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CNN NEWSROOM

Imam Shot Down in Broad Daylight; Joe Biden Joins Clinton on Campaign Trail; Thousands Being Rescued From Historic Louisiana Flooding; Donald Trump to Provide Detailed Foreign Policy in Youngstown, Ohio. Aired 10:30-11:00a

Aired August 15, 2016 - 10:30   ET

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


[10:30:50]

SARA GANIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: ... their home nearby. He shoots both men and then runs away with the gun. And we know that as we speak, police are being very careful about a motive but continue to investigate involving the hate crimes unit at the NYPD, as they do in all cases where a religious leader is gunned down.

But we also know that the Imam had $1,000, about $1,000 cash on his person when he was shot, leading police to believe that robbery was not the motive. They're also saying that this person, the shooter, was precise in his targeting of the two men. As they continue to investigate, of course, this community on edge, feeling very much this is a very scary incident, that this happened in the middle of the day, Carol.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN HOST, "NEWSROOM": Sara Ganim reporting for us this morning, thank you. And good morning, I'm Carol Costello, thank you so much for joining me. Hillary Clinton is back on the campaign trail today with a high-profile Democrat in tow. Vice President Joe Biden will join forces with Clinton as she tries to paint herself as a friend of the working and middle class in Scranton, Pennsylvania today.

But, is that a stretch? A new op-ed published in The Guardian U.S. suggests maybe so. It calls for the left to push Clinton relentlessly on her economic policies, "while she made fun of Trump on the stump for having a dozen or so economic advisors he just named, hedge fund guys, billionaire guys, six guys named Steve.

Apparently she is living in a glass house funded by Goldman Sachs and should be throwing no stones." So let's talk about that. Steven Thrasher is the author of that op-ed, and writer-at-large for The Guardian. Welcome.

STEVE THRASHER, WRITER-AT-LARGE, THE GUARDIAN: Thank you, Carol.

COSTELLO: OK so Clinton is pulling ahead in -- pulling ahead of Trump in nearly every poll that's out there. Shouldn't Democrats be celebrating instead of criticizing?

THRASHER: On the one hand they should be celebrating because she's probably, clearly going to win. But it's also incredibly sad because she's running against the most racist, horrible candidate she possibly could. And even though Bernie Sanders was pulling her to the left, the direction that particularly younger voters want her to go, Trump is really pushing her not only to the right, but in ridiculous directions and ...

COSTELLO: It is ridiculous that Hillary Clinton is not sitting down for any interviews with reporters. She's not holding many news conferences for reporters to ask her questions. Why do you suppose that is?

THRASHER: Well part of it is that she's spending her time, we hear, chasing after endorsements from Henry Kissinger. And actually accepting endorsements from people like John Negroponte. She's also, as we know, she's been taking money from places like Goldman Sachs. And even though her people were not named Steve, who are billionaires, she's courting endorsements of lots of billionaires -- Meg Whitman, Michael Bloomberg.

So she's very much in the camp of people who have a lot of money and she doesn't like to talk to the press. And I think it's a really hard sell for her to go into Scranton and sell herself as somebody who's a friend of the working class.

COSTELLO: Well she's trying to reach out for Republicans so she can win this election. So could it be simply that, not that she buys into their ideology?

THRASHER: It's part of it. I mean, it's unfortunate that she really seems set on running up the score. And if she wins a majority of the popular vote, she'll be the first Clinton to do so, because her husband never did.

And so she seems to want to be running up the score. But it's really sad that she wants to do it with Republicans and she doesn't seem to want to do it amongst Bernie Sanders supporters and people who are more in the middle.

COSTELLO: Still, when you look at the polls, most Bernie Sanders supporters support Mrs. Clinton now. I think 69 percent of them in the most recent CNN-ORC poll. So something she's doing is resonating with those Bernie Sanders supporters.

THRASHER: She is and part of it's because the opposition is so completely horrible. I mean people can't vote for Trump if they have any sanity or any morality. But at the same time, she is somebody that's not offering a good vision, economically. We're seeing all this violence in Milwaukee.

We know the Democrats don't have a plan to deal with how to advance many of the things the Black Lives Matter movement wants. They're not going to give us any kind of magical solution to what's happening with police violence. So I think that her support from Bernie Sanders supporters is really more to do with how horrible the opposition is, than with her adopting his kind of policies.

COSTELLO: Of course, as I said, she's going to Scranton today with Joe Biden. And they're going to talk economics. And they're going to be speaking in front of blue collar, middle-class workers. So Mrs. Clinton unveiled her economic plan last week. And she said, "I will stop any trade deal that kills jobs or holds down wages. Including the Trans-Pacific partnership. I oppose it now, I'll oppose it after the election, and I'll oppose it as President."

Should working-class Americans believe her?

THRASHER: It's really hard to because she has a past that doesn't match what she says. I mean, I was glad -- my column came out shortly before her economic speech did -- so I'm glad that she's saying some of the right things. But when I look at who she's surrounded by, who she takes money from, how her own -- how she's made money in her family, how her family's made money, it really is very concerning that she's going to follow through on these things.

COSTELLO: Well it is interesting. I read an article on it, I wish I could remember who wrote it. But the premise was, Hillary Clinton is really a moderate Republican. And that's why all of these Republicans are rallying around her.

THRASHER: She is.

COSTELLO: And Donald Trump is really not a Republican.

THRASHER: I mean, I understand disaffected, left voters, and young voters. I sort of came to my political activism largely through opposition to the Iraq war, which Senator Clinton voted for. And it's really painful to see not only that she vote for that war, but she is also courting and accepting the endorsement of someone like John Negroponte. She's basically taking the Bush administration's foreign policy.

And so very much she's a Republican in that sense. And I think that people on the left have a real opportunity this year to consider either voting for a third party out of a conviction, but also there's so many states where she's going to win big -- California or New York. Or she's going to lost big, like Texas, that allows people who do want to advance some of these agendas to consider putting in an oppositional vote. And they're not going to necessarily be making Trump more likely to be the President ...

COSTELLO: So the gist of your article is like you hate Donald Trump, I get it, Democrats. But hold Hillary Clinton's feet to the fire because if she's the President of the United States, you're going to have to live with that, too.

THRASHER: Yeah, hold her feet to the fire, make her work for your votes. And even if you ultimately -- and I leave wiggle room -- even if you ultimately vote for her, don't use this as a time to not be critical. I think we should always be critical. I don't like the language of saying politicians are our friends. They're not our friends, they're people who work for us. And so even if you ultimately decide to pull the lever for Clinton, you should really hold her feet to the fire now and make her put forward policies that you know are going to work for your favor. COSTELLO: Steven Thrasher, thanks for stopping by, I appreciate it.

THRASHER: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the Newsroom, deadly flooding destroying entire neighborhoods, driving thousands from their homes in parts of Louisiana.

[10:36:40]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:40:58]

COSTELLO: A state of emergency in Southeast Louisiana. At least five people have died in the historic flooding there. And already more than 20,000 people plucked from their homes and cars in dramatic rescues like this one.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNKNOWN WOMAN: Oh my God, I'm drowning.

UNKNOWN MAN: We're coming.

UNKNOWN MAN: we're coming. I'm going to break this window.

UNKNOWN WOMAN: Oh that's fine (ph).

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: People are just volunteers. You can see a woman pulled from her car. And then she says please, please rescue my dog. And yes, you can see the little doggie there has been rescued, too, aww.

In the meantime, President Obama is declaring a major disaster in the state. Boris Sanchez has the latest from one of the hardest hit areas of Baton Rouge. Good morning.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, good morning, Carol. Yeah, you see rescues like that and it's just incredible. Especially when you consider that those were volunteers that were just in the right place at the right time. And scenes like that have been playing out all over the state. With neighbors coming together to help each other.

Yesterday we saw several people, boat owners, come out and lend their boats to people to go into these affected neighborhoods to try and rescue those who need help. To give you an idea of what's happening right now, you can see behind me there are blue skies. The rain has stopped here in East Baton Rouge, but the water is still rising.

And part of the reason for that is because the ground is saturated right now. There's nowhere for that flood water to go. So any marshes, or wetlands, or rivers start to overflow and they go into neighborhoods, much like what we're seeing here. There was a marsh, the Manchec Marsh behind there -- or rather the bayou -- and it went into this neighborhood in a very short amount of time.

We actually have some neighbors, Brad you live in that home right there. Tell me about the moment you realized you had to get out.

BRAD JACOBS, NEIGHBOR: Well it was about 3:00 in the morning yesterday morning. And I had some neighbors come and knock on my door and say that they're evacuating, they recommend I get out, too. I stayed around, I end up going and getting sand bags from the Fire Department. Started sandbagging my doors and trying to protect my home. Putting things up off the ground, all my valuables and everything.

SANCHEZ: Not much you can do, right?

JACOBS: At this point there's not really nothing I can do.

SANCHEZ: But you're very fortunate to have neighbors like Jenny and Erik. You guys have been helping Brad out. And you live right there, the water's just a few feet from your door. What's going through your mind right now?

ERIK LANG, FLOOD VICTIM: Lucky. We're lucky, we're blessed. We could've gotten water in the house and we are watching it hour after hour. Through the night I could not sleep, neither could Jenny. We were waking up, checking it with the flashlight every inch we could see it slowing down, we were -- felt more and more blessed. It's actually starting to fall. The stick that we put in the front of our yard has actually shown a decrease in the level of the water. So more and more blessed every minute. And we're happy to help Brad, so.

SANCHEZ: That's certainly welcome news. Thank you guys so much for speaking to us. Brad we wish you the best of luck.

JACOBS: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: Carol, as you can tell, some of the danger may be out of the way but there's still a large recovery effort underway. And the governor still asking people, if you don't have to leave your home, to stay inside.

COSTELLO: All right, Boris Sanchez reporting live from Baton Rouge the morning. Still to come in the Newsroom, dozens of top Republican foreign policy experts say Donald Trump would be dangerous for U.S. foreign policy. But will his big foreign policy speech today change their minds?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:48:10]

COSTELLO: Donald Trump is expected to leave Trump Tower at any time now for Youngstown, Ohio. Now normally, candidates talk about the economy in that blue-collar city, but today Mr. Trump will lay out his plan to defeat ISIS.

The specifics? He wants to build alliances with willing allies in the Mideast -- and what you're looking at is, that's Rudy Giuliani, I suspect maybe. Let's go back to that picture, can we? OK let's go back to that picture. There we go, that's Rudy Giuliani. Maybe he's traveling to Youngstown, Ohio with Mr. Trump. But certainly he has been advising him. Because Mr. Trump will go to Youngstown, Ohio. And as I said, normally candidates talk about the economy in that blue-collar town. But today Mr. Trump will lay out his plans to defeat ISIS.

Some specifics, he wants to suspend visas for people from countries with heavy terrorist footprints that cannot be adequately vetted. And define efforts as an ideological struggle against radical Islam. His plan coming just days after dozens of U.S. national top security officials, many of them Republican, signed a letter criticizing Mr. Trump. The leader reading in part, "We know the personal qualities required of a President of the United States. None of us will vote for Donald Trump."

All right so let's talk about this. With me now is Major General James "Spider" Marks, who has come out in favor of Mrs. Clinton. We did reach out to the Trump campaign to provide us with someone to talk about Trump's foreign policy, but no one was available at this hour. So that said, we'll jump right in.

So Mr. Trump is going to lay out his foreign policy. And he will provide details on how to defeat ISIS. What can he say to change your mind about him?

MAJOR GENERAL JAMES "SPIDER" MARKS, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Carol you know, first of all, the most important thing in leadership, and especially if we're looking at being a Commander in Chief, is the notion of predictability. And certainly at the strategic and policy level, predictability is everything.

If we're trying to build alliances, if we're trying to engage with partners, if we have to have a shared vision of what it is we're trying to achieve, predictability is number one. We have to know who's going to stand with us and we have to be able to deliver a message that allows others to galvanize, and to grow around what that vision looks like.

And the challenge I had with Mr. Trump is that he has been so incredibly quixotic. He's all over the map. He's on, he's off, he's being sarcastic when he thinks he's being straight. I -- my challenge with all of that is, if we have nations that are listening to us, we have enemies that are listening to us, and we have friends that are listening to us. And if we confuse them all we're going to be standing alone trying to solve this problem 30 years from now.

Look, the notion of trying to get our arms around ISIS is a monstrous effort. It's intergenerational, this administration has not been doing, I think, an adequate job. And I believe that Mrs. Clinton can come forward, can distance herself from the challenges that have taken place with this administration. And I'm convinced she'll be far more bullish, and she'll be far more predictable, and she'll be able to galvanize and build a team to go forward to address this ...

COSTELLO: Well here's the thing ...

MARKS: ... across the board. That's just militarily.

COSTELLO: ... Donald Trump does seem to be backing off of -- backing off on some of his more controversial ideas, like a Muslim ban. The campaign reported ...

MARKS: Right.

COSTELLO: ... us some details of his speech today. No word of a Muslim ban included in Mr. Trump's foreign policy to defeat ISIS. Does that make you feel better?

[10:51:45]

MARKS: Well I think that makes entirely more sense, absolutely. The challenge, Carol, still remains. What has been stated, what has been put out there, what has been nailed down is now being unnailed.

And so my concern is, look, get your national security team to get around you, come up with a cogent and a very clear, very precise and simple, and simple message that says -- and square it with the American people -- that says look, we're going to be after this for quite sometime. It's not going to be gone tomorrow, I'm not going to walk in and I'm not going to have this magic wand and we're going to wave this thing away. We're going to have to fight this ...

COSTELLO: But no, no, he says, he says he can defeat ISIS quickly ...

MARKS: No that ...

COSTELLO: ... He uses that word a lot.

MARKS: Yeah that -- as we say in the business, that ain't gonna happen. This is intergenerational. This is an ideological challenge that we have. And so it has to -- really it's -- the only way we're going to get arms around this is if we have partners that are willing to work primarily inside.

We have to have moderate Arabs that say, "enough, this is crazy. We cannot afford to have our religion of Islam hijacked demonically like it has been for the last number of years." This is how we have to get about it. Which is very measured, very precise, and a very simple message that says we have to do this together.

COSTELLO: All right Major General Spider Marks, thanks so much for joining me this morning. Still to come ...

MARKS: Thank you, Carol.

COSTELLO: You're welcome. Still to come in the Newsroom, a new call to better protect Olympic athletes after several swimmers were robbed at gunpoint in Rio.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:57:30]

COSTELLO: The International Olympic Committee is now calling for tougher security measures after a taxi full of Olympic athletes was robbed in Rio. Several bandits posing as armed police officers stopped the car. Here's swimmer Ryan Lochte on what happened next.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RYAN LOCHTE, 12 TIME GOLD MEDALIST: They told the other swimmers to get down on the ground. They got down on the ground, I refused. I was like, maybe if we let it go on (ph). And so I'm not getting down on the ground. And then the guy pulled out his gun, he cocked it, put it to my forehead and he said, "get down." And I was like, I put my hands up, I was like whatever.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Coy Wire in Rio with more on this. Hi Coy.

COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR: Hi Carol. Certainly ramping up security of -- right now, looking behind me here on Copacabana Beach where the finished the marathon swim -- they have security members in full force carrying assault rifles. But the Australian team has banned their athletes from even going to Copacabana and Ipanema Beaches, just down the street, after dark.

They've been told to travel in groups of three or more. They have a curfew. So concerns certainly growing. Here we had Ryan Lochte, who shared the title of second most decorated American Olympian of all time behind Michael Phelps, and here he was having a gun pointed to his head.

So Carol, I was at one of these events last -- that night where Lochte and swimmers were -- around the world were attending. The competitions were over, they're training for years and finally they get to celebrate being an Olympian, gold medalist in the case of Lochte, here in Rio.

And it's easy to let your guard down even though you've been told to be safe. You get into this beautiful city and forget that at any moment you could be at the wrong place at the wrong time. So Carol, security certainly coming back to the forefront of the concerns in the wake of Lochte's robbery here in Rio.

So let's get you caught up today on what the good is to see here, in Rio. Pressure in the air, she doesn't care. Simone Biles, she took her third gold medal of the games yesterday. That's already the most by any American woman in Olympics gymnastics history. Carol, she can still win two more.

Two including the beam today with her teammate, 16-year old Laurie Hernandez. They call her the human emoji. That'll be on the beam. Also you're going to see 400 meter, four time gold medalist Allyson Felix will be the star in that. Look out for her to bring home the gold again for the U.S. COSTELLO: I know, and so many athletes breaking world records, it's

been a great Olympics, at least that way. Coy Wire reporting live for us from Rio this morning, thank you. And thank you for joining me today, I'm Carol Costello. AT THIS HOUR with Berman and Bolduan starts now.

[11:00:05]