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Report: Trump Unveils New Anti-Terrorism Plan; Trump Will Fight Terror Viciously If Necessary. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired August 15, 2016 - 15:30   ET

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


[15:30:00] DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: -- debating among all your guests, his specific proposals or vision is a place that is a stronger political place for him than a campaign that is in crisis and concerned that they can't keep him on message. So to me politically the argument he made today I think he made early in the speech.

I think it was when he went through Libya and Syria and Iraq and Egypt and pointed to the way those places looked in January, 2009, before the Obama-Clinton administration came into place and how they look now and that, whether or not he and Hillary Clinton obviously can debate and disagree about the proposals to make those places better, that could be a compelling political argument if he's able to sustain it and stay on it, that the world may appear more chaotic to American voters at home now than it did when Barack Obama first took office.

David, thank you, just back to General Clark, to you and the notion of nation building and the idea of getting away from nation building. It's a popular one, would it not be, in America in 2016?

WESLEY CLARK, RETIRED ARMY GENERAL: It is popular to get away from nation building however the truth is that it was George W. Bush who said we weren't going to do nation building then we went into Afghanistan and it turned out we had to. We're doing a lot of nation building around the world and we have for a long time.

We do it by our culture, by the economy, by tourism, by trade, by many other things. In eastern Europe where Vladimir Putin is reaching out to subvert governments, we're doing nation building we're doing it with diplomacy, we are not doing it with forces over there. So nation building goes on all around the world because people like our values and they aspire to those values. So really the idea that you just cut off nation building, build a wall, it's not realistic.

That's why I say his speech is extremely simplistic, incoherent in its pieces and it just -- it was ultimately the best job they could do to keep Donald Trump from being Donald Trump failed when he said "we'll invade a country and take their oil." I know it's a big applause line in some audiences but it doesn't make sense.

And no military leader would support occupying a country in trying to guard its oil reservoirs and all of its infrastructure to repay debts. We just -- we don't do that in the 21st century. Didn't even do it in the 20th century. After we invaded Germany, we helped rebuild the German economy for Germany and made Germany an ally so there's a lot in this speech that -- it just -- it shows that we have someone here who is not ready to be president. He read his speech off a teleprompter but the real Donald Trump is still showing through here.

BALDWIN: Not ready to be president, incoherent, simplistic. John, is that fair?

JOHN HAJJIR, CO-CHAIR, AMERICAN MIDEAST COALITION FOR TRUMP: Absolutely not. I think it was his best speech on foreign policy. I think you can clearly see from the past seven years there's been a failure of foreign policy of this administration which will be carried on by a Clinton presidency.

Clearly the people know it, the press can tell us whatever we want but the people can see the frequency and the extremity of these Islamic terrorist attacks are increasing, and by the way Donald Trump was clear he was not in favor of the initial Iraq. He didn't want to walk away from our allies, he wanted to stay with our allies and interact, unlike Barack Obama who abandoned them.

And that's what I'm hearing from our people on the ground here and their relatives, friends, associates in the Middle East that the United States under President Barack Obama abandoned our allies, that's the antithesis of what a Trump administration would be. We'll stand by our allies -- Israel, King Abdullah in Jordan, President El Sisi who is ignored by this administration. We will stand by them.

We will create safe zones so the real refugees from the Middle East won't have to trek thousands of miles and risk their lives in rickety boats to drown in the Mediterranean. They'll be able to stay in their homeland in protected areas and allowed to build their own nation. It's not our job to build their nation for them, it's their job. But we should stand by them, provide support as Mr. Trump made clear and not walk away. I thought he gave a lot of substance in this speech, it was very clearly laid out, the antithesis of what we've been hearing and seeing from President Obama and Hillary Clinton on the stump.

BALDWIN: Thank you both, stand by. I want to go to someone who's been to all of these countries that we're referencing, that these nominees are referencing. Ben Wedeman is our senior international correspondent in Istanbul, the site of a recent terror attack at the Ataturk airport.

My question is more of a reality check question. We heard Mr. Trump outlining the state of play in 2009. Libya he said stable, Syria under control, Iraq a reduction in violence. What was it like pre- 2011?

[15:35:00] BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I can tell you, if you look for instance at the case of Libya, Muammar Gaddafi was in power since 1969. The man was mentally unstable. I interviewed him a variety of times and it was clear he did not have a sound mind.

And what you saw in 2011 was basically like a pressure cooker blowing up after so many years and of course there's going to be a messy aftermath. I lived in Syria under Hafez El Assad, the father of Bashar Al Assad. The Assad family has run Syria since 1971. There were pressures, tensions, hatred that was building for decades and of course we saw that turn into the mess that is Syria today.

So to pin this on the Obama administration is, as the general said just a moment ago, somewhat simplistic and, of course, listen to Mr. Trump's speech, in the beginning he went through a list of the attacks in the United States, the attacks in Europe by ISIS but left out of the equation, of course, the attacks in places like Iraq, in Syria by ISIS on Muslims.

I was in Baghdad in July in the aftermath of the July 3 bombing which killed more than 300 people. The majority of whom were Muslims. Shia, Sunni, as well as Christians. And I think when people hear this sort of speech in this part of the world, they will react saying we're the ones who are paying the highest price when it comes to the war against ISIS.

There are Iraqis and Syrians and Libyans and Egyptians who are dying in the war against ISIS. And when looking at the price they have paid, it's somewhat galling for people around here who feel that they, Muslims, are paying the highest price. Here in Turkey as you mentioned the attack on the Ataturk International Airport, this is a 99% Muslim country and most of the victims of that attack were Muslims.

So this a simplistic interpretation of the war against ISIS is going to cause some annoyance in this part of the world. Ben Wedeman, thank you for that. As he talked about Libya specifically, Clarissa Ward, let me pivot back to you. It wasn't too long ago President Obama in an interview was asked about his biggest regret and he said it was Libya and the fact is, as Donald Trump continues to point out Hillary Clinton has her fingerprints all over it.

CLARISSA WARD, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's true, but I think if we've learned anything, Brooke, by the rich tapestry of the Middle East over the ages what we understand is it's incredibly complex and there are no really good solutions. The idea that Donald Trump seems to be proposing that we return to the heyday of the brutal dictator, that that's better for the region is laughable.

The reality is the Arab spring happened, it didn't happen because of President Obama, if anything it was unleashed because of President Obama's invasion of Iraq but as Ben Wedeman said, it's been bubbling under the surface for decades, you can't put the genie back in the lamp, so to speak.

The region is a complete mess and it may take decades to try to sift through it and to try to improve the situation there. He specifically mentioned President Sisi several times as a kind of bastion of stability. Well, the reality is that President Sisi came to power in a coup and has subsequently rounded up tens of thousands of Muslim brotherhood supporters and condemned them to death.

He is a controversial leader by any standards and by U.S. standards and under his watch, in fact, insurgency in Sinai has really gathered momentum. Because the reality is these crackdowns don't prevent extremism. They contribute to extremism. I have said this before and it's true, ISIS supporters say they would

like to see Donald Trump become president of the United States of America because they believe he will perpetuate the same narrative they are trying to perpetuate, that you're either with us or against us. A Muslim or American and there's nowhere in between where the two meet.

BALDWIN: Those ISIS supporters want Donald Trump to be president, Clarissa, I remember you were pointing that out. Thank you, stand by. We've gone from the Middle East, let's talk Russia. I have Matthew Chance, our senior international correspondent. I got a note when you heard Mr. Trump speaking about Middle East policy it was reminiscent to a speech made by Vladimir Putin?

[15:40:00] MATHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Exactly. I mean, I think it's speeches like this that give Donald Trump this reputation that he's gathered for being the Kremlin's choice for American President. Because he uses lots of the same language when he talks about U.S. foreign policy mistakes, or U.S. foreign policy in general. He talks about the interventions, he talks about the revolutions that were supported.

And lays all the blame for that in this case to the Obama administration. But on previous U.S. administrations and that is exactly what the Kremlin does, and uses almost exactly that language. Back in September last year Vladimir Putin addressed the United Nations General Assembly and said all those exact points and said do you realize what you would done?

And I was waiting for those words to come from Donald Trump's mouth as well. He never said them but he could well have done because it was the same rhetorical message.

BALDWIN: Ed Brookover, you've been listening to a lot of voices chiming in both favorable and not to Mr. Trump. Please respond.

ED BROOKOVER, FORMER TRUMP ADVISER: I think today the American public heard Mr. Trump lay out his vision, his values and what he would do to make America safe again, to remove this existential threat to our security and defeat ISIS. It's been something that is a big difference between him and Secretary Clinton and her long record of failure in this region, and he is now ready to lead and put us on good solid footing.

BALDWIN: Let me bring up something as we've heard a number of times, Donald Trump referencing President Obama last week. This was something that we discussed, President Obama as the founder of ISIS, then he said he was being sarcastic. So we've heard from the leader of Hezbollah on Saturday making comments in the wake of Mr. Trump's words saying "this is not simple speech, this is an American Presidential candidate, this was spoken on behalf of the American Republican party, he has data and documents."

I mean, sir, words do matter.

BROOKOVER: Of course, they do. And Mr. Trump was correct in saying the kinds of policies, the kinds of actions that this president and Secretary Clinton took did lay the framework for the growth and the extension of ISIS. That's been pretty clear and there's lots and lots of Americans and American experts who agree with that.

BALDWIN: What did he mean, Ed, when he said he was talking about Hillary Clinton, saying she didn't have the character and judgment to president. And then he went and said she lacks the mental and physical stamina to take on ISIS, mental and physical stamina. What did he mean by that?

BROOKOVER: I think he's talking the weakness she's shown in her policies and dealing with these existential crises that were on her watch. She was there --

BALDWIN: Forgive me. It's one thing to take on -- he has every right to take on her policies or record but when you talk about mental and physical stamina does that not have a different meaning to you?

BROOKOVER: I think what he's talking about is the fact that over here years as secretary of state it didn't work, so we can't expect over a four or eight-year presidency for it to work, either.

BALDWIN: Ed Brookover, thank you so much, former Trump adviser. We are going to ask all of our guests to stand by, we are going to take a quick break here.

CNN special coverage continues after the break including the fact that we heard from Vice President Joe Biden speaking at a Hillary Clinton event on the campaign trail, and he didn't mince words when it comes to Mr. Trump. We'll play that coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: We are talking about a huge speech that Donald Trump just gave in Youngstown, Ohio, laying out some of his plans, if and when he is elected president of the United States. Peter Bergen, CNN national security analyst, one of the points he kept returning to, talking about Al Qaeda and Iraq and as we know ISIS, full blame on both President Obama and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and he said we could have prevented that.

[15:45:00] The fact he said Obama essentially said we're moving out, here's the time and the date referring to the sudden troop withdrawal. How would you respond to that?

PETER BERGEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: We can't run history backwards and let's say we did have 10,000 troops in Iraq instead of pulling them out at the end of 2011 maybe that would have made a difference. We just don't know, I think it would have made some difference.

I don't think it would have prevented ISIS from regrouping in Syria as they did and entering Iraq. They may not have had the successes that they did in the summer of 2014. At the end of the day this speech wasn't about history but proposals. So what was new, Brooke, in the speech in terms of proposals that I

found, one was that we work more closely with Russia, Donald Trump has repeatedly said he's an admirer of Vladimir Putin. The other is that we'll try foreign terrorists in military tribunals and keep Guantanamo open. I don't think that would be useful because Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who was the leader of the 9/11 attacks, the United States captured him in 2003, he is still not on trial in a military tribunal 13 years later.

These military tribunals have not succeeded. Federal courts in the United States have 100% conviction rates for foreign terrorists and they have relatively speedy trials. And the last idea of course is this ideological test and I don't see how that's workable presuming you'd lie if you wanted to get into the United States.

But what I was hoping Trump would say is what he would actually say what he was talking about. Is he talking about Syria? Is he talking about Libya? Is he talking about France which has a big domestic problem?

BALDWIN: He didn't name check any countries. It was to be determined?

BERGEN: To be determined so I don't know what that policy means at this point. And that was what I -- why one hope on this speech was that he would actually be somewhat specific. And I think your guests earlier THE Trump supporter said this is the best foreign policy speech he's delivered. And I think that's true because every other speech had been so bad.

This is the first speech where there was some argumentation, some evidence. No one could deny that the U.S. decision to topple Gaddafi -- which looked like a great idea at the time, produced a vacuum, not enough thinking was given to the day after. And that ISIS has gained a foothold now of course being pushed out. That is simply undeniable.

But still, we're not re-litigating all that if we are talking about what we do as president. What are my policies I'm going to do that are different, and I didn't hear a lot of things that were either different or if they were different they weren't really workable.

BALDWIN: OK. Peter, thank you. And to be fair, I want to make sure we have Ed Brookover respond, Trump's former a senior adviser to the notion that all of his foreign policy or terror speeches were bad so that thus would make this one the best. Please respond to that.

BROOKOVER: I don't think I would agree with Peter on that at all. Mr. Trump has been building his case slowly and surely through the campaign. He has been talking about these areas much longer than opponents in the campaign which I think led to his success.

He has been from day one outlining different proposals he's had to make America safe, more secure, and to avoid this existential threat that ISIS is posing for us.

Today was another step in the process as he continues to lay out values and positions whether it is trying to make our immigration system work for us again instead of against us, and to try and recruit and have more allies join us in the fight against ISIS.

BALDWIN: On his point and Phil Mudd, on his point about keeping gitmo open, peter was just talking about keeping Guantanamo Bay open, what is your response to that?

PHIL MUDD, CNN COUNTER-TERRORISM ANALYST: I have to agree with Peter.

[15:55:00] I found the speech quite interesting actually. I thought it gave the American people clear choices. For example, if you work with the Russians, you will allow Bashir Assad to continue. If you want to continue the insurgency to oust Bashir Assad you are going to give space for ISIS.

On the Guantanamo question, though, I'm going to agree with Peter because I don't see the utility of this. We tried terrorist in courts for years successfully. There have not been security incidents and the trials went along so that the terrorists were convicted. I don't see what the big deal is for transferring someone from Guantanamo to the Southern District of New York. Try them in a court there and put them in jail for life. Fine by me.

BALDWIN: Okay. So that is news on keeping Guantanamo open and building it up. Thank you. Brandon Webb is with me here in New York, former Navy SEAL. and founder of the veteran news site SOFREP. Sir. Quickly, your quick assessment of the speech and then I will play the soundbite on extreme vetting.

BRANDON WEBB, FORMER NAVY SEAL: Sure. I definitely thought this was Trump's best speech. I'll caveat that with he has given a lot of bad ones leading up to this. I think he was right about Russia. Right now we are fighting a special ops covert war and we need sit down with the Russians and hash out a solution.

It was an extremely interesting speech. But I think it lacked a lot of specifics around how we are going to really combat radical Islam at its root core. I think we are still focused on treating symptoms like the immigration policies.

BALDWIN: He gave specifics on sort of redefine what would be a U.S. ally, he talked about tests, when a referenced as extreme vetting. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP. REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: The time is overdue to develop a new screening tests for the threats we face today. I call it extreme vetting. I call it extreme, extreme vetting. Our country has enough problems. We don't need more. And these are problems like we've never had before.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: He wants to keep people out of this country where extreme terrorist activity is breeding where they come from, is that a bad idea?

WEBB: I think it's a bad idea, I think it will further create a divide between the Muslim world and the U.S. and I also, it's again, if you're screening for people that have already been radicalized, that's a symptom. You need to treat the cause.

Like what are the social and economic environments in the world that are producing radical Islam. And enabling a group like ISIS to promote their cause through the internet among the free world. It is a big problem and I haven't heard the current administration back to the Bush administration and anything these two candidates are saying to really get to the core issue.

And Guantanamo Bay just, my thought on that, goes against everything that I fought for overseas as active duty Navy SEAL to hold people without due process is just un-American in my opinion.

BALDWIN: With me now, retired Army three-star general Mark Hertling. I know we have talked many times. You are no fan of Mr. Trump's. There anything you heard today that you agree with?

MARK HERTLING, RETIRED ARMY GENERAL: Brooke, I tell you, I was very excited to listen to this speech. I thought there might be indicators of at least a staff supporting them. What I found was different sections of this speech.

It started off as revisionist history then it became very confused and disjointed and then at the end when he started giving his policy it was obviously uninformed. The various things that he talked about both in the history piece suggesting that American soldiers would occupy a country and then take the oil and use that to treat wounded soldiers was both frightening and pandering at the same time.

His suggestion that NATO has changed based on his suggestion a few weeks ago, I don't want to use Fareed Zakaria's word but it was false. NATO doesn't move that quickly that they could change it even if they admitted to his suggestion.

Then when he said would he find common ground with Russia and at the same time a few minutes earlier talking about Patton being his hero, I wish we could recreate Patton so Patton could tell him that's a hard thing to do and we've been trying to do that for about a hundred years.

I don't think Mr. Trump has the solutions for that and the final thing that you've been talking about, the extreme vetting procedures. And when he used extreme repeatedly three different times during the speech, that scares the heck out of me. I have family members who are friends of Japanese internment civilians during World War II, that was probably the darkest time in our history when we eliminated constitutional rights for citizens

[16:00:00] That kind of talk just scares me.

BALDWIN: Thank you so much. Coming up here, we will talk about a current Trump foreign policy here. CNN special live coverage continues just after this.