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CNN NEWSROOM

Roger Ailes Reportedly Advising Donald Trump; Trump to Receive First Intelligence Briefing, Claims He Won't Trust It; Critics Argue Hillary Shouldn't Be Allowed to Receive Same Briefing Because She Can't Be Trusted; Blue Cut Wildfire Destroying Homes, Land; Louisiana Waters Starting to Recede, Tens of Thousands Asking for FEMA Aid; VP Joe Biden Hangs On for Lengthy Hug with Hillary Clinton. Aired 10:30- 11:00a ET

Aired August 17, 2016 - 10:30   ET

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


[10:30:18]

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN HOST, "NEWSROOM": And good morning, I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me. Sources telling CNN that ousted Fox News CEO Roger Ailes will begin advising Donald Trump. Helping him prep for those crucial presidential debates. It's some things the Trump campaign denies, but it does admit the two men do talk because they are life-long friends like -- or longtime friends, I should say.

So let's talk about the debate and how both candidates might prepare, Trump and Clinton. Alex Conant is the former Communications Director for the Marco Rubio campaign. And he helped Rubio lodge some of his fiercest attacks against Donald Trump. And before we get into it, Alex, I'd like our viewers to walk back in time for just a bit with us.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARCO RUBIO (R), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: But you're the only person on this stage that's ever been fined for hiring people to work on your projects illegally. You hired some workers from ...

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: No, no, I'm the only one on the stage that's hired people. You haven't hired anybody.

TRUMP: You'll have many different plans. You'll have competition. You'll have so many different plans.

RUBIO: But now he's repeating himself.

TRUMP: No I'm not repeating -- no, no, no, no, no. You repeat yourself every day. And talking about repeating, I watched him repeat himself five times, four weeks ago. And I want to tell you ...

RUBIO: I saw you repeat yourself five times five seconds ago.

TRUMP: ... it was a meltdown. I watched him ... (END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: All right, Alex. I know, that was something, right?

ALEX CONANT, FORMER COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR, MARCO RUBIO PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN: Well at least they're good times, right?

COSTELLO: I know, good times. So a lot of people said Marco Rubio should've come out swinging like that much earlier on the debate stage. Do you feel that way?

CONANT: Well I don't know. I mean, I think it's -- going back and revisiting history is hard to do. Nobody took Donald Trump very seriously early on in the debates. But I think at key points, Trump's actually a good debater. I mean, he won just about every single debate that we had.

One way or the other, his poll numbers seemed to go up after every single debate. So I think anyone that looks to the debates this Fall and thinks Trump is not going to do a good job wasn't paying attention to all the debates we had during the primary.

COSTELLO: So if you were to offer advice to Hillary Clinton, let's say ...

CONANT: Yeah.

COSTELLO: What advice would you give her?

CONANT: Well, I'll say it's very hard to prepare to debate Donald Trump. Because you don't know what he's going to say. And, in part because I'm not sure that he always knows what he's going to say. I don't get the sense that he spends a lot of time preparing for debates. A lot of it is off the cuff. And frankly, it's very effective when it's off the cuff like that.

So she's got to be on her toes. I think she would be -- it would behoove her to go back and look at some of the most effective attacks at Donald Trump -- including some of the attacks that Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and other candidates lodged at him in the last couple of primary debates.

But mostly she just needs to be ready to be on defense, ready to perry (ph). And she needs, frankly, to have a better explanation for some of her past scandals, including the email scandals that we've heard today.

COSTELLO: OK so we hear that Roger Ailes will be advising Donald Trump as far as his debate performance. And you got to believe when Fox put on that very first debate and Megyn Kelly's now famous question that came from Roger Ailes. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MEGYN KELLY, COMMENTATOR, FOX NEWS: You call women you don't like "fat pigs," "dogs," "slobs," and "disgusting animals." You once told a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees. Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president? (END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: And I'm pretty sure Roger Ailes probably had something to do with that. So with that in consideration, what will Roger Ailes tell Mr. Trump?

CONANT: Well, look, Roger Ailes is probably the most talented debate coach America has ever seen. I mean he's been doing this for 30, 35 years, plus. He's very effective. And so to the extent that Mr. Ailes is talking to Mr. Trump, I think that's a credit to Mr. Trump.

It's something that should worry the Clinton campaign. They know Ailes is very effective at putting on a good T.V. show. He's very good at coaching people like Trump in those situations. So I think it's -- to the extent that that communication is happening -- I think that's a credit to Trump and something that should really worry Democrats.

COSTELLO: .So there's controversy surrounding Roger Ailes with this whole sexual harassment controversy. He had to step down as the CEO of Fox News because of that controversy. Do you think that female voters will take that into account, or won't it matter?

CONANT: I sort of doubt it. I think that at the end of the day these campaigns are -- voters judge the candidates on the candidates. Not who, necessarily the candidate's advisors are. I know the media likes to obsess over who the advisors are, who the staff are. But advisors are replaceable, staff is replaceable. The only person you can't replace on a campaign is the candidate, himself.

And I know this morning there's a lot of talk about shakeups happening inside the Trump campaign. I think it's all a little bit overblown, what really matters is the candidate. At the end of the day that's who voters judge.

COSTELLO: In your mind did Donald Trump add people who could help him with these demographic groups he's losing?

CONANT: Well I don't know about the demographic groups that he's losing. I think the key point is that he's losing, right? He's down in every single poll, he's down in every single key state right now. And he recognizes that on this trajectory, he's going to suffer an embarrassing defeat this Fall.

And so I give him credit for shaking up his team and bringing in some fresh blood. I've been on a lot of campaigns in my career and a lot of the campaigns that were losing in August, they would bring in a new team in August and we'd go on to win. So it -- I give him credit for recognizing that he was on a failing trajectory, and making a change. It's, I think, way too soon to tell whether or not it will be effective.

It's possible that it's too late for it to be effective since early voting starts in just a couple of weeks and this campaign's already been going on a very long time. COSTELLO: Right. And a last question about the debates. Like, I've

read stories about the Clinton campaign wondering who the stand-in for Donald Trump ought to be. Because you know, when they practice, they have stand-ins for the other guy. So who would that be in your mind?

CONANT: That's a, that's a great question. I mean, I think it's got to be somebody who's got a good sense of humor. Someone who's going to be unpredictable. And frankly, someone who is going to have the courage to stand in the same room as Hillary Clinton and attack her. Because you know that Donald Trump is going to bring everything he's got to that first debate. It's going to be a real knock-out fight. And she better be prepared for it. It's going to be can't-miss T.V.

COSTELLO: Maybe it should be Bill Clinton.

CONANT: Maybe, maybe it should be Bill Clinton, someone from the Obama administration who has gone toe-to-toe with her in cabinet meetings or in the situation room. I mean, I think that's, I think that she needs to be prepared for a really tough debate. She cannot just mail this in. She can't go in there assuming that she can ignore Trump.

Because he is going to find out -- figure out ways to engage her. Just like he did in every single Republican primary debate. And it was a very effective then, I expect it'll be very effective this Fall, as well.

COSTELLO: Alex Conant, thanks for allowing me to pick your brain ...

CONANT: Thanks, Carol.

COSTELLO: ... I appreciate it.

CONANT: Yep.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the Newsroom, classified information, a secure FBI location, Donald Trump gets his first intelligence briefing today.

[10:37:03]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:41:22]

COSTELLO: A pivotal first for the Donald Trump campaign. Later today, Mr. Trump will be at a secure FBI office in New York where he will receive his first classified briefing from the Director of National Intelligence. It will be the first time the businessman has ever had access to such sensitive information.

Evan Perez is following this story for us, good morning.

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. This is a bit of a top line briefing for Donald Trump. This is going to be a lot of the important points of the U.S. Most important, foreign policy relationships with countries around the world, including our allies and some of our adversaries.

Obviously not a lot of operational information is going to be included in this briefing. That's something that comes only when the person becomes President, officially becomes President. That's when they get read-in to some of the most sensitive programs that the U.S. operates.

But it is still a very important part of the process. It helps the candidates know where they can go, what they can talk about, and not create any kind of diplomatic crisis. Today Donald Trump is already on television with Fox News, sort of addressing what he thinks of the U.S. intelligence apparatus. From what it sounds like, he doesn't really have a very high opinion of it. Here, take a listen to what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AINSLEY EARHARDT, ANCHOR, CORRESPONDENT, FOX NEWS: Do you trust intelligence?

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Uh, not so much from the people that have been doing it for our country. I mean look what's happened over the last ten years. Look what's happened over the years. I mean it's been catastrophic. And in fact, I won't use some of the people that are sort of your standards. You know, just use them, use them, use them. Very easy to use them. But I won't use them because they've made such bad decisions. .

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREZ: And Carol, we expect that Trump will have one of his trusted aides, General Michael Flynn, the former Head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, by his side as he sits in this FBI briefing room, essentially, and gets this rundown from the U.S. intelligence agencies on what's going on in the world.

It'll be a very interesting, obviously, meeting because as you can see, he doesn't really have a very high opinion of what these people are going to be able to tell him. And as you said, boy, to be a fly on the wall of that meeting.

COSTELLO: I know, I was just going to ask you, how might the intelligence community react to what Donald Trump just said?

PEREZ: Well you know that's -- I think one of the things that they want to do is to be impartial. And so they expect that they're going to deliver the same briefing to Donald Trump and to Hillary Clinton. And they're really not going to try to take any sides here. I think they know that they're dealing with a challenge here with -- in particular with Donald Trump.

COSTELLO: All right, Evan Perez, I look forward to your reporting later on this afternoon, thanks so much. Both sides have received partisan pushback on their respective intelligence briefings. Republicans arguing Mrs. Clinton cannot be trusted with sensitive materials after using a private email server. An argument Green Party candidate, Jill Stein, agrees with. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JILL STEIN, GREEN PARTY PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We're talking about State secrets. And these are the highest level of State secrets that were put at risk when it's know that the protections for her email were extremely inadequate. And in fact, orders were being issued from her office to others in the Secretary of State Department to do the exact opposite of what she was doing. So certainly, if she wasn't aware that she was violating State Department rules it raises real issues about her competency.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Jill Stein told me that on Monday in the Newsroom. We will most likely hear more about Hillary Clinton's email issues tonight on CNN. Chris Cuomo hosts a special town hall with Green Party Presidential Candidate, Jill Stein and her running mate. It starts at 9:00 p.m. Eastern, only on CNN.

Coming up in the Newsroom, a massive wildfire in Southern California. More than 80,000 people forced from their homes. Plus, Louisiana under water. CNN's Boris Sanchez is there.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey Carol. The sun is out here in Louisiana and the flood waters are receding in certain areas. Other parts, it's getting worse. We'll tell you why, coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:49:18]

COSTELLO: A monster wildfire is moving fast in Southern California. These pictures from moments ago. Thick smoke billowing from the hillside. The Blue Cut Fire as it's being called, has already destroyed 30,000 acres and it's zero percent contained. More than 82,000 people are under mandatory evacuation orders. CNN's Stephanie Elam live in San Bernardino, California with more. Good morning.

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. Yes, we are out in San Bernardino County where this fire just picked up steam yesterday. It started about 10:30 a.m. local time yesterday. So less than 24 hours, it has ballooned to over 30,000 acres that have been burned.

I want to show you behind me just what it kind of looks like now that the sun has crested this hillside here. But you can see where the stuff in front here, the structure -- you can barely tell what was inside there -- has been burnt. There's still smoke coming out of it, you can see that there's a house just beyond that.

This is a community that's right off of Interstate 15, so for a lot of people who like to travel between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, this would be off that route that you would take. Well here's the big thing, Interstate 15 is closed. And the person I spoke with from the fire department this morning say it may stay like that for a couple of days. Simply because there's red flag warnings in here. And so they think it'd be too dangerous to have that traffic open. So for people who want to take that route, it's probably going to be too much. But take a look at this post right here. It's still smoking, still crackling. You can feel the heat off of it. I wish you could feel how hot it is. But this is what they're up against.

And that's why you've had -- over 82,000 people have been evacuated. And some 34 more than that, thousand homes have been evacuated because of the fact that this fire is fast moving. As the sun gets up, Carol, and starts baking in here in this high desert area, more than likely the fire is going to rage back to life.

We went from 18,000 last night before we went to sleep to 30,000 this morning. They are looking for it to grow some more. And at this point, it's not even contained, Carol.

[10:51:15]

COSTELLO: All right, Stephanie Elam reporting live from San Bernardino County, California. Thank you. At least 11 people are dead in Louisiana after torrential rain followed by catastrophic flooding. Rescue workers scrambling to get more than 20,000 people to safety. Now the flood waters are slowly receding but leaving behind untold destruction. CNN's Boris Sanchez live from Gonzales, Louisiana. Hi Boris.

SANCHEZ: Hey, good morning, Carol. Yeah the good news is that the waters are receding. The problem is that they're heading into neighborhoods like this one in Gonzales. This is Ascension Parish, where we were earlier today. The courthouse was inundated. It's very difficult for people to get inside their homes. I'm going to give you a look at this neighborhood so you can see just how expansive this flooding is.

We also have our drone flying right now. And it gives you a much larger picture of just how widespread this water has become in this area. Part of the problem is the backwater flooding. Not necessarily the amount of rainfall that came down in this area, but rather when the ground was saturated and bodies of water overflowed into neighborhoods, they all wind up coming in this direction.

I'm told that this is the last stop before the Mississippi River. And there are actually pumps in this area. The problem is after the water gets to a certain height, the water pumps stop working getting that water out. The hope is that now that the water's going down they'll be able to function again and help expedite the process of getting all this flood water out of here.

The need is tremendous. There are 60,000 people that registered for aid with FEMA. We're going to show you some before and after pictures of Baton Rouge to give you an idea of how badly destructive this flood was. Tens of thousands of people are in shelters and living with neighbors right now. Many thousands are without power.

There's a, again, a desperate need for resources, things that you might not think about. Not just food and water but also baby formula and pet food. The other heartbreaking thing about this, Carol, I spoke to a man this morning that lives in this neighborhood -- he actually lived in New Orleans during Katrina -- and he says that his home was destroyed during Hurricane Katrina. He moved here because he'd be -- he thought he'd be out of the flood's way. Now he's dealing with several inches of water inside his home, Carol.

COSTELLO: All right, Boris Sanchez reporting live from Gonzales, Louisiana. Still to come in the Newsroom, you know that awkward hug that goes just a second or two too long? Well this one you can time with a calendar.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:57:50]

COSTELLO: Consider this, the politics of awkward. The Vice President leans in, the nominee taps out, and the hug goes on and on as viewers squirm and comedians howl. Here's CNN's Jeanne Moos.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MOOS, CNN NATIONAL NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice over): There are hugs where you just throw up your arms and go for it. And then there are hugs that keep going, and going, and going. Joe Biden wouldn't let Hillary go as they met on the tarmac at Scranton Airport.

MOOS: About four seconds into the hug they semi disengage. Nothing to see here, right? Wrong. Because the Vice President wouldn't unhand Hillary for almost 16 seconds.

CENK UYGUR, HOST, THE YOUNG TURKS: Notice how many times she tries to tap out. She let's go, he does not. She tap out, nope she's just tapping out, he's still holding on. OK second tap out, for God's sake, Joe, you got to let go.

MOOS (voice over): This latest awkward hug would not have been microanalyzed if it hadn't been for all the other overly handy Biden moments. Critics collect them. Times when he gently rearranges a young girl's hair and whispers in her ear. Then rearranges some more. There's nothing pervy here, the VP knows he's on camera at these swearing in ceremonies. And the parents are right there as he leans in for a kiss.

The VP is known as a close talker. He even does it to the president. Perhaps his most famous hands-on moment came when he put his hands on the wife of Defense Secretary, Ash Carter.

ASH CARTER, U.S. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: We've got a lot of thanks to give out ...

MOOS (voice over): Conservatives panned it.

GLENN BECK, CONSERVATIVE, TELEVISION PERSONALITY: This is the creepiest thing ...

MOOS (voice over): And so did some liberals. UYGUR: No, that ain't right, man. That ain't right. Why are you --

appear to smell her hair?

MOOS (voice over): At least the VP didn't get that close to Hillary.

MOOS: Now, Hillary and President Obama have come a long way in their history of hugging.

MOOS (voice over): From this paltry excuse for a hug, eight years ago after he defeated her to this. A hug so close that Hillary closed her eyes. They even gazed into each other's eyes. This was a hug so novel for these two, it looked like the cover of a romance novel. Jeanne Moos, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COSTELLO: Just makes me feel a little creepy. Thank you for joining me today, I'm Carol Costello. AT THIS HOUR with Berman and Bolduan starts now.

[11:00:00]