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Clinton's Doctor Says She Remains Healthy; Trump Reveals Some Health Details on Talk Show; Pastor Stops Trump from Making Political Attack in Church. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired September 15, 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: It is hot, and it's always hot when I perform, because the crowds are so big.

[05:58:27] HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE (via phone): I felt overheated. I decided that I did need to leave, and very quickly I felt better.

TRUMP: I don't know, folks. You think Hillary would be able to stand up here for an hour and do this?

CLINTON: Donald Trump's doctor said he'd be the healthiest president in history. That's just not even serious.

TRUMP: I feel as good today as I did when I was 30.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everything is out there for folks to see.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You've got one candidate who's released decades worth of her tax returns. The other candidate refuses to release any at all.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When it comes to transparency, I can't take Mrs. Clinton seriously.

CLINTON: I think it's time he met the same level of disclosure that I have for years.

(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 15, 6 p.m. in the East, so let's talk about the candidates' health. Hillary Clinton set to get back on the campaign trail today after being sidelined for three days by pneumonia. Clinton releasing a letter from her doctor, declaring she is fit to serve as president.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: The overriding concern is transparency, that these candidates are telling you what you need to know. So Donald Trump is also getting in on this. He's trying to out-healthy Hillary, offering some details about his health. But he made a media event out of his disclosure. Going on a daytime talk show, Trump acknowledged he is overweight and also teased that a full report from his recent physical is going to call -- come out soon.

Now, why does this matter? Because the stakes couldn't be higher. Fifty-four days until election day, eight days until early voting in some states, 11 days until the major moment of this race, the first debate.

We've got it all covered. Let's begin with senior Washington correspondent Joe Johns. Good morning, Joe.

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Chris.

It's being described as Hillary Clinton's doctor's note. The new letter from Hillary Clinton's personal physician, Dr. Lisa Bardack, essentially describes the treatment she received for what the doctor characterized as noncontagious bacterial pneumonia. And it described the times the doctor examined Mrs. Clinton a couple weeks ago on September 2 when she was first put on a short course of antibiotics. And then again on September 9 when the Democratic nominee was diagnosed with pneumonia, at that day put on a ten-day course of antibiotics.

The letter said Mrs. Clinton is recovering well, has remained healthy, and has not developed new medical conditions this year, other than the pneumonia and a sinus and ear infection and, quote, "She continues to remain healthy and fit to serve as president of the United States."

This is the information that was promised a couple days ago by Hillary Clinton's campaign not long after she stumbled getting into a van following her departure from a 9/11 memorial ceremony in New York. That moment, caught on camera, helped to increase concerns about the former secretary of state's health and sort of fueled Internet rumors and conspiracy theories about her, also creating concerns about the candidate's transparency and openness.

The campaign has admitted it could have done a better job in handling the release of information about the situation and is hoping this letter puts the controversy behind Mrs. Clinton, although she has lost some days from the campaign trail while recuperating.

Back to you.

CUOMO: All right, Joe, so part of the intrigue here is that, politically, Donald Trump had an opportunity to play this to advantage. Hillary Clinton seemed infirm. He wanted to say, "Look how robust I am."

But the way he's doing it is raising questions. He went on daytime talk show "Dr. Oz" and talked to the host about his health. The interview is set to air today. We do already know one point. Trump used that same controversial doctor, Dr. Bornstein, to report his findings. So the primary question, how healthy is the 70-year-old Republican nominee?

For that CNN's Sara Murray is live in New York's Waldorf Astoria Hotel, where Trump is scheduled to speak later today. What do we know?

SARA MURRAY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning, Chris.

Look, we know that Donald Trump doesn't exercise all that much. We know he wants to lose about 15 pounds. But we don't know a whole lot of details, and that's largely because, even though he released the results of his recent physical to Dr. Oz, he still hasn't made them public. His campaign says that's going to come later this morning. But he did rely on a little reality television flare in terms of revealing these results on daytime TV. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. MEHMET OZ, HOST, "THE DR. OZ SHOW": Why not share your medical records? Why not...

TRUMP: I have, really, no problem in doing it. I have it right here. I mean, should I do it? I don't care. Should I do it? It's -- it's two letters. One is the report, and the other is from Lennox Hill Hospital.

OZ: May I see them?

TRUMP: Yes, sure.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MURRAY: Now, of course, all of this comes as there's a much bigger focus on transparency in terms of the health of both of those candidates.

And while Donald Trump has largely been taking a respectful tone when it comes to navigating Hillary Clinton's health issues at the 9/11 memorial service, he couldn't -- he couldn't avoid getting in a dig when he was campaigning in Ohio last night, taking a swipe at Hillary Clinton's stamina.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: You think this is so easy. In this beautiful room that's 122 degrees. I don't know, folks, do you think Hillary would be able is to stand up here for an hour and do this? I don't know. I don't think so.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MURRAY: Now, it's worth noting that, even when his campaign does put out the results of this physical, it's still going to be relatively limited information. It's not a complete medical history like we've seen some previous nominees provide. And the campaign says they really don't feel the need to release much more beyond that.

As for Trump today, he's going to be switching gears entirely. He's going to be here at the Waldorf Astoria, giving an economic policy speech. His campaign had previously said he would explain today how he is going to pay for the many plans he proposed. Now they're saying that detail is going to come on Friday.

Back to you guys.

CAMEROTA: OK, Sara. Thanks so much for all of that reporting. Let's discuss everything we've learned with CNN Politics executive editor, Mark Preston; "Washington Post" political reporter Philip Bump; and CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Great to have all of you here. There's politics, and there's health.

So let me start with you, Sanjay, about her health. Here's the two- page letter now that Hillary Clinton's doctor has released. And it's filled with all sorts of lab results, the vitamins she's on, what she's not deficient in. What did you see in reading this letter?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I -- first of all, it's a letter. It's not medical records. Because there's all this talk about whether medical records are going to be released. Neither one have medical records released.

I think the biggest thing was sort of a description of what happened to this most recent health episode, the pneumonia. She got a CAT scan, we know now, last Friday to diagnose that. She was put on antibiotics at that point, as well. Ten days of an antibiotic known as Levaquin. Throughout the year she's had several scans. She has a CT scan of her sinuses and her brain. She had a CT scan of her lungs, as I just mentioned.

CAMEROTA: Because she has seasonal allergies, as we've learned, and sinusitis.

GUPTA: That's right. So she has the sinusitis, but they also scanned her brain at that time, as well, which is -- sometimes you'll do that, because you're scanning the sinuses and the brain at the same time. And the brain showed no abnormalities, which was important, because going back to 2012 there was all this -- all these questions: was there some sort of injury to the brain? The CT scan has reported, again by Dr. Bardack, no evidence of abnormalities.

CAMEROTA: So you're satisfied with this letter?

GUPTA: We're reading a summary of someone's interpretation of all the medical records.

CUOMO: What do we usually get? What are we comparing this to as a standard?

GUPTA: I think -- I think this is typically what we get. I think in 2008 John McCain released his medical records, about 1,000 pages, and you know, you got -- I got a chance to look at those.

But, typically, it is a letter like this. And it's typically some type of summary by a -- by a physician who oftentimes has been treating the person for a long time.

CUOMO: Mr. Bump, how is this playing politically in terms of who looks good in this and who doesn't? PHILIP BUMP, "WASHINGTON POST": I mean, it's sort of hard to say. I

like to look at the poll numbers, and there isn't really polling on this yet. I mean, I think the fundamental question here is how much information we expect from our candidates.

And I think that one of the things that we're seeing or one of the things that's being reinforced here is a very partisan interpretation to that. People who like Donald Trump think he's given enough information, think he's given enough information on his taxes and they think he's given enough information in general.

People who like Hillary Clinton feel the same way about Hillary Clinton.

And I think the question that's really interesting that's undercutting all this is what is the standard? How much should we give? Should we give John McCain levels of thousands of pages or is a letter of a summary enough? I think what happened last weekend, Whether such a letter is enough, particularly when there is an acute incident that happens.

But I think that mostly voters are going to look at this through the lens at which they already look at the candidates, either positively or negatively.

CUOMO: Is it relevant how -- how they do it? You know, like Hillary has this doctor who, by all accounts, is a real doctor, put out a letter that has the lab results. Trump goes on "Dr. Oz" and, once again, uses this Dr. Bornstein, who...

CAMEROTA: Is he a real doctor?

CUOMO: He is a real doctor, but he is controversial by any measure, and he wrote a letter that was ridiculous the first time, putting out his findings.

So, they did it in different ways. Does any of that matter?

BUMP: I mean, honestly, I don't really think so. Right? I mean, if you ask someone who is a fervent Trump supporter how they feel about the letter from Dr. Bornstein, they would disagree with your assessment. Right? I mean, obviously, it was a hyperbolic letter. There were a lot of praises in there, which weren't an objective analysis of...

CUOMO: And that ends the analysis of the letter. Doctors don't write hyperbolic letters that are filled with crazy assessments of what somebody's supreme health is.

BUMP: Sure.

CUOMO: So doesn't matter how you feel about it. That's not what anybody that Dr. Sanjay Gupta knows does in a real letter about anything. Am I wrong about this?

GUPTA: And it also lacked in objective data, as well. You know, so it had hyperbole, but it didn't have some simple objective data that you'd look at with regard to someone's risk of heart disease, risks of other sorts of diseases. So it missed certain things, as well.

CAMEROTA: All right. Let's talk about Trump's health. He went on "Dr. Oz" yesterday in what was a stunt. And it was not a real disclosure of his medical records. He had in his pocket a one-page letter that he revealed on Dr. Oz; and Dr. Oz got to take a look at. And so, does that politically answer any lingering questions?

PRESTON: No. Look, Philip is right. But what a made-for-TV moment that was when he sits down and he tells Dr. Oz before he goes in for the interview, you know, we're not going to discuss, you know, specifics or what I would say are specifics about it and sits down and pulls out the piece of -- look what I've got in my hand here.

CUOMO: It's good, it's good.

PRESTON: It's good TV.

Let's talk about politics, though. The politics of it is that he's trying to reach a constituency that he is not doing great with right now, and that is women. He's doing well with married women, but he's not doing great with single women at this point and specifically younger women, as well.

So, when he goes on Dr. Oz, you're talking about a constituency of viewership that is largely comprised of women. So that's why he did that.

And guess what? We're going to be talking about it all day today, as well. So to his point, he thinks that he is not only hitting that constituency, but he's hitting the mainstream media.

And it is worth noting, this isn't the first time that we've had a politician go on a program that is not mainstream media necessarily, right? We've seen the Obamas do it all through...

CUOMO: Clinton just went on Kimmel, you know, in this first brush about health; and she was joking about it.

PRESTON: And the Obamas were on "Entertainment Tonight." And, you know, there's a lot of different venues, but clearly a stunt.

CAMEROTA: Here's the -- here is a moment from Dr. Oz and Donald Trump's exchange. Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OZ: Let's talk about stamina. You've -- you've used that word a lot. You made it an issue in this campaign. You argue that a president has to have a tremendous amount of stamina. If elected at age 70, you will be person to ever enter the Oval Office. Why do you think you have the stamina for the job?

[06:10:09] TRUMP: Just about the same age as Ronald Reagan, and Hillary is a year behind me. I would say just based on my life. I mean, I've had -- I actually, and I don't know if this makes sense, I feel as good today as I did when I was 30.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Sanjay, what else did -- was revealed on the show about Donald Trump's health?

GUPTA: First of all, I wish I felt as good as I did when I was 30. You know, I -- we're going to, obviously, see the full show when he has the results released later today.

I talked to Dr. Oz yesterday and asked a little bit about this. One of the things he zeroed in on was obviously heart. Dr. Oz is a heart surgeon. So we know that Donald Trump has had a CT scan of his heart, looking for calcium. According to Dr. Oz, that looked good. EKGs, he also had an echocardiogram of his heart; and then, as you mentioned, he had various lab tests, cholesterol and things like that.

How Dr. Oz sort of summarized it for me was he said those tests all look good for a man of his age.

CAMEROTA: But his weight was a question.

GUPTA: His weight is a question. It's literally a question, because we're not exactly sure what his weight is. I've heard 236. I've heard 267. Apparently, audience members heard that. And he says he's 6'3" in height. So...

CAMEROTA: That would be overweight. If it were 267; and he's 6'2" or 6'3", that's over...

GUPTA: That would be obese. That would be obese. He'd have a BMI of about 33 or 34 at that point. So a BMI of anything over 30 is considered obese. If he was 236 he would be overweight, close to obese. So those are both significantly high.

And he talked about wanting to lose weight.

CUOMO: Now, we all respect the medical profession very much, but these numbers that we're getting from them, we don't know for sure that these are the numbers, right? Because we're not getting any raw material. How much skepticism do you feel comfortable putting into this?

I mean, this isn't KPMG/Pete Marwick, you know. This isn't an accounting firm that has forensically gone over data. It's doctors who Sanjay has said in the past, there's a collegiality here. They know these people. They're friendly to these people. So how much backup should we ask for when we've never gotten backup before except for McCain?

BUMP: I think the question here is a fundamental question of both trust of the candidate to, you know, to a secondary degree, trust of the people that they're hiring to provide this information. But that is the fundamental question. If you think that Donald Trump is someone that is going to say that he weighs 236 pounds as opposed to 255 pounds, there's basically nothing he can do besides stand on a scale on Dr. Oz's stage to prove that to you, right?

CAMEROTA: That's "The Biggest Loser." That's a different show.

BUMP: That would be good ratings, too, you know, to be frank.

CUOMO: He would never be on that show. Just the title of it alone. He would rather die than be on that show.

BUMP: So, you know, I mean, there are so many questions in this campaign where we have to take the candidates on trust. And I think that's more of an issue this year than we've seen in past campaigns, simply because so much about this campaign has sort of questioned the extent to which we can trust candidates in general, much less these two candidates.

CUOMO: He's playing to an advantage here any way you look at it. Hillary Clinton is the one who had the episode where she fainted and fell into that van. She's the one who had the 2012 episode, not him. There's never been a check on his health. He eats McDonald's, and he runs around like a machine.

CAMEROTA: They both run around like machines, I mean, let's be honest, in terms of their stamina. But I'm also not sure how much voters really do want to hear about colonoscopy results.

CUOMO: All day. I can't get enough.

CAMEROTA: We will discuss that later. Panel, thank you very much.

CUOMO: I look at those in my free time. Forget about work time.

All right. So Donald Trump is now on top in several battleground state polls. What is working for the campaign? What does Hillary Clinton face as the biggest challenge to his momentum? Next.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[06:17:53] TRUMP: Hillary failed on the economy, just like she's failed on foreign policy. Everything she touched didn't work out. Nothing. Now Hillary Clinton...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. Trump, I invited you here to thank us for...

TRUMP: Oh, OK, OK.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: ... not give a political speech.

TRUMP: That's good. I'm going to go back on.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: All right. That was a Flint, Michigan, church pastor stopping Donald Trump for launching into a political attack against Hillary Clinton during his visit to the city Wednesday. This as Trump is gaining ground in several new battleground state polls.

Let's take a look at those polls with Mark Preston and Philip Bump, and let's bring in CNN political analyst David Gregory. Good to see you, brother Gregory, this morning. Let's put the polls up.

We have Ohio. These are our numbers, by the way. These are CNN polls. Trump 46, Clinton 41, Gary Johnson and Stein acculming (ph) to about 10 percent. Florida 47, 44, 6 and 1.

CAMEROTA: Trump ahead.

CUOMO: The point then becomes, guys, let's start with you, David. You're new to the panel. The reasons why we hear Professor Ron Brownstein somewhere, screaming, "I told you." Because Trump is moving up with college-educated white men. What does that mean?

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, well, this has been a significant area of concern for Republicans generally, for the Trump campaign, that that area of strength, college-educated white voters, generally were trending away from Trump. And that's, of course, a Republican stronghold, even as he does well with those without a college degree that he was losing that other key group. And so, we see a change there.

We've seen a change in the national picture, for sure. And here Trump, if you look at states like Ohio, like Florida where he's doing better. One in Florida where he's got a home there and has a base of support and won so handily in the primaries; and in Ohio, which is the Rust Belt part of the country where his message is likely to resonate more, certainly according to his campaign.

CAMEROTA: Mark, how do the numbers crunchers explain it? What is Trump doing that is now attracting college-educated white men?

PRESTON: Well, a couple things that are going on right now. First of all, we're actually seeing a coming together of a Republican Party that has been ultimately fractured. Just really unbelievably fractured over this past year, and it's taken this long for it to come together. So that is part of what is happening with these numbers.

[06:20:16] We're also seeing Hillary Clinton have a terrible month of August. Questions about her honesty and trustworthy. And I know her supporters hate when we say that, because they say Donald Trump is not honest and trustworthy. But the bottom line is, all the questions about her foundation and the e-mail server didn't hurt.

What is also interesting in those numbers where we're seeing a deficit for her is that we're seeing that younger voters. Now, if you look at the state of Ohio, that voters under the age of 45 do, you know, tend to go Democrat. It's now a wash in Ohio, which is amazing.

Down in Florida, she's only up six. This is the -- this was a major part of the Obama coalition that helped -- not only helped make history in '08 but get him re-elected in 2012.

CUOMO: Now, Trump supporters will say, what was that bump SOT about? What, are you just putting that up there to embarrass him? No, it's an instruction. We said when he was going to Flint, Michigan, yesterday, he's got to be careful in places like Flint, Michigan, where they have a population, largely a minority population that doesn't want to hear what's wrong. They want to hear how you're going to fix it. There's a fatigue in place, especially like Flint, what they're going through.

What's the lesson for Trump in that about how you've got to tweak message to your audience?

BUMP: Well, I think the broader lesson of these polls over the past several weeks is that his transition into a more traditional style of candidate, as opposed to the guy who gets up there and rips it every single rally, has been successful. That he's brought in this new team. That he's changed his message.

I think part of what we're seeing with these white college-educated voters is they were specifically trying to reach out to them by saying, you know, "We're going to reach out to the African-American community. We're going to potentially soften our position on immigration." That was targeting those white college-educated voters, and it looks as though it was successful.

One thing I would add to the point about younger voters, we saw this national poll yesterday that came out that shows among, in a four-way race, younger voters people aged 18 to 34, if I'm remembering correctly, Hillary Clinton leads Gary Johnson by only two points. She has a significant problem with younger voters, who of course, were very strongly for Bernie Sanders in the primary.

CAMEROTA: You know, we have the national poll that you're referring to, but not just among the younger voters. The four-way race. So let's look at this. This is Quinnipiac.

Clinton gets 41 percent. Trump gets 39 percent. Gary Johnson gets 13 percent. Jill Stein gets 4 percent. David Gregory, that 13 percent has become significant.

GREGORY: Yes, I continue to be impressed by that number both nationally and then I think it was the Florida number you showed where, if you combine the two, that's double digits. That's a real factor. We go back and look at these races, whether you go all the way back to 1992 with a Ross Perot, with that 7 percent in Florida.

CUOMO: Ohio is where it comes to 10, David.

GREGORY: Yes. And even Ralph Nader, of course, in 2000 having an impact. So, I continue to look at that Johnson number as potentially really disruptive, where the combination is really disruptive.

The larger point here, too, about we see the larger numbers adding onto what the president was saying is not only that you've seen a bad month or a bad several weeks for Hillary Clinton, but you've also seen something we haven't seen from Donald Trump. And that's new leadership and new discipline. No Republican is going to win African-Americans. But the fact that he

went to Flint, Michigan, in the first place shows that he's going to try, that he's going to try to change his tone.

For a disruptive moment that we played at the top of the segment, I thought he played that off incredibly well by saying, "OK, right, we're not going to do that. So we'll go back and talk about Flint." I thought that was very well-handled on his part and shows his kind of maturity as a candidate, as well.

But there is message discipline. There's a kind of different tone and the way he's speaking to women. They're being very disciplined about how they're trying to help him rehabilitate himself among key voting groups.

CUOMO: And it also seems that people have a short memory. You know, because the concern would be he can change now. He can bring in other people, but what about all the other things he's said and done? But if you look at the polls...

CAMEROTA: Or maybe just plugged in now after Labor Day.

CUOMO: But you're still going to know about what's been said. I think people probably have been a little bit more engaged than usual in this campaign.

CAMEROTA: Good point, yes.

CUOMO: But what's your take on that?

PRESTON: Well, to your point, we saw this happen last night at a rally, where Donald Trump has been incredibly disciplined, hasn't been attacking a Hillary Clinton personally, hasn't been calling her Crooked Hillary too much.

But last night, Hillary Clinton, you know, has this medical episode or whatever we want to call it, where it looks like she collapses and they have to get her in the van. Donald Trump goes radio silent on it until last night, where he then kind of takes a jab at her and says, "Listen, I'm up here in this room, and it's 128 degrees. Can Hillary do it? I don't think so. What do you think?" He kind of fell back into the trap of Donald Trump kind of being the bully in the room.

CUOMO: Except she did faint and fall into a van.

CAMEROTA: Not a question about...

CUOMO: Whatever. You just the video for what it is.

CAMEROTA: They say -- her campaign says she is only trying...

CUOMO: That's their job. We don't know what happened. They probably don't know either in terms of who knows what within the Hillary campaign.

PRESTON: It wasn't about tone, though. It is about tone. And last night, the tone that he was taking was not...

CUOMO: He said stamina. In the past they might have said, who knows what he would have said. Maybe that is improvement for him. But, again, Philip Bump, maybe -- maybe Alisyn is right. If they're just tuning in now, this is a different Trump than we've seen in months past.

[06:25:13] BUMP: I mean, it is, yes. I think that's -- I think that's the case. I think the problem that Trump had had for so long was that he kept stepping on his own message. He would come out and he'd do something that would seem like the right way to go and the next day he'd say something that was a little off the wall.

I think, though, that it is true, that people have been paying attention. Everyone in this country, you ask them what Donald Trump's main policy position is, they'll say build the wall. Right? And that suggests that they haven't been paying attention over the course of this campaign. It suggests that they still see Donald Trump. And if you look at polling, "The Washington Post"/ABC News polling, at no point in time has Donald Trump had fewer than 56 percent of the country thought that Donald Trump was unqualified to be president. Those are huge numbers, right, that he has not been able to have come down.

CAMEROTA: Panel, thank you very much.

CUOMO: Quick programming note: be sure to join us tomorrow. We have Clinton's former rival. Senator Bernie Sanders will be back on NEW DAY tomorrow.

CAMEROTA: Also to tell you about a deadly typhoon tearing through China, packing winds of more than 100 miles per hour. Millions flooded and without power this morning. So we have the latest on the devastation there when NEW DAY returns.

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