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Clinton And Bush Battle Over Women's Health; Bush Says He Misspoke About Health Funding; Jeb Bush's Greatest Hits; Obama States That Rejection Of Deal Will Lead To Another War; Obama Defends Nuclear Agreement; Republicans Prepare for Debate. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired August 5, 2015 - 13:00   ET

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


BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Hi there, I'm Brianna Keilar. It is 1:00 p.m. here in Washington, 6:00 p.m. in London and 8:00 p.m. in Jerusalem. Wherever you're watching from around the world, thanks so much for joining us.

And we start with the back-and-forth battle between Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton over women's health care. This started with this comment from Bush.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEB BUSH (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You could take dollar for dollar -- although I'm not sure we need a half billion dollars for women's health issues.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Well, Bush was referring to the half a billion dollars in funding for Planned Parenthood, funding that he and other Republicans want to eliminate. Clinton fired back with this tweet at Jeb Bush. She said, you are absolutely, unequivocally wrong. And she followed that up with this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Jeb Bush said he's not sure we need half a billion dollars for women's health issues. I'm reading it because I want to quote it exactly. Now, he's got no problem giving billions of dollars away to the super wealthy and powerful corporations, but I guess women's health just isn't a priority for him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Bush's team sent out this response. It says, with regards to women's health funding broadly, I misspoke as there are countless community health centers, rural clinics and other women's health organizations that need to be fully funded. That statement fell flat with the Democratic National Committee, as you can imagine. It tweeted, Jeb Bush is all about limiting access to health care. He didn't misspeak, he accidentally told the truth.

And joining me now to talk about this, we have CNN Chief Political Analyst Gloria Borger. How big of a deal is this for Jeb Bush?

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, first of all, standing on a stage with Republicans in a debate, it's not a big deal at all because most of them agree with him on the -- on the Planned Parenthood front.

But I think what you see playing out here is the beginning of the next campaign and Hillary Clinton picking up where Barack Obama left off in 2012 in the so-called war on women. And we've talked about that a lot and she saw an opportunity and she took it.

And you can't blame her campaign team, because what Hillary Clinton needs to do is consolidate the vote of white women, particularly those older suburban women she is not doing really well with. She gets younger women. And this is -- this is one way for her to do it. You know, they already figured they've got a head start with Hispanic voters, given Donald Trump, and this was an opportunity on the women front.

KEILAR: What is to be learned from Jeb Bush? Because this isn't the first time that he's done this. Remember, he said -- he said the thing about workers need to work longer hours. Now, he was talking about part time workers who want to work more hours but it came out in a way that was just this gift for the Clinton campaign.

BORGER: Yes, and it took him, what, four times to say that going to war in Iraq was a mistake. Jeb Bush is rusty, hasn't been on the campaign trail for a while, as we all know, and -- but I think the larger point here for Republicans, and Republicans I talk to say they have to see the passion in Jeb Bush that they haven't seen. You know, he said he wanted to campaign joyfully. He said, you know, he wanted to enjoy himself on the campaign trail. He kind of looks like he's sort of annoyed some of the time by what he has to go through. And we all know it's an annoying process.

KEILAR: It's not fun.

BORGER: (INAUDIBLE.)

KEILAR: Everyone will see that.

BORGER: Hillary Clinton looks annoyed, too.

KEILAR: But you have to pretend -- you have to pretend that it's fun. That's part of the game.

BORGER: You have to pretend you're having a great time.

KEILAR: That's right.

BORGER: And, you know, it's this constant exhaustion and sometimes you're -- you know, you're going to make a mistake and there is no room for error anymore because you're being recorded 24-7. So, he doesn't go from off Broadway to Broadway. He's on Broadway right now and he's got to start behaving like it or Republicans are going to get -- start getting a little worried. KEILAR: Yes, maybe about like right now ahead of this, you know,

debate that's going to happen tomorrow. We'll see.

All right, Gloria Borger, thanks so much.

BORGER: Yes.

KEILAR: This slipup for Jeb Bush is the latest in a growing list of gaffes. Here are some of the others.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BUSH: We see the rise of non-state terror organizations like ISIS, Boko Haram. I force myself to go visit Asia four times a year to learn about the dynamic nature of the region. ISIS didn't exist three or four years ago. In fact, the guy that's the supreme leader, whatever his new title is, head of the caliphate.

MEGYN KELLY, ANCHOR, FOX NEWS: Knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the invasion?

BUSH: I would have and so would have Hillary Clinton, just to remind everybody. And so would have almost everybody that was confronted with the intelligence they got.

I literally -- I mean, there's no way for me to have -- what she said was knowing what we know now, what would you have done? I heard -- some -- I didn't -- whatever I heard it was translated, knowing what you knew then, what would you do?

[13:05:02] People need to work longer hours and through their productivity gain more income for their families. That's the only way we're going to get out of this rut that we're in.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Keep us from taking it out of context. But you -- what you meant to say was -- when you say more hours you mean full time work?

BUSH: Given the opportunity to work -- yes, absolutely.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not that a full time guy or somebody who has two jobs needs to be working even more time?

BUSH: Absolutely not.

My dad is probably the most perfect man alive so it's very hard for me to be critical of him. In fact, I've got a t-shirt that says -- at the Jeb swag store that says I'm the -- I'm the -- my dad is the greatest man alive. If you don't like it, I'll take you outside.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: Joining me now is Dan Pfeiffer, CNN Political Commentator and former Obama White House communications director, and also Matt Schlapp, White House political director under George W. Bush, in his administration. These misstatements here or -- he's struggling. We saw him at the

forum. Jeb Bush seemed a little nervous. How does he -- how does he handle this? How does he clean this up, especially ahead of this big debate tomorrow?

MATT SCHLAPP, FORMER WHITE HOUSE POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Look, Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton, these are people that haven't been on the campaign trail in a number of years and, clearly, they're a little wobbly. They're a little rusty, as you said. And look for more of these misstatements. We are six months away from Iowa. They're going to shake this off and Jeb Bush will become a better candidate. And, by the way, the competition is going to make him a better candidate.

KEILAR: Does it matter this far out, Dan? Does he have room here?

DAN PFEIFFER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, I mean, he's not going to end his campaign right now. But, like, you will see this clip about cutting women's health in ads, if he's the nominee, running on women's programming for months. This will -- this will hurt him.

You know, it may not hurt him a lot in the primary because his position -- his position -- his record against women health choices will probably help him there. But in a general election, it could be death. Romney's statement about defunding Planned Parenthood ran thousands of times in television ads in our campaign room. So, this is going to hurt him in the long run if he's the nominee.

KEILAR: Matt sees this is as rustiness and you see that in all of these candidates. Is that your diagnosis here?

PFEIFFER: Well, I -- look, I think he's been out of politics for a really long time. Politics has changed dramatically in the nearly 15 years since he last ran for office. But I -- he has not answered the question of why he's running for president. He doesn't -- like you said, he does not exude joyfulness on the trail. This looks like a task. He doesn't have a rationale.

If you compare Jeb Bush with Donald Trump or Ted Cruz or Scott Walker, these guys look like they're having fun out there and they're generating enthusiasm and winning a primary is about generating enthusiasm.

KEILAR: He left himself wide open to an attack by Hillary Clinton. Keeping in mind, --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

KEILAR: -- this is coming on a day --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.

KEILAR: -- where, perhaps, he could be attacking her. The FBI is -- we've just learned in a news story that the FBI is looking into the security of her server which contains, expectedly, some now classified information --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's right.

KEILAR: -- or information that will be classified.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's right.

KEILAR: And yet, here he is back on his heels once again.

SCHLAPP: I don't think he is on his heels. I'm going to disagree.

KEILAR: OK.

SCHLAPP: I'm going to disagree. I actually think this is a great issue for him. I think he used the euphemism of women's health issues and actually it's quite extreme when he see these videos about what Planned Parenthood is doing with harvesting the organs of unborn children. And I think it's a real good issue for him because it takes the whole question of the war on women and puts it in the perspective of what Republicans are really saying which is, can't we find a middle course on these questions? Is this really what America wants when you have the --

KEILAR: But that's not what he's saying in his soundbite, is it?

SCHLAPP: I agree. No, you're right. This is the thing, I think, in the long run, it's a good issue for him to focus on. In the short run, we're kind of missing what the real issue is about and he needs to get right on target here which is the American people are really offended by what they're seeing in these videos and by Planned Parenthood's actions, generally.

KEILAR: You see Hillary Clinton defending Planned Parenthood to the utmost. Is this a fault line, you think, in the general election?

PFEIFFER: Oh, absolutely. It was in the last -- in the 2012 election. It will be here. You know, there was a NBC "Wall Street Journal" poll that came out that said that Planned Parenthood is one of the most admired organizations in the country. This is a real problem, particularly for Republicans who need to attract women, particularly younger women, if they're going to do better in this election. And so, this is going to hurt them in the long run.

And to Matt's point, whether it's a good issue or bad for him, we may disagree on that. But he didn't even handle that right because he could have stood by what he said, but he back-pedaled immediately, had to send out two statements, and he looked weak. And he has consistently looked weak throughout this process.

And so, I think there's real questions about the rationale for his candidacy, the -- his political skills. And, you know, that same poll shows his favorable numbers are worse than Mitt Romney's were at any point in the 2012 election. That's a problem.

SCHLAPP: It's not a big problem when you -- when he looks over across the fence and sees how bad and how rusty and how really hidden the Hillary Clinton candidacy is. She's getting a run for her money by an avowed socialist. And I think, you know, all Democrats are looking at that race and they seem to think the solution is to the recruit Joe Biden. So, there's a lot of good news for these Republicans candidates, even though we're in the early skirmishes and they clearly are going to have to improve.

[13:10:02] KEILAR: So much drama.

PFEIFFER: I'll take a Clinton against a Bush any time.

KEILAR: All right, well, we'll see. We'll see.

Matt Schlapp, Dan Pfeiffer, thanks so much to both of you.

And coming up, President Obama just making a big pitch on the Iran deal that the U.S. has brokered with Iran and several other nations. Will he be able to succeed convincing perhaps some Republicans but certainly a number of people in his own party? We'll be right back with more on that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: President Obama is making a hard sell for the Iranian nuclear deal. Speaking earlier today, the president portrayed it as the most consequential foreign policy decision for Congress since the vote to go to war in Iraq.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy or some form of war. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not three months from now. But soon.

[13:15:01] And here's the irony. As I said before, military action would be far less effective than this deal in preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

If Congress kills this deal, we will lose more than just constraints on Iran's nuclear program, or the sanctions we have painstakingly built. We will have lost something more precious - America's credibility.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto and global affairs correspondent Elise Labott joining me now.

And it was interesting because I thought, you know, you saw President Obama and he framed this as a choice between diplomacy and war. And we know that Americans are war weary.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: They are. I mean he - he's making that - he's trying to make it an obvious decision. But the fact is, it's not an obvious decision, right, because we know that even members of his own party haven't come around on this and they have real doubts beyond that dichotomy between war and this nuclear deal. They have differences with the nuclear deal. They say, in effect, he's given up too much in this nuclear deal. And they have - they have a fair argument there because if we go back two years to where we are today with this deal, a lot of these things are ones that the administration would not have been trying to sell them. You know, every nuclear facility still open, though under restrictions and with changes, et cetera.

ELISE LABOTT, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Thousands of centrifuges.

SCIUTTO: I mean you can reasonably take issue with the deal. But he's basically saying you can't because it's either this deal that I negotiated or we're go into another war like the Iraq War.

LABOTT: That's right, he said basically, I was right about the Iraq War and it was - catastrophic disaster and the same people that are against this deal are - want to go to war with Iran now. And I think what - this is not going to bring over reluctant Democrats who, as Jim said, have legitimate grievances about the deal they share with Israel. And I think what they would have liked to see is addressing the legitimate concerns. This is how I'm going to make this deal stick.

SCIUTTO: Right.

LABOTT: You have problems with inspections? This is how we're going to make sure the inspections work.

KEILAR: And you didn't hear that?

LABOTT: I didn't hear a larger strategy to make sure that this deal is workable.

SCIUTTO: Right.

LABOTT: Including in the region. I would have liked to see him nest this in a broader strategy on how they're going to make the allies stronger and how they're going to make Iran weaker.

SCIUTTO: Right.

KEILAR: Elise and Jim, thanks so much for your insights on that.

SCIUTTO: Thank you.

KEILAR: There are a small group of lawmakers who really could make or break this deal. You heard Elise and Jim talking about that. One of them is Democratic Senator Ben Cardin. He is the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and he's joining me now from Capitol Hill.

Senator, thanks for being with us.

SEN. BEN CARDIN (D), MARYLAND: My pleasure.

KEILAR: You helped negotiate a bipartisan measure that gave Congress the authority to review this agreement. So let me begin by asking you, have you made a decision on whether you were going to support or oppose this Iran nuclear deal?

CARDIN: Well, we're in, I think, day 17 or 18 of a 60-day review period. Today we just finished a meeting with the director general of the IAEA, the monitoring agency, which I thought was an extremely important meeting. We have a public hearing this afternoon in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the Iran deal. So we're not finished our hearings and our reviews this evening. We're going to have a briefing, a classified briefing for all senators. So we're still in the review process.

I'm proud of the statute that gives the congressional review. I think as a result, we have a stronger agreement that's been presented by the administration and we're doing the type of review that I think the American people expect Congress to do.

KEILAR: Are you - are you leaning one way or the other? What do you need to hear in order to support this deal and support the president?

CARDIN: Well, it's not a matter of leaning one way or the other. I thought your analysis of the president's speech was right on. We need to be talking about how we're going forward with this agreement or without this agreement. There are certain issues that are - that are being raised, particularly about regional security or our ability to confront Iran on nonnuclear nefarious activities, including their support of terrorism and interfering with other countries. These are questions we've got to answer.

Yes, the first question is, does this agreement put us on a better path to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons state or not, but there are related issues as to how we implement this agreement if it goes forward.

KEILAR: You're, I know, getting lobbies big time from both sides of this debate. The calls coming into your office, can you characterize them for us? How many are you getting telling you not to go along with this? How many you're - you're getting telling you to go along with it?

CARDIN: Every time I mention this, one side winning or the other, the other side seems to get more energized and I get more communications. It's been divided. On any given day, it's been pretty close. The intensity is pretty high. There's a great deal of interest. I can tell when I - in Maryland, I go home every night, people want to talk to me about this, and I think that's good. I think that's part of the process.

KEILAR: But you represent Maryland. And at this point you have President Obama, this is his deal, and Hillary Clinton has come down on the side of this deal. She is far and away the front-runner in the Democratic field for 2016. How, in a state like Maryland, could you buck both President Obama and Hillary Clinton on this and not go for it?

[13:20:17] CARDIN: You know, this - I agree with the president, that this is a pretty consequential vote. So I need to do what's in the best interest of this country. It's not whether I appease the president or one political party, it's what's in the best interest of this country.

The president mentioned the Iraq War. I voted against sending our troops to the Iraq War. And that was an unpopular vote I made when I voted against that. This issue is much more divided among the American public. There's a, I think, divided popularity for either going forward or not. I, I mean, I think, at the end of the day, it's not what's popular, it's not what the president of the United States is asking us to do, it's what's in the best interest of America, and that's how I'm going to judge it.

KEILAR: I want to ask you about the briefing that you got from the IAEA. There have been a lot of concerns raised, especially by republican, but I know Democrats are also concerned, about what they're calling side deals or separate agreements between the IAEA and Iran on how weaponized Iran - how close they had come to a weapon, the weaponization of their nuclear system. Did you get any information about the details of those agreements?

CARDIN: Well, I thought the director general explained pretty clearly that he's under restrictions where he cannot release confidential information. That's the practice of the IAEA and their arrangements with states that they'll maintain confidentiality of their information. So I fully understand his position.

Where we tried to get further clarifications is that there are provisions in these two annexes that deal with the ability of the IAEA to gain access to the possible military dimensions of the Iranian program. That's pretty important for us to understand. And so we're trying to tease out the process information's access, can they get full access, et cetera. And it was difficult because of the confidentiality clause that IAEA operates.

KEILAR: The Obama administration says it's expecting to get some of that information and it will share it with everyone on Capitol Hill. Are you expecting that to happen?

CARDIN: I know there's going to be an all members briefing on this, so we are hopeful we'll get more information, yes.

KEILAR: All right, Senator Cardin, thanks so much.

CARDIN: My pleasure. Thank you.

KEILAR: A really important topic and we appreciate as you consider which direction you're going to go on this that you are talking to us today. Thanks.

CARDIN: Thanks.

KEILAR: Still ahead, Donald Trump, well, he may love the spotlight, but the former reality TV star has a much different stage waiting for him tomorrow night. How will he tackle his first debate and what can his rivals do to steal some of that spotlight? Our political experts will be weighing in.

Plus, the hunting guide involved in the killing of the famous lion Cecil appears in court in Zimbabwe. How he defended his actions. What's next in his case? Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:27:20] KEILAR: He's at the top of the polls, now Donald Trump will be center stage at the first Republican primary debate. Literally he will be in the very center of the stage. It's a field of 10 prime time participants and it is now final. Trump and his closest competitors, Jeb Bush and Scott Walker, will be there in the middle during tomorrow night's debate. But a top advisor says Trump won't go after his rivals unless they attack him.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL COHEN, ADVISER TO DONALD TRUMP: I believe that he - he's very sure that they will not come after him in the way that the media would like him to be attacked. It would be a big mistake on their part. If you attack Donald Trump and look what happened to Lindsey Graham, not even in the debate. Look what happened to Rick Perry, not even in the debate. You attack Donald Trump, he's going to come back at you twice as hard.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Let's bring in senior Washington correspondent Jeff Zeleny, he's here in Washington, and chief congressional correspondent Dana Bash in Cleveland ahead of the debate.

Dana, how - I mean this is pretty interesting when you hear a Donald Trump advisor saying, he's pretty sure they're not going to come at him. I know a lot of advisors to these candidates are probably saying actually don't go after him. So is that how you think they're going to approach Donald Trump?

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I think it is but, wow, what a warning from him, right? You know, I'm not sure if he's trying to - to taunt the other nine to say, you know, kind of make my day. That certainly is not the plan for most if not all of the other nine candidates. I think at this point it's Donald Trump who, in talking to sources, Bri, in pretty much all of the other camps, their focus is going to be their own record, what they have done, what they can do and a person who's not going to be there, Hillary Clinton.

You heard Lindsey Graham start to do this at a New Hampshire forum earlier in the week. But, again, in talking to sources across the board I think the big focus is going to be, I'm the guy who can get out there and beat the Democrat. At this point they think it's going to be Hillary Clinton. So that's why they are the person who the Republicans should elect. I think that's really the key thing to listen for.

KEILAR: Jeff, Donald Trump may not be your typical politician, but he is typical in how he's sort of handling expectations here, downplaying them. He says he hasn't been rehearsing for the debates. Let's listen to what he told Bill O'Reilly on Fox News.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I want to be right down the middle. I want to talk about policy. I want to talk about the wall. I want to talk about illegal immigration. I want to talk about bad trade deals. I may say that I can negotiate better than any of these folks. I did write "The Art of the Deal." I built a phenomenal business, as you know. And I'm not looking to hurt anybody. I'm not looking to embarrass anybody. If I have to bring up deficiencies, I'll bring up deficiencies. But certainly I'm not looking to do that.

[13:30:00] BILL O'REILLY, FOX NEWS: OK.

TRUMP: I'd rather go straight down the middle. But you don't know what's going to happen.

O'REILLY: So I can -

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: He's spoken, Jeff, in a lot of generalizations at this point. Do you think that we are going to see specifics coming from Donald Trump tomorrow?