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Trump Lays Out Immigration Plan in Fiery Speech. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired September 01, 2016 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Are you ready? We will build a great wall.

[05:57:54] VICENTE FOX, FORMER MEXICAN PRESIDENT: He lies every other minute of the day.

TRUMP: I call it extreme vetting. Right? It's going to be so tough.

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Trying to make up for a year of insults by dropping in on our neighbors for a few hours. That is not how it works.

GOV. MIKE PENCE (R-IN), VICE-PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: While Hillary Clinton has been in hiding, Donald Trump is doing what leaders do.

TRUMP: We will break the cycle. There will be no amnesty.

CLINTON: By the way, Mexico's not paying for his wall either.

TRUMP: A hundred percent. Mexico will pay for the wall.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo and Alisyn Camerota.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to your NEW DAY. It is Thursday, September 1. It's September. It's 6 a.m. in the east.

Up first, Donald Trump laying out his latest immigration plan in a fiery speech in Arizona. Trump vowing there will be no amnesty or path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: It was a tale of two Trump. The Republican nominee in Mexico diplomatic, avoiding who pays for the wall, saying it wasn't discussed with the Mexican president.

The president says that's not true, that he told Trump Mexico will not pay for the wall.

But then in Arizona, Trump was back to his harsh stance.

Let's begin our coverage with CNN's Sunlen Serfaty, live in Washington -- Sunlen.

SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you, Chris.

Well, this was not a softening at all. Trump returned to the tough talk that we knew from the primary campaign, declared no amnesty, calling for the wall, saying Mexico will pay for it. But he did not give a definitive answer about what he will do with those non- criminals living here in U.S. illegally.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TRUMP: There will be no amnesty.

SERFATY (voice-over): Donald Trump recommitting to a fired-up no- mercy stance on illegal immigration.

TRUMP: For those here illegally today who are seeking legal status, they will have one route and one route only: to return home and apply for re-entry like everybody else under the rules of the new legal immigration system.

SERFATY: The billionaire vowing to swiftly expel millions who have overstayed their visas and undocumented criminals.

TRUMP: I am going to create a new special deportation task force, focused on identifying and quickly removing the most dangerous criminal illegal immigrants in America who have evaded justice, just like Hillary Clinton has evaded justice, OK? Maybe they'll be able to deport her.

SERFATY: Insisting he will detain and remove anyone caught crossing the border.

TRUMP: We are going to end catch and release.

SERFATY: And force other countries to take back their citizens who have been ordered to leave the U.S.

TRUMP: There are at least 23 countries that refuse to take their people back after they've been ordered to leave the United States. Not going to happen with me, folks. Not going to happen with me.

SERFATY: And declaring he will block funding from the 300-plus so- called sanctuary cities across the country.

TRUMP: Cities that refuse to cooperate with federal authorities will not receive taxpayer dollars.

SERFATY: But Trump is not saying how he would deport all undocumented immigrants living in the U.S.

TRUMP: Only the out-of-touch media elites think the biggest problem facing America is that there are 11 million illegal immigrants who don't have legal status.

SERFATY: As for anyone who wants to live and work here... TRUMP: To choose immigrants based on merit. Merit, skill, and

proficiency.

SERFATY: Trump says they will be up against extreme vetting.

TRUMP: We are going to suspend the issuance of visas to any place where adequate screening cannot occur.

Another reform involves new screening tests for all applicants that include an ideological certification to make sure that those we are admitting to our country share our values and love our people.

SERFATY: Trump also renewing his commitment to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico.

TRUMP: And Mexico will pay for the wall. Hundred percent. They don't know it yet, but they're going to pay for the wall.

SERFATY: Hours earlier, a more measured and softer tone on display as Trump met with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto.

TRUMP: We did discuss the wall. We didn't discuss payment of the wall.

SERFATY: But after Trump left the country, President Pena Nieto disputes that, tweeting, quote, "From the start of the conversation, I made it clear: Mexico will not pay for that wall."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SERFATY: And the Mexican president said in an interview late Wednesday that some of the positions Donald Trump has taken, quote, "are a threat to Mexico."

Now, the Clinton campaign, meantime, they responded to Trump's speech, saying in part, quote, "He showed us very clearly what's at stake in this election by painting a picture of his idea of America, one in which immigrants are not welcome and one in which innocent families are torn apart" -- Chris and Alisyn.

CUOMO: All right. Thank you very much.

Let's discuss. We have CNN Politics executive editor Mark Preston; CNN political analyst and national political reporter for "The New York Times," Alex Burns; and CNN political analyst and Washington bureau chief for "The Daily Beast," Jackie Kucinich.

All right. So Mark, we have two discussions to have. One is, how did he do in Mexico? The second one is, what was the speech about last night? Let's start with the speech.

The speech last night was a return to the same. "I am what I am. It is what it is." There was a window in time last week where they were trying to soften him, make him more appealing to these people who are afraid that he's a bigot, he's too harsh to vote for, but it seems to be over. Fair statement? MARK PRESTON, CNN POLITICS EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Oh, clearly. I mean,

there was a time yesterday between when he left Mexico City to get up to Arizona, where he was still that soft guy that was going to, you know, make things work and was not going to be as harsh in his criticism of those who were coming across the border.

But what we saw last night was a play to his base again, which I don't really understand at this point. We're 69 days out, and he's playing to his base. He doesn't need to keep his base at this point. He needs to expand his base. And that speech last night clearly is not going to help expand his base.

CAMEROTA: Yesterday was a little schizophrenic. I mean, for in terms of what we saw and different personas and even different messages coming out of Mexico versus Donald Trump. Was there is a moment, Alex, when he came out in Mexico at the press conference where the Clinton campaign said, "Uh-oh," because he looked presidential and he was on the international stage, and he seemed measured?

ALEX BURNS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I think there have been a couple moments in the general election. When you think back to that speech at the Detroit Economic Club a couple weeks ago. Certainly, the event in Mexico City yesterday, where for Democrats, there is this brief moment of "Oh, my goodness. What if we start running against a guy who becomes a conventional candidate, who does look -- I don't want to say presidential, but looks like somebody who could hold public office, plausibly, isn't just a sort of reality TV show bomb thrower." Right?

[06:05:17] And at the same time, we have been through the cycle so many times that I think, even those Democrats who have that, you know, that moment of their heart skipping a beat, they do have confidence that he can't sustain it, can't pull it off. And yesterday he proved them right pretty darn quickly.

CUOMO: Although, there's some fair criticism of the strategy the Clinton campaign is employing also, which is let Trump make the mistakes. You know, her hiding -- this was a good move for him, trying to go down there. Whether he made the most of it, you know, that's going to be disputed. But it was a good move.

She allowed him that move. He dominated the cycle. You know, she's doing the duck and cover here, and maybe that's why the polls are so close, Jackie.

JACKIE KUCINICH, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, but it's also been working for her. Because every time she goes out, particularly in front of the press and takes kind of free-wheeling questions, it doesn't end up so well for her.

So -- and the fact that Trump is pretty reliably willing to blow himself up, even when he does do something well -- I mean, it was a good move going to Mexico. He did look -- as Alex said, he did look like someone who could potentially hold public office.

Bu then, the man on that stage was not the man that was in Mexico City. He left reasonable Trump in Mexico and, you know, headed across the border to Phoenix and was himself again.

PRESTON: I think it's worth noting, too, is that she has been quote/unquote, in hiding. She hasn't done a news conference.

But what she has done is done this incredible amount of spade work behind the scenes, raising an incredible amount of money, which is going to help pay for this -- for this ad buy, you know, in the final, you know, 65 days or so.

So I think that Hillary Clinton in many ways, it's dangerous to allow your opponent to define the election, but Donald Trump had a great morning and a terrible evening. So why not let him define that and try to react to it, at the same time raising the amount of money that you do need to pay for these TV ads?

CAMEROTA: Maybe all the money she's raising could pay for the wall. Because there seems to be some confusion about who's going to pay for it.

At the press conference, Donald Trump -- in Mexico, Donald Trump came out and said, "We talked about the wall. We did not discuss who was going to pay for it."

An hour and a half later, President Pena Nieto said, "Oh, I did tell him right at the start of our meeting that Mexico will never pay for that wall."

Donald Trump then said, "No, we never talked about it."

And then, by evening, President Pena Nieto was visibly angry, as how he's described in interviews, as claiming that he put his foot down with Donald Trump. So we don't really know what happened in their one-on-one meeting.

BURNS: Well, what the Trump campaign is not contesting is that the president of Mexico made this comment, that "No, we're not going to pay for your border wall." What they argue and what the Mexican presidency, what his aides will also argue is that it wasn't technically a discussion, because it was a one-way comment.

CUOMO: Depends on the definition of "is."

BURNS: Depends on the definition of "wall," right? This is really sort of embarrassing.

CUOMO: Sounds familiar.

BURNS: In addition to just the spectacle of a guy who has anchored his campaign on the wall, going to Mexico and not really bringing it up that much.

The additional embarrassment of a person who has fashioned himself as this straight talker, this guy who says what everybody wants to say but isn't, you know, gutsy enough to say for themselves, going down and saying, "Well, it wasn't technically a conversation." CAMEROTA: But isn't it more embarrassing for President Pena Nieto? I

mean, he's the person who invited him. And if he didn't discuss the wall and who was going to pay for the wall, it's a big embarrassment for him, Jackie.

KUCINICH: I think everyone should be embarrassed at this point. Because let's talk about just diplomacy. They -- he went down there. They had this big conversation, and then he goes to Arizona and talks about, "They don't even know it yet, but they're going to pay for it." And it kind of throws it in the face, this invitation that he got, from the Mexican president.

CUOMO: All right. So here's -- here's the sound that Jackie is talking about, just to kind of show how Trump originally buttoned up what happened down there. Here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: On day one, we will begin working on an impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful southern border wall. And Mexico will pay for the wall. They don't know it yet, but they're going to pay for the wall. And they're great people and great leaders. But they're going to pay for the wall.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: Manic. Well, he didn't say that to President Pena Nieto. I mean, that sounds -- now, but is that something that's worthy of criticism? The Clinton campaign is jumping on it, saying, "He didn't do it." But isn't that what diplomacy is, and isn't that what a politician does?

That they don't go up to their opponent and say, "You're going to pay for the wall, you know. And if you don't like it, too bad." You know, that you soft talk it, and then you come back and you give a different message. Trump is being a politician.

Trump is absolutely being a politician. And in many ways, I think that he's being reserved and measured by not going down to Mexico and having a discussion about the wall and saying, "Look, I'm going to walk into your kitchen, and I'm going to tell you what you're going to do." So I actually give him props for not engaging in a discussion and arguing, you know, with the president of Mexico.

[06:10:08] But having said that, at the same time, for him then a few hours later to go on stage, be very strident, and almost doing an exact 180 from what he appeared to be saying earlier in the day, and then later on in the sentence say, "Oh, but they're great people, but they don't know yet." It's very manic.

BURNS: I think it does go to the basic risk of a stunt trip like this, you know, creating a spectacle with a trip like this for Donald Trump. In that, if he had brought up the wall, if he had stuck it to Pena Nieto about the wall and who's going to pay for it, then the Clinton campaign would be saying, this guy is an amateur. He's created an international incident. He's too risky to have as president of the United States.

And the alternative is that they say he's all talk. Right?

So it is the -- it is the tremendous risk when you are Donald Trump of taking a show on the road like that.

KUCINICH: Right. I completely agree. I mean, because it looked like he was saying one thing and then doing another.

CAMEROTA: OK. So in the speech in Arizona, here are some of the points of what he now says is his immigration plan. This was the big speech. So finally we have the tenets of what it is founded on. And here are the top five.

No amnesty, no path to citizenship. Remove criminals and people who overstayed their visas. "The Washington Post" has analyzed that, and they say that would amount to 6 million people. So not 11 million people but six million people will be removed somehow from the U.S. Build a border wall that Mexico pays for. I think the question is still open there. Defund sanctuary cities and rescind President Obama's executive orders.

Is that the most clear that he has been, Mark?

PRESTON: I thought he was very broad last night. And we only did the top five. He did ten last night. He also said at the beginning, "This is not going to be a rally. I'm going to give you a detailed plan, a policy prescription about how to solve this." And it turned into a rally. I mean, he turned it into this rally where he would stop and look for applause and he would start, you know, applauding himself. I thought it was very broad last night.

CUOMO: That's the best way to start applause, by the way.

PRESTON: Just start doing it yourself.

You know, look, I think in the end, what we saw last night is something that we saw probably two weeks ago.

CUOMO: Right. Except here's a new level of scrutiny that he's going to have. I think after last night, because he laid it out, his policy, Alex, which is how. He said what doesn't work.

There's nothing that's going on there except sanctuary cities. And that's something that you're going to have to take time and learn about on your own. That is a very misunderstood idea about why they exist in the first place.

But other than sanctuary cities, this isn't about what, it's about how. How will you get these criminals? You've got, you know, the biggest force ever in American history in ICE trying to round them up. It's not that easy. So how will you do it better? How will you do it? He's light there and with good reason. We haven't found a good policy prescription for it.

So will the "how" haunt him here? BURNS: I think it will. I think he has so far played into the

suspicion among conservative voters that our immigration laws are just sitting there on the books. We have these enforcement officers sitting around, not being allowed to do their jobs by the Obama administration, when the reality is obviously a lot more complicated than that, and there's a sort of triage of the immigration cases that the federal government is trying to deal with.

So I think for Donald Trump to be able to defend this going forward, that's the real challenge for somebody like him, who's not necessarily that well-versed in the nitty-gritty of the policy.

CAMEROTA: Panel, stick around. We have many more questions for you.

Also coming up on NEW DAY, we will get reaction from Hillary Clinton's running mate, Tim Kaine. He will join us live in our 8 a.m. hour.

CUOMO: And we are bringing back former Mexican President Vicente Fox. He said that he wanted to tell America what his take was after the meeting. Well, he has it. That's coming up in our next hour.

CAMEROTA: So Hillary Clinton slamming Trump's immigration speech and his visit to Mexico, saying that he failed his first foreign test. Will staying out of the spotlight, no press conferences, hurt her or help her? Our panel is going to weigh in on that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[06:18:12] TRUMP: There will be no amnesty. Our message to the world will be this: You cannot obtain legal status or become a citizen of the United States by illegally entering our country. Can't do it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Well, Hillary Clinton is already slamming Donald Trump's immigration speech. She says in this statement, "Trump once again showed us that he will continue his decades' long record of divisiveness and campaign of hate by pledging to forcibly remove every single undocumented immigrant from our country."

Our panel is back with us. We have Mark Preston, Jackie Kucinich, and Alex Burns.

So Jackie, the Clinton campaign had to be watching yesterday very closely. And I'm sure they had whiplash by the end of the day. Because again, at first, Donald Trump went down. He appeared at the podium; he appeared presidential. There seemed to be a conciliatory meeting between he and President Pena Nieto.

And then he flew to Arizona and gave that speech. Is it OK for Clinton to just stand back and watch all this unfold and sort of take a passive role, or does she somehow need to be inserting herself into this and accepting invitations from foreign leaders and going herself? KUCINICH: Well, that's not something -- a place Hillary Clinton needs

to bolster her resume. Actually, in the president of Mexico's speech, he said something to the effect of "I can't wait to welcome Hillary Clinton back here, because we've met here before." So that's not somewhere where her resume needs more padding.

In terms of her standing back, I'm going to butcher this expression, but why get in -- why stop your opponent from killing themselves when they're doing it themselves. I totally butchered that.

CAMEROTA: I think we got the message.

KUCINICH: I mean, why would she get in the middle of that when he's doing such a good job himself?

CUOMO: Well, OK. So what is the downside? The downside is that you see a compression in polls. And many would argue that she should be blowing Trump away. And the question is, why isn't he?

And it's because she's allowing him to define the race. And not only is she allowing him to define the race, but she's doing something else, which we're going to talk to Tim Kaine about today. They spend a lot of time talking about Trump instead of talking about policy.

Could that be a reason for compression in the polls, that this race is close in the first place, that she's not playing to her advantage, which is supposed to be policy? She's playing his game. She's talking about who stinks more.

BURNS: Well, there's no question about that. And I think that, when you look at the trend in the general election polls over the last two months, you see it's pretty stable with Hillary Clinton in the low to mid-40s, Donald Trump in the high 30s. Except right after the Democratic convention, which is really the only time in the last six months that we've heard Hillary Clinton make a really assertive, really extended, positive case for her own election and lay out her vision in the kind of intensive way that really would be normal for most presidential candidates at this point in the election.

So I just couldn't agree more that, I think, hanging back does allow Trump to define the election. It does allow him to define himself with his stumbles, but it also risks making, you know, the coalition of voters who ultimately have to vote for her perceive the election as Trump versus not Trump, which is not the way to command a majority. It's not necessarily the way to win a kind of mandate for your policies that would be really helpful to have as president.

CAMEROTA: Hang back or dive in?

PRESTON: I think -- look, I think there's always a risk by hanging back, because you -- I mean, Trump has owned the news cycle, as he does whenever he truly wants to.

But I do think there's something to be said. And I know the viewers hate to hear this, but there's something to be said that you need to stock your war chest. You need to raise millions and millions and millions of dollars to go on the air in the final two months and define the race at that moment when most of America is tuned in.

CAMEROTA: So when Mike Pence says, "I don't know where Hillary Clinton has been. She's been in the Hamptons with champagne raising money," you're saying wise move.

PRESTON: I think it was a wise move. But let's don't forget, she was also before the American Legion yesterday, giving a speech on American exceptionalism.

Here's the problem, though. Donald Trump sucks up so much oxygen out of the news cycle that, that wasn't even able to break through. So even when she does kind of come out and Donald Trump does this big event, going to Mexico, how are you even going to overshadow that?

KUCINICH: And she introduced a mental health platform this week, as well.

PRESTON: Not nearly as sexy as going against...

KUCINICH: Exactly. But she is talking about policy. Even though it's not as sexy as this.

CUOMO: Right. Her campaign will say...

CAMEROTA: It gets eclipsed by our...

CUOMO: Well, but it's not that it's just not as sexy. It's the prioritization of it, as well. You know, the campaign pushed back and was like, "You guys won't talk about it." You won't talk about it. You come on the show, you want to talk about Trump. You know, you're going to get asked, what do you want to talk about? What do you think is important. They're using Trump.

Now, here's the turnabout in fair play. Trump is picking up on her passivity, to call it that, and he's seeing it as weakness. Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: These are matters of life and death for our country and its people, and we deserve answers from Hillary Clinton. And you notice she doesn't answer. She didn't go to Louisiana. She didn't go to Mexico. She was invited. She doesn't have the strength or the stamina to make America great again. Believe me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: And just to be clear, he has blacklisted the show. He won't come on. He doesn't want to answer our questions. But fair criticism of Hillary Clinton?

PRESTON: Well, for him, of course, because that's your opponent.

I think the Louisiana thing was not about Hillary Clinton. It's really about Barack Obama allowing Donald Trump to go down there and look presidential while Barack Obama, you know, was playing 18, you know, up on Cape Cod. I mean, that...

CAMEROTA: But she didn't go either. I mean, didn't he -- wasn't he able to leap-frog her successfully by going there?

PRESTON: True, but, like, come September 10, we're not going to be talking about her not being in Louisiana. That moment in the news cycle has passed us by.

And as far as going to Mexico, when's the last time a presidential candidate, like literally less than three months before the election, says, "I'm going to jet off and have a discussion with a foreign leader"? They just don't do that.

CUOMO: So what? It's about being active, showing you want to do the job, showing you can do the job and taking opportunities to do that. He did that; she didn't.

PRESTON: Which was smart for him to do that, absolutely, but he wasn't secretary of state for four years.

KUCINICH: Right.

PRESTON: He wasn't a U.S. senator for, what, eight or ten years.

CAMEROTA: On the foreign relations committee.

PRESTON: There's different mountains they have to climb. Hillary Clinton's biggest mountain is that she needs people to like her. Right? She needs people to love her.

BURNS: If Donald Trump were a governor who was -- was seen as a mainstream figure, a plausible president, but people had questions about his ability to serve as a commander in chief, this would be a tremendously effective strategy. Get to Mexico, get to a disaster area, let people see you in settings where you appear to be doing the things that a president would do.

Trump's problem in all of this is that he's still Donald Trump. So when people see these images of him as a man of action in Mexico, a man of action in Baton Rouge, they're still seeing a guy who they have already decided they fundamentally do not like.

[06:25:23] That doesn't make Hillary Clinton's strategy risk-free. I do think it's risky. And this notion that she's raising money, Mark's of course, right, but most candidates have to do it all. But at the same time, you know, she does have the luxury of running against Donald Trump.

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

CUOMO: We're following some very serious news of the weather variety. Florida is getting hit by rain that is very heavy from Tropical Storm Hermine. Now, before the storm makes landfall, we're going to give you the situation of what happened overnight. There's a live report from the Panhandle next. This is the beginning, the beginning of what could be a very bad week, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: All right. So this is a situation you have to watch. Residents along Florida's eastern Panhandle are already feeling the impact of Tropical Storm Hermine. The storm is expected to make landfall overnight as a hurricane.

We have CNN's Boris Sanchez live along Florida's Gulf Coast.