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Trump is Ready to Make his General Election Pivot; Clinton is Now Responding to Trump's Immigration Flip-Flop. 6-6:30a ET.

Aired August 25, 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] POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Also responding to questions about the Clinton Foundation, and Trump calling her a bigot. We have it all covered this morning.

Let's start with Sara Murray in Tampa, Florida. Good morning Sara.

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: Good morning, Poppy. Well, it seems like Trump is finally ready to make this general election pivot. He's watering down his formerly hard lime language on immigration as he tries to make this appeal to minority voters. But Hillary Clinton, she's not having any of it, spending her day today trying to paint Donald Trump as an extremist right-wing candidate.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: They'll pay back taxes. They have to pay taxes. There's no amnesty. But we work with them.

MURRAY: Donald Trump suggesting a major reversal on the hard line immigration proposal he's touted since the start of his campaign.

TRUMP: Everybody agrees we get the bad ones out, but when I go through and I meet thousands and thousands of people on this subject, and I've had very strong people come up to me, really great, great people come up to me, and they've said, Mr. Trump, I love you, but to take a person that's been here for 15 or 20 years and throw them and their family out, it's so tough. I mean, I have it all the time. It's a very, very hard thing.

MURRAY: Backtracking on his tough talk of using a deportation force to round up and deport 11 million undocumented immigrants.

TRUMP: I would get people out, and I would have an expedited way of getting them back into the country so they can be legal. They're illegal immigrants. They got to go out. At some point we're going to getting them back the good ones.

MURRAY: Now he appears to be considering deporting those with criminal records while allowing other undocumented immigrants who pay back taxes to stay in the country. Remarkably similar to the plans his Republican opponents pushed during the primary.

SEN. MARCO RUBIO, (R) FLORIDA: I don't think you're going to round up into 4-12 million people. JEB BUSH, (R) FORMER GOVERNOR OF FLORIDA: You pay taxes. You don't receive federal government assistance. You earn legal status, not citizenship.

MURRAY: Plans that Trump criticize back when he was fighting to win the Republican nomination.

TRUMP: They're weak people. Marco Rubio is in favor of amnesty.

MURRAY: Trump's minority voter outreach inspiring him to lob one of his sharpest attacks against his opponent.

TRUMP: Hillary Clinton is a bigot who sees people of color -- only as votes, not as human beings worthy of a better future.

MURRAY: As Clinton turns the line of attack around on Trump, previewing the Trump takedown she's set to deliver in Reno today.

CLINTON: He is taking a hate movement mainstream. He's brought it into his campaign. You know, someone who's questioned the citizenship of the first African-American president who has courted white supremacists, who has been sued for housing discrimination against communities of color -- is someone who is, you know, very much peddling bigotry and prejudice and paranoia.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MURRAY: Now, speculation has been whirling for nearly a week about just how far Donald Trump is going to go in moderating his immigration language and how far he'll go in changing his policy. We're now learning that he's expected to deliver an address on immigration next week in Phoenix, Arizona. That was supposed to happen this week, but it was postponed. Poppy?

HARLOW: All right. Big day ahead for that speech week. Sarah, thank you so much live for us in Tampa.

Also, Hillary Clinton is now responding to Trump's immigration flip- flop. She spoke with our very own Anderson Cooper. This is her first national news interview in nearly a month. She takes on a number of topics, including the e-mail saga that's been haunting her campaign.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Let me ask you, according to "The New York Times" report, you told FBI investigators that former Secretary of State Colin Powell advised you to use a personal e-mail account. His response to that this past weekend was reportedly, "Her people are trying to pin it on me." "The truth is, she was using," he's talking about the private e-mail server, "for a year, before I sent her a memo telling her what did I," he's talking about the private e-mail account. Did you say that to FBI investigators? And is Secretary Powell right, were you using this private e-mail server prior to your conversation with him?

CLINTON: Well, look, I have the utmost respect for Secretary Powell. And he was incredibly gracious and helpful after I was nominated and before I took the job. I appreciated the time he took when I was preparing to become secretary. And I valued his advice. I'm not going to relitigate in public my private conversations with him.

I've been asked many, many questions in the past year about e-mails. And what I've learned is that when I try to explain what happened it can sound like I'm trying to excuse what I did. And there are no excuses. I want people to know that the decision to have a single e- mail account was mine. I take responsibility for it. I've apologized for it. I would certainly do differently if I could.

[06:05:09] But obviously, I'm grateful the justice department concluded there was no basis to pursue this matter further. And, I believe, the public will be and is considering my full record and experience as they consider their choice for president.

COOPER: Donald Trump is now indicating he would allow some illegal immigrants to remain in the country. Early on, during the primaries, you well know he talked about 11 million undocumented immigrants, they all have to get out, the good ones can come back in, in his words. He's now told Fox News he would work with people if they paid back taxes. He says that's not amnesty. They wouldn't get a path to citizenship. What do you make what appears to be quite a big shift by him on this if this, in fact, is his policy moving forward?

CLINTON: Well, you know, my understanding is that the comment you just referred to was the third different position he took yesterday on immigration. Somebody has told him, I guess, the latest people that he is consulting, how damaging his statements have been, how terrible his deportation plan is, how offensive his views on immigrants have been from the very first day of his campaign. So, he's trying to do, you know, kind of a shuffle here.

But I think, we need to look at the entire context. We need to believe him when he bullies and threatens to throw out every immigrant in the country. And, certainly, when he changes his position three times in one day, it sends a message that it's just a desperate effort to try to land somewhere that isn't as, you know, devastating to his campaign as his comments and his positions have been up until now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Very interesting there. So some progress in terms of how Clinton wants to deal with the situation of this e-mail server in the first place and then some finesse points on politics as well.

HARLOW: Interesting the most clear comment she's made on this e-mail saga in 17 months was on the phone.

CUOMO: Doesn't change the facts, but does deal with her personal responsibility. Let's bring back Sara Murray and lets bring in CNN Political Analyst, the Presidential Campaign correspondent for "The New York Times" Maggie Haberman and Political reporter for "the Washintong Post" Philip Bump. Let's begin with immigration here because, you know, I understand why people like to be very careful when they're going to criticize a Trump position because we all know what he does when he gets criticized, but how do you look at what he's doing now with immigration as anything other than someone like a Kellyanne Conway or other people what that saying you're losing because people think you're a bigot and a racist on immigration, right or wrong you need to soften and sound like everybody else who's being reasonable. So now he's doing that.

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Certainly in the language he is doing that. To your point, it's not just that he criticizes you, but he actually well then say, I didn't really say that because often what he says is so vague that you're trying to sort of, you know, pin him down.

CUOMO: He said we'll work with them. I've never heard him say that.

HABERMAN: No, he said we will work with them. He said he hears from people around the county whose have been here 20 years, are you going to send me back? I mean, that is the language of people who favor not deporting people. And it's impossible to get away from the fact he's stopped talking about a deportation force. That was a big thing during the primaries. He still talks about a wall. His still does all of that.

HARLOW: Right.

HABERMAN: Right, but this is certainly a rhetorical sheet. I don't know that it undoes 15 months of comments. But it certainly as rhetorical stuff.

HARLOW: Well, even Kellyanne Conway in her interview here on CNN said TBD to Dana Bash on deportation force when pressed on it. I think it's important to look at though whether this broadens his base, right? Or does this alienate his, you know, go-hard supporters enough to push them not to go to the polls, they're not going to go to Clinton, but not go to the polls in droves like he needs. Not to mention if you're Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush this morning, you're beyond annoyed.

Let's listen to how similar Trump sounds to them in the primary.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUBIO: If you're a criminal alien, no, you can't stay. If you're someone that hasn't been here for a very long time, you can't stay. I don't think you're going to round up and deport 11 million people.

BUSH: You come out from the shadows. You receive a provisional work permit. You pay taxes. You don't receive federal government assistance. You learn English. You earn legal status, not citizenship.

TRUMP: They'll pay back taxes. They have to pay taxes. The bad guys are out of here. Now, that one we agree on. But to take a person that's been for 15 or 20 years and throw them and their family out, it's so tough.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Can he make this work for him, Philip? Can he convince people that he has learned, he has been educated through this process after winning the primary and now he has a more full picture?

PHILIP BUMP, POLITICAL REPORTER, WASHINGTON POST: I don't think he has a choice but to try. I mean, if you look at the most recent "Washinton Post"/ABC News poll, one-fifth of Republican men and one-quarter of Republican women think he's bigoted or sexist, which is remarkable. Those are within his own party.

[06:10:06] Clearly what he's trying to do is bring those Republican back into the fold. I think by echoing someone like a Jeb Bush that seems like generally a good way to do it, but the problem is he's been saying this for 15 months. He's been talking about this for a long time.

And people now have to decide if the 15-month Donald Trump is the one they're going to listen to or the two-month Donald Trump. I don't think this is going to hurt his core base of support. I think they're going to be loyal and they're going to stick with him. I don't know that people are going to be convinced by this last-minute conversion.

CUOMO: Well, it's an open question. Let's bring in Sara Murray. You're out there on the hosting. You see the response of people at the rallies. What's the risk? The risk to being reasonable, which is what he's being on this issue. It's where all reasonable minds have wound up. You can't deport 11 million people, may not be humane, may certainly not feasible.

But does it alienate those who are hard line Trump supporters because they love what he was calling strength in the beginning, that everybody's got to go and we'll get them out, we'll throw them right over this big wall that Mexico's going to pay for. Have you noticed any softening and their support?

MURRAY: Well, I don't think it alienate them for two reasons. One, one of the phenomenons we've notice about Trump supporters that because as Maggie was point out. He take all these different positions, he's very vague. As they sort of look for the points that they like and they ignore the points they don't like. And they say, no, this thing Donald Trump said about the wall, that's what he really means. And he's just softening his language, but he's not softening his policy.

The second notice, if you are a true hard line immigration voter, you're not seeing Hillary Clinton and seeing a better alternative there. You'll still stay with Donald Trump.

Now, the question is not whether he loses them in a flop to another candidate. The question is whether they don't show up in the same kind of force he was hoping to. But I have to agree with Philip that at this point, he doesn't really have another option. He needs to expand his base of support one way or another. That's the message he's getting from Kellyanne Conway. This is one way for him to try to do it. HARLOW: All right, so let's turn to Hillary Clinton. Because big interview with Anderson Cooper last night. She hasn't given, a national network interview in almost a month. And she gave, arguably, Maggie, her most clear direct I'm sorry answer to the e-mails. You just heard it in the piece.

But she said, you know, whenever I try to explain, it sounds like an excuse. And she said, there are no excuses, I apologize. It has been, what, 17 months since that press conference at the United Nations. Does it matter now, or is it too late?

HABERMAN: I think it would have been more helpful to her and her campaign aides if she had said this a year ago, either at that press conference or when it was revealed that the FBI was looking at what had happened with the server. I think at any point prior to now. Look, it's better late than never, obviously.

And I think what her folks are looking toward is not just sort of staunching this as an issue, but they're looking at trying to get her in a certain head space heading into the debate. She's going to get pushed on this at the debate, on September 26 on Long Island. And the more she can have an answer that sounds both credible, authentic, actually contrite when she gets pushed, because Trump is going to get in her face on that so in moderator.

CUOMO: She's in a little bit of a fix on these types of issues. We're seeing it with the foundation e-mails. Look, I did Joel Benenson, her strategist tested him very hard on this, because the standard is not illegality. It's semblance of impropriety, an outward appearance that maybe there could be a conflict. That's unsatisfying to people because they want proof. This was wrong, this was not wrong.

But this is about appearances. At the same time, Clinton knows people go after her with unique zeal. These foundation e-mails is a good piece of proof of that. You can't show quid pro quo. You can't show that a law was broken. You can't show that somebody got something because they gave money to her other than a meeting that they probably would have gotten otherwise, and yet days of coverage. That'll lock a candidate up. Look at Trump. He's getting a taste of that on immigration. He flip-flops like that.

BUMP: Yeah, I mean, the interesting thing about the foundation is what the new report from the A.P. reveals is really how D.C. works, which is the Clintons know all these people. And they all give money to her foundation. And it's a lot of them are international actors. A lot of them want to do business with the state department. And it's this cozy D.C. insider relationship, which is not illegal.

And you're exactly right. There's no proof that anything illegal happened and it's somewhat being blown out of proportion. But it's also what people hate about D.C. You know one of the challenges Hillary Clinton has that she's been in politics so long, that has so many of these relationships. And she is somewhat inside D.C.

HARLOW: But it's a lens public to look through and see how she will be as president in the White House, right? It's her lens on how she dealt with the foundation and e-mail.

BUMP: Right. No, that's also true that, you know, I mean and that's the question that it raises for folks. Is that the sort of person I want in the White House. A lot of people say yes. A lot of people say no.

HARLOW: Thank you, guys.

CUOMO: Maggie, Sara our there, thank you very much. Mr. Bump, good to have you on the show. In fact, stick around. We have more we want to talk to you about. Get your free coffee.

Later this morning, we're going to talk to Trump's campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway. She's in the news a lot. She's trying to soften the image. She's trying to do more than a campaign manager usually does. How is it going? We'll check in with her at 8:00.

[06:14:57] HARLOW: Also, up next, we're going to hear more of Anderson's interview with Hillary Clinton, including her strong response to Donald Trump's attack on the Clinton foundation. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: Hillary Clinton fired up, defending the Clinton foundation. The Democratic presidential candidate digging in, calling Donald Trump's blistering pay-for-play accusations nothing short of absurd. Here's what she told CNN's Anderson Cooper.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: And he also said today "That you sold favors and access in exchange for cash from people who donate to the Clinton Foundation." Now, I know you point to the life saving work for the foundation that the foundation's done over the years, getting low cost HIV drugs and other things. I know you denied the charges that Mr. Trump is making there. But at the very least, there is an appearance of a conflict of interest for the foundation. You've agreed to make if you're elected. Why not just make those changes now? Have your husband step away from the foundation now?

CLINTON: Well, first, what Trump has said is ridiculous. My work as secretary of state was not influenced by the outside forces.

[06:20:09] I made policy decisions based on what I thought was right that keep Americans safe and to protect U.S. interests abroad. No wild political attacks by Donald Trump is going to change that.

And in fact the State Department has said itself that there is no evidence of any kind of impropriety at all.

Now, I think it's important to recognize that the foundation which does do life-saving work, and is so well-respected here in our country and around the world has been doing this work for a number of years. And in 2009, they took steps that went above and beyond all legal requirements and, indeed, all standard requirements followed by every other charitable organization, voluntarily disclosing donors, significantly reducing sources of funding, even to the point of, you know, of those funding being involved in providing medication to treat HIV/AIDS.

And I think that the announcements that the foundation has made really reflect its desire to continue as much of its important work as possible, but to do it in a way that provide great disclosure. And although, none of this is legally required, the steps go further than the policies that were in place when I was secretary of state.

And it's important to remember, Anderson, the foundation is a charity. Neither my husband nor I have ever drawn a salary from it. You know more about the foundation than you know about anything concerning Donald Trump's wealth, his business, his tax returns. I think it's quite remarkable. His refusal to release his tax returns is even more ...

COOPER: Well, let me ask.

CLINTON: ... concerning. Even the recent news that his business are hundreds of millions of dollars in debt to big banks, including the state-owned Bank of China and business groups who are tied to the Kremlin.

COOPER: Why was it OK for the Clinton Foundation to accept foreign donations when you were secretary of state but it wouldn't be OK if you were president?

CLINTON: Well, what we did when I was secretary of state, as I said, went above and beyond anything that was required, anything that any charitable organization has to do. Now, obviously, if I am president, there will be some unique circumstances and that's why the foundation has laid out additional ...

COOPER: But didn't those unique circumstances exist when you were secretary of state?

CLINTON: ... if I am elected.

COOPER: Didn't those unique circumstances exist ...

CLINTON: No, no. And, you know, look, Anderson, I know there's a lot of smoke and there's no fire. This A.P. report, put in it context, this excludes nearly 2,000 meetings I had with world leaders, with countless other meetings with U.S. government officials when I was secretary of state. It looked at a small portion of my time.

And it draws a conclusion and made a suggestion that my meetings with people like the late great Elie Wiesel or Melinda Gates or the Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus were somehow due to connections with the foundation instead of their status as highly respected global leaders. That is absurd.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: All right. Let's bring back in our panel to talk about it. Maggie Haberman and Philip Bump back with us, reacting to the news, that interview.

Maggie let me start with you. No one is questioning the good work of the foundation, that they're just not. But when she says, OK, the rules will need to change if I'm president, but they didn't need to change when I was secretary of state. And then when Anderson pressed her on that, she said basically, well, I went above and beyond in 2009.

You know why she went above and beyond? Because never before there been a situation like that. And that's not a direct answer to the question. I wonder if you think that's enough for the voter.

HABERMAN: I don't think it's enough for the voter, and I don't think it's enough for what's going to happen over the next eight weeks terms of the debate and in terms of whatever future interviews she faces. The fact she did this interview at all is the suggestion that what Trump is doing, however unrealistic, is getting call for a special prosecutor which she's been doing for several days now, is getting through the people.

And I think Anderson asked the exact right question, which I if this is not going to be OK when you're president, why was it okay before. And she doesn't have a great answer.

HARLOW: Well, actually why not stop now?

HABERMAN: Right, or why not stop now.

HARLOW: Why not start on unwinding now?

HABERMAN: There are no great answers to this. It is true that the foundation does good work, but it also -- there's an enormous amount of defensiveness on the part of the Clinton about this and has been for many, many years about what are legitimate questions. At the end of the day, yes, it is true. It is smoke, there is no evidence of a quid pro quo. But there is certainly clear evidence of the foundation and the State Department doing what they said they wouldn't do, which is have a lot of interaction and a lot of back and forth.

And that is going to look strange. To your point, we've never had a set of circumstances like this before. Usually what people would do in that situation is try to use the utmost caution.

[06:25:05] The Clintons repeatedly over many years, get into these kind of situations where there's just enough for critics to hit them on. And the two aides who are the most involved in this, Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin, I assume Hillary Clinton will want to bring into the White House because they've been with her for a long time. That's also where there's going to be a headache going forward.

CUOMO: Look, there's a standard here. It's an odd turn of events that in this election we're making illegality the bar for appropriate conduct. Semblance of impropriety, it sounds like legal speak, but look it up. It exists for a reason an outward appearance. Now, what she'll benefit from is Trump and his surrogates going way too far on this. They're saying that foundation was a criminal enterprise, that it was pay-for-play. Is there any proof of pay-for-play?

BUMP: No, not at all. Again, what we're seeing here is we are seeing people who have relationships with the Clintons, having a relationship with Clinton as secretary of state, and having a relationship with the Clintons as the heads of the Clinton Foundation. And we're not seeing any situation. I mean even the A.P. report doesn't say when the people gave money in relationship to when they had these meetings. There's so many missing parts to this story, which of course the Clintons hope never come up.

CUOMO: And the irony is the change agent is Donald Trump, who gave money to the foundation, who openly says this game exists, I know, because I play it for influence.

HABERMAN: He has not been asked, however, why he gave that money, if he thinks that it was, you know, a criminal enterprise.

CUOMO: He has said in the past that the reason he gave money to politicians was to get something ...

HABERMAN: Right. Because act -- sure, yes, he's given that as a broad answer. But I think that he's also going to get hit or at least pressed on that in the debate.

BUMP: Yeah.

HARLOW: So let's talk about what he said about Hillary Clinton last night. He said, very loudly, she is a bigot. And this is all part of his play to get even a few points stronger on the minority voters, especially African-Americans. But him doing it in that way, taking it much further than he took it last week when he said, what the hell do you have to lose by choosing me. Now he's going beyond that saying don't choose her because she's a bigot. I think we have the sound. We can play it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Hillary Clinton is a bigot who sees people of color -- only as votes, not as human beings worthy of a better future. She's going to do nothing for African-Americans. She's going to do nothing for the Hispanics. She doesn't care what her policies have done to your communities.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Phil, there are two schools of thought here. Is he trying to get a few more percentage points on African-American voters to get up from 1 percent in the polls? Or is he trying to convince educated white voters that he's not racist?

BUMP: I would definitely lean toward the latter option there. You know what I mean. I think that line of argument is not going to be an effective line of argument to a community that sees the Clintons as having been part of -- you know, having a relationship with them for a long time. It's part of the reason that Hillary Clinton had such strong support from the black community in the Democratic primary. I mean that's the reason she won by the margin she did this but she had so much support from the black community. And I don't think that Donald Trump making an argument, which essentially is an argument to Republicans who are skeptical of the relationship between the black community and Democrats. That's why he's making the argument in the way that he made it. That is not an argument that's being made to the black community. It's being made to those Republicans who he needs to get.

CUOMO: Somebody. I mean, you know, you don't want to take him on soft the candidate. He is ultimately responsible for what comes out of his mouth. But somebody didn't do him a favor. That was supposedly in the prompter.

HARLOW: I know.

CUOMO: That means that messaging for him is calling Hillary Clinton a bigot. Not only is he not going to favor in comparison to her in term of what he's done for that community, because he has never really done anything. Because he's hasn't been in public service. But how is that going to help remove the stink from Trump that every time he opens his mouth, his foot goes right into it.

HABERMAN: Every time he tries to make this a referendum on something other than himself, it comes back to being a referendum on Donald Trump. And that was last night was, would saying she's a bigot.

Look, there is a generational divide and has been throughout this campaign in terms of Hillary Clinton's support among black voters. Older black voters have a pretty deep relationship with the Clinton's. Younger black voters who came of age during the Obama White House and during the black lives matter movement tend to view her with more skepticism, or some do.

But Hillary Clinton has been pretty vocal about race since the Charleston shooting, which is now going back to June of 2015. And she's been really clear on it. You know, I spoke to some people yesterday who basically we're saying, "Yes, I don't like Hillary Clinton." Some black activist he said "I don't like Hillary Clinton, but that doesn't mean that I'm not aware of what Donald Trump has been saying for the last 15 months." And this is sort of problematic.

The other thing I would say is you talk to Republicans privately, many of them some publically. Many of them will say this isn't a winning message period. You should be talking about the economy. He's not going to get enough black voters to make a substantial difference.

And frankly at this point with this message, he's not going to get enough, you know, concerned white voters, suburbanites who don't like him being called a racist. He needs to refocus what voters are going to the ballot box on. And he is making this about race even if he tries to get away from it.

[06:30:13] HARLOW: And it could be about the economy clearly. Guys thank you very much.