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Trump Refuses to Say Obama Was Born in U.S. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired September 16, 2016 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: He was asked where was President Obama born. He still wouldn't say America.

[05:58:24] DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Hillary Clinton slanders you as deplorable.

CLINTON: People tell me how concerned they are by the divisive rhetoric from my opponent.

TRUMP: Hillary failed on the economy.

CLINTON: We're going to make our economy work for everyone.

TRUMP: My economic agenda can be summed up in three words: jobs, jobs, jobs.

CLINTON: I will never give up. I'll never walk away.

GOV. JOHN KASICH (R-OH), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: There's literally no enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Is it still possible that you could vote for Donald Trump?

KASICH: Very unlikely.

JIMMY FALLON, HOST, NBC'S "THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JIMMY FALLON": Thank you for giving us the material that we're doing.

Can I mess your hair up?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: That might be the moment of greatest transparency that we've seen.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: I agree with you. And he didn't seem like he liked it that much.

CUOMO: Who would?

CAMEROTA: I'll try it on you later. CUOMO: Well, my hair is fake.

Good morning. Welcome to your NEW DAY. It is Friday, September 16, 6 a.m. in the East.

Up first, Donald Trump and his campaign at odds and reigniting an old controversy. Trump's campaign says he now believes President Obama was born in the United States, but Trump himself refuses to say that and says don't take the word of his campaign. Only believe what he says.

CAMEROTA: Hillary Clinton's campaign says Trump needs to say it himself on camera and admit that he is wrong. All of this as Trump gains momentum in the polls.

With only 53 days until election day, there is so much at stake. Early voting just one week away now and 10 short days until the first debate. So we have it all covered for you. Let's begin with senior political correspondent Brianna Keilar. She is live in Washington.

Bring us up to speed, Brianna.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Alisyn, this really seems to be the latest chapter in the birther saga, but what we're now hearing from the Trump campaign is nothing new, really.

Just last week Donald Trump's campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, asserted that Trump believes President Obama was born in America. But despite being questioned about it numerous times, the candidate has yet to go on the record about that.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR (voice-over): In a statement, Donald Trump's campaign saying he now believes President Obama was born in the United States after encouraging false rumors for years.

TRUMP: Why doesn't he show his birth certificate? And you know what? I wish he would. Because I think it's terrible pale that's hanging over him.

KEILAR: Now "The Washington Post" publishing a new interview with Trump where he, yet again, refuses to denounce the conspiracy theory, saying, quote, "I'll answer that question at the right time. I just don't want to answer it yet," adding, "I don't talk about it anymore. The reason I don't is because then everyone is going to be talking about it, as opposed to jobs, the military, the vets, security."

Hours after the story published, Trump's campaign releasing this statement, falsely blaming Hillary Clinton for starting the birther speculation and crediting Trump with forcing the president to release proof of where he was born.

"Mr. Trump did a great service to the president and the country by bringing closure to the issue that Hillary Clinton and her team first raised. Inarguably, Donald J. Trump is a closer. Having successfully obtained President Obama's birth certificate when others could not, Mr. Trump believes that President Obama was born in the United States."

Hillary Clinton denouncing Trump.

CLINTON: He was asked, "One more time, where was President Obama born?" And he still wouldn't say Hawaii. He still wouldn't say America. This man wants to be our next president. When will he stop this ugliness, this bigotry?

We need to stand up and repudiate this divisive rhetoric.

KEILAR: Trump's birther firestorm once again overshadowing policy. The Republican nominee laying out an ambitious economic plan on Thursday that promises to create 25 million jobs and increase economic growth by 4 percent annually.

CLINTON: Hello.

KEILAR: Meantime, Clinton back on the trail after days battling pneumonia, hitting Trump over releasing a doctor's note about his health on a talk show.

CLINTON: I'll never be the showman my opponent is, and that's OK with me.

KEILAR: Trump gaining momentum in the polls during her absence this week. Clinton only has a two-point advantage over Trump in CNN's poll of polls, which is an average of the last five national polls, while Trump is opening up a lead in several key swing states, but Clinton says the race isn't over yet.

CLINTON: I've been called a lot of things. I've never been called a quitter.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: This birther conversation coming to the spotlight as Donald Trump is making a play for African-American voters or, as many people see it, making a play for voters who are uncomfortable with how they feel he's been exclusive to African-American voters. Black voters, of course, is a key Democratic voting bloc. Clinton has been very quick to seize on Trump's missteps with this constituency. The birther comments particularly off putting to black voters, because they're seen as an effort to delegitimize the first African-American president, guys.

CUOMO: All right, Brianna Keilar. Thanks for starting us off on this Friday.

Is this a window into who Donald Trump really is? Let's discuss with CNN political commentator and political anchor of Time Warner Cable News Errol Louis; CNN Politics executive editor Mark Preston; and CNN chief political correspondent Dana Bash.

Great interview with Kasich, by the way, Dana. Thanks for bringing it to us.

So let's start with you, Preston. You say you've got reporting. What do you know?

MARK PRESTON, CNN POLITICS EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Well, listen, I mean, how this is all coming down is we have Donald Trump's campaign right now trying to ensure that he doesn't step on his message. And what has he done? He has stepped on his message.

Yesterday he releases his most detailed plan yet on the economy. Right? We have Hillary Clinton sliding in every battleground state poll right now. And what does Donald Trump do? He goes out, and he steps on his message. He brings up the birther issue. Again, he refuses to say...

CAMEROTA: He was asked about it, right? He doesn't bring it up. He was asked in an interview.

PRESTON: He was asked about it, and he could have cleared it up very quickly. But his campaign manager and one of his top surrogates, Rudy Giuliani, both said that he believed that Barack Obama was born in the United States. Yet, when asked by "The Washington Post," he chooses not to say that and leaves, leaves a little bit of road for us to interpret what he means by it.

CUOMO: He does worse than that. He says, "I'll answer it at the right time." As if this could be, like, an event or something like that.

CAMEROTA: Sure. So, Dana, what's going on inside the campaign that we hear that Kellyanne Conway and Giuliani say, "yes, yes, yes, now he believes that President Obama was born here," but he won't say it?

[06:05:12] DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: We're going to have to see. He's allegedly having a press conference or at least will have a moment with the press later today here in D.C., and that is, obviously, going to be the key question, whether we are going to hear it from Donald Trump's own lips.

And, obviously, what Mark just described is dead on. The campaign, which has been trying to turn the Trump sort of juggernaut into something more traditional, this is one of their last efforts to change Donald Trump from the way he was to somebody who is more palatable to not just the mainstream, but, more importantly, as Brianna was talking about, to even some of the African-Americans that he could potentially get that he's been reaching out to, that this has made it very difficult for him to kind of go that extra step.

The campaign believes that people who he now is trusting to run his world, that this is something that is really hurting him. And, frankly, I don't think that there's any other way to say it. They are trying to box him in.

They -- I was told last night that Trump doesn't allow his campaign to put out any statements under his letterhead, unless he's approved it. But we're going to have to hear it from him. CUOMO: So here's what the campaign is putting out. "In 2011, Mr. Trump was finally able to bring this ugly incident to its conclusion by successfully compelling President Obama to release his birth certificate." It goes on. But what their spin is, he actually ended this. He did the country a favor.

CAMEROTA: He brought closure.

CUOMO: That's right. He -- because he is the ultimate closer. That's what they're saying.

And Errol, what we can say full-throatedly is that's a lot of bunk. He started this to play to political advantage. It brought him to national prominence. It was always mal-intended. It was never intended to do something good for Barack Obama. Fair point?

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Of course. I mean, it was not something that he did as a service to the country at all. It was something that he did as a service to Donald Trump. And it got him the prominence that he sought, and it continues to give him prominence in certain segments.

And this is where the whole "deplorables" comment comes out. Because there are many people -- I would put myself in this category -- who don't really care about what comes out of his mouth on this particular issue. I think he's made it clear over a number of years exactly how he feels about it.

What's more important is the followers who actually believe this stuff. It's picked up in the polls, so it's -- it's widely believed enough that this conspiracy theory that he's been peddling for years, that it actually has some meaning.

So, what I would like to hear and what I think would actually sort of move the issue in an important way would be for him to say not just what he believes, but what he wants the country to believe. What he wants his followers to do and believe, that he wants them to put it behind us so that we can talk about, in these final weeks of the campaign, the things that everybody needs to be talking about.

CAMEROTA: That's not what he has said, obviously. He has taken a much different narrative. So let's remind our viewers what Donald Trump has said about President Obama's birth place.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Why doesn't he show his birth certificate? And you know what? I wish he would. Because I think it's a terrible pale that's hanging over him. Perhaps it's going to say Hawaii. Perhaps it's going to say Kenya.

(via phone): There are many people that don't agree with that birth certificate. They don't think it's authentic, Wolf. Last week somebody came out with a very strong statement, saying that he stated himself that he was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia. Now, I didn't make that statement. That was made by, I assume, either the publisher or the president himself; and that's a statement. That's a pretty hard statement to refute.

(on camera): Do you know who questioned his birth certificate? One of the first? Hillary Clinton.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: OK. Not true. Hillary Clinton is not the person who ever questioned President Obama's birth certificate. Some of her supporters in an e-mail said things. It was never linked to Hillary Clinton, and she didn't start it.

PRESTON: Let me just stay this from a very strategical and a tactical standpoint. OK? You have Rudy Giuliani, whether you like his politics or not, you know, he's well-respected. OK? You have the campaign manager for Donald Trump come out and say Donald Trump doesn't believe in the birthers and many more.

Then you have Donald Trump release or rather tell "The Washington Post" basically cuts the feet out, the knees out from his campaign manager and says she can say whatever she wants. But, basically, leaving out the idea that he doesn't believe it himself.

And then the campaign has to put a statement out themselves under the letterhead, saying that he no longer believes it. But yet, we in the media, and quite frankly, voters all across the nation still can't believe where Donald Trump is on that. And how do we look at Donald Trump and say, "If you can't listen to your top advisors, if you can't be on the same page as your advisors, where are you?" Like, and this is not the economy. This isn't a major foreign policy issue. This is -- this is a moral issue.

[06:10:06] CUOMO: Right. And look, just to be clear about this with Hillary Clinton, it's a little bit messy. There were people who said they were supporters of hers that were involved in this on its grassroots level of asking the questions. You can go to FactCheck.org. They have it all laid out there in terms of what is true, what isn't.

Hillary Clinton did not start the birther movement. It was never connected to her. It was never connected to her campaign. Did one of her advisors put out a memo about it, about how this aspect of Obama could be played to advantage? Yes. It was dismissed by the campaign and actually kind of put them on the outs with them.

Trump picked up this ball and ran like someone was chasing him to the promised land with this, and it didn't pan out. And you can look at Politifact. You can look at Factcheck.org.

CAMEROTA: CNN has independent reporting, as well. It did not originate with Hillary Clinton.

CUOMO: And there's never been anything else that's a meaningful suggestion on it. It's just -- you know, it helps Donald Trump muddy the water on this.

But Dana, the bigger question is, why do we care? OK? The president was born in the United States. He has a birth certificate. That's it. It's easy. So voters can say, all right, then that's it. I don't really care. This is Trump being Trump. Except it is a window into how he would deal with situations that may be bad for him, but in the best interest of everybody else, he has to come clean.

We know that in the room, in his office, the campaign people, his family are saying to him, "You've got to own this. And do it the right way." And he's kicking his family out of the office, and he's saying, "I'm not going to do it." How big a deal is this?

BASH: Well, not only are they not -- are they saying, "You've got to own it, you've got to separate yourself from it. You've got to move on from it. You've got to say that this is not who you are."

But I think that you really hit the nail on the head there, Chris. Why do we care? Well, I can tell you that, just according to my inbox the people in his campaign are insisting that we're the only ones that care and Democrats.

But I just frankly don't buy that. And when I say "we," I mean the media. I don't buy that because for people who are not sure who they're going to vote for yet. And they're trying to figure out, you know, if they don't really love either of these two major candidates. They don't know who they're going to pull the lever for, and they are reminded that Donald Trump pushed a false narrative, as you said, running with the ball like he was being chased, that might make them think twice. That is what Democrats are banking on.

That it is a core fundamental question of who is this guy and why was it so important for him, when he was a private citizen, to make such a big deal out of questioning where the first black president was born. That is what the campaign fundamentally understands and they're trying to move on from. We'll see if he says it.

CAMEROTA: Because Errol, it's beyond African-American voters, right? I mean, it's all voters wanting to know if they're going to have a conspiracy theorist in the White House.

CUOMO: Although it is particularly hurtful to African-Americans.

CAMEROTA: Absolutely. But it's not just limited. But is it limited to African-Americans?

LOUIS: Look, where African-American voters relate to Trump has been a question that goes beyond just the black electorate. Right? So, we've been talking for weeks now about how he makes these gestures. You know, he goes to Detroit. He acts as if he's talking to black voters, he's really talking about black voters in order to get a certain segment of white voters, especially younger ones who don't like the idea of being associated with this.

The birtherism itself is just a metaphor for the kind of ugly bigotry, a notion that we couldn't have really elected the first black president. There must have been a trick, and it must have been a conspiracy.

CAMEROTA: Panel, thank you very much.

CUOMO: One thing's sure. When you're president of the United States, you're going to make mistakes. You have to own them. And that's usually the only way forward. So let's see how this goes.

Now, Dana is going to be back in a few minutes, because as I said earlier on, she did this great interview with Ohio Governor John Kasich. What does he think about the state of play? Who's going to win Ohio, who's he going to vote for, right?

So also coming up on NEW DAY, we've got House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is going to join us in the next hour. And at 8 a.m., the man himself, Senator Bernie Sanders, joins us live.

CAMEROTA: Quite a show.

Donald Trump...

CUOMO: Stick around.

CAMEROTA: Indeed I will. Vowing to create 25 million jobs over the next decade, if he is elected president. He's promising tax cuts, as well. Does his plan add up? We will break down the numbers and decide who has the best plan.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:18:30] CAMEROTA: Donald Trump laying out what he calls a bold economic plan yesterday. He's promising $4.4 trillion in tax cuts, 4 percent annual growth to the economy; and he says he'll create 25 million jobs over the next ten years.

This as "The New York Times" poll shows voters trust Trump more on jobs and the economy but they favor Clinton in several other key issues, like terrorism and immigration. So do Trump's economic promises add up?

Let's discuss it with our experts. CNN global analyst and assistant managing editor for "TIME," Rana Foroohar and CNN chief business correspondent Christine Romans. Ladies, great to have you here.

RANA FOROOHAR, CNN GLOBAL ANALYST: Hi.

CAMEROTA: Let's talk about jobs. Donald Trump is promising 25 million new jobs under his plan. President Obama created 9.7 million -- Christine.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Well, had very famous wedding guests at Donald Trump's wedding. Bill Clinton did create about 25 million jobs, 24 million jobs. So he wants to do what Bill Clinton did and create 24 million jobs. This gives you some perspective about where this slow jobs recovery has been. We lost about 7 million in the recession and slowly brought those back.

So from the very bottom to the top, there's been 14 million jobs created in the past eight years. You know, Donald Trump, if he wants to build a wall, he wants to

potentially have a trade war with China, if he wants to start slapping tariffs on goods coming in from Mexico, he'll have a hard time creating a whole bunch of jobs, because so many of his other policies are so disruptive.

CAMEROTA: But you're saying 25 million is actually a doable number? It happened before.

ROMANS: It happened before under Bill Clinton. It happened before.

CAMEROTA: Let's talk about the growth that is happening. Donald Trump promises 3.5 GDP under him. Let's look at some context. Go ahead, Rana.

[06:20:11] FOROOHAR: OK. Well, you can see back in the '90s much higher, around 4 percent. Donald Trump is saying that we can get back there.

But the growth rate has been much lower in recent years. It's been about 2 percent. So to double the growth rate at a time when he's talking about also cutting taxes, not telling us how he's going to cut spending. The math really doesn't add up.

If you think about, you know, his growth plan is what's called a dynamic growth plan. He's saying that tax cuts are going to help create some of that growth, but under Bill Clinton you actually had taxes going up. There's not a lot of evidence in the last 20 years that tax cuts actually create growth.

CAMEROTA: Let's talk about his plan to cut taxes. Here's what he suggested, Christine. He wants to cut taxes, as well as grow the military and make the deficit neutral.

How can he do that? How can you cut taxes? How can you grow the military and how can you not touch entitlements? And you can still -- I mean, he's talking about unleashing with his other proposals like cutting regulations and redoing trade deals. He's going to unleash all of this economic activity that's been held hostage by the Obama administration.

But what he's talking about cutting, you know, cutting 1 percent out of the federal budget every year, he's just talking about this bottom line here, the nondiscretionary spending.

So, what you have there is he's attacking part of the budget that is least necessary to attack, essentially. The least bang for your buck comes from cutting there.

CAMEROTA: He's also revised his numbers a little bit, Rana. He had originally said that his tax cut plan would cost $4.2 trillion, but then after factoring out the increased economic growth, said he predicts -- that he now says it would cost only $2.6 trillion.

FOROOHAR: Yes. We have to, it's important to say, you have to caveat all these sort of economic projections. Projections tend to be wrong. They're really black box calculations. I wouldn't put too much into the particulars of what the cuts are going to add up to be.

But going from 2 percent growth to 4 percent growth without some kind of, you know, massive change in the economy, pretty unlikely right now.

It took -- back in the '90s, all that growth in the '90s, that 25 million jobs, that was the Internet.

ROMANS: Yes. Exactly.

FOROOHAR: Imagine -- personal computer revolution. Imagine before then you didn't have e-mail to talk to your colleagues.

ROMANS: That's right.

ROMANS: You didn't have a computer on your desk. You couldn't call, you know, your colleagues in India or in Europe, you know, and send over information. So that was a really remarkable revolution. To get 25 million jobs, to get 4 percent GDP, to be able to do this and, like, not explode the deficit, I mean, you would have to have some kind of a revolution like that. He thinks it's the Donald Trump revolution that will just unleash all this activity.

ROMANS: Yes. We need a new Baby Boom.

CAMEROTA: Speaking of Baby Boom, let's talk about child care, which we're representing by either a pair of men's briefs here or a high-cut diaper. I'm not sure. However, you know, he talked about his child care plan. Go ahead. What do you see here, Christine?

ROMANS: Well, the child care plan is interesting. He wants to give mothers six weeks' paid maternity leave by giving them jobless benefits. And so instead of requiring companies to pay for maternity leave, he's going to tell them that, you know, people can get jobless benefits and pay for that by squeezing out fraud in the jobless benefits market.

And some, you know, budget watchers have said, yes, you'd like to squeeze fraud out of all these federal programs. But that might be a little naive. You know, it might be a little more difficult right away to get that out of there. And others have said, well, they don't want to encourage companies to move off of their own paid maternity leave and push them onto the jobless benefit system.

FOROOHAR: You know, Congress has passed a number of get-tough-on- fraud and unemployment insurance laws. I'm not sure how much more juice there is to squeeze here. There's also concerns that a lot of the benefits of this plan accrue to the top earners. Because if you think about, you know, who benefits from these kind of tax deductions, it's those that are paying most on their taxes.

CAMEROTA: So in other words, we've discussed this, Christine. It's not necessarily for the working class moms and maybe working two jobs to support their families. This is for middle class and upper class moms. ROMANS: He does say he wants to expand the earned income tax credit.

He wants to make it through the tax code to get people money back. But, you know, low-wage workers, they need cheap child care every week; and they need the money to pay for it every week, not later in their taxes.

FOROOHAR: It's kind of philosophical divide. Do you want to get more tax breaks or do you want to say we are going to make a public commitment to making child care less expensive?

ROMANS: Billions and billions of dollars to be able to give people a very low option. Hillary Clinton wants a universal pre-K. That's going to cost a lot of money the taxpayers are going to have to pay for. But, you know, we're talking about a workforce that needs a revolution and how we're paying for child care and how we're educating our kids and taking care of our kids.

CAMEROTA: Thanks so much for breaking all of this down for us and starting this conversation. Christine, Rana, great to have you here.

Let's get over to Chris.

CUOMO: All right. So a man with a meat cleaver goes on a rampage on a busy New York City street during rush hour. An off-duty police officer gets slashed in the face. How did police end this potentially deadly confrontation? We have it for you next on NEW DAY.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:28:57] CUOMO: It's almost 6:30 in the east and the five things to know for your NEW DAY.

No. 1, Donald Trump refusing to answer a question about whether President Obama was born in the United States. In a new interview with "Washington Post." Trump's campaign releases a statement after the story posted, saying he does believe the president was born in America, but Trump will refuse to say it.

Hillary Clinton back on the campaign trail, but questions about transparency linger. She declined to talk specifics when asked twice whether her running mate, Senator Tim Kaine knew she had pneumonia after she was diagnosed.

Officials in Columbus, Ohio, promising a thorough investigation into the deadly police shooting of 13-year-old Tyree King. Officers claim King pulled a B.B. gun while being questioned about a robbery. The boy's family says witnesses dispute that story.

The feds officially recalling 1 million Samsung Galaxy Note 7 smartphones. There's been dozens of complaints about the device. They say that the phone catches fire. So, consumers can either get a replacement device, a refund or a new Note 7 when it hit stores next Wednesday.

The Justice Department reportedly set to launch a new plan to combat heroin and opioid addiction.