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New Day
Trump Lays Out Immigration Plan In Fiery Speech; Washington Post Analysis: 6 Million Immigrants Could Be Deported; Former Mexican President Vicente Fox Live On New Day; New Book Explores Patty Hearst Kidnapping Story. Aired 7:30-8a ET
Aired September 01, 2016 - 07:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[07:30:03] CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Did Trump have a good day or not? Was it good that he went down there? Did the speech help him last night or not? That's what it really is. I mean, you're getting all these different versions based on which campaign you're listening to so let's bring in somebody --
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: And which hour you're talking about.
CUOMO: That's exactly right because it does flop around. So let's bring in CNN political commentator and host of CNN's "SMERCONISH", Michael Smerconish. Let's try and break through all of this. What's your straight take on the net effect of him going down and meeting with the Mexican president and then the speech last night?
MICHAEL SMERCONISH, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: The day was awash. Everything that he gained in the morning he gave back at night. He gave a speech at night that was a 10. He knocked it out of the park. It was a 10 for people who are already voting for him.
But the tone of that speech isn't going to do him any favors with my neighbors in suburbia and the exurbs -- Republicans who have college degrees, right now, with whom he's losing. So that's the group with whom he needs to gain ground and I just don't see it.
CAMEROTA: Michael, let's break it apart, OK? Let's break apart the day because there was a bit of whiplash in terms of the persona and tone of Donald Trump. So first, the visit to Mexico where he stood at the podium with President Pena Nieto and they had that press conference. What did you think of that moment?
SMERCONISH: I thought that that was a good moment for Trump. I thought that it showed that he could reign it in. We all know the bombastic side of him. I thought that this was him acting presidential. This is the side of Donald Trump, now that we're beyond primary and caucus season, that he needs to show more of.
He needs Americans to be able to watch CNN, see that event, and think of him as a potential commander in chief. So, as of the time that the press availability ended, I said Donald Trump's having a good day.
CAMEROTA: OK, so that was a 10. That part of the day you rated a 10.
SMERCONISH: Well, I gave him a 10 for the speech for his base, right? For those who already --
CUOMO: But that's a fugazi 10 --
SMERCONISH: -- voting for him.
CUOMO: -- because the speech -- but that's a fugazi 10 because he needs to expand his base if he wants to be president. That's why they went through this odd morphing last week of trying to soften up and see how that worked. Obviously, they decided to double down and make him what it is. So, 10, to the base, doesn't wind up being a net effect of even a five or a six for them, though, right Michael?
SMERCONISH: You got it. I mean, I -- Chris, I'm wondering, have they done some kind of a calculus and have they said to themselves we're not getting people of color. We're not getting Hispanics, we're not getting African-Americans.
And within 10 days, Barack Obama is going to be out on the stump for Hillary Clinton. He'll mobilize that base. What we've got to do is just maximize our core constituency. Frankly, I don't think the numbers are there to enable that kind of a path to victory.
But as I watched last night, and I listened to the tone and I heard those 10 points that he was articulating and looked at that crowd, I said all he's doing is quadrupling down on the people who are already for him. There aren't enough left in the country. The demographics of the nation have shifted.
CAMEROTA: First of all, no one told me there'd be math in this segment, particularly not calculus. However --
CUOMO: I'm on it.
CAMEROTA: I know, you're doing the long division over there. OK, so the first part of the day was a win, where he looked presidential.
SMERCONISH: Yes.
CAMEROTA: Then he came to Arizona and he gave the speech. He laid out most clearly, or at least most -- sort of condensed his plan for immigration. Did you hear anything new in that plan or anything that jumped out at you?
SMERCONISH: Yes. Something that jumped out of me was the absence, Alisyn, of something that he said. I was watching the speech. I also had a transcript so I was reading the speech and I think I paid close attention. Somebody please still tell me what happens to the -- whatever the number is -- whoever is here illegally -- because he quibbles about that number and I'm no expert.
If you're here and you're here illegally and you keep your nose clean, you don't break anymore laws, it sounds to me like you get to stay and live in the shadows. I didn't hear any conversation about a deportation force. I heard 10 different steps, some overlapping, that he wants to take to contain the problem, but it sounded to me like the people who are here illegally will get to stay. CAMEROTA: It depends on what you -- how you categorize illegal because some of them -- "The Washington Post" did an analysis on what he said last night and if you've overstayed your visa -- OK, so that can be --
CUOMO: Turn around your vote (ph).
CAMEROTA: -- qualified as illegal and they believe that there are six million people who fit into that category or who have committed a crime, and so they would have to go.
SMERCONISH: Maybe so. I didn't hear him speak of any mechanism whatsoever as to how he's going to pull that off.
CUOMO: But if somebody cares about this issue -- if this is top table for them when they go to vote, isn't it hard for Clinton to justify the status quo and say this is how it is, we're going to do better because -- or she has to make a full-throated appeal to do something that's much more progressive in terms of amnesty for people because if you think the problem is the status quo, how does she win on that?
SMERCONISH: Hey, Chris, I think the status quo is unacceptable. I mean, I'm trying to analyze this in terms of does he move the needle from a political standpoint. I thought bringing out -- I believe he referred to them as angel moms -- at the end of the evening was probably an effective part of his presentation.
Pardon me if I'm being repetitive. I just think that all of the people to whom those remarks were appealing are already individuals lined up in the Trump category. And listen, we keep talking about the number of days. I don't know, what is it, about 70 days?
CUOMO: Seventy-nine.
SMERCONISH: It's actually a hell of a lot less because early voting --
CUOMO: Sixty-nine.
SMERCONISH: Nearly one-third of voters voted early in the last cycle. That starts in a matter of weeks so it's crunch time. Where is the appeal to the people who live in suburbia who need to be in the Trump column?
CAMEROTA: Michael Smerconish, on that dangling participle we will wish you goodbye. Thank you very much for all of the --
SMERCONISH: Thank you.
CAMEROTA: -- the insight.
SMERCONISH: OK.
CUOMO: Math, no. Grammar, always.
CAMEROTA: Indeed. CUOMO: All right, so this man has been an outspoken critic of Donald Trump, so how does former Mexican president Vicente Fox feel about Trump's immigration speech and the Mexican visit? He joins us next, live.
[07:36:20] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CAMEROTA: Donald Trump sticking to his hardline position on immigration in a speech in Phoenix last night. It was quite a different tone than when he was in Mexico meeting with President Enrique Pena Nieto, so listen to both of these.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[07:40:00] DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We did discuss the wall. We didn't discuss payment of the wall. That'll be for a later date. This was a very preliminary meeting. I think it was an excellent meeting.
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)
CAMEROTA: All right, joining us now is the former president of Mexico, Vicente Fox. President Fox, thanks so much for being here.
VICENTE FOX, FORMER PRESIDENT OF MEXICO: It has been a pleasure. Good morning, America.
CAMEROTA: Good morning.
FOX: Please wake up.
CAMEROTA: (Laughing) Good morning, great to see you. What did you think of Donald Trump's visit to Mexico?
FOX: Well, a fake. It really is incredible how a man can play with public opinions in both sides. He comes to Mexico, he plays a thoroughly different music. Very diplomatic, very easy and soft talk, very non-content -- no content at all.
And he comes back to the states and then he comes back to his very old now message relying his whole campaign on that wall. It's incredible. The most gigantic nation in the world, which is United States, the largest by far economy, it's based on building a wall. That cannot be a presidential campaign.
CAMEROTA: Yes.
FOX: So, let me speak very briefly about the economic impact of this nonsense of building a wall, of throwing out 11 million Mexicans that are hardworking there in the United States contributing to that economy.
Mexico contributes at least with 10 million U.S. jobs for U.S. citizens for those who are backing up Trump. Mexico provides those jobs. So if we have to quit our relationship because he is proposing that, the first loser is the same United States. And, of course, Mexico has where to replace, where to go to work, to build.
CAMEROTA: Yes.
FOX: We can go to many places in the world --
CAMEROTA: Yes.
FOX: -- and many economies are successful. Really here, my message is please wake up, America. You have everything to lose and nothing to win with this false prophet.
CAMEROTA: President Fox, did you think it was a mistake, now in hindsight, for President Pena Nieto to have invited Trump?
FOX: It certainly was, and it was because, very smartly, Trump took advantage on a very well program right before this meeting in Arizona to present his immigration plan. An immigration plan is already right there in Congress for U.S. approval -- for approval from Congressmen -- and that's very sound, very solid.
It solves the problem of the 11 million undocumented which, by the way, are working -- are working for American families. Are working there in the United States in the construction industry, in farming. Jobs that nobody else will take.
CAMEROTA: Do you know, as you sit there today, who will pay for Trump's idea of a wall?
FOX: That's absolutely certain -- we are not going to pay for that "F" -- I'm going to be moderate today -- for that "F" wall. It's a crazy idea and I don't know why U.S. citizens -- taxpayers accept that they will pay for the wall. They don't have an alternative. If that wall is built, no way Mexico will pay for it. We are smaller nation than United States but we have our pride, we have our dignity, and we have our ways of solving our own problems.
He has to understand that North American region is the most powerful region in the world, and I'm including Mexico. We are part of North America through NAFTA, and that's the way the U.S. economy has become so strong and that's the way Mexican economy has become so strong and retained here millions of Mexican citizens that otherwise would have migrated. Now they have a job, now they're working here in Mexico.
[07:45:00] And United States has benefited extensively by the amount of jobs that NAFTA has created and, more so, the profits that U.S. corporations have benefited with. With a wall, U.S. corporations have a great -- very great problem. And I'm sure they will begin unemploying people because they would not havemarkets. It's stupid, this whole idea. I don't know why we discuss it so long and so frequently. CAMEROTA: But do you --
FOX: This guy is absolutely crazy.
CAMEROTA: But, President, do you believe that President Pena Nieto spelled it out as clearly and as forcibly as you just did, to Donald Trump, that Mexico will not pay for the wall?
FOX: No, absolutely not, and that's why it was a mistake. I think that what happened is horrible for Mexico -- that, and for President Pena. He is contributing to the wrong play (ph) that his man is proposing. And, yes, President Pena is not representing the 120 million Mexicans here and also with the 35 million Hispanic-Mexicans that are there in United States.
So, no, big mistake. Historic mistake in the case of Pena. And also for Trump. He's just showing himself as he is, a liar. He is a liar. He's lying to U.S. and borders, to U.S. followers, and he came to Mexico to lie to Mexican people. He is violent on his (INAUDIBLE). He's authoritarian on his (INAUDIBLE). He's totally wrong around his economic ideas.
He remembers me of President Hoover. He came exactly with the same proposals -- to isolate the United States, to tax imports from abroad, and to limit companies and corporations to invest abroad. And then the big depression came. This is what U.S. borders, followers of Trump have to read. They have learn about this and this is what will happen.
CAMEROTA: Let's talk about Donald Trump's speech then, after he left Mexico, in Arizona, where he laid out some of the points of what he calls his immigration plan.
Here are some of the main pillars. No amnesty, no path for citizenship. He says he will remove any criminals -- anyone who's committed a crime in the U.S. and millions of the undocumented who have overstayed their visas. Build that border wall that Mexico will pay for, as we've discussed. Defund sanctuary cities and rescind President Obama's executive orders.
In terms of deportation, do you understand, President Fox, how Donald Trump's plan would work?
FOX: Impossible, impossible. There is reasonable legal ways of bringing order to that border if needed. I'm clear on that. We need order on people crossing. We need order on containers and truckloads crossing either way. We need order in that border in relation to guns, which Trump is promoting that every U.S. citizen should have a gun. And those are the guns that are provoking violence here in Mexico.
What is United States doing about drugs crossing the border? Why is not it stopped right there in the border? Why do have a wall -- United States has, and drugs are brought in because of the huge demand on drugs with United States. So there are many problems around our relationship but it has to be solved one by one and in a joint effort together, which we've been doing for years, for decades and the case of NAFTA is one of them.
That's another contradiction. He said he would take -- he would take United States economy out of NAFTA and now he says that we have to improve NAFTA. Fortunately, this visit to Mexico opened his eyes in a way. He learned, for the first time, what's Mexico all about. It's not a land of exploitation of businesses like his, but it's a land of progress, of development, of competitiveness, of educated people, of good people as a whole.
And this is the same Mexicans that are in the United States. They are not the criminals and the rapists. It's a minority and always each minority in each society and community has criminals, it has violence.
[07:50:00] CAMEROTA: Yes.
FOX: Of course, violence and crime has been -- has to be stopped but the United States -- it's not caused by Mexicans, believe me. It's caused by all together U.S. society. So please wake up, America. Please wake up, followers. Please understand what these proposals mean to that great nation.
I am part of that nation. I am an immigrant myself. My grandfather migrated from United States from Cincinnati, Ohio back in 1895 to come and build his own American dream. This is the way we should understand migration. It's a two-way street but it has to be controlled, it has to be in order.
CAMEROTA: Yes.
FOX: We do that on the southern border.
CAMEROTA: President Vicente Fox, thank you for all of your thoughts on Donald Trump and more. Great to have you on NEW DAY.
CUOMO: Our thanks to President Fox. Hillary Clinton going on the attack, saying Donald Trump failed his first foreign test. Her running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine, joins us live with his reaction, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[07:55:15] CUOMO: The picture, the picture. We're going to show this picture that became one of the signature images of the 70's. Do you remember this? Newspaper heiress Patty Hearst shocking the world two months after she was supposedly kidnapped, then this comes out. The question was obvious. What happened with Hearst? Did you join her captors willingly, was this a set-up?
A lot of the questions went unsatisfied, if not unanswered. Jeffrey Toobin is the author of "American Heiress". Of course, he's CNN's senior legal analyst and he joins us now. Congratulations on the book.
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Thank you, sir.
CUOMO: Four weeks -- this is the fourth week on "The New York Times" bestseller list? TOOBIN: Yes, sir.
CUOMO: So, what does that mean? What do you think drives the interest in this?
TOOBIN: Because it's a mystery, just the mystery you set up. Here, you have this woman privileged, wealthy, 19 years old. She gets kidnapped in a horrifying violent way, but within just seven weeks she announces that she has become Tania -- she's changed her name -- and she participates in a bank robbery in San Francisco.
At that point, she then goes on the run with the SLA for a year and one-half, commits an extraordinary series of crimes -- two more bank robberies, shoots up a street. And the question is, is she a victim or is she a perpetrator?
CUOMO: So -- and then there became these tangential kind of points of curiosity. It first was who took her? The Symbionese Liberation Army. What did that even mean?
TOOBIN: Donald DeFreeze, who was an escaped prisoner from Soledad Prison, coined the term and invented -- he -- the word was symbiosis -- coming together - and he turns it into an adjective. He called it an army even though, at most, it had a dozen people in it.
CUOMO: So Symbionese didn't mean it came from somewhere.
TOOBIN: No, a lot of people ask me -- it's like, where's Symbia? No, there's no such place, no.
CUOMO: And the -- although, you know, it being a fake army worked in its favor, right? Made it harder to detect because there was no reach or connection.
TOOBIN: Well -- and they were so extreme. Their first act was assassinating the school superintendent in Oakland, California. An act that was so appalling that the Black Panthers, the Weather Underground, condemned it. So the SLA was so isolated it made it harder -- it made them harder to catch, which is one reason they were on the run for a full year and one-half.
CUOMO: And then the speculation was OK, so if Patty Hearst, who is assumed at 19, to be sure, vulnerable --
TOOBIN: Certainly.
CUOMO: -- but somewhat, you know -- a good kid, a family -- the father, the big newspaper man, she's at Berkeley College -- then they must have brainwashed her. You say not so fast.
TOOBIN: Well, you know, brainwashing is a journalist term, it's not a medical term. And the same thing with Stockholm syndrome. What I try to do in the book is look at what she did as opposed to what label you want to apply to it. And, frankly, what I see in her behavior is that she was a rational person. She was a 19-year-old kid isolated, unhappy in her engagement to her boyfriend, Steven Weed. Didn't get along with her mother, either. And --
CUOMO: Wasn't he older? Wasn't --
TOOBIN: he was -- not that much older, about four years older. He was a graduate student in philosophy.
CUOMO: But she got sideways with the family about that, right?
TOOBIN: Exactly, yes.
CUOMO: She moved in with him or something?
TOOBIN: Exactly, you know, living in sin. And if you look at how they approached her once she was captured it wasn't brainwashing in a North Korean sense, but it was just talking to her. It was explaining to her that they were out to feed the poor, which is what they did at first, and how the FBI was the real threat to them, not the SLA themselves. And gradually, and then not so gradually, she did become a member of the SLA.
CUOMO: So what do you want to tee up for people because I didn't get to talk to you before we did this today, so I don't know what you want to keep in book so that people have to read it? But what's the pitch? Why should they read this?
TOOBIN: You know what, the seventies. You know, I was live in the seventies but I was a kid. But the thing that was so shocking to me was how bad the seventies were in the United States. Think about this one fact. A thousand political bombings a year in the United States. Can you imagine what cable news and Internet would do with 1,000 bombings a year? But in that more primitive era people didn't know just how violent things were. Two hijackings a month in the early seventies.
The SLA was an aberration but it wasn't that much of an aberration. This was a country that was really coming apart at the seams. And Patty's experience as -- between the two worlds -- between the good girl world, as you say, and the world of revolutionary violence, was kind of a perfect metaphor for how crazy the country was going. And to this day people are still arguing about what side she was really on.
CUOMO: Jeffrey Toobin, perfect man for the job.
TOOBIN: Thank you, sir.
