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LEGAL VIEW WITH ASHLEIGH BANFIELD

Trump Hammers Clinton in Speech; Clinton Meets with Democrats. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired June 22, 2016 - 12:00   ET

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


[12:00:00]: UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE).

BERNARD WHITMAN, FORMER CLINTON POLLSTER & DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Mitch McConnell and the rest of the Senate Republicans are going to abandon Donald Trump.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, guys, thanks so much.

That's all for us AT THIS HOUR.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: "Legal View" with Ashleigh Banfield starts right now.

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Ashleigh Banfield. And welcome to LEGAL VIEW.

Our breaking news is that searing detailed and scripted attack on the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee by the presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, as you may have just seen live right here on CNN. This was the scene just before Trump unloaded on the background, the judgment, the character of one Hillary Clinton, barely 24 hours after it was Clinton lighting into Trump's business skills. Trump focused on Clinton's tenure as secretary of state during which he claimed, and I quote him here, "her decisions spread death, destruction, and terrorism everywhere she touched."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESUMPTIVE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: In 2009, before Hillary Clinton was sworn in, it was a different world. Libya was cooperating. Iraq was seeing a reduction in violence, believe it or not. Syria was under control. Iran was being choked by sanctions. Egypt was governed by a friendly regime that honored its peace treaty with Israel. Something very nice because, by the way, Israel has been totally mistreated by the United States. ISIS wasn't even on the map.

Fast forward to 2013. In just four years, Secretary Clinton managed to almost single handedly destabilize the entire Middle East. Her invasion of Libya handed the country over to ISIS, the barbarians. Thanks to Hillary Clinton, Iran is now the dominant Islamic power in the Middle East and on the road to nuclear weapons. Hillary Clinton's support for a violent regime change in Syria has thrown the country into one of the bloodiest civil wars anyone has ever seen, while giving ISIS a launching pad for terrorism against the west.

She helped force out a friendly regime in Egypt and replace it with the radical Muslim Brotherhood. The Egyptian military has retain control, but Clinton has opened the Pandora's box of radical Islam. Then there was the disastrous strategy of announcing our departure from Iraq, handing large parts of the country over to ISIS and the ISIS killers. ISIS threatens us today because of the decisions Hillary Clinton has made, along with President Obama.

ISIS also threatens peaceful Muslims across the Middle East and peaceful Muslims across the world who have been terribly victimized by horrible brutality and who only want to raise their kids in peace and safety. In short - in short, Hillary Clinton's tryout for the presidency has produced one deadly foreign policy disaster after another.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: And it went on from there, too. CNN political reporter Sara Murray was at the speech at the Trump Hotel in lower Manhattan. I also want to bring in CNN's senior political analyst David Gergen, who's a former White House advisor to four U.S. presidents, and CNN chief national security correspondent Jim Sciutto.

All right, to, Sara Murray, first to you. Is this the reset that we were all expecting after the firing of his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, and the urging of his adult children to take a different tack?

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: Well, Trump said when he fired Corey Lewandowski that it was time for his campaign to move into a different direction, and I think that's the message that he and his advisors are trying to send today, the idea that you can unify the Republican Party against a common enemy, in this case Hillary Clinton. And Trump really went through point by point, there was something for everyone in this speech in terms of their issues with Hillary Clinton, whether it was immigration, whether it was the economy, where Trump is currently polling better than Clinton, whether you wanted to go after her on Benghazi or on her tenure as secretary of state. This was essentially a grab bag of Republican attacks against Hillary Clinton.

And in addition to that, Trump laid out some of the things he wants to do, why he thinks he's a better alternative, what he would do in his first 100 days of the presidency. And we're already hearing from Republicans who are saying, OK, if this is the kind of candidate that we're going to see from Donald Trump going forward, this is the kind of candidate we can work with. But as you know, Ashleigh, Trump has been known to fall back into his ways and we saw a little bit of that in this speech, a little bit of a conspiracy theory side of him poking out. So we'll have to see over the next couple of weeks if this is the candidate we see on the campaign trail in addition to in these more formal speeches.

[12:05:05] BANFIELD: All right, Jim Sciutto, come in with the - the characterization of some of these - these statements that were made in this speech were pretty hyperbolic. I mean I have to say, to hear something like she used the State Department like her own personal hedge fund, it's not the first time I've heard it, but it's getting louder. That kind of a statement is getting louder. And also if you characterize what he said, the world was great all before Hillary Clinton got her hands on the State Department as secretary of state and it's just fallen to hell in a handbasket since that time. And you're the national security correspondent. So what's the real story?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, let me tell you, this statement, and I'm paraphrasing, but he said that Hillary Clinton has almost single handedly destabilized the Middle East since 2009. That's investing her with a fair amount of power because you're in effect blaming her, not just for Syria and Iraq and Libya, but for the, you know, the Arab Spring, et cetera, the protests that led to the disillusion in many of these countries involved. So that's just not a credible statement there.

And the thing is, with Donald Trump, you do have paths to criticize here that are substantive. On is on Libya. Libya is a policy move that you can't quite single handedly put around her neck, but she was a driving force for the military intervention in Libya and over the objection of others in the Obama administration. Of course, ultimately, the president' decision, but she was behind that move. And, you know, you had - you successfully removed Moammar Gadhafi from power, but there was no after plan really and the country really dissolved afterwards. That is a substantive line of attack.

He gets into more dangerous territory when he talks about Syria being stable pre-2009. Yes, Syria was stable, but it was under a brutal dictator, Bashar al Assad, who was the stated policy not just of the Obama administration, but the Bush administration prior to him, to remove him. And as happened there, you had a popular revolt. It was not fomented by the U.S., this popular rebellion, like in many other countries there during the Arab Spring. So it's just - it's implausible to lay that at her feet and it's also in somewhat dangerous territory to say, hey, it would be great to have Bashar al Assad, who was an enemy of the U.S., back in power there. So that's more difficult.

And then also bigger picture to describe the Mideast in 2009 as a land of milk and honey. It really just defies facts because, yes, things were calmer then to some degree in Iraq pre-the withdrawal of U.S. forces, and that again is a substantive lien of attack, but, you know, that was six years after a U.S. invasion, that horrible consequences inside that country and arguably outside the country, as well. So, you know, big picture, Ashleigh, you have a chance for substantive lines of attack here, say Libya for instance, or not being able to convince her president for greater intervention, aiding the rebels in Syria at an earlier date, but to say that single - clearly Clinton single handedly brought down the Middle East is just - it's just hyper -- hyperbole beyond belief.

BANFIELD: Yes.

SCIUTTO: You know. I'm sure there's some in the base who buy that line of attack, but I spent a lot of time in the Middle East over the last 10 years and it's just - BANFIELD: Yes.

SCIUTTO: It's just delusional to make that line of argument.

BANFIELD: I can - I can personally attest that from 2001 to 2004 I spent a lot of time in countries east of the Carpathians (ph) wearing a flak jacket and a helmet -

SCIUTTO: Yes.

BANFIELD: And it was no picnic, I'll tell you that.

Jim Sciutto, stand by for a moment.

I want to bring David Gergen with the 30,000 foot view on all of this.

No matter what you say, you can call it hyperbole, you can call it whatever you want, some fact-based issues that he gets at are meat and potatoes, but mostly red meat, for those who have been waiting for Donald Trump. This is a wish list for those who have been waiting for Donald Trump to stop making the campaign about himself and make it about their common enemy, Hillary Clinton.

DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: I think that's right. And also it was a better written speech. The packaging of Donald Trump was much better today than it has been. You know, the speech was actually delivered to us before the speech started. We -

BANFIELD: And it was read pretty much word for word.

GERGEN: And it was read pretty much.

BANFIELD: Yes.

GERGEN: And he had some good lines in it. The line he said, you know, her motto is, I'm with her. Let me tell you, I'm with you, the American people. That was a smart line. I think we'll hear that more.

And so - and he did - it became apparent that what's going to be driving each campaign is demonizing the other one. But I must tell you that at the substantive level what Donald - that Donald Trump didn't change substantively in terms of what he was saying, it's still slanderous. It is still a series of attacks that are going to leave the Clinton people just seething.

But, you know, with the misstatements. Let me just go to two issues that I think are pretty darn important because he's - he's essentially charging she's corrupt. And, you know, he said - he quoted somebody saying, she ought to be in prison, not in the White House. What's -

BANFIELD: I believe he said she's the most corrupt person to ever seek the presidency.

GERGEN: She might be - she may be the most corrupt. Yes. Yes.

BANFIELD: Leaving out Richard Nixon, but putting (ph) her in that basket.

GERGEN: Exactly. Well, exactly.

So his charge basically is that her husband had this foundation and it was all pay for play. You give money to him, she changes her policies. He based that on a book called "Clinton Cash." That book has been -

[12:10:03] BANFIELD: Peter Schweitzer.

GERGEN: Yes, Schweitzer.

BANFIELD: Peter Schweitzer.

GERGEN: It has been wildly discredited. Schweitzer himself has gone on before national news organizations and said, I don't have evidence to prove that. I see a pattern. It ought to be investigated. And Trump takes it and says, it's basically all true. Well, that's like - that's a different - we're going to places in American politics we have not seen in our lifetimes.

BANFIELD: Yes.

GERGEN: We are - we are moving in a direction of (INAUDIBLE).

BANFIELD: Extrapolation extraordinaire.

GERGEN: And that is just - we saw it in the early days of the Republic. We've seen it a few times in our history, but not in modern life (ph).

BANFIELD: Can I - can I just point out something. The first 100 days -

GERGEN: Yes.

BANFIELD: The list - I went over these points. Let me just summarize them very, very quickly. This is his plan, appoint judges who will uphold the Constitution, change immigration rules, stand up to countries that cheat on trades, cancel rules and regulations that send jobs overseas, lift restrictions on energy production, repeal and replace job-killing Obamacare, pass massive tax reform, create millions of new jobs, impose tough new ethics rules to restore dignity to the office of the secretary of state. Do you know what's missing from that list?

GERGEN: What?

BANFIELD: Build a wall, which has been the centerpiece of his entire campaign for the last year.

GERGEN: Yes.

BANFIELD: No Muslim ban.

GERGEN: Yes.

BANFIELD: That's not on this list. GERGEN: And deportation.

BANFIELD: And I didn't see anything about tighten up those libel laws to restrict - you know, stop the presses, effectively.

GERGEN: Absolutely.

BANFIELD: Those are the things that have gotten people frenzied in those giant halls that he's been packing for the last 12 months and it's not on the list.

GERGEN: Absolutely. And, well, I think that may be a move away. I think - because, if you think, you know, he's got - he got so hurt by going after the judge and then right after Orlando the same -

BANFIELD: What does that do to the base that's been supported him up until now, David?

GERGEN: I think the base will be very happy with this speech. I think the base -

BANFIELD: Do you think they're just going to not remember that these promises were made to them for a year?

GERGEN: I think - I think the base right now - I don't think a lot of people actually believed he'd build a wall. I especially don't think they believed he'd deport all those people. That's just not going to happen. Everybody knows that's not going to happen. But I think they will love the way he went after Hillary Clinton. That's what's really driving a lot of the folks who are - who do think the system is rigged and -

BANFIELD: Are we that random as Americans that we can just ping-pong back and forth between all these promises that were so popular and, like I said, almost exclusively the center piece of his campaign in the primaries, to something now that is now meat for all Republicans?

GERGEN: Ashleigh, American politics are going off the track. We're going into places we've never been before in our lifetimes. And it's very distressing. If you go to that list, yes, he can do some things by executive order, but if he wins this election, if Hillary wins this election, based on the kind of fighting we're now seeing, nobody can cover. There's going to be a war in Washington that's going to continue on beyond the election.

BANFIELD: It's been fascinating.

GERGEN: So he - no, it's fascinating, but it's also very, very distressing.

BANFIELD: Yes. To say the least. Try fact-checking a speech within five minutes of it ending.

GERGEN: Yes, exactly.

BANFIELD: That's our show team, right now. David, thank you for being here with that giant mind of yours.

GERGEN: Exactly.

BANFIELD: Sara Murray, as well, thank you for your reporting. David Gergen. I know you were scribbling away, Sara, and it was a tricky feat. And, Jim Sciutto, to you as well for getting the foreign policy questions in there. I do appreciate it.

Speaking of the fact checking, so we dispatched Tom Foreman to that, because he's just about the best in the business. And that poor guy has been working faster than a speeding bullet. But he's coming up. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:17:00] BANFIELD: Welcome back, everyone.

The story of the hour, a scorched earth speech by Donald Trump aimed at who else, his presumptive general election opponent Hillary Clinton.

I want to bring in my CNN colleague, Tom Foreman, who was watching that address from his post in Washington, D.C., trying to keep up with all the statements.

I know you're stoic right now, but your hair must have been infuego (ph) for a while there. So walk me through the fact checker, the reality check, as you were working that speech, Tom.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The reality check team was very busy during all of this, Ashleigh, but I will point out a number of items here that we got around to. Trump attacked Clinton's plan to increase the number of Syrian refugees taken into America. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESUMPTIVE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Under her plan, we would admit hundreds of thousands of refugees from the most dangerous countries on earth with no way to screen who they are, what they are, what they believe, where they come from.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOREMAN: He was talking about this in reference to the Syria program in the context of his speech. So let's look at the reality there. President Obama has said he'd like to get 10,000 Syrian refugees in here by the end of September this year. Yes, Hillary Clinton has talked about increasing that substantially to 65,000 people being brought in, in the near term. Still, that is not hundreds of thousands of people out there. And, more importantly, she has said none of these people should come in without the most stringent screening and vetting process. Now, granted, there are security analysts who say it's very hard to have an infallible system and especially hard where you talk about Syria, where the civil war makes checking background of people very, very difficult. That said, if you look at his overall claim, hundreds of thousands, no checking whatsoever, that is simply false. He also went after her on the economy, criticizing Washington in

general for its economic policies. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We got here because we switched from a policy of Americanism, focusing on what's good for America's middle class, to a policy of globalism, focusing on how to make money for large corporations who can move their wealth and workers to foreign countries all to the detriment of the American worker and the American economy itself.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOREMAN: The case can be made that there have been policies that have enabled the offshoring of jobs that are American jobs and now are somewhere else, but Trump does not mention there, though, and CNN's own investigations have proven, is that many of his manufacturing companies have been part of that trend, shipping jobs off to Asia, and to China, and to Central America. He probably should have mentioned that. His claim is true, but because he left that out, it's also a bit misleading.

And, finally, Trump is hitting Clinton over trade deals, specifically the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was signed by her husband in 1994, and a deal to let China into the World Trade Organization it 2001. Listen.

[12:20:01] (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We've lost nearly one-third of our manufacturing jobs since these two Hillary-backed agreements were signed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOREMAN: Did she support the deals. That's the first question. Yes, she did. Secondly, did they really cost us that many jobs? Many economic analysts say it is difficult to draw a clear cause and effect because these are really big programs. We're talking about a substantial amount of time. There was a recession. We've had technological advances. Many things could come into play. And he exaggerates the numbers just a little bit.

But, if you look at just what he actually said, did we lose that many jobs sense this happened and did she approve it, yes, that is mostly true. You can find out more about all of our reality checks, Ashleigh. Just go to our website, cnn.com/realitycheck and we'll be busy all afternoon getting to more of them.

BANFIELD: Yes, I assume so. We catered lunch for you and the team. Thank them for us and, thank you, Tom Foreman, do appreciate it. Tom Foreman doing the job for us in D.C.

We've got this breaking news out of D.C., as well. Marco Rubio, remember him, he now says he is planning to run for re-election after all. That freshman Florida senator, and former GOP presidential candidate, had famously sworn off a second term in Congress. But party leaders turned up the pressure when it looked as if the Democrat might actually win his seat. A source says the official announcement should come later on today. Senator Rubio won't be considered a shoo-in, though, for this race because back in March he lost his home state's presidential primary to Trump by almost 20 points. He's also arguably somewhat behind in the fundraising and it's going to cost a lot of money to do some advertising in Florida. But we'll continue to follow that story, as well.

This is breaking news political hour. Democrats in the House of Representatives, all 188 of them, gathering around their party's likely nominee for president. It was a short time ago that the House Democrats' weekly strategy session, always behind closed doors, but today they had a big visitor. And there she is. They invited Hillary Clinton to attended. This is her first appearance before House Democrats since two things happened. Number one, she reached high enough on the delegate count to secure the nomination. And, number two, she received the endorsement of one Democratic President Obama.

I want to get out to our senior political reporter, Manu Raju, on Capitol Hill.

So, first things first. There was, you know, some dissension among ranks with Bernie Sanders being a supported candidate over Hillary Clinton. I'm not sure if that's been assuaged before or during or even after this meeting. And then there's that whole talk about vice presidential picks. Do we have any more insight after this meeting?

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: Well, this was mostly a pep rally talking to House Democrats. As we know, most of these House Democratic members supported or endorsed Hillary Clinton during the primary. Actually, only nine of these members endorsed Bernie sanders during the primary season.

But she went into detail about how she could help House Democrats down ticket. She believes, that is going to be, what she said, a 50 state strategy in which she would actually help even members in southern states. Elijah Cummings of Maryland came out afterwards and said that she is not going to not going to write-off the south. So it's even helping to flip some Senate seats. She thinks that they could help - her candidacy could help North Carolina, where Democrats have an outside chance of taking down Richard Burr, the senator there. So clearly this was an effort to galvanize folks on Capitol Hill.

She did mention Bernie Sanders by saying that he ran a good campaign, that they agree on a lot of key issues, but she also made note that in 2008 during the convention, she declined to have a roll call vote because she wanted to have unity behind Barack Obama, suggesting that's what she wants Bernie Sanders to do now. So an interesting moment there.

One other note, Ashleigh. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, he's a supporter of Bernie Sanders. After the meeting, me and a couple of - a couple of the reports chased him down the hallway, tried to get him to weigh in on Hillary Clinton. He refused to do so. So some folks maybe not quite there yet. BANFIELD: OK. There's something else - for the folks among us who like to watch CSPAN -trust me, it's awesome - you see a lot of the same stuff every time you watch. But today there's something a little different that was happening on the floor of the House, and it had to do with gun control. Have a look at this little piece of tape of a sit-in that's going on. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Rise up, Democrats. Rise up, Americans. This cannot stand. We will occupy this floor. We will no longer be denied a right to vote. I yield to our majority whip and leader.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: OK, Manu, explain.

RAJU: Well, what's happening now are House Democrats trying to convince Speaker Paul Ryan and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy to hold a vote on gun control, namely background checks. They want to expand background checks and they also want to push forward on legislation to deny folks on the terror watch list the ability it buy a gun.

[12:25:10] Now, Paul Ryan, the House speaker, has been noncommittal about a vote on the House floor. But this is - there's an effort actually going on in the Senate right now to build a -- compromised behind a bill that Susan Collins of Maine is pushing forward, but that bill actually stands very low chance of passing the Senate. So, as a result, lack of votes are leading to a protest on the House floor, trying to push the House Republican leadership to move forward. We don't have any indication that they will. And, as a result, we're seeing theatrics like this.

Ashleigh.

BANFIELD: Well, pretty interesting theatrics. They made TV. Manu, thank you. Appreciate that.

Coming up, back to that whole scripted excoriation of one Hillary Rodham Clinton, all at the hands of Donald Trump at a formal podium. So, the things that he said about her, how do they resonate with his supporters, even if they push the envelope a little? Do they hate her more than they dislike some of the stuff he does? That's a good question. We'll answer it, next.

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