacks.

They'd have a broad sheet that says c for color. They are number nine for blacks. The government sued the Trumps. Donald Trump was very upset about this. After all the government had sued his father. He felt very protective in the situation.

He had to decide do I settle or fight? One night he is in a night club in New York City, he runs into Roy Cohen, who is Senator John McCarthy's lawyer and Cohen tells him fight like hell, when you're hit, hit back ten times harder.

Cohen filed $100 million counter-claim against the federal government, immediately tossed out. Eventually after two years they settled the case. But Trump had imbued this philosophy. The idea that you're going to fight.

He has retained this animus against the federal government because this lawsuits, he feels to this day was unfair that he was accused of racial bias. So it is one of the defining characteristics of his career.

CUOMO: Going through the book -- again, I'm not your base reader for this book because I've been dealing with it for so long. But it reminds you how much you don't know, even the personal insights of this man who everyone thinks they know.

[08:25:05]The idea that he is not a reader as we often find in the business of these people who want to be president. They've studied every other president. Not him. He's not a big friend person. He only really counts his kids, which is kind of at once sad, but also really endearing as the people in his life who are his friends.

FISHER: I asked him, as you're preparing to be president, are you reading up on the presidents you most admire? He said, you know, I've always wanted to read a political biography, but I never have. He's not someone who spends time reading.

I asked him, how would you make decisions as president? And he doesn't want memos. He doesn't want reports. He truly believes in his gut instinct. He wants people to come in, give him a quick oral briefing and he's going to decide based on how he feels.

How he feels is a big thing for Donald Trump. It's also true that, I asked him about, who do you turn to when a tough moment in your life, when you're in an emotional crisis?

He said, well, I don't have friends the way most people define them. You know, somebody you go out to dinner with. I've never had that. I said who would you turn to in trouble?

And he said, it's my kids. It's interesting because his kids didn't have much of a relationship with him. They lived with their mothers through most of their early life. It was only like Donald with his father only in the teens when they came in and learned the business and they really bonded.

CUOMO: Marc Fisher and Michael Kranish are here. They are the co- authors of this book "Trump Revealed," however, a team of "Washington Post" reporters were on it. Thank you very much for a look inside -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: All right, Chris, Donald Trump says the political system is rigged. So we're bringing in our own Michael Smerconish, who has something to say about that. He is next.

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