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CNN NEWSROOM

Trump Rips Clinton, Tries to Woo Minorities; Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired August 23, 2016 - 09:00   ET

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


[09:00:01] CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: That bears her family's name. At an Ohio rally, Trump called for a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton, blasting what he says was a, quote, "whitewash" by the FBI and the Justice Department on her private e-mail server.

But Trump also doubled down on another newer theme of his campaign, his attempts to woo minority voters. And he took aim at Democrats and their policies in the process.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The Democrats have failed completely in the inner cities. Poverty, rejection, horrible education, no housing, no homes, no ownership. Crime at levels that nobody's seen. You could go to war zones in countries that we're fighting and it's safer than living in some of our inner cities. They're run by the Democrats.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: CNN's Jessica Schneider joins me now with more on Trump's latest rally. Good morning.

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning, Carol. Donald Trump hitting Hillary Clinton on multiple fronts and escalating his attacks on her e-mail scandal. Trump amping up his accusations of pay-for-play and calling for an immediate, expedited and impartial investigation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CROWD: Lock her up. Lock her up.

SCHNEIDER (voice-over): Donald Trump once again attempting to capitalize on ongoing scrutiny of Hillary Clinton's e-mails and the Clinton Foundation. In his strongest language yet accusing his opponent of fostering a pay-for-play culture when she served as secretary of state.

TRUMP: The amounts involved, the favors done and the significant number of times it was done require an expedited investigation by a special prosecutor immediately, immediately, immediately.

SCHNEIDER: Trump claiming the FBI and the Justice Department whitewashed Clinton's e-mail scandal.

TRUMP: It has proven itself to be really, sadly a political arm of the White House.

SCHNEIDER: This charge coming as a judge orders the State Department to review an additional 15,000 e-mails and other documents the former secretary of state did not voluntarily turn over. A development Clinton brushed off Monday night.

HILARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Jimmy, my e-mails are so boring.

JIMMY KIMMEL, HOST, "JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE": Yes, mine aren't.

CLINTON: And, I mean, I'm embarrassed about that. They're so boring. And -- so we've already released, I don't know, 30,000 plus, so what's a few more?

SCHNEIDER: Trump also continuing his outreach to black and Hispanic voters, raising eyebrows with his tone yet again.

TRUMP: What do you have to lose? I will straighten it out. We'll get rid of the crime. You'll be able to walk down the street without getting shot. Right now you walk down the street and you get shot.

SCHNEIDER: Clinton's campaign blasting Trump's overcharge of the black community, accusing Trump of "doubling down on insults, fears and stereotypes that set our community back and further divide our country."

This appeal to Hispanics coming as Trump's campaign continues to attempt to clarify his stance on the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants after postponing a big policy speech.

TRUMP: We're going to get rid of all of the bad ones. We've got gang members, we have killers, we have a lot of bad people that have to get out of this country. We're going to get them out. And the police know who they are.

KELLYANNE CONWAY, TRUMP CAMPAIGN MANAGER: He will deport those who have absolutely committed a crime, been convicted of a crime.

SCHNEIDER: This change coming after Trump advocated for mass deportation for months.

TRUMP: They're going back where they came.

SCHNEIDER: As for Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee forced to address unfounded conspiracy theories over her health.

RUDY GIULIANI, TRUMP SUPPORTER: Go online and put down Hillary Clinton illness, take a look for the videos for yourself.

CLINTON: I don't know why they are saying this. I think on the one hand, it's part of the wacky strategy. Just say all these crazy things and maybe you can get some people to believe you. On the other hand, it just absolutely makes no sense.

KIMMEL: Can you open this jar of pickles? This has not been tampered with.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCHNEIDER: So Hillary Clinton laughing off questions about her health there. She'll also be changing the narrative to the economy today. She's putting forward a plan to expand healthcare credits and make a standard tax deduction available to small businesses.

Her running mate Tim Kaine will talk about those plans at a round table in Colorado -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Jessica Schneider reporting for us live. Thanks so much.

Donald Trump is calling for the Clintons to close down the global foundation and return the donations. He charges Secretary of State Clinton -- former Secretary of State Clinton is guilty of pay-for- play. In other words, he says, there is evidence Mrs. Clinton granted favors while she was secretary of state in exchange for donations to the foundation.

James Carville, a longtime Clinton supporter, says a shutdown would be catastrophic for the needy people who benefit from the Clinton Global Foundation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMES CARVILLE, CLINTON SUPPORTER: So the Clinton Foundation was, A, taking no money for the Clintons, raising money from rich people and giving it to poor people. And all of a sudden the press has decided that we're going to go after this and shut it down.

[09:05:04] And you know what, you're probably going to be successful. And there are going to be people that are going to die because of this. And all of the people that help shut it down are going to say, gee, we did -- we did it. So a few -- you know, some people, a million people had to die but we had to prove a point. OK. Go ahead. You have your point. Wow. What a great idea.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: This is some of what Carville is talking about. The Clinton Foundation provides meals to 31,000 schools in the United States. It's helped 105,000 farmers in East Africa with their crops, and it's renegotiated the cost of HIV drugs so they could be provided to 11.5 million people. But with the good, come those questions.

CNN's Cristina Alesci is here with that part of the equation. Good morning.

CRISTINA ALESCI, CNN MONEY CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. What it comes down to, the foundation itself is confusing and controversial for a couple of reasons. One, it has 11 different initiatives under this big umbrella organization. And some of those initiatives are actually based overseas. So the reporting guidelines and requirements for those are different than what you would get in the U.S. Also, additionally, the very main foundation implies to some people

that this is a grant-making institution. This is one of the biggest misunderstanding about the foundation. This is why you hear conservatives say -- conservative critics say it doesn't -- it holds onto the money itself. Well, it holds on to the money because it is a charity doing the work on the ground itself as opposed to a foundation which is sort of known as a grant-making institution. Wealthy families set these up and then they make grants to other nonprofits that actually execute the work. So that's the number two biggest confusion.

Number three, you have something called the Clinton Global Initiative, which is one of the initiatives. Now one source described it to me as the "OK, Cupid" of the nonprofit world. What it does is it matches wealthy donors with outside causes. The problem is that the Clintons charge $20,000 in membership fees to attend these events where these wealthy donors announce their support for various charities.

Now critics say that that is essentially an access fee to the Clintons. And that's been the problems plaguing the initiative, which by the way the foundation announced it's no longer going to be holding those events.

But what it boils down to, Carol, and what we've been hearing so much about is the conflict of interest, this idea that there was pay-for- play while she was secretary of state. And the biggest criticism has been, OK, so now the Clinton Foundation announced these changes where they're not going to accept donations from foreign countries. Why didn't you do it sooner is what the critics are pushing here.

If there wasn't -- if there's going to be a conflict while she's president, why wasn't there one while she was secretary of state? Why didn't this happen sooner?

COSTELLO: OK. So all of these new e-mails have been uncovered. And I know you've read through them. Is there any evidence, hard core evidence of pay-for-play while Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state?

ALESCI: That's the thing. There's no smoking gun per se. But the problem again, Carol, is there have been a number of slip-ups. And one of the biggest ones was while she was secretary of state there were supposed to be protections in place to make sure that there was not even a perception or a -- you know, an image of this pay-for-play. And at least on one occasion -- and the Clinton Foundation has admitted this -- there was a violation of that agreement. That's why people have a trust issue here, Carol. It's not because there's a smoking gun. It's because of the image, the perception problems that it's trying to combat.

COSTELLO: All right. Cristina Alesci, thanks so much. So let's talk about this. With me now Joseph Borrelli, a New York City councilman and Trump supporter, and Angela Rye, CNN political commentator and former executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus.

So, Angela, why not just shutter the foundation and put an end to all of this? ANGELA RYE, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I think James Carville

had it right. Substantial challenges and it's not just waves that you're making in the press. You're making waves with people who actually need these resources. I understand the optics of it. I think they're challenging. I think it's been a tremendous distraction for not only the Clinton campaign but the Clinton Foundation. So they have a lot of work that they've got to continue to do. And I think a lot of people who legitimately are relying on that work, regardless of the questions they're raising about access, whether or not there are donors, even like Donald Trump, who have helped to provide those types of funds to ensure that people can benefit whether you're talking about, like you said, HIV or farmers in Africa --

(CROSSTALK)

COSTELLO: So before we get into Donald Trump -- because he did donate to the Clinton Foundation.

RYE: Sure.

COSTELLO: And I'll ask you about that in just a second. But, Joseph, I want to hear from you. What about those needy people that benefit from the Clinton Foundation? What do you do?

JOSEPH BORELLI, TRUMP SUPPORTER: Nobody is really questioning that.

[09:10:02] The problem is that the byproduct of the foundation is the good work it did. The substance of the foundation and the reason for the foundation is to influence the Clintons and gain access to the Clinton family, the State Department, stuff like that.

And I disagree with what Cristina said. There is some smoking guns. And you see case after case and one in particular where a Saudi prince was denied officially a meeting by the State Department with the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and then someone from the foundation comes up and says, by the way, he's a friend of ours, which is first of all, it's odd mafia terminology, like he's a friend of ours.

RYE: Gosh.

BORELLI: Yes, it is.

RYE: I think the relationship --

BORELLI: Well, what does it even mean? He's a friend of ours. He is a friend of the foundation so therefore Hillary Clinton should alter her decision to meet with this person. If this Saudi prince donates to the United Way or the Girls Scouts, would he have gotten the same treatment? No. That's why there really is a smoking gun here.

COSTELLO: Well, here's what we do know. OK. So there were requests directed to Clinton's deputy chief staff and confidante Huma Abedin, right? The request from donors would often come through Doug Band who's a longtime Bill Clinton aide and created the Clinton Foundation. And Abedin was the primary contact, right? Band declined to comment on the newly released e-mails, I just want to say because we did reach out to them. But what came of this, we just don't know because the donors didn't always get what they wanted particularly when they sought anything more than a meeting.

RYE: So I guess the thing that I would raise here and maybe it just works different for the city council, but I would say, as a former Hill staffer, there are a lot of people who are friends of your bosses and what ends up happening is regardless if they donated or not, or they're just a good person who they work with over the years providing constituent services, a friend of a member means you shouldn't just ignore the e-mail whether you give them what they want or not because you're not supposed to be breaking any rules, or ethics rules. There have been allegations. We don't know that there are any ethics rules broken. You still reply. You still respond. You should do that with constituents, period, but you definitely don't ignore your friends.

COSTELLO: Yes, but -- but should those requests have come through from Huma Abedin.

RYE: Well, I don't know the parameters of that. And so for me, I think that it's treacherous territory when you start commenting without all of the facts. What I will say is Huma has worked with Secretary Clinton for a long time. To your point, trusted confidant. If someone goes to Huma, they know that it's likely to be seen by Hillary Clinton. I think that's a sign of the staff work. I don't think that's what's been done.

COSTELLO: Joseph?

BORELLI: Huma was working for the foundation and for the State Department at the same time. I think there's a conflict of interest in that in itself. But --

RYE: She got special clearance for that from the State Department.

BORELLI: But you're right. One incident may not be a smoking gun. But you have the FBI and three separate Department of Justice field office coming to the attorney general and saying we believe there's enough evidence of criminal conduct with the Clinton Foundation that we should investigate. And guess who killed it? Coincidentally the same person who met with Bill Clinton on a private plane. That is a problem. And that's why Donald Trump is calling for a special prosecutor. You -- again, you have the FBI saying there's evidence. Let us investigation. The Department of Justice --

COSTELLO: I don't think he called for a special prosecutor.

(CROSSTALK)

RYE: And not only that --

COSTELLO: We get it.

BORELLI: He's asking the president -- he's asking the president to appoint a special prosecutor.

RYE: But he's also calling for something in a system that he's already sold to his supporters system as a rigged system.

COSTELLO: OK --

BORELLI: No --

(CROSSTALK)

COSTELLO: We're going to continue our conversation but I got to take a break. So you two stick around.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, Donald Trump's message to minorities is simple. What have you got to lose? But for some African-American and Hispanic voters, Trump's eyebrow-raising rhetoric does not match their reality.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:17:28] COSTELLO: In the key battleground state of Ohio, Donald Trump tried again to reach out to African-American voters.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: It is a disaster the way African-Americans are living in many cases and in many cases the way Hispanics are living. And I say it with such a deep felt feeling. What do you have to lose? I will straighten it out. I'll bring jobs back. We'll bring spirit back. We'll get rid of the crime. You'll be able to walk down the street without getting shot. Right now you walk --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: All right. So inside the rally, Mr. Trump's comments were wildly applauded. But he appealed once again to a mostly white crowd. We counted two African-Americans in that crowd. And Akron, Ohio, is 30 percent black.

CNN's Gary Tuchman drove 10 minutes from the rally to an Akron neighborhood that has the highest percentage of African-Americans in the city to get their perspective on what Mr. Trump said.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Tasia Anderson just opened up her own boutique here in West Akron. She's 22 years old and says when she heard Trump make that statement and continue to talk about African-Americans, she felt --

TASIA ANDERSON, ENTREPRENEUR: Why does he have the audacity to say that? But, you know, that's just how he does anything. He just kind of says anything.

TUCHMAN: Kimberly Wilson is a principal at an Akron grade school with more than 90 percent African-American students. A new school here is about to begin in a recently built school building. Donald Trump saying your schools are no good saddens her.

KIMBERLEY WILSON, SCHOOL PRINCIPAL: We have parents and teachers and staff that are dedicated to our students.

TUCHMAN: But then we met Kenny Wells.

KENNY WELLS, OHIO VOTER: Right now, if I had to vote today, it would probably be Trump.

TUCHMAN: Wells believes Trump is speaking some hard truths.

WELLS: He's probably right. What do we have to lose?

TUCHMAN (on camera): So you don't find that insulting and generalizing?

WELLS: No. Sooner or later Democrats are going to insult me some kind, too, so they -- in fact they have insulted me, assuming I'm going to vote for them.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: All right, let's talk about this. With me again, Joseph Borelli and Angela Rye.

Joseph, does Mr. Trump need to tweak his message to African-Americans?

BORELLI: Well, I think he is starting to talk very strongly about issues that are of concern to not only African-Americans but to broader Americans who might be living in cities. Look, I obviously cannot speak to African-Americans as well as someone who is African- American. But this network has had a dozen people who are black who do support Donald Trump.

COSTELLO: Well, you've run for office. Would you talk to the African-American community like that?

[09:20:01] BORELLI: Well, you're right. So I represent part of New York City which is a very, you know, predominantly minority city. And there are people in every neighborhood of the city who believe that Democratic policies are not working. There are people who believe that fighting against school choices is a mistake the Democrats make. Lessening prison sentence, birth control, all these things that are traditionally associated with the Democratic Party, there are plenty of people of every color who think they're wrong. It is totally within good thought and rational thought for Donald Trump to say, what have you to lose? You've gone in this direction for so many years. Why not consider an alternative?

COSTELLO: Is he connecting with that message?

RYE: I think not, Carol. I think when you look at the polling number, the fact that Gary Johnson and Jill Stein are doing better with the black community than Donald Trump is damning. I also think when you start your campaign with the slogan like make America great again, when some of us hear shackles in our mind, and we hear dogs and see fire hoses. That's not an era that we want to go back to.

The fact that he doesn't understand that he couldn't disavow the KKK and his father was presumably seen at a KKK rally. The fact that he continues to say things like you walk down the street without getting shot. Surprise, Carol, I made it here this morning. I think that is really, really frustrating when you think about a group of people, when their most important issue is race relations in this country, and the only thing Donald Trump has done since the beginning of his candidacy is make those race relations even worse.

COSTELLO: There are some African-Americans saying that Donald Trump really isn't speaking to an African-American audience when he says these things.

RYE: That's right.

COSTELLO: He's really speaking to his base. Is he?

BORELLI: Right. He's got to do a better job. And he's even been critical of the Republican Party broadly for not doing a good enough job speaking to again African-Americans and Hispanics inside inner cities. In fairness, he's probably one of the first Republican elected officials to really make it part of his major policy platform to readdress the way we look at inner cities. I think he's actually going in the right direction.

And to Angela's point, you know, not every person who is African- American feels that the broad left or Democratic African-American leaders speak for them. And they --

RYE: I didn't say that.

BORELLI: And -- but maybe Donald Trump will never speak or get 95 percent of the vote, like he sort of jokingly said, but --

(CROSSTALK)

COSTELLO: He's saying he's only speaking to a small portion of the black community.

RYE: He's not even speaking to them. And I think that when you hear people say, you know what, my economics aren't as good as they need to be, but I'm certainly not going to vote for the guy who won't even consider raising the minimum wage when there's documented proof that raising the minimum wage alone would benefit 35 percent of African- Americans.

BORELLI: There's documented proof that raising the minimum wage here in New York City, and I can show you the studies, will actually decrease low-income jobs. I mean, so there are really genuinely two sides to every story on issues like this. Take the issue I mentioned. school choice. There are people in the Democratic Party who live and die by the teachers union.

(CROSSTALK)

COSTELLO: But see, Donald Trump isn't talking about schools.

BORELLI: He is. Yes, he is. RYE: Come on --

COSTELLO: In that rally he wasn't. He was saying, I'll fix it so when you walk down the street you don't --

RYE: He said your streets are broken. And I think the reality of it is the best thing that Donald Trump can do is get a new black outreach strategy. The people who on his team who are serving in this capacity are doing a disservice to him and are clearly incompetent. And I think the other piece that you have to acknowledge is Donald Trump has to do a much better job not just of going to large audiences and talking to black voters, which we know they're missing. But he's going at least now to Akron. You have to start having real conversations with people who are policy makers in this space, and have touched and lived this life.

He's not done that throughout his entire privileged life. And it's very clear, the only thing that Donald Trump has done is discriminate against black people with housing cases, the two DOJ cases, and he's also had -- he's also had challenges --

(CROSSTALK)

BORELLI: So they give him credit for the -- this is about Hispanics, but give him credit for the meeting he had with Hispanics last week.

RYE: No, no, I'm not going to give --

BORELLI: -- that did exactly what you said. Exactly what you just said.

RYE: Joe, I'm not going to give him credit for a meeting with Latino people when we're talking about black people right now.

BORELLI: Right. And I shouldn't have made the comparison. But it's still -- the Hispanic community, he's also been criticized for not doing an effective job in outreach. And this is not the first time he's had these meetings.

RYE: So --

(CROSSTALK)

BORELLI: Back -- no. I think in March he had a meeting amongst African-American pastors. So he has had meetings with African- Americans. He does it consistently. I think he met with Sheriff Clarke yesterday in Milwaukee.

RYE: OK. Sheriff Clarke is no example of beacon of civil rights.

BORELLI: Well, he's an African-American leader who's elected in this country.

RYE: So we're going to start cherry-picking African-American leaders who are deemed offensive in the black community, I think that's when we have a problem and that's exactly why -- BORELLI: I don't think all African-Americans think Sheriff Clarke is

offensive.

RYE: No. I think that many do.

BORELLI: That's your opinion.

RYE: Based on facts.

COSTELLO: OK. I have to leave it there. Joseph Borelli, Angela Rye, thank you very much.

RYE: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, long before he became a presidential candidate, Donald Trump played the stock market. But did his Wall Street success come at a huge cost to American workers?

We'll delve into that, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:28:54] COSTELLO: Wall Street ended Monday mostly in the red. And with the Opening Bell just moments away, we're watching to see if investors will turn things around for Tuesday. We'll take you live to the New York Stocks Exchange in just a minute, but first, making millions playing the market.

During the 1980s Donald Trump used a controversial but totally legal tactic to win big. But did it cost thousands of people their jobs?

CNN's Phil Mattingly has more for you.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the high flying '80s it was the corporate raider who got the big headlines and even bigger paydays. Donald Trump wanted in on the action.

TRUMP: Money is a score card. Money is a score card as far as I'm concerned. Believe me money is not the most important thing but it's a way of keeping score.

MATTINGLY: It's something Trump rarely discusses on the campaign trail, the four years where he played the stock market, and mostly won, big, to the tune of more than $200 million. But a CNN investigation comprised of hundreds of pages of never-before released depositions, testimony and financial documents, as well as more than a dozen interviews, opens a window into a playbook with striking parallels to his campaign, one driven by a bare-knuckled strategies, strong-armed tactics, media leaks and public statements that often ran contrary to the truth.