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Earthquake Hits Italy; Trump Softening Stance on Immigration; Clinton Foundation Questions. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired August 24, 2016 - 06:00   ET

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

[06:00:00] CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: -- the ability of this community, this area to deal with a magnitude problem like this.

BARBIE LATZA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is a seismic area, so they are used to small tremors. You know, in 2009, there was a devastating earthquake that really just leveled lock, you know, one of the towns and not so far up the road from here. You know, they have the means and civil protection are very well versed in how to save people from these situations.

The problem though is the area of devastation and the access points. It's been very difficult. We haven't seen any heavy equipment come up this country lane yet. This is one of the roads to the hardest hit area. We can't get up there. The roads are blocked. They can't get up there either to pull off, you know, this rubble -- there are piles of rubble.

This is a multistory building behind me that is now flattened out. You still see the tomato plants in the front garden of the house. You know, this is rural Italy. You know, but what that -- what makes this area just so beautiful is what makes it so deadly, these ancient buildings just collapse into rubble and a heart bit within earthquake like this, Chris.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: We can see that behind you Barbie. Thank you for the update. We'll check backing with you throughout the program for the status of what's happening there.

Joining us now by phone is Eve Read. She's staying in the town of Monte San Martino with her family. She was woken up by the powerful earthquake eve. Tell us how you are at this hour and what you felt when the earthquake struck.

EVE READ, WITNESS TO EARTHQUAKE: Hi, yes. Still quite shaken, to be honest. I mean, we've not seen much devastation. We're in a very rural areas. We literally are quite isolated. We were woken just after 3:30 a.m. Italian time with some quite severe shaking of our beds and rooms. There's 10 of us staying here in a farmhouse. And, yeah, it was -- I guess shock kicked in straight-away.

CAMEROTA: We're looking at your pictures right now that you've taken of your farmhouse and we can see particularly in the bathroom the damage where it looks like the ceiling, part of the ceiling has fallen in and then you can also see the cracks there in the ceiling of the bedroom and the wall. I understand you have three generations of your family staying in that farmhouse right now. How old are the kids?

READ: My children are 2 and 6, and my niece and nephew 10 and 13. So, varying ages. Our youngest went straight back to sleep again after the earthquake had happened.

CAMEROTA: What about the older ones? I mean -- yeah, tell me -- what was their reaction to this experience?

READ: They were scared. I mean, I think we were all shaken. And as I said earlier, we're, you know, we're all still a little bit shaky, not really knowing what's going on. Obviously, we're very lucky in comparison to lots of people here. And I think in a way that, you know, makes it more difficult to come to terms with.

CAMEROTA: Yeah. What was the shaking like? How violent was it? How long did it last?

READ: It was quite violent. I mean, obviously, I'm English, so we're not experiencing earthquakes to an extent. So, it was a very different experience for all of us. It felt quite violent. And it lasted for probably six or seven seconds after we were awake and were awoken by it. I'm guessing somewhere in the region of 10 seconds.

CAMEROTA: What are the aftershocks like?

READ: They were quite severe to start with. I haven't felt one for an hour or so. And what continue to crash (ph) out was some of them quite minor. But you can still feel them and just, you know, feel the things in the cupboards moving. So, yeah, still around, I should think.

CAMEROTA: Well, what a scary experience, Eve. Thank you for sharing your experience with us. And, obviously, the best to your family and your kids there.

READ: Thank you very much.

CUOMO: All right. We'll stay on this story this morning. But there's another situation to tell you about. ISIS is under attack in Northern Syria as Turkish tanks backed by jets and U.S. coalition war planes crossed the border, blasting the militants from the border town of Jarablus.

Turkish jets and artillery have been carrying out shelling and air strikes targeting at least 93 militant hot spots. Turkish-backed Syrian rebel forces are also in the region as part of the operation to take back the town from ISIS.

CAMEROTA: OK. Now to the big story back home here, Donald Trump says he may be, "softening" his hard line stance on immigration saying he might be open to allowing some undocumented immigrants to stay in the U.S. Trump also using a new report to attack the Clinton Foundation. And the Clinton camp is firing back.

CNN National Correspondent, Jessica Schneider is tracking all of the latest developments for us. Jessica, what is the latest? JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. You know, the latest is that Donald Trump is honing in on his attacks of Hillary Clinton, also of the Clinton Foundation. In fact, calling it a foundation that is a business that used political clout to make advances. So Donald Trump was in Austin, Texas last night. And he talked about Hillary Clinton honing in on those attacks, but he also focused in on maybe softening his stance on immigration.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[06:05:10] DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: It is impossible to figure out where the Clinton Foundation ends and the state department begins and the State Department begins.

SCHNEIDER: Donald Trump honing his rally cry, attacking Hillary Clinton and her family's name sake foundation.

TRUMP: The Clintons set up a business to profit from public office.

SCHNEIDER: Trump ceasing in a new report by the associated press that claims more than 50 percent of the private citizens Hillary Clinton met with during her tenure as secretary of state were donors to the Clinton Foundation.

TRUMP: This is corruption. And this is why I have called for a special prosecutor.

SCHNEIDER: The Clinton campaign mincing no words in denouncing the APS report, disputing the findings in a statement, saying, "This story relies on utterly flawed data. It cherry picked a limited subset of secretary Clinton's schedule to give distorted portrayal of how often she crossed paths with individuals connected to charitable donations to the Clinton Foundation. The data does not account for more than half of her tenure as secretary, and it omits more than 1,700 meetings she took with world leaders.

The State Department also releasing a statement saying it's entirely within the law that individuals, including those who have donated to political campaigns, make contact or have meetings with officials in the administration. This as Trump confirms he may consider softening his hard line stance on immigration, allowing some law-abiding undocumented immigrants to remain in the stay in the U.S.

TRUMP: There certainly can be a softening because we're not looking to her people. We want people. We have some great people in this country.

SCHNEIDER: This is a major reversal from his key campaign proposal to round up and deport all 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But how do you do it in a practical way? You really think you can round up (ph) 11 million people?

TRUMP: You know what? At some point, we're going to try getting them back, the good ones. 11 million people in this country that came in illegally, they will go out.

SCHNEIDER: At a rally in Texas, the billionaire did not back off from another campaign promise, that wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

TRUMP: We are going to build the wall. And who's going to pay for the wall?

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKERS (in unison): Mexico.

SCHNEIDER: Trump planning to meet with Latino and African-American activists on Thursday as he also continues his pitched to minority voters.

TRUMP: I say this to the African-American community, give Donald Trump a chance. We will turn it around. We will make your streets safe so when you walk down the street, you don't get shot.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHNEIDER: So Donald Trump repeating those same lines about inner city crime that have raised eyebrows. But his campaign pledging he will continue that outreach. RNC Chair Reince Priebus, in fact, saying yesterday Trump wants to go after every minority vote in this country. Chris and Alisyn?

CUOMO: All right, Jessica, appreciate it. Thank you very much. All right. Let's discuss exactly what the implications of these Clinton calendar situations. We have Washington Post reporter Philip Rucker, CNN Political Analyst, the National Political reporter for RealClearPolitics, Rebecca Berg, and CNN Political Commentator and Op- Ed Columnist for The New York Times, Charles Blow.

Charles, Trump has a simple strategy. Make Clinton look like a felon.

CHARLES BLOW, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yeah.

CUOMO: So, we get why he's pushing this very hard.

BLOW: Right.

CUOMO: But when you look at the calendar and the overlaps of the dates, the Clinton campaign says A.P. cherry picked its calendar information. But if they're even close in terms of showing the overlap, what does it do to the standard of semblance of impropriety? Any outward appearance of doing the wrong thing.

BLOW: Right. So I think the word there is, is the appearance, right, and that's the problem that they have. That the Clinton -- the Trump campaign is looking for appearance of something wrong. What the A.P. did was look at just the non-government meetings. Many of these people would have gotten meetings with the secretary of state anyway, right? You know, one is like a Bangladeshi, a Pulitzer -- you know, Nobel Prize winner. I mean, these are the kind of people, but they also donated to the Clinton Foundation. This is the problem. Big-money donations are messy in America. Internationally, they're even more messy. And when you get -- when you're dealing with that universe of people, you're going to have that sort of problem. Donald Trump was a -- was a big money donor to the Clinton Foundation, and they showed up at his wedding. This is the sort of thing that happens.

And I think that what the problem becomes is he's going to press for 70 days this idea that there's some overlap that is inappropriate. This is what people worried about when ...

CAMEROTA: Yes.

BLOW: ... when Clinton was going into this.

[06:10:01] CAMEROTA: Absolutely. I mean, Congress was worried about this. And Rebecca, so Congress tried to set up these rules because they knew that this would be a problem, they understood the incestuousness nature of this so they try to set up rules. And in fact, Senator Lugar said you should force for any foreign contributions while you're secretary of state. They didn't do that. But it wasn't illegal.

REBECCA BERG, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: No.

CAMEROTA: Everything that the A.P. found bound and the Clinton camp is now responding to, not illegal, but again enough of inappropriate feeling.

BERG: Absolutely. So, when we were talking about the e-mails and Hillary Clinton's private server, we were talking about an actual potential criminal investigation there that she might have violated the law. But this is just the perception of impropriety. The perception that she was letting her donors have an advantage over some others ...

CAMEROTA: Buying access. I mean, that's what it feels like.

BERG: Exactly. And so, this is why when Hillary Clinton became secretary of state. President Obama and his administration urged her to create some sort of fire wall between the Clinton Foundation and whatever Bill Clinton was doing with the foundation and what she was doing as secretary of state. But she decided not to. That was her decision and her aides' decisions and their recommendation, and now she's paying the price politically potentially.

CUOMO: Philip Rucker, is being illegal the bar for whether or not something should be right for one of our leaders in government?

PHILIP RUCKER, REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: Well, it's all in the eye of the voters, of course, politically. I think this is damaging for Clinton. It speaks to the broader fear that people have of her that that the rules don't apply to her and that the donors have special access and that she would be part of the status quo system in Washington. That's the argument that Donald Trump is trying to make with his new campaign team and really make the selection hinge on Clinton's character and judgment and ethics. And they feel like if they can get on that issue base and not talk about these Trump controversies, he might have a chance to turn this campaign around.

CUOMO: And we got an interesting coupling here. You have Hillary Clinton, who, now you have a basket of examples of how the system works, right? And she's seen as an agent of the status quo. And she's running against a guy, Donald Trump, who uses that system as much as anybody so the question becomes is he the right changes.

CAMEROTA: So let's talk about Donald Trump and what happened last night. He was at a rally in Austin and he admitted that he is maybe softening his stance on deportation, that all along for the past year everybody said was completely impractical, you weren't going to be able to deport 11-plus million undocumented workers. So now he's come around. Is that politically harmful to him or helpful?

BLOW: Well, there's a lie here and there's a big one. Either he was lying the entire campaign -- the primary campaign when he was baiting the nationalists and (inaudible) about immigration or he is lying now about softening his stance and what he's going to do when he takes office.

One of these things is a lie, and it's a huge lie. And we have yet to figure out which one it is, what is the truth of it. And maybe we won't know that until after an election and after, you know, god forbid, from my perspective, it is -- he is elected. But something there is not right.

And I think the, you know, I'm not sure that his -- if his base believes that he is softening, which is another way for saying waffling, which is another way of saying completely going back, reneging on your promise, it could hurt. I don't that think that they believe it and therefore I think they give him a pass. I don't believe it.

BERG: The challenge for Hillary Clinton and her campaign, as Donald Trump begins to soften his language, even if he's not, you know, changing his stances in any sort of meaningful way, at least he's trying to sound more sensitive when it comes to the issue of immigration. The challenge for Hillary Clinton over the next two months will be reminding voters, undecided, persuadable voters that Donald Trump did hold these extreme positions on immigration for the length of this election to date.

And she needs to make the point now that he is going to hold those views in the White House. But it's very hard as Charles pointed out, because he is in the process of flip-flopping. It seems he doesn't have any strongly held views of his own on this issue, and it's going wherever the political winds take him.

CUOMO: So, Phil, this is the calculus for him on this. Somebody came to him and said, this position is killing you with the undecided and the college educated white Republican voters. It's killing you, this issue. You can't get any minorities. You have to change. And now he's changing. So what's the plus/minus in doing it? RUCKER: Well, what he's trying to do is get rid of this label of him as a racist. The associated press poll in July found that 65 percent of all Americans think that that word applies to him in some way. And that's a real problem for Donald Trump, not only with minority voters but with a lot of white voters, especially white women who are right now turned off by his candidacy, and he's trying to soften his language to do this outreach to African Americans and Latinos as well to convince these people that he's a more compassionate person, that he's not a racist person and that he would be an inclusive president. So that's one piece.

[06:15:11] The other piece is this immigration policy. He's softening his language a little bit, but he's not actually explained what this specific policy is and what he would do with the 11 million people who are here in the country illegally. I think he's going to flush that out in the next couple of weeks. That's what his aides are telling me. But to this date, we do not have that specific policy.

CAMEROTA: We do also want to talk about Donald Trump courting -- or his attempt to court minority voters. So, panel stick around. We have more or you.

Also, Hillary Clinton preparing to deliver a big speech linking Donald Trump to the controversial alt-right. That's the new term you'll be hearing. It's the political movement, the far-right movement. So, what these suggest about -- what does it suggest, we should ask about her Republican rival? We'll take a closer look at that also.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:19:59]CAMEROTA: Donald Trump continuing his speech to African- American voters at a rally in Austin, Texas last night. He's asking them to give him a chance.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: With rates of crime, with rates of poverty like you've just heard, what do you have to loss? I will fix the problem. We will fix it. I say this to the African-American community, give Donald Trump a chance. We will turn it around. We will make your streets safe so when you walk down the street, you don't get shot.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: All right. Let's bring back our panel. We have Philip Rucker, Rebecca Berg, and Charles Blow. Charles, has he won you over with that speech?

BLOW: First, we have to stop calling this an outreach to black people, because it's not.

CAMEROTA: What is it?

BLOW: It's an outreach to white people, right? And there's all it is, and every time for the last 10 days people who have been on television saying this is an outreach to black people and innocent, that is a lie, and we all know this is a lie.

CUOMO: Why is it?

BLOW: It isn't a lie, because it is the most insidious kind of bigotry. It is the kind of bigotry that says I will knock you down while I pretend to pick you up. It says that I am not talking to you, I'm talking to the guy behind you or over your shoulder. It's the kind of bigotry that says I am urinating on you and telling you do dance in the rain.

This is the most horrible kind of bigotry. And the fact that people keep asking the same question, particularly to black commentators like me, is he reaching out to black people? He is not reaching out to black people. There's nothing about this appeal that has any resonance with anyone black that I can't even find. I even looked at the largest black websites that I could find, just to see if anybody was taking this seriously. Not a single person that I could find. The thing is, only people taking it seriously is white people.

CAMEROTA: But the white voters that you say he's reaching out to, doesn't he already have them?

BLOW: Huh?

CAMEROTA: Why is he reaching out to those ...

BLOW: No. No, it's not -- No, he does not have the ones that you were just talking about in your last segment. It is the moderate ones who say, I don't want to be the one, the woman, man who votes for the racist guy. And if this guy can now change his opinion, I do want to be a conservative but I don't want to be belong (ph) with the conservative who votes for the racist guy. And now he's different.

Well, actually, he's not different. He's not talking to us. He's pretending to talk to us as he talks to you. And this is an insult to all people of color, both black, Hispanic, and otherwise because he is using us as pawns to get to you. You do not get in and out, know the guy who was a bigot yesterday. He's a bigot today. He will be a bigot tomorrow. And if you vote for him, you're voting for a bigot. That's it.

CUOMO: Rebecca, critics point out the fact that he is speaking almost invariably to white audiences while saying I'm reaching out to the black community. Is that a meaningful distinction?

BERG: Well, it's important optics, right? You have people on campaigns, who, their whole job is to make sure a rally looks the way it supposed to in terms of the message that you're trying to project. So, it does matter if you're trying to genuinely appeal to a Hispanic audience, to an African-American audience to show that there are people in those communities actually listening to you actively in person.

But I agree with Charles here. That's not what he's doing. He is reaching out to college educated white voters to try to assuage some of their concerns that he's too crass, that he's not sensitive to minorities, to women, some of these key demographics.

CUOMO: You think he helps himself by saying I'm going to help you so you don't get shot when you're walking down the street? I mean, he's basically catalyzing (ph) the entire race.

BERG: That's the question. His approach is a little -- shall we say unusual for a politician. He's not appealing to these groups in the way someone like Reince Priebus or professional Republicans might suggest.

If you read the Republican RNC autopsy, so-called autopsy, from 2012 after they loss that election, you can see that Donald Trump has broken pretty much every rule they laid out for appealing to these groups. And he's not really doing much better with this appeal. I think some Republicans maybe a little bit hopefully, would say at least he's trying and that's a step forward.

CUOMO: So Philip, how is this new language going over in terms of what do you have to lose?

RUCKER: Well, it's a categorical classification of an entire race. I mean, he's suggesting that all African-Americans walk down the street with fear of being shot. But there are plenty of African-Americans in this country who don't have that experience and don't live that lifestyle.

And so, you know, a lot of people are offended by that. One thing Trump is going to try to do in the coming weeks which we've been reporting at "The Post" is he's going to take trips to inner cities and urban areas. He's going to visit some charter schools, visit some black churches. He's thinking about a trip to Detroit with Dr. Ben Carson, a native of Detroit, who's going to show him the neighborhoods where he grew up.

You know, I don't know if that's going to help at all. It certainly is going to change the optics of the outreach and put him in these communities. But again, I just don't know that people are really listening to him.

CUOMO: So he's got a one-two strategy. He's got this let me soften myself up trying, take some of those edges down that you're referring to Charles. But then on the other side of the ball, you have the alt- right movement that's coming up that is incredibly hard acidic and often very manipulative in terms of that they're trying to do with their campaign.

[06:25:11] They're trying to help Trump. Now, also I guess were seeing the two parts of his campaign, the Breitbart guy, you know, versus the more middle minded guy, what about this all right movement?

BLOW: Well, the southern poverty law center had basically labeled all of the Breitbart site part of the alt-right movement, which is kind of white nationalist movement. And Trump goes out and hires a chief in his campaign from Breitbart. I mean, I don't know how I'm supposed to take that. And on the same time he's trying to appeal to black people and soften his stance on immigration. What, you know, I -- who's being suckered by this? I'm just -- I'm really confused about which white people in America are being sucked in by this and how -- what you're telling yourself over dinner at night and how you're making this all make sense to you. Because nobody else is -- nobody who's been insulted by this man is doing this. Nobody's having that conversation where you're saying, oh, well, maybe he's changed and maybe he's so different. That conversation is not happening. So I'm just -- I'm very curious sociologically to understand what conversation is being hand because ...

CAMEROTA: I mean, we've had some of those conversations. We've interviewed lots of Trump supporters and these are people who feel betrayed by government, betrayed by Republicans. These were people who identified as Republicans, and feel that Republicans went to Congress and betrayed them. They made them promises, and they didn't keep them.

When they got to Washington, and they feel that Donald Trump in his truth speaking or whatever, lack of political correctness, is finally somebody that they can trust. I mean, I hear you. That's just what they've told us.

BLOW: So how do they deal with this? I think, of course (ph), the one he was saying all these things about blacks and minorities, now he is saying something else.

CAMEROTA: Right. And then maybe -- I mean, Rebecca, maybe you have the answer to this, but it may be what Charles is saying that they don't believe he actually is softening.

BERG: Exactly. So, what Donald Trump is sort of a Rorschach test -- I mean, he speaks in platitudes, and so you can believe whatever you want to believe about him or you can believe whatever negative you want to believe about him. But it makes it makes it very difficult for people to pin him down on anything.

But I think what this goes back to is, you know, Charles, you're asking the question, how can white voters feel comfortable with this? Well, the fact of the matter is, college educator white voters, this is a group that has voted Republican for decades since -- ever since 1976, basically, the modern era. Every presidential election, this group has gone for Republicans.

Right now, they are going for Hillary Clinton, and this is Donald Trump's problem. He needs to appeal to this segment of voters. If he can't coalesce college educated white voters around his candidacy, there is no way that he can expand his support to include Hispanics, African-Americans, more women from Hillary Clinton. And his campaign is in real trouble.

CAMEROTA: Panel, thank you very much for all your insights. Great to have you here with us this morning. What's your take on everything that we've just discussed? You can tweet us at New Day or you can post your comment on facebook.com/newday. CUOMO: We're going to stay on top of breaking news out of central Italy. As we told you this morning there's been a very bad earthquake there. More than 37 people dead already. They're still just beginning to assess the damage.

According to the mayor of one of the villages there that have been hardest hit, he says his town is no more. We have the latest coming up.

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