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CNN NEWSROOM

Clinton Email Controversy; Trump Pushes on Clinton's Health; Louisiana Flooding; Rio Passes Olympic Flag to Tokyo. Aired 9:30-10a ET

Aired August 22, 2016 - 09:30   ET

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


[09:30:00] JEFFREY LORD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: This is going to be a steady drip, drip, drip, all the way through the fall election and it's going to remind people of exactly what her problem is when it comes to credibility.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: So, Bakari, was it effective that Congress demanded those notes from the FBI then?

BAKARI SELLERS, CNN COMMENTATOR: Well, yes, I mean, I said this last week, I think it was Monday on "New Day" when we realized that these notes were going to come to Congress and preverbaly (ph), although they're confidential, they would going to be leaked. I mean I don't understand why people don't have an issue with that. They were confidential notes. They were 302s. I practice federal criminal defense all the time. When you take a client in to do -- to go through this interview and they have 302s, these notes that the investigators take, you don't expect those to be public because they're usually not.

And in this case, the FBI made them public. It's a very slippery slope. And now they're leaked. That is how the conversation got out. This is not Hillary Clinton throwing Colin Powell under the bus. In fact, this is the United States Congress leaking pieces of this, and we will have these leaks from this point forward. So to Jeffrey's point, it's a problem.

COSTELLO: All right. Well, I have to leave it there. I have to leave it there. Thanks so much. Ron Bonjean (ph), Bakari Sellers, Jeffrey Lord.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, Rudy Giuliani is relentless when it comes to attack son Hillary Clinton's health, telling people to go online and see for themselves. But what happens when you Google Rudy Giuliani's name?

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[09:35:28] COSTELLO: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello.

Donald Trump is putting his new campaign strategy into action, talk policy, act presidential, and slam Hillary Clinton. One attack, focus on Clinton's unsubstantiated stamina issues.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: For one thing, she doesn't have the strength or the stamina, coupled with all of the other problems that this country has, and we have a lot.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Her campaign and a number of people --

RUDY GIULIANI (R), FORMER NEW YORK CITY MAYOR: Hold --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Defending her, saying there is nothing factual to the claims about her health and that that's speculation at best.

GIULIANI: Well, go online -- well, so, go online and put down "Hillary Clinton illness," and take a look at the videos for yourself.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: OK, so let's talk about that. Kristen Soltis Anderson is a Republican strategist and columnist for "The Washington Examiner," and Margie Omero is a Democratic pollster who also co-hosts "The Pollsters Podcast," along with Kristin.

Welcome to both of you.

KRISTEN SOLTIS ANDERSON, COLUMNIST, "WASHINGTON EXAMINER": Good morning.

COSTELLO: thanks for being here. So, Kristin, Rudy Giuliani said look online for proof that Clinton is mentally ill. But if you Google Rudy Giuliani's name, I mean, you can -- that comes up with all sorts of things. Let's put -- there it is. I mean it says he has Alzheimer's. Should we believe that too?

ANDERSON: I think that this whole diversion into whether or not the candidates are physically or mentally fit to be president in the way that it's being brought up now is completely side tracking this campaign away from the issues that most voters care about. The polls that Margie and I look at on a regular basis show that what people care about is the economy. It shows that what people care about is, how are we going to make America safe. It doesn't show that people are interested in pushing conspiracy theories from the right or left about the health of these candidates. And so I think for the Trump campaign to have surrogates who are out there, who are pushing this message, it's the sort of thing that certainly stirs up a piece of Trump's base. And up until this point, he's been very good at playing to his base, but it's not the sort of message that I think is necessarily the one he needs to be on if he wants to expand his voter pool and really be competitive in November.

COSTELLO: And, Margie, it seems to be a coordinated effort, because there are lots of articles on Breitbart, right, about Hillary Clinton's alleged instability. Sean Hannity on Fox brings up the issues of Clinton's health all the time. Now you have Rudy Giuliani saying it like it's a fact. So what's the strategy here?

MARGIE OMERO, DEMOCRATIC POLLSTER, PSB RESEARCH: I don't know. I mean it -- it smacks of desperation. Just because something gets a rise out of people doesn't mean that it actually moves voters or that it's presidential and that it, God forbid, would actually be an effective strategy if one were to become president. So I don't know why this seems like a good strategy because it's so clearly not from the polling. Morning consult (ph) shows that two-thirds of Americans feel that the Trump campaign is badly managed and a majority say that this tells you something about how Trump would behave as president. And one of the videos or one of the comments that, well, she needs a pillow sometimes when she travels. I mean if I had her schedule, I'd need something a lot stronger than a pillow to make it from, you know, the morning to the evening. It's just crazy, these things. And -- and they -- and they really have -- it's just such a diversion from the things that people say matter to them.

COSTELLO: What --

ANDERSON: Carol, what I --

COSTELLO: It's interesting you bring up the pillows, and I just have to get this out because I was talking to my mother the other day and she said, does Hillary Clinton really need pillows to prop -- and I didn't know what she was talking about. So it is resonating, right?

OMERO: Yes, I mean -- no, people hear it. I mean, look, that -- people hear it, certainly. I've heard it in a focus group that we did a couple of weeks ago, somebody had mentioned this. The fact that people hear it is different from whether or not it actually convinces people to become Trump voters. Certainly the 50 percent of people who say, I'm never going to vote for Trump, is it going to get them off that ledge and say, OK, well, now, you know, the pillows, that makes sense, now I'm going to vote for Trump. I just don't think so. This is why people are not voting for Trump.

ANDERSON: Carol, the one -- the one polling number that I think does feed into why Trump and his surrogates think that this might be a strategy they should deploy is that if you ask voters, which of these folks makes you anxious, the idea of them being president makes you anxious, Trump, it's 70 percent of people are anxious about the idea of him being president. But for Hillary Clinton, it's 50 percent. You've still got half of people who say, I'm anxious about the idea of her being in the White House.

So what I think Trump is trying to do is go really negative and drive up those numbers so that he and Hillary Clinton are both on the same page in terms of the percentage of people who are anxious about them being president. I think the smarter strategy for Trump, and the one that certainly feels more ethical, is the one for him to actually behave in a more professional manner and reduce the percentage of people that think that they would be anxious if he were president.

[09:40:02] COSTELLO: And, Margie, it's not like there's not stuff out there to criticize Clinton on or to attack her on that are legitimate.

OMERO: Well, look, we could have a debate over policies and the things that differentiate Democrats and Republicans. The reason that Trump is in the 40s is because there are Republicans out there who want to vote for the Republican candidate, and we're not having a debate on the issues. We're not having a debate on how people feel about taxes or involvement overseas, or how do we feel about the role of government. We could be having that civilized debate and decide how we feel as a country. But instead, we're having a debate over what incendiary thing Trump said, how he's flip flopped from what he said last week, how he gave a pivot that didn't even last barely, you know, 24 hours. These are the kinds of things that we're having. And it's not a conversation that really makes people feel good about this election process or about government.

COSTELLO: All right, I have to leave it there. Kristen Soltis Anderson, Margie Omero, thanks to both of you. It was a pleasure.

ANDERSON: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Still to come in the NEWSROOM, President Obama set to visit Louisiana tomorrow to see for himself the catastrophic flooding that's left tens of thousands of people homeless.

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[09:45:14] COSTELLO: It could actually get worse in Louisiana. More storms are possible today in the state already devastated by flooding. President Obama will head there tomorrow. The losses from the catastrophic flooding are staggering. Thirteen people dead, more than 60,000 homes destroyed. Polo Sandoval live in Gonzalez, Louisiana, with more.

Good morning.

POLO SANDOVAL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Carol, good morning.

I want to show you the scenes that await the commander in chief when President Obama arrives. This is what he will see. You see people's belongings still piled on lawns. And you see them all over here in the city of Gonzales. And this scene repeats itself throughout southern Louisiana. Those 7 trillion gallons of rain, they left behind, as you can see here, widespread devastation and you're about to hear, a tremendous amount of heartbreak.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DREW LEBLANC, GONZALES RESIDENT: This is where the kitchen was right here. The water got up to about two and a half foot in the house.

SANDOVAL (voice-over): Step through Drew LaBlanc's door in the city of Gonzalez and you'll see what hundreds of homes in southern Louisiana look like today, a bear interior stripped of any comforts of home.

D. LEBLANC: We had to gut everything totally in the house.

SANDOVAL: LaBlanc only saved what he and his son Alec (ph) could carry out as the water approached his doorstep last Monday. Most of what was left behind had to be discarded and now sits soaked on the front lawn.

AMBER LEBLANC, GONZALES RESIDENT: It happened fast and it's sad. You do what you got to do. We saved a lot. We -- thanks to him and my brother, they put everything as high as they could.

SANDOVAL: LeBlanc saved his family and the small, irreplaceable items, including his mother-in-law's albums.

D. LEBLANC: Her stuff, she kept it this blue tote. And this is what gets me. I said, we -- I said, we're not going -- we don't need to get that. So I felt bad the next day. Because I didn't want it destroyed. And I said, I'm going back. I don't care how deep it is, to get her things that she wanted.

This is a damn shame.

SANDOVAL: LeBlanc used his cell phone to capture that return home, along with his son.

D. LEBLANC: I didn't even remember it was his birthday, because of all the trauma that was going on.

Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you.

SANDOVAL: There was time for a brief celebration amid the heartbreak though.

D. LEBLANC: I actually sang happy birthday to him while we were standing in the water in the house.

SANDOVAL: Dad fashioned a makeshift cake out of whipped cream and a few cookies. Like many of the families on his block, LeBlanc has help from friends, neighbors and coworkers.

D. LEBLANC: I'm living in my camper. And it's going to be rough for the next two months, but we, you know, all of us are safe. We're alive.

SANDOVAL: Even with those helping hands, he says it will be weeks, perhaps months, before he turns his house into a home again.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SANDOVAL: And even after seeing those pictures, believe it or not, the LeBlanc family still considers themselves to be among some of the lucky ones. You see, and as you just heard, they have a place to stay. There are at least 3,000 other people that are still in shelters this morning. That's according to some brand new numbers that were just released by the state. That is a sign, Carol, that the people here in southern Louisiana still face a very long, difficult and, for many, and for most really, a very expensive road to recovery.

COSTELLO: One awesome family, Polo. That's awesome. Polo Sandoval, thank you so much.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, his conduct during the Olympics gave Team USA a black eye. Ryan Lochte says he's human. His new apology, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [09:53:11] COSTELLO: The Olympic games are officially over. At last night's closing ceremony, Rio said good-bye to the games and passed the torch to Japan. But as successful as the games were for the United States, the actions of some athletes outside the arena cast a long dark shadow. And I'm sure you know who I'm talking about.

Coy Wire live in Rio this morning.

Good morning.

COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you, Carol.

Ryan Lochte certainly cast a dark shadow over these games, at least momentarily, when his bathroom incident at a gas station became an international incident that everyone was talking about and feeling here in Rio. So he sat down in his first TV interview just the other day and had some words to say about that whole thing. Here he is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RYAN LOCHTE, 12 TIME OLYMPIC MEDALIST: I'm just really sorry about -- I'm embarrassed for myself, my family, especially those guys, USA Swimming, the whole Olympic games, everyone watching. I was immature and I made a stupid mistake. I'm human. I made a mistake. And I definitely learned from this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WIRE: All right, let's move on and get to some good stuff, shall we? Last night's closing ceremony was so sweet. Despite all that negative coverage Rio received ahead of the games, the Zika, the pollution, the crime, the games were no doubt an overall success. So it was a samba extravaganza. You had Simone Biles in the house, the four-time gold winning superstar for U.S. gymnastics carrying the American flag for Team USA. She took that Olympic stage by storm down here and what a wonderful representative for the United States. She was kind, humble, caring, full of smiles, high flying and amazing Simone Biles.

Now back -- the highlight of the night, guys, the performance portraying the passing of the Olympic torch forward to the next host city of the summer games, that's Tokyo. And the prime minister of Japan jumping out of a giant green pipe dressed as the video game hero Super Mario, Tokyo '22 games look out -- 2020 games outstanding.

[09:55:15] Men's basketball, last opportunity to represent for the red, white and blue and they threw down a 30-point smack down of Serbia, grabbing that last gold medal available in the Olympic games, remaining unbeaten all the way back to 2004. Three straight golds for Team USA.

The final Team USA medal count, 121 total for the USA, including 46 golds, China in second with 70, Great Britain in third with 67. Carol, it's a bit of a sad day here, the games have concluded, but what a wonderful experience the first ever South American Olympic games have been. COSTELLO: Woo, the United States spanked everyone. I -- I have to

admit it, I liked seeing that. Coy Wire, great coverage, thanks so much.

The next hour of CNN NEWSROOM after a break.

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