Return to Transcripts main page

CNN NEWSROOM

Key ISIS Leader Killed; Clinton Speech to Women in Virginia; Trump to Receive National Security Briefings as Presumptive Nominee. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired May 9, 2016 - 14:30   ET

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


[14:30:00] CAPT. TRIER BRYANT, DIRECTOR, TWITTER UNIVERSITY RECRUITING & COMBAT VETERAN, U.S. AIR FORCE: Remember, also, this isn't just about them going through this for four years, but families. The families and friends that have made arrangements and have been supporting them for the four years to know that this is in limbo, you know, I really just hope West Point will have -- will expedite their investigation and not prolong it to prevent the women from celebrating not only with their peers and classmates but their families of this great accomplishment.

And we really should focus on that. 18 women will -- 18 black women will be graduating in West Point's class this year. There were two or three classes behind me at the Air Force Academy, there were three black females. When my friends and I have been talking about this, this morning and over the weekend, we were more focused on the numbers. And this is something that they should be proud of.

BALDWIN: Interesting.

Captain Trier Bryant, thank you so much. Appreciate you.

BYRANT: Thanks, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Thank you.

Next here, breaking news in the war on terror. One of the world's biggest targets taken out. We have a live report from the Pentagon, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

[14:35:23] BALDWIN: Just past bottom of the hour. We have some breaking news in the war against ISIS. We are getting word that a key leader of the terror group in Iraq has been killed.

Let's bring in Barbara Starr at the Pentagon.

Barbara Starr, tell me about Abu Wahib.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good afternoon, Brooke. The Pentagon announcing it believes it was successful with an air strike a few days ago killing a terrorist in Iraq. This happened west of Baghdad. Wahib is the leader of ISIS operations in Anbar Province, west of Baghdad where ISIS is fairly well dug in. Targeted and killed, the Pentagon said, as he was traveling in a vehicle with three others.

One of the things that makes this so interesting, Wahib has been reported dead a number of times before, but those strikes, obviously, not successful, because he has always come back. So there's a little caution here. But they do believe the strike was successful.

A very serious bad guy said to be responsible for a number of very deadly ISIS operations in that area -- Brooke?

BALDWIN: Barbara Starr, thank you so much for that.

STARR: Sure.

BALDWIN: On the trail today, Hillary Clinton taking the fight for the White House directly to the swing state of Virginia. This afternoon, she looks ahead to a general election matchup, likely against Donald Trump. Moments from now, he is due to meet with a group of suburban women voters. You can see them around a coffee shop in the county of Loudon, Virginia, outside of Washington. Her meeting a couple of days after Trump called her an enabler of her husband's infidelity.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE & CEO, TRUMP ORGANIZATION: She is married to a man who is the worst abuser of women in the history of politics. She is married to a man who hurt many women. And Hillary, if you look and see and you study, Hillary hurt many women, the women that he abused. She's married to a man who got impeached for lying.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Let's parse through this with "CNN Politics" editor, Juana Summers, and the president of Bellwether Research Consulting, Christine Matthews. Christine advices Republicans on how to attract women voters.

Ladies, welcome.

CHRISTINE MATTHEWS, PRESIDENT, BELLWETHER RESEARCH CONSULTING: Thank you.

JUANA SUMMERS, CNN POLITICS EDITOR: Thank you.

BALDWIN: All right. So, let me set some more sound up here. During an interview on CNN today with Chris Cuomo, Trump was on and doubled down on the earlier comments about Secretary Clinton. Here he was.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP (voice-over): She's playing the woman's card to the hilt. She's going -- I mean, I watched over the weekend. Everything is about woman and Donald Trump raised his voice and -- it's all nonsense. You know what? Women understand it better than anybody. And watch how well I do with women when it counts, when the election comes. Watch how well. Nobody respects women more than Donald Trump. I'm going to take -- I will -- I will be better for women by a big factor than Hillary Clinton, frankly, I don't even think will be good to women.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: All right. So, Christine, to you first.

Do you think this is a good strategy to talk to women?

MATTHEWS: Well, you know, Donald Trump has said plenty about women. It would be nice if he talked to women as human beings with some ideas about what he would do taking them forward and not generalities. And so, you know, I think when you move into territory when you criticize Hillary Clinton about her marriage, about her looks, her stamina, it's really risky.

BALDWIN: Yes. I have this number. Last month, seven in 10 women voters had an unfavorable view of Donald Trump.

And, Christine, staying with you, you say topics like foreign policy, terrorism, could turn Republicans toward Hillary Clinton. How could she turn, you know, states like this blue?

MATTHEWS: Yeah. It's interesting. You're set up was in Loudon County, Virginia. I have done plenty of focus groups with women in Loudon County, Virginia. The most important concern is national security and terrorism. She is smart to use the trade "loose cannon." If she can say, listen, you may not like me but I'm stable, I'm not mercurial, I'll keep you safe, he doesn't know what he is doing, I think she has some opportunities. And I think she has to acknowledge she's not going to win them over in terms of them liking her. But if they think that she is more reasoned, more stable, will keep them safe, then she has an argument there.

BALDWIN: You know, she said the "loose cannon" thing four different times in that interview with Anderson Cooper last week. Obviously, a line they hope sticks with voters.

Meanwhile, Juana, we dig into the vault. Back to 2008, you know, we played what Mr. Trump has said about, you know, former secretary of state and former president's marriage, but here's what he said in 2008 after Bill Clinton's affair and impeachment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[14:40:20] TRUMP: Look at the trouble Bill Clinton got into with something that was totally unimportant and they tried to impeach him, which was nonsense. And yet, Bush got us into this horrible war with lies, by lying, by saying they had weapons of mass destruction, by saying all sorts of things that turned out not to be true.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Do words not matter in politics? I'm talking across the aisle here.

SUMMER: Brooke, this is a tough one. We have seen time and time again that the traditional laws of political gravity for some reason don't apply to Donald Trump. But I think statements like that and playing the statement, whether the statements on abortion rights, on gay marriage or like you played why some people and I think back on this, to Iowa, don't see Donald Trump as a consistent conservative. I think if we see a general election matchup between a Donald Trump and a Hillary Clinton, you will be hearing statements like that played back again and again and again, and Donald Trump forced, whether he likes it or not, to confront his own words and square up what he said eight years ago with what he's saying on the road today as he stares down the general election.

BALDWIN: Here's some more sound. This is also Donald Trump recently saying women have it easier than men. Here he was.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Only the men are petrified to speak to women anymore. They get it better than we do, folks. All right? They get it better than we do.

(CHEERING)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: As a woman, Christine, what do you think about that?

MATTHEWS: OK. That's just not the way to go, that women have it so great and, you know, they have it better than men. He was speaking to men in that particular segment. No woman will believe that they have got it so great. You know, the one thing that the Trump organization seems to say when confronted with his record on won is, oh, promoted the strong women, women managers, good track record. Maybe it's time for him to step back and put the women forward, you know, wouldn't hurt in terms of testimonial. In 2012, a strongest ad for Mitt Romney was the women he appointed to the administrations speaking out on his behalf. So that's something I think they should consider probably, and he should consider being more quiet.

BALDWIN: And then the binders full of women comment. It's tough. It's tough in politics.

Thanks, guys.

Let's go now to Loudon County, Virginia. Hillary Clinton sitting in on a coffee shop.

HILLARY CLINTON, (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE & FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: -- heard of obvious, maybe even typical responses. But I'm trying to get a much broader view about what will work. These are issues that I have worked on for a really long time, going back to my own life as a mother, a daughter, and some of the challenges there.

But also, in the work that I have done for the Children's Defense Fund and other ways of trying to figure out how we have a more cohesive and, frankly, welcoming set of expectations and supports for families in today's world. Because it's just harder I think. That's just my take. I mean, I think costs are greater, everything from commuting times to feeling like if you take that vacation day, you're going to be viewed as slacking off. I mean, there's just -- there are cultural as well as economic and structural challenges.

So I'm just very interested in hearing what all of you might have to say. And then I've got a couple of people with me who have worked with me for a long time and, thankfully, they are still helping me.

BALDWIN: Hillary Clinton again speaking at a coffee shop trying to address women in Virginia, important state, Loudon County.

Christine was talking about the issues women care about, national security there.

Quickly, Juana, beyond that, what more does Hillary Clinton need to do to specifically attract women to her side?

SUMMERS: We talked about Donald Trump's numbers looking at women and both of the candidates in the general if they have a general election matchup don't have great favorability numbers. They're some of the most disliked presidential nominees we've had --

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Since early '90s.

SUMMERS: Since the early '90s. There's work to be done for women, who will make up 52 to 54 percent of the electorate, but across the board as we're heading towards what could be a really interesting matchup.

[14:45:41] BALDWIN: Juana Summers and Christine Matthews, ladies, thank you so much. We'll continue that conversation through November. It is an important one.

Meantime, next, Donald Trump is just an official nod away from the nomination, and that means he is even closer than ever to an Intel briefing on America's most highly classified secrets. So exactly how much will Donald Trump find out? We'll find out, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: Donald Trump is about to get a major crash course on the state of the world and possibly get his hands on some classified information at the very same time. As is tradition, the White House says it expects intelligence officials to brief Trump, if and when he is named the official nominee.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOSH EARNEST, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: They are committed to fulfilling the spirit of this bipartisan or even nonpartisan cooperation when it comes to sensitive national security issues. At the same time, they also will carry out those activities consistent with their understanding about treating this information sensitively.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Joining me now, Phil Mudd, CNN counterterrorism analyst and former CIA counterterrorism official.

Good to see you, sir.

PHIL MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: Thank you.

BALDWIN: You did this for Secretary of State John Kerry when he was running some years ago.

MUDD: Yes.

BALDWIN: What kind of information exactly do they become privy to?

[14:50:06] MUDD: There's a couple of stages you have to think through. The first stage at the end is November is when someone actually wins, Democrat, Republican, they typically will receive access to the family jewels. In other words, they get the same presidential brief that President Obama will be getting in the final months of his term. Before that, after the conventions with nominees of both parties, they get an initial security brief, and that will not get into the kind of detail that a candidate, a president-elect, will see in November. For example, what we call sources and methods. What the CIA is doing in Syria, for example, would not be part of that initial briefing cycle. More high-end briefings on things like China, North Korea, Iran -- Brooke?

BALDWIN: That's what they would get, the latter half you said?

MUDD: That's right. That's right.

BALDWIN: OK. We have heard some folks, including Senator Murphy, opposing this. He said, quote, "Trump wouldn't think twice of taking classified information and putting it in the public realm to serve his political purposes."

Do you think that's fair? This is how it works each and every four years.

MUDD: No. I don't think that's fair. This is the way the game works. The White House traditionally looking at the CIA and other intelligence agencies and say the American people have spoken through Republican and Democratic primaries. Regardless of who the American people choose, those candidates have the right to receive equal accessed information. If it later turns out someone can't handle that information, because they reveal it, then deal with it. But on the front end, you deal with it like every other president has. People went down to Waco, Texas, to talk to President-elect Bush. People went down to Little Rock, Arkansas. I expect the White House, as suggested earlier, will authorize, after the conventions, briefings for whomever wins.

BALDWIN: And then finally, on equal access, obviously, it's presuming Hillary Clinton is the nominee on the Democratic side, will she have the same sort of briefings or up to speed on so much of this as a former secretary of state?

MUDD: No. She will have the same briefings. The way it works is White House is going to be careful about scripting this. For example, there's categories of information or subjects that will be appropriate for conversation. They will tell the transition teams on both sides you can't go outside those lines. You can't start asking about other stuff that might, for example, relate to the political campaigns. Again, North Korea, Iran, would be fair game. And both sides get the same kind of briefing at the same kind of high level, before there's a president-elect in November.

BALDWIN: Makes sense. Fair.

Phil, thank you so much.

MUDD: Thank you.

BALDWIN: Coming up next, photographs seen publicly for the very first time take us behind the scenes of an administration in crisis. President Bush in the moments after the September 11th terrorist attacks. We'll talk to the man behind the lens, the president's personal photographer, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:57:03] BALDWIN: Who could forget the scene here showing President Bush's reaction to the news that a second plane hit the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001? The enormity of that moment, the hours that followed were captured by the president's White House photographer. And now some of the extraordinary pictures he took are being made public. In one shot, you see the president here drafting remarks he would give to the nation from the Florida grade school he was visiting as the attack unfolded. Another image shows the president consoled on Air Force One.

Photographer Eric Draper is good enough to join me.

Eric Draper, I have always wanted the talk to, you know, a White House photographer. You were former chief White House photographer. And just welcome to you.

And for people who don't understand, I mean, the function of your job, are you essentially attached to the president's hip through his time in office?

ERIC DRAPER, PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH'S PERSONAL WHITE HOUSE PHOTOGRAPHER & FORMER CHIEF WHITE HOUSE PHOTOGRAPHER: Yes. That's basically correct. You know, access is everything. And President Bush trusted my presence. And the job of the White House photographer is to create a visual archive of the administration, including official and nonofficial events, so I was definitely the president's shadow for all eight years.

BALDWIN: Wow. And little would you know, little would any of us know waking up that Tuesday morning how our world would change.

And the photo you hone in on, Lieutenant Colonel Cindy Wright, from the White House military office, on board Air Force One, with a right arm sort of around the president's neck. Can you tell me about that moment? And was the president weeping?

DRAPER: Well, no. The president wasn't crying at that moment. This occurred approximately -- it was late afternoon and we'd actually learned that we can return to Washington and so, everyone was, you know, relieved that we were heading home. And the day was already hours long, and Cindy Wright, a wonderful woman, a White House nurse, and she -- she was supports everyone. And I miss her a lot. But, yeah, that was just a very intimate moment when she walked up and tried to comfort the president on a very, very hard day.

BALDWIN: On that hard day, can you remember just as you were behind the lens just the tensest moment?

DRAPER: Well, the entire day was tense for me. Learning what was really happening -- I mean, you might remember the words that Andy Card watched and I watched that happen, and I didn't know what was going on until I walked into the hold room and saw the live pictures of the burning towers, and I knew it was going to be a big day. And I -- I had to basically -- I was on autopilot basically but I was also human and it was a very tough and very, very intense day. And there are days that were very, very intense where the president was basically so focused on his job that it didn't matter where I was in the room. I could be right in front of his face and he didn't care.

BALDWIN: Quickly, when did you fully absorb that you had a front-row seat to one of the worst days in our nation's history?