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Clinton & Trump Barnstorm Must-Win Florida; Donald Trump on His Fear of Losing; Historical Sports Night in Cleveland. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired October 26, 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: You vote for her, you're crazy, OK?

[05:58:22] HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: He's run a campaign based on insults. His final target is democracy itself.

TRUMP: Job-killing Obamacare is just one more way that our system is rigged.

JOE BIDEN (D), VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'd like to take him behind the gym if I were in high school. Wouldn't you?

TRUMP: I'd love that. Mr. Tough Guy. He's Mr. Tough Guy.

CLINTON: This is a crossroads election. I want to wake up in the White House.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. Welcome to your NEW DAY. It's Wednesday, October 26, 6 a.m. in the east. And up first, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump barnstorming the must-win battleground state of Florida. Twenty-nine all[important electorates up for grabs.

Trump bashing on rising Obamacare premiums to attack Clinton. This as new hacked e-mails show Clinton's use of private e-mails sent the White House and her campaign scrambling.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Also, you will hear from Donald Trump in his own words about his fear of losing and his fixation with fame. They're these fascinating new tapes released by one of his biographers.

We are just 13 days away from election day. We have it all covered for you. So let's begin with CNN senior Washington correspondent Jeff Zeleny. He is live in Lake Worth, Florida. What is the latest, Jeff?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn. Hillary Clinton is opening her second straight day of campaigning here

in Florida on the heels of three straight days of campaigning by Donald Trump. Florida is an essential part of his comeback plan, a plan she's trying to block today right here in Palm Beach County.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CLINTON: It is so great to be back in Florida.

TRUMP: We're going to win the state of Florida.

ZELENY (voice-over): Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in a relentless fight for the golden prize of Florida's 29 electoral votes. Trump mincing no words on his view of those who choose Clinton.

TRUMP: Tell you what, you vote for her, you're crazy. OK? I'll tell you. She is the worst.

ZELENY: Clinton releasing a new campaign ad narrated by Morgan Freeman, laying out a stark choice.

MORGAN FREEMAN, ACTOR: A steady hand or a loose cannon.

ZELENY: A new CNN/ORC poll shows seven in ten Americans now believe Clinton will win the White House. She's dismissing the poll but for different reasons than Trump.

CLINTON: It's going to be a close election. Pay no attention to the polls. Don't get -- don't get complacent.

ZELENY: With 13 days to go, Trump trying to turn the tables, seizing on news of skyrocketing healthcare premiums for Obamacare.

TRUMP: The rates are going through the sky.

ZELENY: Yet, Trump's argument that his employees were being crushed by Obamacare quickly fell apart. Most don't get insurance under the Affordable Care Act, a point he struggled to explain.

TRUMP: It's a small group, but it's a group that's having tremendous problems with Obamacare, because of what's going on with the going on with the premiums and what's going on with the deductibles.

ZELENY: In a Miami radio interview, Clinton said millions of Americans now have health care under the law but acknowledged major shortcomings that should be fixed, not repealed.

CLINTON (via phone): The costs have gone up too much. We're going to really tackle that.

ZELENY: It's an 11th-hour political headache hitting voters in the pocketbooks. Clinton ignoring health care at her rally, trying to keep the focus squarely on Trump and whether he's fit for office.

CLINTON (on camera): Americans are coming together at the very moment when Donald Trump is making an unprecedented attack on our democracy.

ZELENY: Former Republican secretary of state Colin Powell throwing his support behind Clinton. She tweeted that she's proud to have the endorsement of a decorated soldier and distinguished statesman.

All this as Trump and Vice President Biden trade fighting words.

BIDEN: The press always ask me, don't I wish I were debating him? No, I wish we were in high school, and I could take him behind the gym. That's what I wish.

TRUMP: Did you see where Biden wants to take me to the back of the barn. Me. He wants -- I'd love that. I'd love that. Mr. Tough Guy. You know, he's Mr. Tough Guy.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZELENY: Now, Clinton is waking up in Miami on her 69th birthday today. She is one year younger than Donald Trump. To celebrate last night she went to an Adele concert in Miami. No cameras were allowed at that.

It was a moment where she was actually not having a fund-raiser, just listening to the music. But she did have her final fund-raiser before that, her 371st fundraiser of her entire campaign.

And the Trump campaign pushing back this morning on reports that he is closing down his fund-raising operation. They said that simply is not true. That report came in "The Washington Post."

But Chris, a new poll out this morning we have received just a moment ago from Bloomberg Politics shows Donald Trump, 45, and Clinton, 43, right here in Florida. That explains why she is campaigning hard here, and President Obama, he's coming back on Friday.

CUOMO: Very close, very important. Jeff Zeleny, thank you very much.

ZELENY: Indeed.

CUOMO: So Trump's using a big axe on Obamacare right now, but is he fumbling his own message once again?

Let's discuss with CNN political commentator and political anchor of Time Warner Cable News, Errol Louis; and CNN political analyst and Washington bureau chief of "The Daily Beast," Jackie Kucinich; and CNN Politics editor Juana Summers.

Errol, why are we saying he's fumbling his message again, because of what he did at one of his own rallies? Let's play a taste.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: So we're going to repeal and replace Obamacare, and I can say all of my employees are having a tremendous problem with Obamacare.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you provide health insurance plans to all these employees?

TRUMP: Obamacare is a disaster. It's got to be repealed and replaced.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: None of them are on Obamacare?

TRUMP: OK. Some of them, but most of them no.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: OK. Some of them, but most of them no. He brings out his employees. He says they're struggling with Obamacare, but they're not. And it's not really even some of them. His own manager says it's like certainly 90 percent or above get insurance the way half this country does, if not more, which is through their employers. Is this stepping on his own message, again?

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, of course it is. The first problem, as you said, look, 95 percent of his employees, according to his own managers, are already covered. So that's not Obamacare.

The second is that the increase in the premium rates, which is bad news that he should be able to exploit politically, is actually not the same as saying that those who are using Obamacare are getting hammered. There are lots of subsidies. That was what the whole thing was about, to sort of cover some of those premiums.

Obamacare was supposed to do a couple of things. It was supposed to provide help for people who were uninsured and couldn't get coverage. It was also intended to slow the rise in medical costs, which was really driving the whole system.

[06:05:14] That's the problem with this 25 percent premium increase. It looks like, you know, cost containment is not working as promised. That's sort of a subtle argument. So you kind of have to have the whole thing lined up. This has been a weakness with the Republican attack on Obamacare from the beginning. They say repeal and replace, repeal and replace. OK, replace it with what? What exactly is the problem? Is the problem the coverage? Is the problem the cost containment?

And he has been using the slogan for 15 months without ever getting into the details. He's going to have to get a little bit more specific about what he thinks is the problem.

CAMEROTA: But isn't this even a bigger problem what we saw yesterday, where he's like, "Look at all my employees. They have a tremendous problem with Obamacare."

"But, Mr. Trump, are your employees on Obamacare?"

"No, actually not."

His campaign had to come out and say, no, they provide health insurance through the Trump Organization. So how did his managers, his campaign manager let him have a press conference like this? That they then had to immediately correct, Juana?

JUANA SUMMERS, CNN POLITICS EDITOR: This is the point I keep getting back to with Donald Trump, no matter how much preparation Kellyanne Conway, other senior advisors, can throw at him, it all comes down to the candidate himself. And it's clear that the candidate just simply was not familiar with the health care law as it relates to his employees.

CAMEROTA: Or what he gives his own employees.

SUMMERS: Absolutely. And that is a huge problem. Look...

CUOMO: Or he knew and did it anyway.

SUMMERS: That doesn't make any sense. Why, then, would his campaign have to come out ten minutes later and be like, "I'm sorry. We actually do provide health care."

CUOMO: What if nobody asks?

CAMEROTA: I don't think he knew.

SUMMERS: These increases are salient for voters in a number of the states that Donald Trump must win if he wants to win the presidency. And the fact of the matter is he stumbled on himself. He diverted the attention away from what could be a winning issue, something that could draw in voters that have not cleaved to him yet, and instead were focused on whether or not Donald Trump knows what's going on with his own employees. We have seen this from this candidate time and time again.

And this is not the story line, certainly, that his campaign aides or that he wants less than two weeks away from election day. This is not what we're supposed to be talking about. He missed the mark here.

CUOMO: Also, Jackie, it also goes to the point that his name is on a lot of things that he doesn't run. You're hearing the stories here in New York City of some of the buildings that have Trump on them on the outside.

The boards are meeting to remove the name because of some of the things he said. How can they do that? It's a Trump building. No, it isn't. It's just his name on the front.

Now a little bit of this, what Alisyn is -- her take on it is a window into who he is, how he thinks and what he wants to do. That was flushed out more by one of the authors that have written about him, named Michael D'Antonio. Here is a sample of one of the tapes of him interviewing Trump back in 2014 about his favorite subject.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I was a very rebellious kind of person. I don't like to talk about it, actually. But I was a very rebellious person and very set in my ways.

MICHAEL D'ANTONIO, BIOGRAPHER: In eighth grade.

TRUMP: I loved to fight. I always loved to fight.

D'ANTONIO: Physical fights.

TRUMP: Yes, all kinds of fights.

D'ANTONIO: Arguments.

TRUMP: All types of fights. Any kind of fight, I loved it, including physical.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: What do you see in that, Jackie?

KUCINICH: He's talked about this before. He ended up in military school, and he's talked about how, you know, that's how his parents straightened him out.

But this does give you a window into who this person is and sort of what makes him tick. And it's, you know, you throw a punch, you think about it later. And we've seen it over and over again throughout this campaign. And apparently, according to those tapes, he was shaped like this very young.

CAMEROTA: And he likes fighting. That's what I thought was telling about it.

CUOMO: It was eighth grade. We disagree on this.

CAMEROTA: He was in eighth grade, but I think that he's also using it as an illustration in 2014 that he gets off on fighting; he is gratified by fighting. But he's using it -- well, I don't see it just as in eighth grade. I see it as him giving Michael D'Antonio a window into who he really is. I think that he's saying back in eighth grade it started, and I like the fight. That's why anybody who goes after him, it energizes him.

CUOMO: But I don't -- is that a bad thing?

SUMMERS: I think that...

CUOMO: If you're beating kids up in eighth grade, that's a bad thing. But if you love to fight, and you see yourself as a warrior -- people attack you, you attack back, what's the knock?

KUCINICH: It depends on how you channel it.

CAMEROTA: It depends on how you channel it, but I don't think it's a knock This is instructive on this is why he beat 16 other people in the primary. He gets off on the fights.

Here's another moment from that Michael D'Antonio interview about how Trump thinks of winning and losing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: If you lose a lot, nobody is going to follow you. Because you're looked at as a loser. Winning is a very important thing, and the most important aspect of leadership is winning. If you have a record of winning, people are going to follow you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: Errol, that's a truism, isn't it? People don't follow losers?

LOUIS: I'm not entirely sure about that, to tell you the truth. I just, as he's saying this, I'm thinking to myself, we know of many people who lost and lost and lost. I mean, the first president of the United States, George Washington. You know, you read back about what happened in those first early battles, and he did nothing but lose.

[06:10:16] He got driven out of New York. He got driven across the Hudson River and had any number of setbacks. And, of course, the lesson that we teach our kids and that we've all learned is that what matters is not that you get knocked down but whether you get back up.

And so it's a little bit different from Donald Trump saying, you know, you always have to win or you're not a leader. I mean, all of this, by the way, I think also explains some of what he's done that has been very damaging to his campaign in recent days, which is that women come and they make these accusations. He can't let any of them go. He has to respond in the most inappropriate form. You know, Gettysburg, he has to sort of say, "I'm going to sue you. I'm going to win."

CAMEROTA: He has to vanquish the other person.

LOUIS: Well, you have to know when not to fight. I mean, that's part of -- you know, sort of winning the war, as opposed to every single battle.

CUOMO: Juana, what's your take on what these tapes mean?

SUMMERS: It's just -- it's very revealing listening to the pre- candidate Trump and what was spiking to me, as he boils everything, especially in that last clip, down to really simple terms. Everything is very black and white for him. There are no shades of gray. He's on top or he's not. He's winning or he's losing.

And I think it just gives you a really interesting kind of intellectual insight into the mind of Trump, and it's very clear to me that there's not a lot about what we heard from how he's running his campaign, it just seems like the two run on parallel tracks, and it doesn't seem like any of the aides around him, multiple campaign managers, the advisors, the RNC can deviate from the man we heard on that tape really being what sets the tone for this campaign.

CAMEROTA: Panel, thank you very much. Stick around, if you would.

CUOMO: You know who disagrees with the tape, that these tapes show anything negative? The man coming on in the 8 a.m. hour. Former New York City mayor and Trump senior adviser Rudy Giuliani is going to join us, making his closing argument for Donald Trump.

CAMEROTA: All right. Meanwhile, on the other side, endorsements are coming in for Hillary Clinton. But do people believe that she will actually win? Our new CNN poll asked viewers. We have what they said in terms of who they believe today will win. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:16:00] CAMEROTA: Less than two weeks out to election day. So who do Americans think will win?

Our new CNN/ORC national poll shows nearly seven in ten voters say Clinton will take the White House. But do they think that Trump will accept the results? We asked that. Six in ten voters believe that Trump will not concede.

Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway is still coy on whether or not he will accept the election results.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CONWAY: He said it depends on what the results are. He can't make -- he cannot make that judgment now any more than Hillary Clinton.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: But there's no recount, no significant discrepancies, he will concede.

CONWAY: It depends. It depends...

BLITZER: Depends on what?

CONWAY: He said no significant discrepancies. Is there widespread voter fraud somewhere or?

BLITZER: But I've just said if there isn't widespread voter...

CONWAY: That's a very tough hypothetical for me to -- for me to answer.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: We have a lot to talk about. Let's bring back our panel: Errol Louis, Jackie Kucinich and Juana Summers.

Jackie, this morning, Donald Trump got some good news. He's been in Florida for the past three days. And here is the latest Florida poll. This is a Bloomberg Politics poll, and it shows for the first time in weeks Donald Trump on top. He's getting 45 percent to Hillary Clinton's 43 percent.

Do you think that -- I guess it's too early for his campaigning there for the past three days to be paying off. What do you think has allowed for him to leap frog her?

KUCINICH: I mean, Florida is going to go back and forth. But, you know, Donald Trump has an appeal with older voters, which has been very helpful in Florida, and he has been working really hard there.

They've been really -- the organization with the RNC. They have a ground game in Florida. But, you know, he can't take his foot off the gas here, which is why him coming to D.C. today to open his new hotel is a little perplexing. Why you would do that when he is seeing gains somewhere like Florida in a place that is so critical for him to win. You know, if he wants to pull this off in negative.

Well, you have to remember, also a big military population there in Florida. A lot of them are off base. That's why you see that uptick in absentee ballots. That could be relevant. And remember, it's winner take all. So it could go bounce back and forth. Whoever wins gets all 29. Other than what is it, Maine and Nebraska, who have a little bit of a different portioning system, this is winner take all. In Nebraska, you know, who have a little bit of a different portioning system. This is winner take all.

All right, so a couple of other big poll numbers came out that are instructive. Juana, North Carolina from "The New York Times," you've got Clinton ahead seven points here. This is a big gap for her. I think I have only seen one that was bigger than this. And then Arizona is very close. This is a different polling outfit. Monmouth university, and this has 46/45 within the margin of error. How do you see these?

KUCINICH: That Arizona number is really striking to me, the fact that we're talking about Arizona possibly being up for grabs, Clinton doing incredibly well there. We've seen signs also that her state might show additional resources there to compete in that state; shows you what a different map we're looking at this cycle.

And what is interesting to me across the board as we look at this is just how broad of a coalition Clinton is bringing together in these final two weeks of the election. He's not only getting the voters, who have reliably come out for her. We're talking about voters of color. Women, for example, particularly married women. She's done well there.

But she's also bringing in new voters. She's running close with white men with Donald Trump in a number of these key states, which is not a great sign, given the results we saw from 2012 and how well Mitt Romney did with that group.

So she is expanding the base, which is what both campaigns need to do at this point. Seems to be doing effectively, not just in the national CNN/ORC poll you guys talked about at the top of the segment but also a number of these key battleground states and depriving Donald Trump of his best chance on that road to 270.

CAMEROTA: Meanwhile, Errol, every day it seems that there is a new WikiLeaks revelation...

CUOMO: Drip, drip, drip, they like to say.

CAMEROTA: Drip, drip, drip of the stolen John Podesta e-mails. So here's the latest one. It shows that -- whether or not President Obama knew that Hillary

Clinton was using her own personal server. He had said on "60 Minutes" that he did not know and, in fact, he learned when the rest of us learned, when it was revealed in the national media.

But here is an e-mail that comes from one of her spokespeople, Josh Sherwin, who says to another campaign staff, Jen Palmieri, "Jen, you probably have more on this, but it looks like POTUS" -- president of the United States -- "just said he found out Hillary Clinton was using her personal e-mail when he saw it in the news."

Then Cheryl Mills replies at some point later, "We need to clean this up. He has e-mails from her that do not say state.gov."

What does this mean, Errol?

LOUIS: I mean, my sense of it is that, first of all, it will be used as fodder by the Republicans, and they'll say that, you know, clearly, the president was in on her, and the conspiracy theories can flower.

CAMEROTA: Wait, but is it conspiracy theory, if he was getting e- mails from her personal one didn't he notice at some point that it wasn't state.gov?

LOUIS: That's a very good question that I would love to ask the president. And I sure will the next time I get an interview with him, which will probably be the first time I get an interview with him.

There's a -- look, there's a lot in these Podesta e-mails there. It's sort of almost mundane. It's almost helpful that these folks are not looking over their shoulders. So this is just kind of the chatter that goes on inside the administration and inside the campaign.

And in this case, it looks to me, having interviewed Cheryl Mills and having looked at some of the stuff, I think this is not sort of dynamite. This is them saying, "We need to clean this up because, apparently, the president didn't check. Hey, where is this e-mail coming from?"

CAMEROTA: You're taking him at his word that what he said on "60 Minutes," that he did not know. But this suggests that he did know.

LOUIS: Well, no. This to me suggests that we need -- saying, "We need to clean this up" is like maybe he didn't check. Maybe he -- maybe the e-mail comes in, he's looking at it and he's saying he didn't know.

CUOMO: That's a generous spin. I think, Jackie, that the way they'll use it is like this. He either knew -- right, the only good spin he can have in terms of what they're calling cleanup. And by the way, cleanup is automatically a damning phrase. And if you're arguing against Hillary Clinton, you're using that phrase alone, you're getting traction out of it.

This is drip, drip, drip. It doesn't have to be dynamite, which Errol is right to set up as the standard, if you're arguing it from the Clinton perspective.

From the Trump perspective, drip, drip, drip is fine with me. It shows that, you know, together, exactly a tapestry of toxicity here and that's what they're trying to do in Trump land. And maybe the only spin Obama would have is, "Well, I knew I was getting e-mails from her, but I didn't know whether it was her server or it was something else."

CAMEROTA: But does that pass the smell test?

KUCINICH: You know, it's another way that they can say the Clinton and, you know, to this extent would President Obama have been secretive. Have been trying to hide something from the American public and present a face forward that might not be the face that, you know, they show each other.

So, for that reason, I think the damage is already done on this topic with Hillary Clinton and bringing the president into it, I don't -- I don't know her turf. This feels this is sort of baked in at this point. We heard this.

It just reemphasizes if you don't like Hillary Clinton, you don't like this. I don't know that this particular part of the scandal really changes any minds at this state of the game.

CAMEROTA: Panel, thank you very much. Great to get all of your perspectives.

CUOMO: All right. So you're ready? Here's the riddle of the day. Black cats, billygoats and Bartman.

CAMEROTA: Got it.

CUOMO: The Chicago Cubs are trying to end a World Series curse more than a century old, and they're off to a lousy start. A live report from Cleveland, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:27:33] CUOMO: Boy, did you hear the screams of David Axelrod last night all the way from Chicago after World Series game one. The Cubs got spanked. Andy Scholes live with details of a really big night in C-Town -- Andy.

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS: Chris, you couldn't have asked for a better night if you're a Cleveland sports fan. I actually saw a fan walking around here in downtown Cleveland last night, holding up a sign saying it feels like it's been Christmas all year, and that really sums up Cleveland perfectly this year in the sports world.

And I'll tell you what: Cleveland was the center of the sports world last night. Game one of the World Series against the Cubs. Their ace, Corey Kluber, on fire to start this game. He had eight strikeouts in the first there innings. That's a World Series record.

And the unlikely hero for the Indians, catcher Roberto Perez hit three home run all season. He had two in the game last night. He's a nine hole hitter. Awesome night for Cleveland.

Indians win in a shutout, zip-zero, game one. And it's a big win, because the winner of game one of the World Series have gone on to win 12 of the last 13 World Series.

Game two tonight has been moved up an hour, because there is rain in the forecast. So, first pitch 7:08 Eastern.

Awesome night for Cleveland actually got started next door in Quicken Loans Arena, as the Cavs celebrated the city's first championship in 52 years. LeBron and company getting their championship rings and then raising the banner. And the Cavs look like champs against the Knicks. LeBron a triple double in the opener. The Cavs would win now in a blowout, 117-88.

You know, the NBA moved up the Cavs ring ceremony 30 minutes so the fans in Cleveland could watch it and not miss any of the World Series. I took advantage of the friendly sports schedule. I ended up going to both. There was a time lapse I saw on my phone as I walked from the ring ceremony over to the World Series. Really cool opportunity to see two historic events next to each other.

And hey, it only took me about five minutes to walk from the ring ceremony to the World Series. Really cool.

But guys, I want to end on one note. You know, everything is going great for Cleveland right now with the Indians and the Cavs. They do keep it balanced here in Cleveland with the Cleveland Browns, the only winless team in the NFL right now. But Chris, they do host your Jets this weekend, so I guess there is hope for the Browns, right?

CUOMO: You're a funny guy, Andy. I hope you don't trip and break some of those beautiful teeth.

CAMEROTA: Andy, thank you. On that note.

So if he does break his teeth, he'll need health care, and Obamacare is under fire. What do Trump and Clinton think about Obamacare today? What are their healthcare plans? We examine their positions in your money, your vote, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)