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Clinton, Trump Square Off at Forum; House Democrats Release 2009 Email Exchange Between Clinton, Powell; Clinton, Trump Take on Veterans' Issues. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired September 08, 2016 - 07:00   ET

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

BYERS: ... proposals, that's going to be a huge challenge for him. I think that's what we saw last night.

[07:00:04] CAMEROTA: That was a little preview for what we will see at the end of this month. Dylan, Brian, thank you.

CUOMO: Last night was the easy version. Because they didn't have to be there at the same time. One thing is to be sure. Last night was a big night. It was a big night for you. You got to see things about these two candidates that you have not seen before. And there are moments from last night that are going to matter all the way through to election day. So let's get right to it.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Barack Obama did not follow what our experts said to do.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I don't think the guy is qualified to be president of the United States.

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: We're going to defeat ISIS without committing American ground troops.

TRUMP: I have great judgment. I have good judgement.

CLINTON: We've got to do it with air power. We've got to do it with much more support for the Arabs and the Kurds, who will fight on the ground.

TRUMP: When he calls me brilliant, I'll take the compliment.

CLINTON: It was a mistake to have a personal account.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: E-mail exchange between Colin Powell and Hillary Clinton.

CLINTON: I valued his advice.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Powell advised Secretary Clinton on how to skirt security rules and bypass requirements to preserve federal records.

CLINTON: I communicated about classified material on a wholly separate system. I took it very seriously. (END VIDEOTAPE)

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

CAMEROTA: Good morning, everyone. Welcome back to your NEW DAY. The president firing back at Donald Trump. This was just about an hour ago. President Barack Obama calling Trump unqualified to be president.

CUOMO: The president's comments come after a commander in chief forum last night that was a must see. Don't worry: we have all the big moments for you now and what they're going to mean in this election.

You had Clinton and Trump facing tough questions from people who deserved good answers. Veterans and active-duty troops and their families. Both candidates were often on the defensive, trying to prove themselves ready to serve. Who did a better job?

Let's get to our coverage. We have CNN's Sunlen Serfaty -- Sunlen.

SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Chris, it was so fascinating last night to see both the candidates appearing back to back at this national security forum in what essentially turned into a small preview of how they would handle themselves at the first real face off, which will come later this month at the first debate, both trying to gain the upper hand on the big question: who is ready to be commander in chief.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SERFATY (voice-over): Donald Trump drumming up more controversy.

TRUMP: The man has very strong control over a country.

SERFATY: Praising Russian President Vladimir Putin while trashing President Obama.

TRUMP: He's been a leader far more than our president has been a leader.

SERFATY: And attacking the performance of U.S. military generals, standing by his statement claiming he knows more about ISIS than the generals do.

TRUMP: Under the leadership of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the generals have been reduced to rubble. They have been reduced to a point where it's embarrassing for our country.

SERFATY: But giving no details on his plan to defeat ISIS.

TRUMP: I have a substantial chance of winning. If I win, I don't want to broadcast to the enemy exactly what my plan is.

SERFATY: Hillary Clinton making clear her plan to fight ISIS will not include ground troops. CLINTON: We've got to do it with air power. We've got to do it with

much more support for the Arabs and the Kurds who will fight on the ground against ISIS. We are not putting ground troops into Iraq ever again, and we're not putting ground troops into Syria. I view force as a last resort, not a first choice.

SERFATY: Clinton getting grilled over her use of a private e-mail server while serving as secretary of state and her vote to go to war with Iraq.

CLINTON: Classified material has a header which says "top secret," "secret," "confidential." Nothing -- and I would -- I will repeat this, and this is verified in the report by the Department of Justice, none of the e-mails sent or received by me had such a header.

I think that the decision to go to war in Iraq was a mistake. We must learn what led us down that path so that it never happens again. I think I'm in the best possible position to be able to understand that and prevent it. I'm asking to be judged on the totality of my record.

SERFATY: Later, Trump repeating his false claim that he opposed the Iraq War from the start.

TRUMP: I've always said, shouldn't be there.

HOWARD STERN, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: Are you for invading Iraq?

TRUMP: Yes, I guess so. You know, I wish it was -- I wish the first time it was done correctly.

SERFATY: And declaring that the U.S. should have stolen oil from Iraq.

TRUMP: But if we're going to get out, take the oil. If we would have taken the oil, you wouldn't have ISIS. Used to be to the victor belong the spoils.

SERFATY: And sparking outrage for defending his controversial 2013 tweet that suggests sexual assault in the military is the result of women serving alongside men.

[07:05:04] TRUMP: It is a correct tweet. There are many people that think that that's absolutely correct. You have reported, and the gentlemen can tell you, you have the report of rape, and nobody gets prosecuted. There are no consequence.

SERFATY: Also drawing criticism, NBC News anchor Matt Lauer being accused of aggressively questioning Clinton...

CLINTON: This is an important issue. We're on TV, and we don't have a lot of time.

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

CLINTON: I'll talk quickly.

SERFATY: ... and not fact-checking Trump's claims throughout the event.

TRUMP: I was totally against the war in Iraq. Perhaps almost as bad was the way Barack Obama got out. That was a disaster.

LAUER: People talk about you and commander in chief and not just Secretary Clinton, but some of your Republican opponents in the primary season, and they wonder about your temperament.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SERFATY: And afterwards, both sides slammed the other over their performance. The RNC chair specifically calling out Clinton for, in his words, being angry and defensive the entire time, tweeting out that she had no smile and was uncomfortable, upset that she was caught wrongly sending our secrets.

The Clinton campaign shooting right back, saying that's just what taking the office of the presidency seriously looks like.

So once again, Chris, you have both candidates here really trying to gain advantage over this big issue of who has the right temperament for this job.

CUOMO: And that was the big night, the first moment we've had, Sunlen, both of them there answering the same questions. And again, to a crowd that deserved good answers. Everybody's weighing in. President Obama was on an international stage and took the opportunity to criticize Donald Trump.

After meeting with the leaders of ten southeast Asian nations in Laos, the president was asked about Trump's criticism of his foreign policy. The president made his strongest statement yet about the 2016 election.

Here he is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I don't think the guy is qualified to be president of the United States. And every time he speaks, that opinion is confirmed.

And I think the most important thing for the public and the press is to just listen to what he says and follow up and ask questions about what appear to be either contradictory or uninformed or outright wacky ideas. There is this process that seems to take place over the course of the election season where somehow behavior that, in normal times, we would consider completely unacceptable and outrageous becomes normalized. And people start thinking that we should be grading on a curve.

But I can tell you, from the interactions that I've had over the last eight or nine days with foreign leaders, that this is serious business. You actually have to know what you're talking about, and you actually have to have done your homework. And when you speak, it should actually reflect thought-out policy that you can implement. And I have confidence that if, in fact, people just listen to what he

has to say and look at his track record or lack thereof, that they'll make a good decision.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: OK. So that's some big news overnight. There's other news that's happened last night. Hillary Clinton's e-mail saga taking an interesting turn. An e-mail exchange between Secretary Clinton and her predecessor, Colin Powell, has been released. And it reveals the tips Powell gave her on how to handle personal e-mail.

Let's bring in CNN political reporter Manu Raju with more. What does it say, Manu?

MANU RAJU, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Alisyn. Remember that that first story about Hillary Clinton's e-mail use broke in March of 2015. And it continues to be a major distraction for the Democratic nominee's candidacy.

But on the eve of more House Oversight Committee hearings into Clinton's e-mail arrangements, Democrat Elijah Cummings of Maryland releasing an e-mail exchange intended to give Clinton some political cover.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CLINTON (via phone): I'm not going to re-litigate in public my private conversations with him.

RAJU: Private conversations no more. The ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee releasing a surprising 2009 e-mail exchange between former Secretary of State Colin Powell and Hillary Clinton. Two days after Clinton was sworn in as secretary of state, she wrote to Powell, asking what the restrictions on his Blackberry were, hoping to bring hers to the State Department.

Powell, who used an older version of a smartphone during tenure, responding, "What I did do was have a personal computer that was hooked up to a private phone line so I could communicate with a wide range of friends directly without it going through the State Department's servers."

[07:10:06] Powell said the State Department "gave me all kind of nonsense about how they gave us signals and could be read by spies, et cetera," adding the real danger is that if it goes public, "government or not, to do business it may become an official record and subject to the law. Be very careful. I got around it all by not saying much and not using systems that captured the data."

CLINTON: I have the utmost respect for Secretary Powell. I appreciated the time he took when I was preparing to become secretary, and I valued his advice.

JAMES COMEY, FBI DIRECTOR: There is evidence that they were extremely careless. RAJU: The e-mail coming hours after FBI Director James Comey released

a staff memo following fierce criticism of his e-mail investigation and the decision not to recommend charges against Clinton. Comey writing that the case was not a cliff hanger, nor prosecutable, concluding that the critics are full of bologna.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

RAJU: Now, Powell has yet to respond to CNN's request for comment, but a spokesperson has said that Powell used a secure computer for classified information, and his correspondence was about unclassified information. And as we know from James Comey's testimony, that there were classified e-mails in Clinton's exchanges.

So already, Chris, Republicans saying it hardly exonerates her, especially since she's the one running for president -- Chris.

CUOMO: Manu Raju, thank you very much.

Let's bring in Republican congressman from Wisconsin. Sean Duffy has endorse Donald Trump. Congressman, good to have you on NEW DAY as always.

REP. SEAN DUFFY (R), WISCONSIN: Good morning, Chris. Thanks for having me on.

CUOMO: Absolutely. Let's play some moments from last night and get your reaction from the Donald Trump perspective. Here's what he had to say about Vladimir Putin in comparing him to the president of the United States favorably.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: If he says great things about me, I'm going to say great things about him. I've already said he is really very much of a leader. I mean, you can say, "Oh, isn't that a terrible thing?"

The man has very strong control over a country. Now, it's a very different system, and I don't happen to like the system, but certainly, in that system he's been a leader, far more than our president has been a leader.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: Congressman, do you agree that Vladimir Putin is a better leader than the president of the United States?

DUFFY: I'm not comparing the two of them. We have two different systems. We're a democracy. We elected Barack Obama, and that system and our leaders in that system are far better than the Russian model. I think...

CUOMO: But the man you support for president, Congressman, just said that he thinks that Vladimir Putin is a better leader than the president. Do you agree with his answer?

DUFFY: No, listen, no, I think -- I look at the systems, Chris. And I think that our system and our leadership is better.

But also, Hillary Clinton hit a reset button with Russia. Absolutely failed. I mean, people misjudge situations all the time.

But no, I look at this, I go our system is better. I'll take our president over any kind of Russian leader any day of the week. Though I might disagree with Obama, and I dis -- I don't like Putin, I like our system better.

CUOMO: Of course you do. What did you hear last night that gave you confidence in your decision to support Donald Trump as commander in chief?

DUFFY: Listen, I thought he came across presidential. I thought he looked good on the stage. So often we see him on the stump talking to 15,000 people. And he gets animated, and his voice goes up. And I thought this was a nice setting where he was calm and took the questions from Matt Lauer and answered those -- those questions. And I think that was the biggest feat of the night, is looking presidential on -- on the stage with Matt.

CUOMO: You believe that Donald Trump has a secret plan to fight ISIS?

DUFFY: Yes, I do. I think if you look at what he's done in business, I don't think he wants to telegraph what he's going to do or how he's going to do it. I think he's seen the mistakes of Barack Obama telegraphing, especially, our plan and our exit from Iraq and what that did in our ability to fully execute that plan. And I don't think he wants to do that.

CUOMO: I get the -- it's easy to criticize the status quo. We know that. You have to deal with it in government all the time. If he has a secret plan that's so good that it will quickly beat ISIS, why does he need this immediate rush to judgment by generals when he becomes president in 30 days to come up with a plan?

DUFFY: Well, I think any smart leader will say, "Listen, I've got a great idea." It happens in my office. I'm sure you do the same thing. As a leader, I know what I want to do. But I also bring my team around me and say, "Hey, what do you guys think? Is this the right strategy, the wrong strategy? What do you think we should do? And let's compare ideas."

Any strong leader who has good ideas will use a really good and smart team to bounce those ideas off of and ask them to -- to present their own ideas so you get the best plan possible moving forward. That just makes sense.

CUOMO: Congressman, if I had a secret plan to make NEW DAY the best morning show ever, and I was put in power to execute it, I wouldn't be having any conversations. Let me play you another...

DUFFY: But Chris, you don't have to because you are the best morning show out there.

[07:15:10] CUOMO: Oh, come on. You're the man. You're the man. DUFFY: That's because of Alisyn, not you.

CUOMO: Absolutely. Believe me, my mother says the same thing.

DUFFY: Love you.

CUOMO: All right. Let me play you another moment from last night that goes to the fundamental character test between these two candidates.

Obviously, Hillary Clinton had to deal with her e-mail stuff last night. The idea of being for or against the war came up last night and what that means. Clinton said, "I was for it. It was a mistake. I've learned from it. I can move on."

Trump doubled down on something that he has said all along. Let's play it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

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. And I happened to hear Hillary Clinton say that I was not against the war in Iraq. I was totally against the war in Iraq from -- you can look at "Esquire" magazine from '04. You can look at before that. And I was against the war in Iraq, because I said it's going to totally destabilize the Middle East, which it has. It has absolutely been a disastrous war.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: Now, Congressman, as you know, I've gone at it with Mr. Trump over this issue before. Get a lot of heat from his supporters. There is no proof that he has been able to provide or we've been able to find -- and believe me, we've looked for it -- that he was against the war at the time that it was being debated or any time soon thereafter.

Should he be held to account for something that he cannot prove, even though it is politically convenient to say?

DUFFY: Well, first of all, I haven't done the great research on what he said and what he said it and what the context of it was. But I think, you know, you have, and you've called him out for that. So have other networks. And I think the American people will make a decision based on his judgment on the war.

But I think they'll also look at Hillary, Chris, and her judgment that she's made, not just on the Iraq War that was addressed last night, not what I mentioned before, the reset button with Russia, but she called Assad a reformer. The failure that she's had in Libya. Those are all big issues that she has been involved in and has been an utter failure at.

Now, Donald Trump hasn't been on the foreign policy stage, not in the government arena, but in business, the guy's made good decisions. He's been very successful, building out the Trump empire in a way that shows strong leadership and good judgment that I think a lot of Americans and especially the military men and women who have served under commanders in chief, they look at the two candidates, and by points of almost 20 percent, they like Donald Trump more than Hillary Clinton.

And even if you go to Iraq -- I'm sorry, if we go to ISIS, last night, not a lot of detailed plans coming from either of them. This was not a point-by-point strategy and plan on how we execute military strategy.

But when Hillary comes out on ISIS, which a lot of Americans are concerned about, she has the same plan that Barack Obama has. Try to bomb them, get someone else's boots on the ground, and then have a Twitter war with ISIS to try to win. That strategy has failed us.

And I think Americans want a different strategy, because they want that threat not just away in the Middle East, but they're tired of ISIS inspiring radicals in our homeland and killing innocent American citizens.

So for both of them, it was, you know, it was a presidential night, but details were slim from both sides.

And you know, can I give one push on Matt Lauer? I know that everyone is saying he was so hard on Hillary. What I thought was he kept using quotes from Donald Trump. I would have loved if he would have used quotes from Hillary Clinton, saying, "I turned over all my e-mails." She told you that. She told the Congress that. And then we find out she didn't actually turn over all her e-mails. There were 17,000 that she didn't turn over that are work=related.

And not only that, she used Bleach Bit to delete all these other e- mails. Those also would have been...

CUOMO: Right.

DUFFY: ... you know, in the cone of that debate and prior statements that could have been used against her, as well.

CUOMO: Yes. Except that in context, there was probably a reason that they didn't. The FBI found those e-mails, reviewed those e-mails. Not all of them were things that were new. In fact, very few were. And they made a determination that there was nothing there to prosecute on. That part of the equation has to be there, as well.

DUFFY: No, no, no, no. Prosecution is different. She told us, "I turned over all the e-mails to the State Department." And she didn't turn all the e-mails over to the State Department.

I know you do hot yoga, Chris. I don't know if you use Bleach Bit to delete your hot yoga schedule.

CUOMO: But those are two different issues.

DUFFY: Or conversations with your wife.

CUOMO: Those are two different issues. How she destroyed things is one issue and worthy of criticism. What was turned over...

DUFFY: Taking a hammer to cell phones is consciousness of trying to destroy data. Your hot yoga schedule isn't deleted by you smashing -- you probably have an iPhone -- your iPhone.

So I think all of these things are coming into play. And it goes to this greater argument that, in a very serious time in American history with our economy and foreign policy, we have two candidates that a lot of Americans don't like.

[07:20:12] CUOMO: That's for sure.

DUFFY: And it's going to be an interesting election. I think it's going to be fascinating to see the two of them on the debate stage together, where they're laying out their ideas and their strategy. And Donald Trump is going to have to up his game on the plan front to go toe to toe with Hillary Clinton.

CUOMO: Well, you're certainly a precursor for what we'll see in the debates. Congressman Sean Duffy, thank you very much. We know that you're holding hearings about money that was sent to Iran and what it was for. When you get some information on that, please come back to us. Thanks for being on NEW DAY, as always.

DUFFY: Thanks, Chris.

CUOMO: Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: All right, Chris. Donald Trump laid out his vision for how to help veterans. A Democratic congressman who sits on the Veterans Affairs Committee joins us with his reaction to the national security forum next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: People are dying on line. They're dying waiting, waiting to get to see a doctor. They're waiting five days and six days. Under a part of my plan, if they have that long wait, they walk outside; they go to the local doctor; they choose the doctor; they choose the hospital, whether it's public or private; they get themselves better.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[07:25:13] CAMEROTA: That was Donald Trump criticizing the Department of Veterans Affairs over healthcare for vets. He proposes letting vets see local doctors outside of the government system. Let's discuss this and more with U.S. Congressman Mark Takano. He's a Democrat and ranking member of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs.

Congressman, good morning.

REP. MARK TAKANO (D), CALIFORNIA: Good morning.

CAMEROTA: What did you think of Donald Trump's plan to speed up healthcare for our vets?

TAKANO: Well, first of all, let's clarify that the V.A. healthcare system already does engage with contract care, with providers in the community, so it's not new.

But Donald Trump is proposing, I believe, a massive expansion of the choice program. Most VSOs, most credible veteran service organizations, oppose Donald Trump's plan as a huge step toward privatization, something which they oppose and Hillary Clinton clearly opposed last night.

CAMEROTA: But why oppose the privatization? I mean, Donald Trump actually got it a little bit wrong in making the point last night. He said they wait five to six days. Drew Griffin -- our Drew Griffin at CNN did an investigation into the phoenix V.A. They wait five to six months in some cases to get in for health care.

There are at least 40 vets who died while waiting. So why not try to speed it up with privatization?

TAKANO: Well, first of all, it wasn't really clear that those vets, you know, died because of the V.A. wait times. The V.A. wait times were inexcusable, and we held extensive hearings into that issue and attempted to address the wait times.

Look, the veterans would face in the private sector care, in many cases, wait times, as well. Those wait times are not necessarily published by private sector healthcare organizations. The V.A. is open and transparent to -- well, potentially transparent to public scrutiny, because, you know all of their -- all of their activities are potentially discoverable by the public and the press.

So the expansion of the choice program would drain nearly 40 percent of the V.A.'s resources away, leaving the V.A. with the most complicated, most difficult, most expensive patients.

Donald Trump's expansion of choice would cost nearly half a trillion dollars over the next several years. He doesn't explain how he'll pay for that at the same time that he wants to raise military budget by $100 billion.

CAMEROTA: Let's talk about another issue that came up last night. And that is the crisis of sexual assault in the military.

Donald Trump was asked about a controversial tweet that he sent out in 2013. Let me read you that tweet. Trump said then, "26,000 unreported sexual assaults in the military, only 238 convictions. What did these geniuses expect when they put men and women together?"

Last night he was asked about that, and he said he stood by that tweet. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Well, it is -- it is a correct tweet. There are many people that think that that's absolutely correct, and we need to have a strength...

LAUER: So this should have been expected? And does that mean the only way to fix it is to take women out of the military?

TRUMP: Well -- and by the way, since then, it's gotten worse. No, not to take them out, but something has to be happened. Right now part of the problem is nobody gets prosecuted. You have reported and the gentlemen can tell you, you have the report of rape and nobody gets prosecuted.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Congressman, what's your response to what he thinks the problem is?

TAKANO: I think military sexual rape or assault is something that will be addressed through proper leadership and judgment.

And Donald Trump clearly, on that tweet, doubled down on it. The idea that sexual assault and rape are a natural, inevitable consequence of putting men and women together in a working context is simply absurd. Donald Trump should have rejected and repudiated what he said instead of doubling down on it.

He showed -- further, he showed very little knowledge about our military justice system. We do have a justice system in place. And there was a robust debate in Congress about whether we should change it. We have been paying very much -- very close attention to this.

But Donald Trump showed no preparation, no serious thinking about what he would do about this problem. He just sort of spouts off what he thinks is politically expedient to suit his -- to suit the moment.

CAMEROTA: But what about his claim that nobody gets prosecuted and that the -- there's a much greater number of accusations and assaults than there are prosecutions?

TAKANO: It is indeed a problem that we have to deal with. I -- as I said, there's been a robust debate within the armed services committee among both male and female members of Congress.

CAMEROTA: But what's the answer?

TAKANO: Well, the answer for the moment is to keep these...