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End of the Email Controversy?; Media & Pundits Criticize NBC's Presidential Forum. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired September 08, 2016 - 06:30   ET

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

[06:30:03] LT. GENERAL MARK HERTLING (RET), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: What do you do, you leave Mobil and Exxon to just pump it out, while the rest of the country tries to regain their security and stability? I just don't know how that works. Maybe I'm slow, but it's confusing to me.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: General Kellogg, your response.

LT. GENERAL KEITH KELLOGG (RET), FOREIGN POLICY ADVISOR, DONALD TRUMP CAMPAIGN: Well, I think one of the roles you have is to make sure you take control of strategic parts of a country. When I went into Iraq, actually, into Saudi Arabia in the First Gulf War, the unit I was with, the 82nd Airborne Division, we put units around the oil fields that was so critical to the fight going forward in case Iraq came south into Saudi Arabia.

CAMEROTA: But do you take their natural resources?

KELLOGG: You hold them.

CAMEROTA: But Donald Trump is talking about something different. He's talking about taking oil.

KELLOGG: No, he's not. I don't believe he is at all.

The comment -- and here's part of the concern I have going forward. When you use words like plundering, that's a pretty hot word to use. He has never said plunder.

CAMEROTA: What did he mean? You take their oil. If we would have taken the oil, you wouldn't have ISIS. What does he mean?

KELLOGG: What he mean is strategically hold that area. So, you deny them the ability to have an economic lifeline. You take the oil.

We know they're using it. We know they're getting about $3 million a day from black market oil. So, you take away their finances. When you hold the oil, you take away their ability to finance, cuts down their ability to recruit, it cuts down their ability to conduct terrorist operation.

CAMEROTA: And holding the oil would have involved more ground troops.

KELLOGG: Well, yes. Would it involve ground troops, yes. Whose ground troops are they?

CAMEROTA: I don't know. What's the answer to that?

KELLOGG: Well, the answer is he's going to leave that up to the commanders to figure, that out. The intent is that the Arab coalitions would put the troops on the ground. Now saying that, he's been very, very clear, he's going to reserve judgment.

One of the things I like about him and what he's done, he's looked to the commanders and said, you come to me, you generals in civilian leadership, you come to me with a plan within 30 days of assuming office. After that plan, I'll look at it.

It's like we do in any military operation. You come through with several courses of action and then you make the hard decision.

CAMEROTA: General Hertling, I want to get your response.

HERTLING: I'm going to use the word plunder because that is what he said. Quite frankly, Alisyn, it's really discouraging to me, and I love Keith, but to see not only Keith but others attempt to interpret what he said.

Every time you get a different surrogate for Mr. Trump, they interpret it a different way. When is he going to start meaning what he says and using the right words to communicate?

He didn't say guard the oil. He didn't say secure the oil. He said we should have taken the oil. That only tells me that he's looking at plundering, and that's against the American value system and the American way of war.

CAMEROTA: General Hertling, General Kellogg, thank you for debating all this.

KELLOGG: Thanks, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Let's get to Chris.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: So last night, the e-mail controversy that's been dogging Hillary Clinton, it came up. Now, it is debatable whether or not the server story is a matter of national security. But what did not come up last night may be the headline for you this morning.

You see Colin Powell on your screen right now. An e-mail from him to Secretary Clinton that's been speculated on a lot is now here for our review. The facts, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:37:31] CAMEROTA: All right. This is being called something of a bomb shell this morning. Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings releasing a 2009 e-mail exchange that backs up Hillary Clinton's claims that she sought advice on whether or not to use personal e-mail and devices from her predecessor as secretary of state, Colin Powell. Last month, Powell told "People" magazine that Clinton's campaign was

trying to, quote, pin her use of private e-mail on him and that she'd been using the private server for a year before she discussed it with him. But this new e-mail exchange reveals something quite different. Clinton asked him, quote, "What were the restrictions on your use of your BlackBerry? Did you use it in your personal office? I've been told that the DSS personnel knew you had one and used it but no one fesses up to knowing how you used it. President Obama has struck a blow for berry addicts like us. Any and all advice is welcome."

Here is how Colin Powell responded.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: "I didn't have a BlackBerry. What I did do was have a personal computer that was hooked up to a private phone line. Sounds ancient. So I could communicate with a wide range of friends directly without it going through the State Department servers.

I even used it to do business with some foreign leaders and some of the senior folks in the department on their personal e-mail accounts. I did the same thing on the road in hotels.

Now, the real issue had to do with PDAs, as we called them a few years ago, before BlackBerry became a noun. The issue was diplomatic security would not allow them into the secure spaces, especially up your way. When I asked why not, they gave me all kinds of nonsense about how they gave out signals and could be read by spies, et cetera. Same reason they tried to keep mobile phones out of the suite.

I had numerous meetings with them. We even opened up one for them to try to explain to me why it was more dangerous than, say, a remote control from one of the many TVs in the suite or something embedded in my shoe heel. They never satisfied me, and the NSA and CIA wouldn't back off. So, we just went about our business and stopped asking.

I had an ancient version of the PDA and used it. In general, the suite was so sealed that it was hard to get signals in or out wirelessly, however there is a real danger. If it is public that you have a BlackBerry and it is government and you're using it, government become an official record and subject to the law.

Reading about the president's BlackBerry rules this morning, it sounds like it won't be as useful as it used to be.

[06:40:05] Be very careful. I got around it all by not saying much and not using systems that captured the data. You will find diplomatic security driving you crazy if you let them. They had Maddy tied up in knots. I refuse to let them live in my house or build a place on my property. They found an empty garage half a block away.

On weekends, I drove my beloved cars around town without them following me. I promised I would have a phone and not be gone more than an hour or two at Tysons or the hardware store. They hated it and asked me to sign a letter relieving them of responsibility if I got whacked while doing that. I gladly did. Spontaneity was my security. They wanted to have two to three guys

follow me around the building all the time. I said if they were doing their job guarding the place, they didn't need to follow me.

I relented and let one guy follow me one full corridor behind just so they knew where I was if I was needed immediately. Their job is to keep you hermetically sealed up.

Love, Colin."

(END AUDIO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Former Secretary Powell has not responded to a CNN request for comment on these newly released e-mail chains.

CUOMO: All right. So let's discuss. CNN political analyst and national political reporter for "The New York Times," Alex Burns, and CNN political analyst and host of the David Gregory show podcast, David Gregory.

Let's just get right out there with what this means.

How big a deal is this in the context of Clinton has been saying all along that she went to Secretary Powell for guidance, he said he used his own computer, that he'd set u his own personal space, and that was guidance for her.

The Trump campaign, the Republicans who have held a gazillion hearings on this, have said she was lying about that essentially all along. What now?

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, a couple things. I have to point out my wife Beth Wilkinson represents Hillary Clinton's aides in this investigation, not the former secretary herself.

CUOMO: So you knew this and said nothing to us.

GREGORY: No, I did not know this. But I think there's still a dispute between them because Powell has made it clear she was using the private server and he never did that. But he's clearly expressing to her the difficulties about when personal e-mail could be subject to the law, could become public record and she would have to be careful.

What's not in dispute is this was a serious lapse in judgment on her part. She has admitted that. What's also not a dispute is that is illegal based on what the FBI and Justice Department --

CUOMO: And Colin Powell, a man of very high integrity, told her I'm using a personal computer because these rules are cumbersome, because I'm concerned about the transparency aspects of it.

GREGORY: But that's different than having an outside server, and that's certainly different than deleting thousands of e-mails. So the politics of this is never going to go away. But we know some things that are not in dispute. I think this gets into other areas about what's classify, what's not, the difficulties of personal communications that a lot of government officials go through, especially at the highest levels. I want to at least be careful at this point about overreading this.

CAMEROTA: What do you hear, Alex?

ALEX BURNS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I think just politically, a lot of -- certainly a lot of Republicans and some Democrats are frustrated with the e-mail story. They kind of -- I don't even know that Colin Powell having done exactly the same thing as Hillary Clinton is politically exonerating. It gives her some cover in that she can say this man of integrity told me he did the same thing.

CAMEROTA: And that she reached out. She was trying to get an answer. What this tells me is she was searching for an answer. She didn't go in with a plan. She was asking people, how do you handle this? What should I do?

He tells her basically there's this bureaucratic morass she should try to avoid.

BURNS: Like I'm old enough to remember when Democrats thought the Bush administration was inadequately transparent and inadequately attentive to following the strictures of executive power, right?

So, the idea that George Bush's secretary of state did the same thing as me or did something similar in a certain area and told me what I was doing was okay, I don't know that's an explanation that really holds up.

GREGORY: Also, look at what they're talking about. They're talking about BlackBerrys, which is a window into the fact that even our treatment of e-mails as a society, let alone in government, has changed. Even since 2008, it's changed dramatically.

But look, he's also saying be careful. Hillary Clinton, she'll make arguments about whether or not she was careful or not in her age. The fact is, she has admitted a serious error in judgment.

Setting up the server initially and then deciding on her own to delete emails.

CUOMO: Here's what I think it does objectively. Hillary Clinton gets attacked for what she did as if nobody has ever done anything like this before. I think that is fair criticism from her campaign and supporters on a regular basis, that when she does it, it gets magnified in importance. I think that's what the Colin Powell e-mail goes to, is that she wasn't the first one to ever consider these ideas of what to do to insulate herself from undue scrutiny.

Another point on that is what Comey just said. So, the FBI is now getting tarred for its investigation of her.

[06:45:02] They put out the report. The GOP, Clinton critics are using it as proof that somehow the FBI was inadequate in their investigating. So, Comey said this, put them up on the screen. "There are two

aspects to this. One, our judgment about the facts and prosecutive merit," which is supposed to be his only job. "And two, how we decided to talk about that judgment, which is not his job. The difficult decision was actually the second part, not the first. At the end of the day, the case itself was not a cliff hanger."

I have worked and reported on the FBI for 15 years. I cannot find anybody inside that agency who has any clout to say anything else, that this wasn't a closed case. We would not prosecute this.

Comey was put in an artificial position, which is his second point. He's not supposed to talk about why he wouldn't prosecute. That's for the DOJ. That got messy politically.

But do you think that this matters, that he's coming out and saying it wasn't a close case, period?

GREGORY: Well, I do think it matters. Again, I want to be very careful here because my wife as a lawyer has dealt directly with the FBI investigation. So I just want to be totally transparent with our audience about this.

CUOMO: Do you feel he always makes it about him when I ask a question?

CAMEROTA: Or about his wife.

GREGORY: I'll be fairly scrutinized about this. This is a very specific point. It is just, as an objective matter, highly unusual for an FBI director to talk about why they didn't charge someone, if they didn't charge them.

Just like the Justice Department would not talk about it if they didn't charge someone. What's clear is that -- and I know this from my own reporting -- that this FBI director is extremely sensitive about criticism within the FBI about the treatment of this investigation and feels the need to justify himself.

What I find curious is that this same man, who has a senior Justice Department official in the Bush administration, was so sure and so confident in the independence and rule of law that he stood up to the president and his chief of staff and would not allow an order to be signed by then incapacitated Attorney General John Ashcroft with regard to the treatment of prisoners. He felt so strongly about it then, but he's apparently less confident in the independence of the judiciary today that he feels the political pressure.

I think it shows you how political this issue has become.

BURNS: And Donald Trump has had no compunctions about putting the FBI itself on the defensive here. He's now actively out there on the campaign trail accusing the FBI of improper conduct, accusing the Justice Department of rigging the investigation.

So, you can understand why an FBI director would want to say something. It's just a question of whether that's actually part of his role to push back.

CAMEROTA: Let's talk about last night, where there was this candidate forum and it was this commander in chief forum. It was the first time that viewers and voters got to see the two candidates, level playing field, apples to apples, exactly what their plans are laid out.

What do you think the reaction was? What do you think the political fallout was from last night?

GREGORY: You know, President Obama said something which is like we're almost grading on a curve that we tend to view these kinds of debates and some things Donald Trump says as if they're above board and normal and should be reported normally. I think that's true and not true.

The true aspect of it is that I think Donald Trump or any political outsider can make a searing critique of the state of the world and the state of presidential leadership and even the leadership of former secretary of state with regard to what's happened in the Middle East over the past 15 years, that she certainly has been a part of -- voting for the Iraq war, voting for an invasion of Libya, as she did, supporting it as secretary of state, driving that policy. I think that's a fair criticism.

When he says that Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, who is an authoritarian, has good control over his government, that just shows he doesn't understand the international system and he somehow thinks he's going to have a better relationship with Russia, which has betrayed the trust of two presidents in a row, indicates he doesn't appreciate how difficult that relationship would be.

CUOMO: The notion that seeing them this way removes the idea of parody when it comes to policy, do you think that will become a common reaction to last night?

BURNS: I do. And I think it's really a preview of what we're going to see in the debates starting later this month. It was in some ways an apples to apples comparison last night, but you didn't have the candidates interacting with each other, and you didn't have the moderator asking them the same questions and treating them the same way, right?

So, when they're actually engaging with each other and when you put her knowledge of policy up against his, you know, purposeful but rather hazier argument about change, that's when the voters are really going to get the contrast.

GREGORY: That's right. They can get into a real debate, and voters will be able to make a judgment about temperament, about knowledge, about something a lot. Can you imagine that person as president?

CAMEROTA: And in a moment, be watching that first debate. Thank you very much for being here.

Well, NBC's Matt Lauer is under fire on social media at least for his performance as moderator last night.

[06:50:02] What did he do wrong? Our media mavens give us their take next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: All right. So an aspect of understanding the impact of these events with the candidate is how they're run. At last night's commander in chief forum, you had NBC's Matt Lauer, now getting heavy crate schism for a variety of reasons.

Lauer really went at Hillary Clinton early on, giving her a lot of cues about time. We did not see that same dynamic with Donald Trump.

And then there was a big moment. Trump doubled down on one of his most common --

CAMEROTA: False?

CUOMO: False, well, I don't know what you want to call it. But he has no proof he was against the Iraq war, but he argues he does. Here's that moment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MATT LAUER, NBC NEWS: But you say --

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Now, look, this is an important issue. I know we're on TV. We don't have a lot of time.

LAUER: I want to get to a lot of questions.

CLINTON: I will talk quickly.

LAUGHTER: What have you done in your life that prepares you to send men and women of the United States into harm's way?

[06:55:00] TRUMP: Well, I think the main thing is I have great judgment, I have good judgment. I know what's going on. I've called so many of the shots.

I happen to hear Hillary Clinton say that I was not against the war in Iraq. I was totally against the war in Iraq.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: All right. He says, I'm totally against the war in Iraq, you can look at the interview I gave with "Esquire" in 2004. You can look at what I said with Howard Stern, all of that was after the war, after everybody realized those of us of who were over there covering it and people back here realized that it was a mistake.

There is zero proof that he was against it at the time it was being debated. I've asked him about it. He doesn't have a good answer.

Let's discuss how the forum was run and the candidates' performances in that context. We have CNN senior reporter for media and politics Dylan Byers, CNN senior media correspondent and host of "RELIABLE SOURCES," Brian Stelter. What did you see, my brother?

BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESONDENT: I saw the journalistic challenge of this decade. Interviewing Donald Trump and challenging him when he's wrong is the journalistic challenge of our time. Hillary Clinton is a challenge too, but Donald Trump is a challenge. Matt Lauer did not step up to that challenge.

CAMEROTA: Dylan, why is everybody hating on Matt Lauer this morning, since it's social media and all the criticism. What did he do wrong?

DYLAN BYERS, CNN SENIOR REPORTER FOR MEDIA & POLITICS: Well, look, you know, political interviews, forums, town halls, debates, these are significant deals. There's especially big, significant given all that's at stake in the 2016 election. You don't send Matt Lauer to do a political reporter's job.

Look, in a debate, it might be fair to argue you can let the two candidates fact check each other, but when it comes to these one-on- one interviews, these forums, you have to step up and play that role. That onus is on you.

And Matt Lauer didn't do that. He certainly didn't do that with Donald Trump. He didn't do it on the Iraq war. He didn't do it on a number of other issues.

And, frankly, this criticism that he went a lot harder on Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump, I think, is well founded.

STELTER: I would add live television is really hard. The other caveat I would add is if the candidates had been willing to sit on that stage longer, we could have heard more and could have heard more fact checking.

You know, I agree with the frustration that I think so many viewers at home felt during the debate, during the discussion, that there wasn't more follow-up from Lauer. Yes, there were time constraints, but if he had dug deeper on specific question, we might have come away knowing more about the candidates.

You know, guys, a few years ago I wrote a book about the morning show wars. Really a lot about Matt Lauer. I came away really respecting the man. He's one of the best broadcasters alive today in America.

And yet, in an event like this with limited time, this was a real struggle. I think journalists have to look at this event last night and wonder for the debates what kind of real-time fact checking can be done.

CAMEROTA: Yes, will this be instructive for all of the moderators coming up that when somebody says something erroneous, do they just let the other candidate fact check them, or do they jump in and say, that's not proven.

STELTER: I would argue, there has -- there are some moments, not many of them, where facts are very clear. On this issue about the Iraq war, the facts are very clear. There's no documentation that Trump can hold up and say, this is the proof I was against the war at the star of the on 2.

CUOMO: One quick note on this h then I want to get away from us and talk about the people who matter, the candidates.

BYERS: We all have a great deal of respect for Matt Lauer, but again, this is a really big calling. You have to know your facts, and you have to be prepared. I almost think we're giving him too much credit. There are questions here like, what do you read in order to prepare for becoming president of the United States of America. What experience do you have? When Donald Trump doesn't answer those questions, you have to go as hard on him as you went on Hillary Clinton on her e-mails.

CUOMO: It's easy to criticize. I have a very long and known history with Donald Trump. I earn -- you e damned if you do, you are damned if you don't. I'm proof of that.

So, let's talk about how they fared last night, because in these context, how do you think Clinton did in terms of she was under hard scrutiny, you'd have to deal with. And I saw that he kind of carried her mood through out it?

STELTER: I did. She seemed to be caught off guard being questioned about these e-mails in detail. She should be questioned about them more. That might help her and voters move past it. It continues to come up at an event that should have been more about issues Iraq and Afghanistan veterans face.

CAMEROTA: Dylan, how do you think the candidates did?

BYERS: Look, I think it was hard for both of them. Hillary Clinton needed to give more succinct, concrete, and clear answers, especially on the e-mail issue. I think that's actually an issue that matters a lot to military men and women and to military veterans. They don't feel like they've had a clear answer on that from Hillary Clinton. That's the story for her.

But Donald Trump needed to give actual answers and factual answers. He didn't do that last night. When he gets on stage with Hillary Clinton at the same time and she goes up against him in terms of policy, in terms of concrete proposals, that's going to be a huge challenge for him. I think that's what we saw last night.

CAMEROTA: That was a little preview for what we'll see at the end of this month. Dylan, Brian, thank you.

CUOMO: Last night was the easy version.