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Clinton Weighing in on Trump's Immigration Flip-Flop; Trump Calls Clinton "Bigot"; Death Toll Climbs in Italian Earthquake; Interview with Rep. Jim Himes. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired August 25, 2016 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:03] CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Now there's a new line. It is that he would work with undocumented people and guess what, his former rivals has some tough words for him.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Hillary Clinton also weighing in on Trump's immigration flip-flop in a brand new CNN exclusive interview. She's also responding to new questions about her e-mails and questions about the Clinton foundation also respond to Donald Trump last night calling her a bigot.

Quite a lot of news in the last 24 hours. We begin our coverage this morning with CNN's Sara Murray in Tampa, Florida. Good morning Sara.

SARA MURRAY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Poppy. Well, looks like Donald Trump is finally ready to make that general election pivot. He is watering down his rhetoric when it comes to immigration.

And Hillary Clinton is watching all of this saying, wait a minute. She does not want to let him get away with that. And that's why she's going to spend her day painting 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, an interview with CNN Anderson Cooper, a previewing of 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, while Hillary Clinton will be delivering a speech today, Donald Trump is looking ahead to his own big speech next week. That is where he's going to detail changes to his immigration policy. We're expecting that to happen on Wednesday in Phoenix, Arizona. So we'll see just how much of a change in rhetoric versus a change in policy. Back to you, Chris.

CUOMO: All right, Sara, thank you very much.

Let's bring in CNN Commentator and Hillary Clinton's supporter, Bakari Sellers and the Executive Director of National Diversity Coalition for Trump, Bruce Lavelle. It's good to have you both with us. Mr. Lavelle, why is the campaign calling Hillary Clinton a bigot?

BRUCE LAVELLE, EXEC. DIR., NATIONAL DIVERSITY COALITION FOR TRUMP: Well, you know, I can't really speak for the campaign. I will tell you this though. I represent the national diversity coalition. We're a large group that minority based groups that represent all different types of minority groups across country. And I well tell, Chris, we do have a pulse of what goes on -- a lot of our communities for that matter.

And, you know, this is another example of Hillary trying to deflect off of not, you know, addressing her own situations as it relates to her e-mails that keep coming up. That's really suspicious. And you know this ...

CUOMO: Well, hold on. Just so we understand, if we're on the same thing, I'm not saying that you said it, but Donald Trump, the man you support, just said Hillary Clinton is a bigot. Do you agree with that?

LAVELLE: Well, I mean, she has made statements in the past that has been some, you know, racist remarks as it relates to especially the African-American community, calling them super predators and, you know, things like that. So, you know, yeah, I mean, you know, there has been some level of, you know, stereotypes towards the African- American community, towards the Clintons.

[07:05:10] CUOMO: Do you believe that same criticism that Mr. Lavelle is charging to Hillary Clinton can be the same thing said for Donald Trump, Bakari?

BAKARI SELLER, CNN COMMENTATOR: Well, I think so. And, I think that Donald Trump making this argument about Hillary Clinton being a bigot is one that's going to fall on deaf ears in many communities.

I think while Donald Trump was being sued by the Department of Justice n not once but twice for failing to rent to persons of color. Hillary Clinton was actually an African-American community throughout the south, investigating discrimination in our education system.

She then went to South Carolina, where I'm from, and she actually went and she worked in South Carolina to take young African-American males, juveniles, out of adult prisons because they were being raped, being beaten, et cetera. And Donald Trump has a long line of instances, whether or not it's the central park five, whether or not its the birth of movement, which calls great hesitation and heart burn.

So, he's going to have a hard time flipping that switch and making that jump. I think to Donald Trump used that incendiary language so that we don't have to delve into his policy that's going to uplift the African-American community or any minority community for that matter.

CUOMO: Well, let's do that right now. On immigration we saw a change part of the diversity coalitions mandate. Of course Mr. Lavelle, the plus side is Donald Trump now sounds a lot more reasonable on an issue that matter to a lot of Americans which is how we deal with people who come to the country legally and illegally.

The downside is he crushed people in the primaries who said what he's saying right now. How do you reconcile the two positions, sir?

LAVELLE: Well, you know what, you know, everyone knows one thing about running for president, it is a long process, and you do gather general consensus among your constituents as well as your faith-based organizations, your minority communities, as you progress and you grow.

And Chris, you got to remember too, this has been a mess on both sides that hadn't been dealt with for many years that's going to take some time to address, you know, a lot of folks that came over here undocumented and had families and you know in the school and everything else.

So it's going to take time. So, it's not something that's going to happen overnight. So, this is an example of good leadership that I've been saying all along on Donald Trump's ability to have, you know, to listen and to understand. And you know, one thing, too, though, Donald Trump really cares about the community, really cares about families.

So, you know, this is something that unfortunately has been going on for so many years has been neglected and pushed behind that everyone wants to happen overnight. So, it's going to be a gradual process, you know, to where we can get to a point to where we can deal with this mess.

CUOMO: So Bruce Lavelle is making the point that this is about an evolution, about Trump learning as he goes through the process. Bakari Sellers, how do you see it?

SELLERS: Well, it's a flip-flop, plain and simple. I think that Republican voters, they bought a bill of goods, hook, line, and sinker. And they were bamboozled. The fact is that Donald Trump started with Dwight Eisenhower's 1954 operation wetback, which was very brutal.

That's what he patterned his immigration policy after, going in his home surrounding him up seating him back. And now, he's getting to the point that many of us were making, even you, Chris, push back.

We realized it was politically unfeasible, politically stupid. It was too expensive, and it was just inhumane. And now, he's getting to a point where John Kasich, Jeb Bush, and Marco Rubio are all sitting at home saying, that is what I've been saying, that is what I've been saying.

And now, he's there. It's amazing to me that we want to give credit Donald Trump for somehow finding humanity. And I refuse to simply give him credit and say overnight he just "Found humanity".

CUOMO: All right, so, let's put up the statements from the two campaigns. Just so you understand the state of play here Mr. Lavelle. We heard from the Bush campaign and from the Cruz campaign, their reaction to Trump changing positions.

Here's what they had to say. Pop up upon the screen and I'll read them to you. "It's unsurprising that Donald Trump is finally faced with reconciling his immigration policy with reality, something Governor Bush predicted last year." And from the Cruz campaign, they said, "It vindicates the speech, referring to what he did at the convention, which seemed to be a lukewarm at best embrace of the then-nominee Trump. It vindicates what Ted Cruz warned would happen during the primaries." So the criticism is, we told you this guy would change as soon as it suited him in the general, and that's what he's doing now. Fair criticism, Mr. Lavelle?

LAVELLE: No, I disagree. Well, you got to remember those were Mr. Trump's opponents. So, they're still a little sour grapes going on. And hopefully they'll come around you know, more effectively to help us grow the party.

So, you know, I disagree. You know, it's like I said before, when you're running for president, when you're campaigning, you're traveling from all over the country and you're getting information from a lot of -- like I said, from your faith-based organizations.

Mr. Trump has met with a lot of faith-based pastors for many, many year Hispanic African-Americans and gathered information as he progresses into the campaign. So, you know, it's quite natural to learn.

Listen, you got to remember, guys, the president works for the people. You listen to the people as you go. So, I disagree with that, sir.

[07:10:04] CUOMO: And let me give you a chance to talk policy. What is Mr. Trump offering the members of the African-American community across the spectrum? Because, obviously you can't describe African Americans as all living in the ghetto, who get shot when they walk down the street. So what is the range of policy proposals that he has?

LAVELLE: Well, I will tell you this though. In term of his speeches, the bottom line is, Chris that a lot of the communities are having tough time that we've been seeing on TV that has a lot of situations going on with what we've seen in Milwaukee and a lot of other cities.

You know, that's been under Democrat regime. And so, you know, the deal here is that, you know, you guys have had this for 60 years plus. You know, give us a chance at this. Give us a shot at this.

You know, in terms of Mr. Trump's you know, charter school initiatives that go in a lot of African-American communities, that could lift top a lot of these schools to get local control, bringing trade schools, electrical trade schools, skills and a lot of those schools in there. You know alternative solutions that will really impact and help the African-American community.

CUOMO: Mr. Lavelle swings a good stick at you, Bakari Sellers. That a lot of the big cities have been Democratic run for the leadership for decades and the status quo is unacceptable. Why continue to reward the party?

SELLERS: Well, first of all, that's a red herring. I mean, it's more complex than that. And I think Mr. Lavelle knows that as well. But if we want to just throw out statistics without understanding the complexity of issues of poverty, then we can talk about the fact that 95 out of the top 100 counties that are most impoverished are in red states and the highest concentration of impoverished African Americans are in the Deep South and the southern legislators.

But the point is you asked for a concrete proposal. One of the things that Hillary Clinton is talking about is taking 10 percent of the federal government spending and investing that in the communities that have 20 percent poverty for over 30 years. It's called the 10, 20, 30 plan from Congressman James Clyburn.

She's talking about implementing that. And that uplifts 434 communities, Democrat and Republican, but many of which are communities of color. That's a concrete plan. I am really, really tired of Donald Trump and his surrogates unable to articulate to you a plan on which they're going to do anything. And that's the frustrating part about this political debate.

CUOMO: Bakari Sellers and Bruce Lavelle, thank you for being here and making the case on both sides. Appreciate it, be will.

SELLERS: Thanks.

LAVELLE: Thanks.

CUOMO: So, next hour, we're going to talk with Trump's campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway. Live on the table for her Poppy

HARLOW: Looking forward to that. Also, want to take you to Italy this morning because the death toll from that powerful earthquake, the devastated central Italy, it has hit 252 people now.

The areas dealing with a series of strong aftershocks, rescue workers trying to find any survivors if they can trap in the rubble. We showed you last hour that 8-year-old girl pulled out from the rubble, just astonishing.

Our Senior International Correspondent Frederick Peitgen has more from the hard-hit city of Amatrice.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FREDERICK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Racing against time as a series of aftershocks continue to shake central Italy. Rescue workers scrambling for a second day to find survivors after a devastating 6.2-magnitude earthquake.

Amid the rubble blanketing the town of Amatrice, 90 miles northeast of Rome, signs of life.

(FOREIGN LANGUAGE)

PLEITGEN: Are you able to breathe, the rescue worker asks. The desperate answer, "only a bit." A little girl found alive under piles of broken concrete. First rescuers saw a tiny foot, then a leg. And the video, a man seems to be talking to the girl as someone repeatedly says the name Julia. Moments later, covered in gray dust, they pull her out. Joined by bystanders, the Italian Red Cross ratcheting up rescue efforts. As they face the threats that continue tremor.

BARBIE NADEAU, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The problem, of course, until now has been access.

PLEITGEN: CNN's Barbie Nadeau was broadcasting live near by Spoleto with rescue workers on roof of a damage home suddenly there's a roar. The earthquake's epicenter surrounded by mountains and historic brick buildings causing a deadly combination of landslides and easily collapsible homes. Before and after photos from Google Earth show a town reduced to rubble.

EMMA TUCKER, BRITISH SURVIVOR: The house was trembling, shaking. It got more and more intense. It felt like someone had put a bulldozer to the house to try to knock it down.

PLEITGEN: Fred Pleitgen CNN Ametrice, Italy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: Our thanks to Fred and the rest of the CNN team that are on the ground there now. This is going to go on for a long time.

Now, other news for you this morning, 13 people, including at least seven students, killed in a siege at American University in Kabul, Afghanistan. Gunmen, storming the campus, sending terrified students and staff into hiding for hours. The rampage only ending when two of the attackers were killed in a police operation this morning.

[07:15:04] A third attacker was killed when he detonated his explosive laid in car. Thirty students injured in the siege. Two professors, an American and Australian, were kidnapped from the same university earlier this month. There where about still unknown.

HARLOW: All right and to Colombia, the war is over. That declaration coming from the Colombian government lead negotiator, this after depend peace seal with spark rebels and 50 years of fighting there.

The two sides have been trying to get this deal done for four straight years. It is a landmark peace agreement. It's not totally done yet though. A majority of Colombians have to approve it. There will be a referendum to do so in October.

CUOMO: Scientists have discovered an earth-sized potentially habitable planet orbiting the closest star to the sun, according to the European space observatory. It has a temperature "Suitable for water to exist on its surface." They dubbed the new planet Proxima B.

It is more than four light years away from us, but practically around the corner in cosmic terms. There's J.B Berman looked at this picture this morning and said it reminds him ...

HARLOW: Of what?

CUOMO: ... of felt or velvet photos many had in their living rooms in the '70s.

HARLOW: That's the name, honestly, Proxima B?

CUOMO: Proxima B but, that's just a start. In some point it will get a much cooler name like Earth.

HARLOW: There you go, habitable Earth 2. All right, coming up, back to politics, Donald Trump, you heard it, slamming Hillary Clinton and saying the lines between the state department and Clinton foundation are far too blurry.

What is Clinton had to say? She went one-on-one with our Anderson Cooper. You'll hear her answer next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:20:42] CUOMO: Hillary Clinton fired up, defending her family's name sake foundation. The Democratic presidential candidate infuriated, calling Donald Trump's pay-for-play accusations nothing short of absurd. Here's what she told to Anderson Cooper.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST, "AC360": 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. 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.

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 talk about this. Joining us now is Connecticut Congressman and a Clinton supporter, Jim Himes. Thank you for being here. Nice to have you on the program.

REP. JIM HIMES, (D) CONNECTICUT: Good morning, Poppy.

[07:25:02] HARLOW: So, let's talk first about the foundation. We just heard what she told Anderson. And of this part by saying, there's no question about the good work the foundation did and continues to do. But it's beyond that because it's become clear that there was not a total separation between Hillary Clinton's time as Secretary of State and the foundation, right? And this follows her e-mail controversy. So some look at this, Congressman, and they say, this is yet another example of Hillary Clinton playing by her own rules. The narrative about the Clintons.

And then they say, is this a lens through which we can see how she would operate as president, to have her own separate set of rules that is above others. Not about legality but about the perception. What do you say to those folks?

HIMES: Well, this isn't an example of the Clinton's playing by their own rules. Because there's absolutely zero evidence, zero evidence that any rules were broken here. Now, what is undeniable is that there is the possibility for a conflict of interest, of course. And by the way, that's true in journalism, it's true. In politics, it's true all over the place.

HARLOW: Yeah. But it's not just that. It's about the perception too. It's about her aides, like Cheryl Mills, well, she's working with her as Secretary of State, coming up to New York to interview candidates for high positions in the foundation. It's about the perception of impropriety.

HIMES: I think the question is though -- you know if you want to believe even a tenth of the foam at the mouth rhetoric that you're hearing out of Donald Trump.

The question is, did somebody actually get something from the State Department from the Secretary of State while she was Secretary of State because they donated to the Clinton Foundation? And the answer to that, according to the State Department -- by the way including -- according to anybody, is no. Now, you know.

HARLOW: So the lines have been less blurry? Let me ask you that. I'm not talking about any laws being broken. But I'm talking about what is clearly a closer relationship than was thought before and then what she'd agreed to with the Obama administration when she became secretary of state on how she would deal with the foundation.

HIMES: I think what you can say is that there were staff members of the foundation communicating with staff members of state. And all of those staff members probably could have used an awful lot more discipline around that separation.

But again, and then look, you've seen the e-mails. You know there were e-mails sent, requests made.

HARLOW: Yeah.

HIMES: Those requests were by and large not abided by the so-called evidence that maybe there was a, you know, that there was a conflict, that the crown prince of Bahrain got to meet with the secretary of state.

Hello, he's the crown prince of Bahrain, right? A place where the fifth fleet of the United States navy is based. Muhammad Yunus, you know, again, this A.P. report which has been widely discredited for the methodology that they used, holds up Muhammad Yunus, a nobel prize and presidential medal of freedom winner. The guy got a meeting with the secretary of state. I mean that there is a zero evidence out there that these people got anything for their contribution.

HARLOW: I'd like to also get your take on her e-mails. Because I want you to listen to how Hillary Clinton answered Anderson's question about e-mails, because this was a unique answer.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLINTON: I've been asked many, many questions in the past year about e-mails. And what I've learned is that when I tried to explain what happened. It can sound like I'm trying to excuse what I did. And there are no excuses. I get responsibility for it. I've apologized for it. I would certainly do differently if I could. But obviously, I'm grateful, the Justice Department concluded there was no basis to pursue this matter further.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: This is the clearest perhaps, the most contrition we've heard for her on e-mails. And some are saying this morning the best answer she's given on the e-mail question in 17 months. Are you happy to hear it?

HIMES: I am happy to hear it. You know this whole e-mail controversy which has dogged her in the campaign for a long time. I suspect would have been a much smaller controversy if a year ago or year ago plus she had used language like that.

HARLOW: Why don't you think she did?

HIMES: I don't know. I can't get into her head.

Look, this is a woman who for three decades has been attacked constantly by outrageous claims. You know, you heard the foundation called the most corrupt institution ever by Donald Trump, right? This is a foundation that has provided HIV drugs to 12 million people around the world and that has lowered the price of malaria drugs. And it's called the most corrupt.

You know when you get that day in and day out, my guess is that you probably put on a coat of armor that maybe makes it hard to be -- you know to say, I'm sorry.

HARLOW: The question is when you want to be the leader of the free world. You also need to be able to answer those questions very clearly. And you're going to face a lot more from the White House Press Corps.

Finally to you, should she have a press conference? It's been 265 days. She said last night to Anderson, stay tuned. She didn't say yes. I'll be holding a press conference. Should she open herself up more, Congressman? Do you think at this stage that would be beneficial?

HIMES: I think both candidates should be as accessible to the press as they can be.

HARLOW: So that would be a yes?

HIMES: I'd love to see her do more press conferences. She's actually -- she's an enormously smart woman. She does get attacked day in and day out. But she's an enormously smart woman. When she speaks, she talks about the thing she's going to do for the American people when she's president of the United States.