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New Day
Trump: Groping Claims "All Fabricated;" Obama Blasts Republicans Who Waited to Dump Trump; First Lady Delivers Blistering Takedown of Trump. Aired 6-6:30a ET
Aired October 14, 2016 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DONALD TRUMP, REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This is a struggle for the survival of our nation.
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Donald Trump issuing an apocalyptic call to arms to his supporters amid mounting allegations of sexual misconduct.
TRUMP: Our campaign represents a true existential threat.
KEILAR: Portraying himself as the victim of a smear campaign, a conspiracy orchestrated by Clinton, the media and the establishment.
TRUMP: This is a crossroads in the history of our civilization.
KEILAR: The Republican nominee flatly denying the accusations against him.
TRUMP: These claims are all fabricated. They are pure fiction and they're outright lies.
KEILAR: Even suggesting that Natasha Stoynoff (ph), a writer for "People" magazine who says she was physically attacked by Trump in 2005 was not attractive enough.
TRUMP: Look at her, look at her words. You tell me what you think. I don't think so.
KEILAR: Trump's speech a stark contrast to Michelle Obama's emotional call to women to rise up against him.
OBAMA: I have to tell you that I listen to all of this. The shameful comments about our bodies, the disrespect of our ambitions and intellect, the belief that you can do anything you want to a woman.
KEILAR: The first lady condemning Trump's lewd comments captured on tape about women and sexual assault.
OBAMA: It is cruel. It's -- it's frightening. And the truth is it hurts.
KEILAR: Speaking in deeply personal terms while refusing to mention Trump by name.
OBAMA: This isn't about politics. It's about basic human decency. (APPLAUSE)
It's about right and wrong. And we simply cannot endure this or expose our children to this any longer, not for another minute, and let alone for four years.
KEILAR: President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden also taking on Trump while campaigning for Hillary Clinton.
BIDEN: His admission of what is the textbook definition of sexual assault is not inconsistent the way which he (ph) has abused power all along.
KEILAR: The president hammering Republican leaders who have just decided to withdraw their support.
OBAMA: You claim the mantle (ph) of the party of family values. And this is the guy you nominate...
(APPLAUSE)
...and stand by and endorse and campaign with until finally, at the 11th hour, you withdraw your nomination? You don't get credit for that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: Donald Trump has two rallies in battleground North Carolina. That's a state where latest polls have him falling behind.
Hillary Clinton is actually off the trail again today. She has a star-studded fund-raising swing on the west coast. But she does have her husband, Bill Clinton, and her daughter, Chelsea, campaigning for her as well as President Obama in Ohio who will try to rally voters in that state that he won twice to vote early. That's his message.
Chris?
CUOMO: All right, Brianna, thank you very much. One of Trump's accusers is a woman named Jessica Leeds. And she's telling her story to CNN. She says Trump's alleged assault happened on a plane decades ago.
She laid out her allegations in detail exclusively with Anderson Cooper. Here's a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LEEDS: He wasn't flirting. And I don't think I was flirting. We were just talking.
COOPER: And then the meal finished.
LEEDS: Then the meal finished and the stewardess cleared away the -- the -- the dishes and everything else like that. And it was like suddenly, he's like encroaching on my side of -- of -- of the seat. And his -- his hands were everywhere.
COOPER: Did he say anything?
LEEDS: No. And I didn't either.
COOPER: You didn't say anything?
LEEDS: I didn't say anything.
COOPER: You say his hands were -- were everywhere. Can you be specific?
LEEDS: Well, he was grabbing my breasts and trying to turn me towards him and -- and kissing me and then after a bit, that's when his hands started going -- I was wearing a skirt. And his -- his hands started going towards my knee and up my skirt.
And that's when I said, I don't need this. And I got up.
COOPER: Is that literally what you said...
LEEDS: I don't know...
COOPER: before you...
LEEDS: ...if I said it out loud or whether -- but (ph) -- you know...
COOPER: That's what you were thinking.
LEEDS: I -- I do remember thinking the -- the guy in the other seat, why doesn't he say something? I mean...
COOPER: Could other people see?
LEEDS: The -- the guy in the seat across the aisle could see. And I kept thinking, well, maybe the stewardess is going to come and he'll stop. But she never came.
COOPER: Do you know how long that went on for?
LEEDS: Not real long, no, no. I would say just about, what, 15 minutes. That's long enough.
COOPER: That's a long time.
LEEDS: Yes.
COOPER: Did -- did he actually kiss you?
LEEDS: Yes, yes.
COOPER: On the -- the face or on the lips?
LEEDS: Wherever he could find a landing spot, yes.
COOPER: And, I mean, 15 minutes is -- is a very long time.
LEEDS: Well, you know, it seemed like forever. So -- but I got up, got my bag and I went back to the coach section. And I went all the way back to the tail of the airplane, the last seat in the last aisle and sat down.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: All right, we have a lot to talk about. So let's bring in our panel. We have CNN Political Analyst and "New York Times" Political Correspondent, Patrick Healy, CNN Political Commentator and Political Anchor of Time Warner Cable News, Errol Lewis, and "Washington Post" Reporter, Abby Phillip.
Great to have all of you here. So Donald Trump said that all of these are lies. None of this happened from the women who have come forward with sort of similar accounts. And yesterday, at a speech, he said that he's going to be able to prove that this didn't happen.
So listen to Donald Trump here.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: These vicious claims about me of inappropriate conduct with women are totally and absolutely false. We already have substantial evidence to dispute these lies.
And it will be made public in an appropriate way and at an appropriate time very soon.
(APPLAUSE)
CAMEROTA: OK, Patrick, as Chris just pointed out to me, now would be the appropriate time to bring these forward.
PATRICK HEALY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Right.
CAMEROTA: But also, how do you prove a negative? How is he going to prove that he didn't kiss women?
HEALY: Right. I mean, he's also been saying he's going to reveal his tax returns, you know, now for -- for months. So all this information is still -- is still to come out.
He's going to have a hard time, Alisyn. I mean, the large number of voters, 70 percent of women, about 50 percent of men, reacted very badly to the 2005 videotape remarks of Donald Trump.
This is not complicated comments that are being made. People have visceral, personal reactions to the kind of language that he's using, to the kind of behavior that he's accused of.
How he comes forward when he simply says, this never happened, this never happened -- is he going to come forward sort of proving that he wasn't on a certain flight? Is he going to say, you know, I was out of town when this sort of encounter happened? It's -- it's very hard. CUOMO: Well, look, what's going to be his best defense to this? In
the interest of fairness, I know this isn't popular to question victims. But these happened a long time ago, Errol. There is...
CAMEROTA: Two thousand and five or (ph) many of them.
CUOMO: Well, 2005 or a couple of episodes, I'm saying "The New York Times" ones...
CAMEROTA: Sure, sure.
CUOMO: ...you're talking about 30 years ago. The corroboration that "The New York Times" says outwardly that it did, talking to four people in one of the case, but they're intimates. They don't put out the names.
They don't vet (ph). I mean, do we remember -- I don't know, you're probably too young, many of you, to remember, but in the '90s with the Clintons, if it was Paula Jones (ph), you had to have contemporaneous corroboration of that time of people who were not connected to her to show an objectivity of vetting this out.
That's his best defense. These are really old. Why didn't they come forward then? Where is any proof of this having happened? Where is the corroboration with someone other than an intimate...
(CROSSTALK)
ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: That's right. That's right. Well, that's right. That's assuming he can do that and that with 25 days until the most important day of his life, he's got the resources and the personnel to -- to make that happen.
Patrick is exactly right. I mean, we don't know what that appropriate time is. You're going to let that hanging out there. You know, there's things like his plan to defeat ISIS that we also don't know about.
The appropriate time for this is probably going to have to be after the election. I mean, we shouldn't kid ourselves. Frankly, the Trump campaign has spoken with a lot of different -- they kind of scrambled a little bit on this.
But to the extent that they say that this is a distraction, the American people and the future of the country depends on us, talking about something more important, he should probably go to that sting (ph) that he thinks is more important, even though it will be tough, even though everybody in the media is going to want to ask him all about all of this different details about all of these different allegations.
But the reality is, they just don't have the resources to do this. I mean, there -- there are many, many things going on in this campaign that they have to worry about that take precedence over him trying to disprove a claim from 30 years ago. ABBY PHILLIP, REPORTER, WASHINGTON POST: And things have also changed
a little bit since the '90s. I mean, I think we have been through, as a society, the Bill Cosby saga, where -- where women, 30 -- sometimes, 30 or 40 years after the fact came forward and I think the American public has a different view of how to approach these sorts of things, and -- and not only that, but Trump has the challenge of having this preponderance of evidence that's out there, that people are looking at.
And it makes it easier for them to accept these women's stories. That's just a challenge that he has to overcome. And it starts by not compounding the problem with all of these various excuses that only make things worse.
HEALY: And another challenge that he really has to overcome is talking to the wider group of voters who he needs to win over -- undecided voters, soft Clinton supporters. He's -- he's going out yesterday saying, you know, I'm a victim of this conspiracy. And I'm willing to take the slings and arrows, he said, for our movement.
He's talking to his supporters. He's talking to his base. The 26 days before an election, you're going after Hillary Clinton's soft supporters.
You are not supposed to be just trying to rally and stabilize your base.
CAMEROTA: Hillary Clinton has responded to this. She went on "Ellen," which will air today. But we have a little snippet of it. So let me play this for you.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CLINTON: There's a lot that is coming out, which is distressing on many levels. But I don't want anybody to think this election is over because it's been so unpredictable up until now that I'm not taking anything for granted.
We've got to work really hard for the next three and a half weeks because who knows. Who knows what can happen?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: Errol, this election is unpredictable. And if Donald Trump went back to all of your points about just talking about the issues, if he became that man that we saw at the podium in Mexico after the meeting with the president there, where he seemed more presidential, there are still people who don't want to vote for Hillary Clinton and are looking for an alternative. Could he turn it around in these next 25 days?
LOUIS: Look, he's got some opportunities. I mean, I -- you know, I was looking at some of the ads that he's running, you know. And I was looking at some of the ad buys (ph) yesterday.
He's got a whole slew of money. We always knew he was going to sort of backload a lot of his campaign spending. Now, is the time to start spending it.
They've sort of set aside some money in a lot of key swing states. He's going to be making his case to people who either haven't heard it (ph) before or might be a little bit more willing to listen right now.
I -- I would just say, look, if you're going to -- if you're going to make a case, if you want to delve into this stuff, you want to go back 30 years, you want to refute all of these things, we know from his personality and his temperament that that's what he's inclined to do, it's going to -- it's going to look like -- it's going to end up being quick sand -- political quick sand, instead of trying to climb that mountain that he still has...
(CROSSTALK)
CUOMO: He almost drowned in it yesterday just with one of his first lines of talking about one of the accusers saying, look at her. And then he said, well, look at her words, you know.
And he almost fell right in the hole...
CAMEROTA (?): Yes.
CUOMO: ...of being what everybody says he is. Let's hold this discussion right now. Let's change topics to Michelle Obama. We're going to do that in just a second because she seems -- she's now Clinton's most effective surrogate.
She delivered a unique address yesterday. There was an emotion in it. She didn't want to talk politics. She said she wanted to talk about decency.
What she said that is resonating so widely this morning, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CUOMO: First Lady Michelle Obama delivered a really blistering and emotional take down of Donald Trump. She never even said his name.
She says, hearing the lewd comments about women on that 2005 video shook her to her core. Here's a sample.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: And last week, we saw this candidate actually bragging about sexually assaulting women. And I can't believe that I'm saying that a candidate for president of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women.
And I have to tell you that I -- I can't stop thinking about this. It has shaken me to my core in a way that I couldn't have predicted.
So while I'd love nothing more than to pretend like this isn't happening and to come out here and do my normal campaign speech, it would be dishonest and disingenuous to me to just move on to the next thing like this was all just a bad dream. (END VIDEO CLIP)
CUOMO: Let's discuss with our panel. We've got Patrick Healy, Errol Louis, and Abby Phillip. She made another point that I want to play for the audience right now and -- and for you guys to digest where, you know, often you would dismiss this out (ph). Politicians toughen up.
You know, people talk like that. That's the rationale, right? She said, no, I'm not going to toughen up because I haven't heard talk like this before, not from the men in my life.
Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: Because I can tell you that the men in my life do not talk about women like this. And I know that my family is not unusual.
(APPLAUSE)
And to dismiss this as everyday locker room talk is an insult to decent men everywhere.
(APPLAUSE)
The men that you and I know don't treat women this way. They are loving fathers who are sickened by the thought of their daughters being exposed to this kind of vicious language about women.
They are husbands and brothers and sons who don't tolerate women being treated and demeaned and disrespected. And like us...
(APPLAUSE)
...these men are worried about the impact this election is having on our boys who are looking for role models of what it means to be a man.
(APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CUOMO: Abby, what did Michelle Obama get done in that speech that hadn't been done to this point in refuting these lewd comments?
PHILLIP: Look, this is the dynamic that we're looking at here. There is Michelle Obama talking about something that she knows that -- that every woman in this country understands.
Sexual assault, sexual harassment, being talked to when you don't want to be talked to, being leered at when you don't want to be leered at -- it is a profoundly common phenomenon. And she gave voice to that.
On the other side, you had Donald Trump just said (ph) maybe an hour later basically saying, none of that exists. And we will see, I think, in this election which of those two things is the most powerful force (ph) here.
I think it is much more common. Women in this country know what sexual assault is. They know what sexual harassment is. It is more common than many people think.
It is more common than many men think. And Michelle Obama said that. And she said, you know what, this is not normal. And you should not have to feel like it's normal.
And that is, I think, going to be extremely powerful.
CAMEROTA: Patrick, could Hillary Clinton have given that speech?
HEALY: That's a great question.
CAMEROTA: I mean, that emotion, that -- that tapping into exactly what Abby is saying...
HEALY: Right.
CAMEROTA: ...and -- and delivering it with that kind of emotion?
HEALY: Michelle Obama, I think, has a kind of reservoir of -- of trust with voters that Hillary Clinton has struggled with, that when people feel that when Hillary Clinton gives a personal speech when she draws on her own emotion, that there's another agenda at work, that there are doubts that -- that people bring. But that in (ph) part, that's because voters have experienced her, you know, for 30 years as -- as a political figure.
I think one thing that Michelle Obama has been able to do incredibly effectively for eight years is that she's largely been seen as -- as a mother first, as a wife and supporter for Barack Obama. She doesn't go out and give overtly obviously partisan speeches.
But she's also -- and not to take away anything away from the content of her speech, but she's also a great performer. I think she knows how to connect with crowds.
I think she knows how to use her voice, use her hands, use pauses, use body language in a way that just reinforces how, not only how personal she's getting at, but also sort of the civility, that I think a lot of Americans still aspire to or for ourselves, for -- in our politics.
CUOMO: Message is often, I mean, necessarily matched by the messenger. Well, Michelle Obama was somebody in 2008, who said if you can't take care of your own house, you can't take care of the White House.
She was talking about the Clintons and what she saw as a perception of immorality. So she's got a little bit of a credibility on this issue that has never been tarred by anything that's happened in their own lives, that's been exposed in the rest of the media.
And she used that to say, how about what we're learning, what our kids are learning for the first time. That really resonated with me. I remember that with Bill Clinton when all that discussion, you know, about all the oral sex and all that stuff and how kids were hearing that for the first time, what is the impact on those voters who are still deciding?
LOUIS: Well, look, some of that is generational, right? I mean, when the impeachment was going on, and we were learning about the blue dress, I wasn't married and I didn't have kids -- totally different situation.
My son's coming to me now. He's watching the news independently and telling me as an 11-year-old what he thinks about all this stuff. So it -- it is very different. I think of Michelle Obama as giving people permission to feel what they already knew, you know, that -- that for -- for women who wanted the country to move forward and wanted the culture to move forward, and for this to not be OK, it's something almost akin to what we saw during the -- the Clarence Thomas hearings where sexual harassment in the workplace got a thorough airing.
And the standard shifted because we had essentially a national conversation about it. That's what I saw Michelle Obama as doing, is sort of pushing things so that it's never going to be the same for the next presidential candidate, that hot mike (ph) moments, discussions about the sexual harassment, sexual assault -- they're going to be very different now because of the speech that she...
CAMEROTA: We have less than five seconds. Is Michelle Obama ever going to run for office?
PHILLIP: No.
LOUIS (?): No, too smart.
CAMEROTA: There -- there she (ph) go. That's what makes her, in part, popular. Thank you very much, panel. So there was this computer glitch overnight that we have to tell you about.
It has caused flight delays nationwide for a major U.S. airline. We'll tell you which one and what it could mean for you if you are flying today and if you're Christine Romans. We'll explain.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CAMEROTA: Time now for the five things to know for your "New Day." Number one, Donald Trump, for the forceful rebuttal of accusations that he made unwanted sexual advances on several women.
Two of Trump's accusers exclusively telling Anderson Cooper that Trump's hands were everywhere during the alleged incident, one of them more than 30 years ago.
CUOMO: Michelle Obama on the trail, saying not to look at what Trump has said and maybe done to women through the lens of politics but through the lens of decency, the first lady calling Trump's lewd comments and his behavior toward women disgraceful, intolerable and not normal. CAMEROTA: Pentagon officials warning Iran-backed Houthi rebels that
the U.S. will strike again if Iran moves its warships off Yemen's coast. Hours earlier, the U.S. struck three radar installations in Yemen in response to attempted attacks on a U.S. Navy Destroyer.
CUOMO: Colombia's president announcing he's extending a cease-fire with FARC rebels through the end of the year in an effort to strike a new peace deal. He's hoping to restore a peace accord to end five decades of war.
Voters rejected the deal in a national referendum.
CAMEROTA: Overnight, United Airlines experienced a computer glitch causing flight delays around the world. The airline says the issue has been resolved.
It is working to get customers to their destinations as soon as possible. For more on the five things to know, go to newdaycnn.com for all of the latest.
CUOMO: The Wikileaks release of hacked Clinton e-mails giving new ammunition to the Trump campaign. What is actually in the e-mails and how are they being described to you by the Trump campaign?
There is a difference. We'll take you through it, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
