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Trump Wages War on Republican Party; Gore and Clinton Hit Campaign Trail in Florida; 27 Days to Election. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired October 12, 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: I don't want his support. I don't care about his support.

[05:58:19] BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Why did it take so long for some of them to finally walk away? We saw this coming.

TRUMP: I wouldn't want to be in a fox hole with a lot of these people. Including Ryan.

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Let's focus on what's really important in this election.

TRUMP: WikiLeaks is amazing. The stuff that's coming out.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Russian government seems to be trying to interfere in this election in favor of Mr. Trump.

TRUMP: We have to investigate Hillary Clinton, and we have to investigate the investigation.

CLINTON (via phone): Despite all of the terrible things he has said and done, he is still trying to win this election.

(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 Wednesday, October 12, 6 a.m. in the east.

Up first, Donald Trump waging war on his own party, declaring himself freed from their, quote, "shackles." The Republican nominee says he's better off without the support of Paul Ryan and John McCain.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Trump also saving plenty of venom for his Democratic rival, seizing on hacked e-mails that he says prove collusion between Hillary Clinton and the Justice Department.

Once again, we have cause to say we have never seen any serious candidate for president pull what Trump is doing right now.

Just 27 days until election day, seven days until the final debate. Let's begin our coverage with CNN senior political reporter Manu Raju -- Manu.

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Chris.

Now, any semblance of Republican unity is gone as Donald Trump is going after critics in his own party, like Speaker Paul Ryan and Senator John McCain, in increasingly personal terms, upset that McCain revoked his endorsement of Trump in the aftermath of Trump's vulgar words about women, caught on video. And taking offense that Ryan told House Republicans earlier this week that he could no longer defend Donald Trump.

Trump noting there were a number of congressmen on that call who were not happy with Ryan's decision to focus exclusively on trying to save the congressional Republican majorities.

Now last night, appearing on FOX News, Trump did not hold back when he was asked about Paul Ryan.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I don't want his support. I don't care about his support. What I want to do is I want to win for the people.

BILL O'REILLY, FOX NEWS HOST: Man.

TRUMP: The first sign of a little bit of difficulty, he unendorses.

O'REILLY: All right.

TRUMP: I wouldn't want to be in a foxhole with a lot of these people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: The question is, how much does this intraparty feud help Donald Trump on election day? We know that a lot of voters are frustrated with Washington, and exit polls from the primaries show that many conservatives felt betrayed by party leaders.

But we're headed into a general election now, where Trump is trying to grow his support and reach undecided middle-of-the-road voters. And his calculation, according to his advisers, to energize the Republican base by attacking the GOP establishment and also try to make Hillary Clinton even more unpopular, and hoping that those attacks will suppress enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton.

But as he goes down this road, Chris and Alisyn, Republicans are worried that his eroding popularity and this GOP civil war could cost them control of Congress -- Chris and Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, Manu, thank you very much for that.

Let's discuss Trump's war with the GOP. Joining us now, CNN senior political reporter Nia-Malika Henderson; and CNN political commentator and anchor of Time Warner Cable News Errol Louis. Great to see both of you. Let's bring our viewers up to speed over what has transpired in just the past 24 hours. There was a tweetstorm yesterday while we were on the air and afterwards by Donald Trump. Let me just read three of these.

At 9:05, he tweeted, "Our very weak and ineffective leader, Paul Ryan, has had a bad conference call, with his members went wild at his" -- oh, "his members went wild at his disloyalty."

Ten o'clock, Trump says, "It's so nice that the shackles have been taken off me, and I can now fight for America the way I want to."

At 12:52 p.m. yesterday, he says, "The very foul-mouthed Senator John McCain begged for my support during his primary. I gave it, he won. Then dropped me over locker-room remarks."

Errol, does he need Paul Ryan and John McCain to win?

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, we'll find out. But I think, look, Paul Ryan is, I think, more of a symbol than anything else. In practical terms, Paul Ryan was on the ticket in 2012 and couldn't carry his own state. They lost -- Republicans lost Wisconsin by about seven points. So in practical terms, it's not as if there's some gigantic political machine that Paul Ryan wields that Donald Trump really needed or even wanted.

On the other hand, as a -- as a symbol, it's incredibly important, because it gives everybody else permission to walk away from Donald Trump. That's why it got under his skin a little bit and why he's tweeting about it. Which is that, if you've got dozens and dozens of Republican congressional candidates who are saying, "You know what? We're not going to push the Trump stuff so much. Or, you know, we've got an ad and some -- maybe some palm cards, some of the mailings, some of the joint campaign material that's out there, but we're not going to use it," that really starts to hurt. And that's where it really starts to matter in a lot of the swing states.

CUOMO: Portman took until late Saturday night, 8:30 Saturday night, but he stepped away. He had been one of the people who had -- he has a lot of legitimacy in the Senate. And he had been saying, "This is our guy. You have to separate the antics from what matters most." And then he went bad on Trump, as well.

Nia-Malika, now what's interesting is Trump says, "The shackles are off. I can now campaign and fight the way I want to." And of course, what does he do? He just commits to this tirade of insults. He didn't discuss anything that supposedly could win him this election. So the question becomes, what is the upside to this strategy for him?

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: You know, I think the upside for him is that this is his comfort zone. I mean, he talks about the shackles being off. I think the shackles really weren't ever on in any consistent way, if you look at the last year and a half or so that he's been campaigning in this political realm.

So in that way, he's got people around him who reinforce this instinct. People like Steve Bannon, people like Roger Ailes, people like Roger Stone, as well. So -- so in that way, I think it's good.

I mean, for the Republican Party, it's, obviously really, really bad. And just for -- in terms of getting voters, I think Errol was right about Paul Ryan being a symbol, and he's also a symbol of actual Republican voters, right? If you look at what -- what Donald Trump needs to do, he needs to get those moderate Republicans who voted for Mitt Romney.

And, you know, I was in North Carolina a couple weeks ago and those -- I met a lot of Republicans who had voted for Mitt Romney, who were very skeptical about -- about Donald Trump and wondering if they would vote at all for Donald Trump. Not likely necessarily to vote for Hillary Clinton, but maybe -- maybe they just would leave that part on their ballot blank.

[06:05:06] So, I think, you know, there's one thing where he's trying to suppress the vote of Hillary Clinton backers, but I think this scorched-earth tactic really is dangerous, because he starts to eat into those voters that he needs. And even those voters. Even, you know, Republican voters might not be enough, if you look at what happened in 2012.

CAMEROTA: And, yet, Errol, there's a whole slew of conservatives who say, good riddance to the Paul Ryan, you know, part of the party. Laura Ingraham on her radio show, she had Congressman Steve King on yesterday, and they were sort of celebrating this. Listen to this moment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. STEVE KING (R), IOWA: I also think about the establishment wing of the party could simply be amputated out in this -- in this...

LAURA INGRAHAM, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: Go. Good.

KING: ... in this effort that's going on right now.

INGRAHAM: They should leave.

KING: They've gone so far out on this limb.

INGRAHAM: Yes, I think they should leave.

KING: And in the end, maybe we can rebuild.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: How does that work?

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think you probably had, among the establishment Republicans that they're talking about, the flip side of that very same conversation: "Maybe we can finally get some of these crazies and amputate them and get them out of the party so we can go forward."

In other words, instead of waiting another month and then seeing the results of the election and then having their little civil war, it's starting already. That's really what this says to me, is that they can't wait to settle scores with the other side. And in some ways, the outcome of the presidential race is not even the most important thing for them right now.

CUOMO: So, what happens here, Nia-Malika? You've got -- you've got 27 days here. How does this work going forward? I mean, you know, for Trump, what is this supposed to do? I mean, the key in this race is going to be getting out the vote, right? He has this effort now, perhaps, to go as negative as he can on the Clintons to suppress their out -- their turnout, but how does this help him if he doesn't have any of the party machinery behind him to help get out the vote?

HENDERSON: It doesn't. I mean, you -- at this point, it really is about that infrastructure that the RNC has on the ground there and other conservative groups and personalities. Right. I mean, if you look at what's going on on the progressive side, you've got really big groups like Planned Parenthood, the Human Rights Campaign, out there mobilizing voters, doing voter contacts, and Trump was already behind, right? He didn't have an organization himself in terms of infrastructure and get out the vote in the way that Romney did. So the RNC was really carrying that load.

And now you have the sense that the RNC is not quite onboard, even though Reince is out there saying that he's onboard with -- and there's a lot of skepticism about that, a lot of skepticism about whether or not they will continue or whether or not they will want to shift resources, as well, in the way that Paul Ryan is talking about.

So in terms of how this works, it certainly doesn't work well for the Republican Party. I talked to one former aide of Donald Trump, and he said, you know, Donald Trump is the kind of candidate at this point who essentially wants to fly the plane into the side of the mountain, right? And that's essentially what's going on at this point.

And I think, for Republicans like Paul Ryan, I think one of the things that's clear is they're very much setting up for 2020, right? You can imagine, even if Donald Trump wins, there might be a whole field of candidates, Republican candidates who challenge him, because he's so strayed from Republican Party orthodoxy. Obviously, he loses, I think in some ways, you'll have a replay of what we just saw, which is this field of 12 or 15 candidates who have tried to carve out an identity vis-a-vis -- a party, vis-a-vis what Donald Trump is doing to the party.

But yes, I mean, I think we're pretty much fast forwarding already in the minds of a lot of these Republican leaders, to 2020.

CAMEROTA: Guys, stick around. Because we want to talk to you also about what went on with Hillary Clinton yesterday. So we'll talk to you in a second. Hillary Clinton and her husband also made news.

CUOMO: A lot of drama on the other side of the ball. They got Al Gore out there, teaming up on the campaign trail in Miami, hoping to clinch the millennial vote. Gore driving home the point that every vote counts. CNN's Suzanne Malveaux is live in Washington with more. What have you

got, Suzanne?

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Chris.

The campaign has gotten so nasty, so ugly Hillary Clinton's team is now worried it might be turning off the voters that they need to win this thing, the folks that are just going to stay home. So the strategy now is to make this case that every single vote counts, and Exhibit "A" was on display yesterday in Florida. That was the former vice president, Al Gore, who spoke directly to millennials. He was saying that anyone under 25 might not remember, but it was the spoiler, Ralph Nader, back in 2000 that cost him the election.

So while he was addressing climate change, an issue that he and the young voters very passionate about, he was also warning, though, about the outcome of supporting a third-party candidate like Gary Johnson.

At the same time we also saw President Obama. He was back on the trail, having a good time in North Carolina simply mocking Trump and the Republican leadership, trying to exploit this rift between them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: You can't repeatedly denounce what is said by someone and then say, "But I'm still going to endorse him to be the most powerful person on the planet." He's been saying really bad stuff for a while now. What did you think? He was going to -- he was just going to transform himself?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: Now, all this comes at a time when Hillary Clinton is dogged by more hacked e-mails by WikiLeaks, leading to more questions, essentially, about the campaign, the DNC, the role of the Justice Department.

And in the meantime, her husband, former President Bill Clinton, he was interrupted on the campaign trail in Florida by Trump supporters, who were calling him a rapist.

Today Hillary Clinton, she's going to be campaigning in Colorado, Nevada, before she makes a two-day fund-raising swing through Washington state and Florida -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: We'll be talking more about all of that. Suzanne, thanks so much for the reporting.

So Donald Trump has this blistering new attack ad, and it targets Hillary Clinton's health and her stamina. How is the Clinton campaign responding? We'll tell you, next.

CUOMO: You know what he was waving?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) CUOMO: All right. So, how does Trump think he's going to win the election? By going hard often. He has a new campaign ad just attacking Hillary Clinton's health and stamina. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[06:15:10] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hillary Clinton failed every single time as secretary of state. Now she wants to be president. Hillary Clinton doesn't have the fortitude, strength or stamina to lead in our world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: Although as we learned at the town hall the other night, he does think she's an amazing fighter...

CAMEROTA: Who never gives up.

CUOMO: ... who will never quit.

All right. Let's bring back our panel: Nia-Malika Henderson and Errol Louis.

Nobody expects any consistency in this campaign. It's whatever works in the moment. But Errol, when you look at that ad, who is he targeting, and does it have a shot at expanding his reach at all?

LOUIS: That has no shot at expanding his reach, and it's targeted, clearly, at the portion of his base that wants to believe that, already has decided that these things are true, and they're just looking for whatever mud they can throw at Hillary Clinton.

The problem with doing that, of course, is all she has to do is what she will probably do in the next 24 hours, which is come bounding out on the stage looking great, sounding great, standing and talking for an hour or so and showing that -- that ad is completely inaccurate.

I mean, we'll see it again at the next debate. We saw it at the last debate. She more or less stood for 90 minutes, going toe to toe with Donald Trump.

The problem with that particular argument is that, you know, it doesn't say anything about her character or her policies or her prospects or anything else. They're just kind of saying, "Well, she's weak and Donald Trump is strong." Well, he's pounded that home to everybody over the last year. He's all about strength. OK, fine. But you know, strength to do what is the real question with three weeks left in the campaign.

CAMEROTA: Nia-Malika, I've heard so many voters say that they liked that moment in the debate when Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were asked what was positive about the other one. You know, it was so refreshing to hear them have to come up with something.

Is this ad and his argument that she doesn't have the stamina undermined by what he said about her at the debate, what Chris said, that she just never quits?

HENDERSON: Yes, I think it is. I think it's undermined by his statements. It's undermined by the totality of Hillary Clinton's career. Right? I mean, she's been on the stage for 20 or 30 years. She was secretary of state and clearly has stamina in a doggedness in terms of pursuing -- pursuing this presidency at this point.

I think, also, Donald Trump's problem, right, is that he -- it's one thing to argue that Hillary Clinton shouldn't get this job or that she should be fired, but he hasn't made a credible case that he should be hired for this job in terms of temperament. Right? If you think about what the presidency is about, it really is about discipline and focus, and you're sitting in meetings all day. You're hearing information; you're processing information. It isn't you're giving these big rallies at, you know, at events across the country and flying around in your jet.

So I think that's his problem, right? He hasn't, I don't think, yet made that credible case that he has the temperament and the discipline to do the job of presidency. And you wonder, in these last three weeks, if he can turn that around, because that's where you look at all these polls. That's where voters are skeptical about Donald Trump. And it's been that way for months and months and months.

CUOMO: Right, but the soft spot, Nia, is that people are sick of the status quo. They want change, and for those types of voters, Hillary Clinton checks just about every box of what they don't like, and that leads us to the WikiLeaks. Better than this ad will be any cause for suggestion in what comes out that shows that Hillary Clinton is an insider that manipulates the system to get what she wants and not your interests.

Do you see at least some smoke in what's come out so far?

HENDERSON: I think so, yes. I mean, I think the problem, again, for Donald Trump if you looked at his Twitter feed yesterday, he had three tweets about this whole incident. The WikiLeaks coming out, some of the e-mails about the Justice Department, some of the e-mails about the Clinton Foundation. He has six about the terrible Republican Party and how they're abandoning him and how they're weak.

CUOMO: Do you think that he has any proof of his "there is clear collusion between the Clintons and the DOJ"? I guess his best clue would be Brian Fallon's e-mail. What do you have about that? Let's put it up for people.

"DOJ folks inform me there's a status hearing in this case this morning. So we could have a window into the judge's thinking about his proposed production schedule as quickly as today."

What case, Nia? What are they talking about?

HENDERSON: Yes. No, I think at this point Brian Fallon is talking about information that he's getting that is available to the public at this point, right? And Donald Trump is arguing that there's some kind of collusion and he's got inside information about this case about the e-mails. Sure. And so sure.

I think the problem, again, is if you're Donald Trump, you want to hammer this message. Maybe you want to have a press conference, and you want to have the full bench of Republicans hammering this case about collusion, about corruption, about you know, sort of pay-for- play in terms of the Clinton Foundation.

[06:20:06] But again, he's so off message, and Republicans are so reluctant to get out there and talk about this, because they know they're going to be asked also about Donald Trump, that it's hard -- it's hard for this message to break through, because he's such an erratic candidate at this point.

CAMEROTA: Errol, you know, the Clinton campaign has tried to make the message about that this comes from Russia, this originates from Russia. They're the ones doing the hacking, stealing John Podesta's e-mail. What do you think about the effectiveness of that argument?

LOUIS: Yes, well, I think that argument is true, but irrelevant in many ways. I mean, it's true that it's important that the Russians, according to the FBI, apparently are trying to intervene in this election. That's serious. That's important.

On the other hand, we've seen a lot of dumps from WikiLeaks, and nobody has ever challenged the actual accuracy of the underlying documents. Nor has the campaign said these are not John Podesta's e- mails. Right? So the e-mails then actually start to matter. And some of them, you know -- I think the Brian Fallon case, Nia is exactly right. It was public information. It was sort of a weigh station about when there was going to be...

CUOMO: It was a status conference.

LOUIS: A status conference.

CUOMO: It wasn't like a ruling or anything.

LOUIS: They go into open court, and they talk about where things are at and when we're going to produce more documents. Not important at all.

What was important was our dear friend Donna Brazile, sort of -- you know, sort of saying, "Look, from time to time I get questions in advance. Here's the questions you might want to be ready for." It was during the primary season, so it didn't hurt Donald Trump or the Republicans in any way. This was her going at it with Bernie Sanders. Arguably improper, questionable behavior, something that they should own up to rather than saying, you know, "This is the Russians who are behind this."

The Russians didn't really care whether or not Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders. I'm pretty sure about that. So it doesn't have any real political meaning. But I think the campaign is going to have to do more than just point to Russia in talking about this stuff.

CUOMO: Well, I'll tell you this. Also, some of the e-mails they've manipulated things. They've said they come from somebody, but really, it's a translation from somebody else, and they're putting words in people's mouths. So you have to be careful about the authenticity of how the documents are used, once they come out.

Wiki may have the real document, but how is it used?

And I'll tell you, I've done town halls here. There is zero chance at that cone of silence. They take this question so seriously. They take this security so seriously. I have never been able to leave with any of the copies of the questions.

LOUIS: They take the paper back from you, right. Exactly.

CAMEROTA: There you go. Errol, Nia-Malika, thank you very much.

HENDERSON: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: We should mention that Christiane Amanpour will be up in a moment with an interview with Sergey Lavrov, foreign minister of Russia and so, obviously, all of this will have come up.

Meanwhile, "The Today Show's" Billy Bush caught on that leaked tape with Donald Trump, making lewd comments about women. Is he out at NBC? What we know, the latest, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:26:40] CAMEROTA: It's time for the five things to know for your new day.

No. 1, Donald Trump waging war on his own party. The GOP nominee slamming House Speaker Paul Ryan for abandoning him and Senator John McCain for pulling his endorsement.

CUOMO: Hillary Clinton and Al Gore campaigning together in Miami, pulling out all the stops to secure the millennial vote. Gore reminding the crowd every vote counts.

CAMEROTA: The aftermath of Hurricane Matthew still a real threat in North Carolina. Thousands being warned to move to higher ground because of flooding. The storm already blamed for 18 deaths in that state.

CUOMO: A humanitarian crisis unfolding in Haiti. U.N. officials say more than a million people urgently need help in the wake of Hurricane Matthew. The spread of cholera now a major concern.

CAMEROTA: NBC on the verge of cutting ties with Billy Bush. Sources tell CNN that NBC is working on a separation deal with "The Today Show" co-host. Bush was suspended for his comments in the recently released audiotape of Donald Trump making vulgar remarks about women.

For more on the five things to know, you can go to NewDayCNN.com for the latest.

CUOMO: All right. So Donald Trump insisting that hacked e-mails reveal collusion between Hillary Clinton and the Justice Department. Is that true or is there even any basis for that opinion? We will dig deeper next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)