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Erin Burnett Outfront
Bill Clinton Explains Wife's Health Scare; Trump: Clinton's "Deplorables" Remark Disqualifies Her; Trump Hasn't Donated To His Foundation Since 2008; Bill Clinton: Hillary Has Had Dehydration Spells Before; Manhunt on for Suspect Who Set Fire to Florida Mosque. Aired 7-8p ET
Aired September 12, 2016 - 19:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[19:00:13] ERIN BURNETT, CNN ANCHOR: OUTFRONT next, the breaking news, Bill Clinton speaking out about his wife's health. His explanation for her health scare tonight.
Plus, Trump's running mate refuses to call KKK Leader David Duke deplorable.
And win or lose, Donald Trump is open for business tonight on Pennsylvania Avenue, yes, let's go OUTFRONT.
Good evening, I'm Erin Burnett. OUTFRONT, the breaking news, Bill Clinton speaking out moments ago to CBS News, insisting his wife's health care was little more than the effects of dehydration, ensuring that she's ready to get back to campaigning but saying that this has happened before. This as the Clinton campaign spent the day scrambling to explain the health care. A Clinton spokesman admitting the campaign should have provided, quote, "More information more quickly promising to release more detailed medical records soon."
Clinton, herself dismissing any concerns tweeting she was just taking off for a sick day. She said, "Like anyone who's ever been homesick from work, I'm just anxious to get back out there. See you on the trail soon."
Joe Johns begins our coverage outside Clinton's home in Chappaqua, New York. And Joe, we've heard a lot from the Clinton campaign today, the candidate, herself though know she has been behind closed doors.
JOE JOHNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Erin, she has been behind closed doors all day. Pardon me, fire engine passing behind me right now. She's been behind closed door all day. We haven't seen her, we don't expect to. The campaign has both suggested that some mistakes were made in the way all of this was handled, at least in terms of public information. But also indicating that the story we heard late yesterday is the story that they stand by, that she was diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday.
Continued to push through or power through as has been said. And then on Sunday at the 9/11 memorial in New York City became dehydrated and since has become rehydrated with the help of a doctor. Apparently on about antibiotics. But she's not expected to leave here or at least to go and do a lot of active campaigning out in the West as she was originally planning to do. I am going to stay close by while President Bill Clinton, the former president fills in in California as well as Nevada on Wednesday and Thursday. So we await what the campaign says will happen next, and we'll let you know. Erin, back to you.
BURNETT: All right, Joe Johns, thank you very much.
And one of the questions tonight is, of course, how this will affect the campaign. Brianna Keilar is OUTFRONT.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hillary Clinton is out of sight, resting up as she tries to kick a bout of pneumonia. Clinton canceling a trip to California today after abruptly leaving a 9/11 ceremony Sunday when a bystander shot this video of Clinton stumbling and being helped into her van by secret service.
ROBBY MOOK, HILLARY CLINTON CAMPAIGN MANAGER: My understanding is she did not lose consciousness.
KEILAR: After Clinton paid a visit to her daughter, Chelsea's apartment, she appeared in better shape.
HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: A beautiful day in New York.
KEILAR: But her campaign concedes it should have been more upfront about her condition.
BRIAN FALLON, HILLARY CLINTON CAMPAIGN PRESS SECRETARY: Retrospect, I think we should have provided more information more quickly.
KEILAR: Clinton's doctor diagnosed her on Friday, days after an extended public coughing fit explained at the time as seasonal allergies.
CLINTON: Every time I think about Trump, I get allergic.
KEILAR: But Friday's pneumonia diagnosis wasn't made public until Sunday. The health scare follows months of Donald Trump questioning her physical fitness.
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: She didn't go to Louisiana. She didn't go to Mexico. She was invited. She doesn't have the strength or the stamina to America great again.
KEILAR: Trump's response to Clinton's illness, subdued even as he insinuates something more could be going on.
TRUMP: It was interesting because they say pneumonia on Friday but she was coughing very, very badly a week ago. And even before that, if you remember. This wasn't the first time. So it's very interesting to see what is going on. I want her to get better. I want her to get out there. I look forward to seeing her in the debate. KEILAR: Clinton's campaign is now batting away unfounded claims from
Trump surrogates that she never fully recovered from the concussion she suffered in 2012 which caused a blood clot between her skull and brain.
FALLON: The reality is that the pneumonia is the extent of what she has been diagnosed with. There are no other undisclosed conditions. There's nothing that happened yesterday that was caused by or related to what happened in 2012.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Secretary, how are you feeling?
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KEILAR: Now, the campaign is saying that Clinton is going to be releasing more medical information this week, Erin. It's also important to note that as Bill Clinton is going to be filling in for his wife at some of these fund-raisers. She he is tonight going to be addressing donors via a teleconference, so trying to kind of make her presence known. And also Bill Clinton did just speak a short time ago to Charlie Rose in an interview that's going to air in its entirety a little later.
And in it, he actually says that over the years on more than one occasion, Hillary Clinton has gotten dehydrated as we saw yesterday. And he says that when pressed, that this was dehydration, nothing more. He said if it's more than that, it's news to him.
[19:05:38] BURNETT: All right. Thank you very much, Brianna.
OUTFRONT now Dr. Sanjay Gupta, our chief medical correspondent, a practicing neurosurgeon. Ron Brownstein, senior editor of The Atlantic. And David Gergen who served as adviser to four presidents, Reagan and Clinton among them.
Brianna just referencing what I mentioned at the top of the show, Bill Clinton saying that this had happened before. Let me just play for you exactly how he said it in that conversation with Charlie Rose.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BILL CLINTON (D), 42ND PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, if it is, it's a mystery to me and all of her doctors. Rarely, but on more than one occasion over the last many, many years, the same sort of thing happened to her when she just got severely dehydrated. And she's worked like a demon as you know as secretary of state and as a senator and in the years since.
CHARLIE ROSE, CBS NEWS ANCHOR: But more importantly, she's on a grueling campaign.
B. CLINTON: Yes.
ROSE: And you know what that's like.
B. CLINTON: I do. ROSE: She's older than you were when you ran.
B. CLINTON: And she's had two-and-a-half hard days before the day when she got dizzy. But today she made a decision, which I think was correct, to cancel her campaign day.
ROSE: Right.
B. CLINTON: To take one more day to rest.
ROSE: Is it possible she will be away for weeks from the campaign trail?
B. CLINTON: No, not a shot.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: Sanjay, so what do you say? I mean, operative line there is, over the last many, many years, the same sort of things happened to her when she got severely dehydrated. Sort of saying don't worry about it because it's happened before?
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: I think that's what he's saying, he's saying, look, it's not as big a deal, this has happened before, she's obviously recovered. But at the same time, he's saying, look, this has happened before. And what has happened before is that the image that people are sort of left with of her trying to get into that van. So, the fact that that's happened before is probably not exactly what he was trying to convey, but this wasn't as big a deal I think as what people may think.
BURNETT: So, what else do we need to know? I mean, I'm sure you have a lot of questions. What else do we need to know? Especially now that he's coming out and saying this has happened before.
GUPTA: There's still not a lot of information here. That sort of the striking thing. And sometimes within medicine, you know, you feel like you're getting inside baseball a little bit but we know she has pneumonia. We found that out two days after she was diagnosed. We still don't know what type of pneumonia she has. That's important because it can be -- there's pneumonias then there are pneumonias, there can be much more serious depending on what the cause of the pneumonia is.
BURNETT: Uh-hm.
GUPTA: Did she have a chest x-ray? How much of her lung is actually involved? Former President Clinton is saying she'll be back in a day based on what? Based on, is there some sort of medical criteria for that? She's been treated with an antibiotic. What is this antibiotic? Those are things that actually become relevant, Erin, when trying to determine how someone is going to recover, when she's going to recover. I have no doubt that this is treatable. I think that, you know, it's very treatable. But the real question is how's it going to be treated, how long is it going to take? BURNETT: And what's the impact, then, Ron, I mean, of the incident,
itself, and look, you know, when you go through the history here, we know she's had blood clots before three times. Bill Clinton was the person who came out last time obviously and said that it took her six months to recover from one that was in her skull. The video, look, it's startling and it's upsetting. Okay? We've all seen it. And I sort of watched it again and again. Because, you know, your heart goes out to somebody. You think what is wrong? This is someone who wants to be commander-in-chief. I mean, in every level, it's startling. Ron, does this episode hurt her with voters?
RON BROWNSTEIN, SENIOR EDITOR, THE ATLANTIC: I think if this is it, not much, or at all, really. I mean, if she's sick, she has pneumonia, if she gets treated and she's better, we move on. If there are more indications of ill health as the campaign goes on, this raises the stakes. And Bill Clinton's language is very strange there. Because they are attributing what we saw to pneumonia. And depending on how you interpret what he has said, he is saying that this is something like this has happened before.
Presumably, she's not had pneumonia before. So, there's could be another round of questions based on what he said. But I think if, you know, if you have one candidate, 69 on Election Day, Inauguration Day, another candidate who's going to be 70 on Inauguration Day, there is clearly a need for more information about their health than we have received so far. If nothing else, this is going to catalyze that.
BURNETT: Sanjay, what do you say before I bring David and Bill on that issue that Ron raises, but if he is saying it happened before, presumably not linked to pneumonia, does that raise more questions neurologically?
GUPTA: There are different reasons people become dehydrated clearly.
BURNETT: Yes.
GUPTA: But I think Ron brings up a great point, this time it was related to pneumonia. Before they told there was pneumonia, they said, hey look, she's on a thyroid medication that increases her hidden tolerance. She's on her doses of anti-histamines which are decongestant, they dry out your sinuses but they can also dry out your body so you become dehydrated. So, there are other reasons for it. I don't think that, it didn't seem to me that the former president was suggesting she'd had pneumonia many times.
BROWNSTEIN: Right.
BURNETT: No, no.
[19:10:18} BROWNSTEIN: But this is a little unclear by what he meant exactly when he said this has happened before.
BURNETT: Right.
BROWNSTEIN: Does he mean the kind of, you know, the wobbly incident?
BURNETT: Right. Exactly what is it that has happened before?
BROWNSTEIN: Right. What is it? We're going to be talking about that tomorrow I guess.
BURNETT: I'm sure we are. And David Gergen, you know, when you put all this in context, of course you have Donald Trump saying he had his physical. He said he is going to put out all the detail, numbers. His tests were Friday. He obviously now must do that. Right? I mean, there is no question. I mean, obviously both of them to need to do it. But he now has to do that whatever those results are.
DAVID GERGEN, FORMER PRESIDENTIAL ADVISER: Well, I think both of them are in a race to get there to clear the record.
BURNETT: Yes.
GERGEN: But there are really two stories here with regard to Hillary Clinton. One is the story of -- about her pneumonia, is she going to get back on her feet quickly? Will she be back on the campaign trail? What where we going to see? But there's the second bigger story, and that is, are we going to know the truth about her larger medical situation? And will they be giving -- they said they were going to disclose some records now.
We don't know what records. I think the next big milestone is when they release those documents and make them available and then we can listen to Sanjay and he can tell us, we have enough to make serious judgments about her overall health or we don't. And if Sanjay concludes, people like Sanjay conclude, we don't, she's going to have a really serious political problem even though she may by all appearances look good.
GUPTA: It's interesting because I think the biggest health issue that I think David is referring to is probably dates back to 2012 and this injury to her head.
BURNETT: The concussion.
GUPTA: The concussion. A brain injury. That also led to this blood clot, as you mentioned, between her skull and her brain. I mean, certainly someone who has a brain injury like that, you do worry, is it going to have any long-term impact? What we hear from her doctors, what is in her medical letters, is that that was tested a year later, that her brain function was tested. That everything returned to normal and that that clot had resolved. That is a summary, that is conclusion based on these doctor's interpretations.
But I think David mentioned a really important point. I think when you release all the medical records, it can really dive into this and see how do they test this, what do they find, what's the impact? Likely it's going to be nothing because that's what her doctor who knows her best to this point has concluded. But I think, you know, being able to see this will be important.
BROWNSTEIN: Erin, we know less about Donald Trump's health at this point. BURNETT: That's right. Of course, we'll see what numbers we get this
week. And that probably will only just start to answer some of the serious questions people have. Thank you, all.
Next, new questions about the Trump Foundation. Did the Trumps use $20,000 of money from their foundation to buy a portrait of Donald Trump?
And, protesters at the opening of the newest luxury Trump hotel. Are his hotels losing business because of his campaign or not?
And after slamming Clinton for calling some Trump supporters deplorable, Mike Pence passed on David Duke.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: You call him a deplorable. You would call him --
MIKE PENCE (R), VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: No, I'm not in the name calling business, Wolf.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[19:16:13] BURNETT: Breaking news, Donald Trump standing up for his supporters tonight. Moments ago at a rally, Trump taking Hillary Clinton to task for calling half of his supporters, quote, "deplorables," and, quote, "irredeemable."
Clinton expressing regret for part of that. He says, doesn't cut it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Hillary Clinton spoke with hatred in her heart for these working-class Americans. Absolute hatred in her heart. Never in history has a major party presidential candidate so viciously demonized the American voter.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: How big of an issue will this be?
Sara Murray is OUTFRONT.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SARA MURRAY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The biggest gift of Donald Trump's presidential campaign may have just arrived in a basket.
TRUMP: She called half of our supporters a basket of deplorables. She divides people into baskets as though they were objects, not human beings.
MURRAY: Trump seizing today on this comment from Hillary Clinton at a fund-raiser last week. CLINTON: To just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of
Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it.
TRUMP: She and her wealthy donors all had a good laugh.
MURRAY: Today the GOP nominee left to his supporters' defense.
TRUMP: Our support comes from every part of America and every walk of life. Millions of working-class families who just want a better future.
MURRAY: And now he's calling on Clinton to disavow her comments.
TRUMP: If Hillary Clinton will not retract her comments in full, I don't see how she can credibly campaign any further.
MURRAY: While Clinton says she regrets lumping half of Trump's supporters together as deplorable, she also said she won't stop calling out bigotry and racist rhetoric in this campaign. It's a debate her campaign says it's more than happy to have.
FALLON: We cannot treat Donald Trump as a normal presidential candidate. The idea that somebody is running a campaign that is engaging in this type of hate-filled demagoguery in 2016 is deplorable.
MURRAY: As for Trump, he does have a history of elevating some of his intolerant supporters. He's re-tweeted to his 11 million followers, racially charged images and comments from white supremacists with handles like white genocide. After Clinton's latest comment, David Duke, a white nationalist, who supports Trump, took to Twitter with this superhero style image proudly touting himself as one of Trump's deplorables. But even today Trump's running-mate, Mike Pence, declined to use that term to describe the former Ku Klux Klan leader.
PENCE: Donald Trump is denounced David Duke repeatedly. When we don't want his support and we don't want the support of people who think --
WOLF: You call him a deplorable?
PENCE: No, I'm not in the name calling business.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MURRAY: Now, even as Donald Trump was defending his supporters, there was an incident with one of them tonight at his event in North Carolina. The man appeared to get into an altercation, hitting and appearing to shove a number of the protesters who were there. Now, my colleagues who were on the ground for that event, Jeremy Diamond and Noah Gray have been reporting that even though the protesters were escorted out after this, the Trump supporter who hit them was allowed to stay -- Erin.
BURNETT: All right. Thank you very much, Sara. OUTFRONT now, Donald Trump supporter Kayleigh McEnany, Hillary Clinton
supporter Karine Jean-Pierre, Washington Bureau chief for The Daily Beast, Jackie Kucinich. Ron Brownstein also back with me.
I want to talk about that video in a moment. But Jackie, first of all, Clinton says she regrets now using the word half of Trump supporters. She is not taking back deplorable, irredeemable. Lasting damage or not?
JACKIE KUCINICH, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, THE DAILY BEAST: This is not going to go away for her. And the people that could alienate are those blue collar workers that she's really been reaching out too. She's been sending Biden, she's been sending Bill, she's been sending them to talk to them. Those are the people she has to worry about that's really alienating at the end of the day because if they don't go and read the entire remarks, that little snippet sounds like she's talking about anybody.
BURNETT: Karine?
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE, NATIONAL SPOKESWOMAN, MOVEON.ORG: No, look, I disagree. I don't think this is going to hurt her at all. Because I think, look, we've been watching this election cycle for the past 15 months. There has been an element of his supporters that have been deplorable. Right? And we've seen at his campaigns, we've seen footage of people yelling white power, we've seen the full-throated support of David Duke. You know, and we've seen confederate flags hanging over, you know, at her events. So there is like, this is -- she's not making this up. These are his own words and these things are happening at these events.
BURNETT: Taking out of context.
[19:21:03] JEAN-PIERRE: But hold on a second. And then, let's look at the polling. Thirty five percent of Trump supporters -- I'm sorry, Trump supports believe that President Obama was born, you know, 60 percent of Trump supporters believe President Obama was not born in this country. I mean, it goes on and on. Thirty five percent of voters think that he's racist. So it doesn't -- I mean, this is what's happening in the last 15 months. So the question that I have is, is he going to disavow this element, right, that are deplorable?
KAYLEIGH MCENANY, DONALD TRUMP SUPPORTER: You know what, I think, President Obama said it best four years ago, when he said, when you're running for president of the United States, you're running to represent all Americans, you are not running to represent half of Americans. That was in reference to Mitt Romney's 47 percent comment. And I couldn't agree with him more. For Hillary Clinton to cast dispersions on me and my family and all the millions of hardworking people out there, veterans who support her, military men and women.
And by the way, the other half of Trump supporters, she also cast dispersion on, saying they're desperate falling into this trap. This is half of the country. When you want to be president of the United States, it is reprehensible to characterize millions of millions of people as racist, Islamaphobic -- (TALKING OVER EACH OTHER)
BROWNSTEIN: They might be equally reprehensible --
MCENANY: Donald Trump never did that.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, he did.
MCENANY: He never did that.
BROWNSTEIN: All right. Look, it is always a mistake -- it is always a mistake for a candidate to impugn the motives of the people running for the other side. It's never a good idea. But having said that, it is too simple to describe this as a gaffe that would hurt her I think. Because the fundamental dividing line between these two coalitions is more cultural than classic at this point. And the Democratic coalition overwhelmingly is composed of the groups that are most comfortable with the increasingly diverse culturally and racial society we're evolving into and on taking on this fight, Hillary Clinton is portraying herself as defending those values against a candidate that they view as uniquely threatening to those values.
So in the same way that this is I think Donald Trump is going to, you know, bat, you know, bang on this to mobilize his base, it is something that unifies the modern Democratic coalition. His key components overwhelmingly. For example, ABC/"Washington Post" poll view Trump as biased against women and minorities.
BURNETT: All right. I want to play again the other issue Karine that just happened of course which is Trump's running-mate Mike Pence who was on with Wolf and was asked about the KKK, former KKK grand master David Duke and whether he's deplorable. So he went out, he said I disavow him, we don't want his support. You just heard him. Let me just play another part of how he did not call him deplorable. Here he is.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WOLF: You'd call him a deplorable? You would call him --
PENCE: No, I'm not in the name calling business, Wolf.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BURNETT: Was that a smart move?
KUCINICH: Of course David Duke is deplorable. Of course he is. He's a KKK member. I don't understand how questions like that don't have -- don't have immediate answers.
BURNETT: Why doesn't he just say, yes, of course, he is but I don't want to call names, we disavow -- why not answer it that way?
MCENANY: He did say it immediately, we've renounced his support, we don't expect --
(TALKING OVER EACH OTHER)
BURNETT: He did --
MCENANY: Anyone who wants to, again, mischaracterize Mike Pence who's a man of upstanding resilient, incredible character, he is not that -- David Duke -- David Duke has no place in this party. I'm still waiting on Hillary Clinton to renounce the KKK grand dragon in California who's endorsed her. I'm waiting for her to be asked those same questions and renounce that support. It is and I'm still waiting for her to renounce her support of Robert Byrd, her mentor, who was a KKK grand master --
JEAN-PIERRE: But she actually apologized for that.
BURNETT: So, Karine, when he says he has to place in our party, we don't want to support, we disavow and he wouldn't use the word deplorable. You know, David Chalian was saying, one our political directors that, the reason was, they want the word, deplorable, to be associated with Hillary Clinton. Right? He didn't want to take that on. Do you buy that or do you take some more motive --
JEAN-PIERRE: Here's an opportunity for the Trump campaign once again to disavow David Duke.
MCENANY: He did.
JEAN-PIERRE: No. No, he didn't.
MCENANY: He was asked --
JEAN-PIERRE: He didn't even know who he was. I mean, you know what, that should disqualify you for running for president if you don't know who David Duke is, period.
MCENANY: He has disavowed time and time again.
JEAN-PIERRE: Former grand wizard of the KKK.
MCENANY: And then he's talked about reaching out to African- Americans?
JEAN-PIERRE: He's disavowed two dozen times.
MCENANY: What disqualifies a candidate who says I can't represent half of this country because I view them as racist, Islamaphobic, homophobics, that is disqualifying.
JEAN-PIERRE: There is an element of Trump supporters --
BURNETT: All right.
MCENANY: It's not half this country. I am here to tell you.
JEAN-PIERRE: I am telling you there is an element. And that's how he got into the foray of politics in 2011.
BURNETT: All right. We're going to hit pause. You'll going to be back with me.
Next, new questions about the Trump Foundation. Is Donald Trump giving away other people's money to charity?
And if you're planning a trip to the inauguration, Donald Trump has a heck of a deal for you.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:29:29] BURNETT: Tonight, major questions about the Donald J. Trump Foundation. Trump says he donates millions, but according to the "Washington Post," he hasn't given any money to his own foundation since 2008. He's been giving away other people's money to charity, and according to the "Post" he's actually benefiting from that.
OUTFRONT tonight, David Fahrenthold, he has been investigating the Trump Foundation for the "Post" for months and months. A lot of articles and stories on this, David. Trump not donating to his own foundation since 2008. You are reporting, though that he has benefited personally from that foundation. Tell us how.
[19:30:01] DAVID FAHRENTHOLD, INVESTIGATING TRUMP FOUNDATION FOR THE WASHINGTON POST: Well, in a couple of ways. One is that he's actually used money from the foundation, which is earmarked for charitable purposes, to buy things for himself. He once bought, he spent $12,000 of the foundation's money to buy himself an autographed football helmet and he also spent $20,000 of the foundation' money to buy a giant six-foot-tall portrait of himself.
In both cases, that seems to be a violation of the IRS's rules which say that a charity's leaders can't spend the charity's money to buy things for themselves. In addition, Trump uses the money -- that's other people's money in his foundation. He gives it to charities that do business at his clubs in Florida. Trump can make up to $265,000 off one night, one charity gala at Mar-A-Lago. So, it uses these other people's money to cement those relationships.
ERIN BURNETT, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Now, when you have foundations, people can give to foundations, right? And then those foundations give money away. So that in and of itself happens in plenty of cases, but when you say he's not giving to his own foundation, the big question, of course, is he giving to charity, himself, in his own name, not through his foundation? What have you found there?
FAHRENTHOLD: Well, so far, I called 326 charities that seem to be closely tied to Donald Trump looking for evidence that they had gotten money from Trump. I'm not trying to find all of his charitable donations, but trying to find some sign that they're out there. And between 2008 and this May, I found just one donation out of Trump's own pocket. That was in 2009 and it was for less than $10,000.
BURNETT: And it was and you've called 326. So, again, to make the point on that, obviously, there could be other large donations you did not find, but you found whatever charities that had links to Trump, himself, that you would have thought those would be ones he gave to? FAHRENTHOLD: That's right. First of all, I asked the Trump campaign
a number of times, hey, there's a list of organizations he's given money to, give it to me. They haven't. So, I tried to reconstruct my own list. So, I look at groups he'd given money to from the Trump Foundation, other people's money, groups he praised in public, groups where he'd gone to their galas, anybody who had a connection to Trump looking for evidence he'd given their money, his money.
BURNETT: All right. Well, thank you very much. As I said, David has done a lot of reporting on this. Thank you.
And joining us now, Trump senior adviser, Boris Epshteyn, Clinton supporter, Sally Kohn, Kayleigh and Karine are back with me.
Boris, what do you make of this? Look, I pointed out, you can have a foundation and have other give to your foundation. You don't have to fund it all yourself, right? So, that in and of itself is not something that would necessarily be wrong. But he reports, foundation buying an autographed Tim Tebow helmet, a picture of himself. It certainly doesn't look good.
BORIS EPSHTEYN, SENIOR ADVISER, DONALD TRUMP CAMPAIGN: Under applicable IRS laws, you have to take other people's money into a public foundation. That's how that's structured. So if you did not, you fail to continue as a public charity. In this case, he's following those applicable rules and regulations.
BURNETT: What about those two instances David was reporting on, the football helmet and the picture?
EPSHTEYN: David said it seems -- David's not a lawyer, he's someone who's obsessed with the story. It seems that it's somehow against IRS rules. It absolutely was not.
KAYLEIGH MCENANY, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: David left out the fact the Tim Tebow paraphernalia was at a Susan G. Komen Foundation where he auctioned for those goods. And Boris is correct to say it seems like it was illegal under the self dealing rules.
You can't come on this network and leave out the fact that this was auction. He just made it seem like he went on Amazon and bought this. That is dishonest journalism we saw right there from the "Washington Post."
EPSHTEYN: Here's the key --
BURNETT: The reality is, though --
EPSHTEYN: David has been obsessed with this for month.
BURNETT: He used foundation money to buy the football helmet he now has, himself. Forget laws and rules. That to most people smells a little fun.
EPSHTEYN: If anyone can prove, David or anyone else, that Donald Trump did anything that's inappropriate or somehow illegal with the two instances, then go and do that. David can't. That's why he's trying to make Donald Trump and this campaign prove a negative. So, he's saying, well, I'm calling all these charities and they're not giving me --
(CROSSTALK)
BURNETT: It should be easy for him to give a list of organizations to which he has donated money and someone to go and verify --
EPSHTEYN: How does that impact his ability to be president? This doesn't matter at all.
BURNETT: He's not put his taxes out there. We can't look that way. I'm not going to argue --
(CROSSTALK)
BURNETT: Go ahead, Sally.
SALLY KOHN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: If you want to question why this bears on his ability to be president, why have we been scrutinizing every single aspect of the Clinton foundation beyond just those, also the donations where the money went, et cetera.
EPSHTEYN: She was secretary of@ state.
KOHN: Number one -- I see. Let's keep changing the bar. Number two, I'm going to buy a giant bottle of champagne and I'm going to open the moment that Kayleigh and Boris can find to criticize Donald Trump on. He didn't contribute his own money to his foundation and took the money that was supposed to be going to charity and used it to, you're right, make donation and purchase objects he then kept. The piece we did --
(CROSSTALK)
EPSHTEYN: Can you prove he kept those --
KOHN: Boris, I'm going to talk now.
The thing we didn't mention, there were five sizable donations that he reported to the IRS. That that reporter found were fraudulent. They --
EPSHTEYN: That is factually incorrect.
KOHN: Turned tout be the money that was given to Pam Bondi --
(CROSSTALK)
[19:35:01] BURNETT: Let Karine get in.
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE, HILLARY CLINTON SUPPORTER: We've already seen, like, the foundation has already gotten themselves in trouble by doing the, you know, given money to the attorney general. They got fined by the IRS. The IRS actually said it was unlawful. EPSHTEYN: It was self-reporting.
JEAN-PIERRE: OK. Whatever, it's still -- he was fined. He was fined that.
EPSHTEYN: I know he paid the fine.
JEAN-PIERRE: But it was still wrong.
EPSHTEYN: Twenty-five hundred bucks.
JEAN-PIERRE: It doesn't matter how much it was.
(CROSSTALK)
KAYLEIGH: Everyone wants to get on Donald Trump's case. We don't want to get into numbers here. You're talking about five disclosures. Let's talk about over half of Hillary Clinton's meetings as secretary of state were with foundation donors --
(CROSSTALK)
BURNETT: One of the things I want to talk about on the money front, which is Trump today slammed Janet Yellen. That's obviously the top economic leader in this country, head of the Fed which is supposed to be an independent leader of monetary policy in this country. Here's how he said it on CNBC.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: She's keeping them artificially low to get Obama retired. I think she's very political and to a certain extent she should be ashamed of herself.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
BURNETT: That is supposed to independent, why we have a strong dollar, why our country is country everyone wants to do business in.
EPSHTEYN: Hillary Clinton did the same thing in 2008 when running for president. She criticized then chair of the Fed, Ben Bernanke. Donald Trump is absolutely in his right as a citizen --
BURNETT: For policy but not necessarily -- she didn't accuse him of trying to support the president at that time.
EPSHTEYN: Listen, if you look as somebody in finance, our interest rates are unbelievably low, they have been kept low, they're propping up this economy and they're propping up a bubble. Donald Trump is right on the key here, he's right on the issue. This economy is in a bubble because of --
BURNETT: Sally?
KOHN: This is the Donald Trump choose your own facts election. This is the same kind of conundrum we're having with the unemployment rate. He unemployment -- if the unemployment rate continues to be low, it's lower than it has been, record for decade. Then, all of a sudden, Republicans and Donald Trump say that's not the real unemployment rate. I think he actually said real unemployment is somewhere around 40 percent.
But mind you, if the same statisticians said the unemployment rate were actually double, triple, four times what it is, then Donald Trump will be holding that number up and saying, oh, how abysmal.
EPSHTEYN: That's not a factual answer.
KOHN: He doesn't like the-
EPSHTEYN: That's not a factual answer. On the Fed, Donald Trump is 100 percent correct.
BURNETT: All right.
KOHN: He's keeping interest rates low to stimulate our economy.
EPSHTEYN: That's a bubble, Sally. As someone in finance, I can tell you it's a bubble.
(CROSSTALK)
BURNETT: Thanks to all.
And next, win or lose, Donald Trump is in open for business on Pennsylvania Avenue. Tonight, he'll make money of the inauguration whether he's there or not. Is his hotel empire, though, taking a hit because of his campaign?
And our special report on presidential candidates and presidents who hid their health problems.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:41:44] BURNETT: The newest Trump luxury hotel just down the street from the White House is open for business tonight. A room right now will cost you $750 a night. Protesters taking advantage of the opening, blocking the entrance for hours, fighting against Trump's comments about immigration. But have Trump's comments hurt not?
Phil Mattingly is OUTFRONT.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Donald Trump is open for business on Pennsylvania Avenue. Trump International Hotel, the 263-room, $200 million luxury establishment, sitting on prime real estate just a few blocks from the White House.
TRUMP: We are way ahead of schedule and the quality is even better than we thought, and we're right on budget, and it's been a great thing. MATTINGLY: But an ongoing court battle raises another key question,
what affect the Trump candidacy had on his business empire? Trump's campaign says his extensive portfolio has, quote, "continued perform exceptionally well" throughout Trump's 15 months on the trail. But there have been no shortage of headlines claiming the opposite.
There's an August report from data scientists at the app company, Foursquare, show among its 50 million users, foot traffic at Trump's properties dropped 17 percent over the course of a year. But the Trump organization says its portfolio is, quote, "exceeding all targets, across a variety of metrics, including group bookings and reservations volume."
Still, when it comes to Trump's newest hotel, there's no question the billionaire's candidacy has caused problems -- problems that led Trump to file lawsuits against two celebrity chefs, Jose Andres and Geoffrey Zakarian, who pulled out of deals to open restaurants at his D.C. location because of these comments.
TRUMP: They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists and some I assume are good people.
MATTINGLY: Trump in a deposition for the suit reviewed by CNN said he hadn't put any thought into the negative impact on his business empire those comments may have had.
But Zakarian made clear, it was a choice he had to make, noting the threat to his, quote, "reputation and his financial future".
But he also noted there were, quote, "moralistic reasons", saying, quote, "all my employees are Mexicans or Hispanics, almost all of them. It's disgraceful."
The hotel will take a hit to its bottom line. It was unable to find a restaurateur willing to step in for Zakarian. Trump's suit claims $5 million in lost revenues, alone, but for now, Trump has shown little concern about any potential business hits. And he has taken to touting his new-crowned jewel amid the daily political battles.
TRUMP: We built the largest luxury ballroom in Washington, and meeting rooms and spas.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They needed one of those.
TRUMP: It's really -- it's really going to be a great tribute to our country.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MATTINGLY: And, Erin, that new hotel is prime real estate, no doubt about it. In fact, it's smack in the middle of where the inaugural parade will go through on January 20th of next year. That, hotel officials said, all but guarantees it will be sold out that week, rooms prices then starting at about $1,250.
But, Erin, if you want to go really big-time, the hotel is offering a package for $500,000. That includes spa treatments, a dinner for up to 24, custom-made bryonies suits, first-class airfare and, yes, Trump family commemorative plates -- Erin.
[19:45:11] BURNETT: All right. Thank you very much, Phil Mattingly.
OUTFRONT next, surveillance video of a man running from the mosque where the Orlando gunman Omar Mateen prayed as it was set on fire overnight. Was it retaliation?
And our special report on presidential candidates who hid health problems. Some stuff in here you may never have heard before. It's pretty stunning. Why it matters so much tonight.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BURNETT: Breaking news, Bill Clinton speaking out moments ago to CBS News insisting his wife's health care was just effects of dehydration, saying she's experienced the same sort of thing before. Her campaign, meanwhile, admitting the episode was mishandled, saying they were more concerned about her condition than just dating the press. It's far from the first time health questions have swirled around presidential candidates, though, or frankly that candidates have kept the press in the dark.
Kyung Lah is OUTFRONT.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hillary Clinton is hardly the first candidate to visibly fall ill in the glare of running for president.
1992, President George H.W. Bush fainting and vomiting into the lap of the Japanese prime minister. His campaign blamed the flu. Bush 41 was in the middle of a tough re-election campaign against a much younger candidate, Bill Clinton.
DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: That video clip in today's parlance went viral, kept being shown over and over again on television and it leads one to think that the candidate is weak.
[19:50:08] LAH: That fear consistent through presidential times, says historian Doug Brinkley, as are the very human condition of illness.
1840, William Henry Harrison was elected president. You may not have heard of him because he stubbornly refused to wear a coat at his inauguration, caught a pneumonia and died after being president just one month.
In 1933, candidate Franklin Delano Roosevelt publicly acknowledged his illness, polio, opening up a retreat for polio patients. Once elected, he famously restricted photographers from documenting his disability. This being one of the few film clips of FDR in a wheelchair.
JOHN F. KENNEDY, FORMER PRESIDENT: We happen to live in the most dangerous time. LAH: There are the candidates who simply lie about their health.
John F. Kennedy projected youth, energy, when in reality his family and advisers kept his medical records and treatment inside the White House secret, hiding a rare autoimmune disease.
BRINKLEY: It's almost impossible to get away with it in this new media culture.
LAH: Video now captures stumbles like Bob Dole's plunge off the stage, and Gerald Ford falling down the steps of Air Force One. Both eventually satirized then weaponized in the political forum against the older men.
Learning from the past, John McCain chose to open up volumes of his medical history. Joe Biden did the same, though his disclosure came two decades after suffering an aneurism. Vice President Dick Cheney's heart issues were public, his resignation letter in case he became incapacitated while in office. Then, there's recent history's most elderly nominee flipping his age on its head.
BRINKLEY: Sometimes presidents are able to get rid of issues of health effectively. I remember in 1984 when Ronald Reagan, you know, flipped it on a debate.
RONALD REAGAN, FORMER PRESIDENT: I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience.
LAH: The Republican president perhaps a cue for this contender.
BRINKLEY: I think the debates for Hillary Clinton are going to be a way for her to outperform him, outduel him and show that her stamina is for real and that this setback of pneumonia was just that, a normal, human condition that hits a lot of us when we're overworked and exhausted.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LAH: So, here's what historians have to say to the Clinton campaign. Recent history has shown that it is best to be honest with the voters before the voters learn about it some other way.
So, Erin, here's something important to remember. FDR, JFK in today's media landscape probably would have been busted for hiding something from those voters -- Erin.
BURNETT: Absolutely.
All right. Kyung, thank you very much.
David Gergen is back with me.
And, David, you look at Kyung's reporting, history o presidential candidates with health issues, keeping it quiet, pointblank lying about it, doesn't it just feed into conspiracy theories about health when you don't come clean? DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Absolutely. And, listen,
people in the past did hide it. Franklin Roosevelt, most famous case in history, when everybody thought he had beaten polio, had gotten up and walked again. It wasn't true. That's why he kept the photographers away.
John F. Kennedy lied about -- John Kennedy had, like, I think four different final rites before he became president. His health was very precarious.
But in the modern age, we don't accept that when we've had three recent presidents, really started with Reagan when he was the oldest president elected and people insisted on his health records. He put them out there. Bob Dole put them out there.
John McCain then set the gold standard. He -- all those records we just saw from the McCain campaign, opened them to reporters, not to the public, opened up all that stuff to reporters. Made a huge difference.
BURNETT: All right. Well, David Gergen, thank you very much.
GERGEN: Thank you.
BURNETT: Obviously a lot more to come on this one.
And next, the breaking news, a manhunt under way for the person in this video. You see that man running across there. Well, he torched a mosque. A mosque once attended by the Orlando nightclub gunman. Was it payback?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:57:50] BURNETT: And a programming note: Hillary Clinton is going to speak about her health for the first time since he fainted yesterday right here live on CNN with Anderson next hour. You're going to want to stay for that. Obviously, very significant coming up next hour.
Breaking news: a manhunt on tonight for the suspect who deliberately set fire to the mosque the Orlando nightclub gunman Omar Mateen attended. This surveillance video shows a bright flash coming into the Islamic center in Ft. Pierce, then you see a person, a man there, as you see, running across with what appears to be jeans or sweat pants and light colored shirt running across your screen.
This is the same mosque I was at after Mateen slaughtered people in that horrific, horrific attack in Orlando. (INAUDIBLE), I met him there, he's known Mateen since he was a child, he was worried about others following suit. He sent me this picture of the fire's aftermath today. You can see the destruction there, burning down the mosque.
Boris Sanchez is OUTFRONT. He's in Ft. Pierce tonight.
And, Boris, you know, we see that video of the man running across right after he appears to light this fire. What do we know about him tonight, the suspect?
BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Frankly, Erin, at this time, we don't know much about the suspect. That's part of the reason officials put out this video hoping that someone that knows this suspect might identify him and lead officials to him. What you see in the video is startling.
This man was wearing a bandanna covering his face wearing a hat as well, button-down shirt and embroidered jeans. He shows up to the mosque about 11:30 last night in a Harley Davidson style motorcycle, and then you see him holding a bottle of some kind of liquid and paper. Suddenly in the video, there's a flash and you see him fleeing the scene.
Officials wouldn't publicly speculate as to a motive, but sources do tell CNN that this is being investigated as a hate crime. It's not only related to the shooter in the Orlando nightclub shooting, it was also the 15th anniversary of September 11th, obviously, and a Muslim holiday as well, Eid al Adha, and morning prayer was set for 9:00 a.m. this morning. That obviously had to be relocated.
I spoke to officials who said there's no question, Erin, that this is a hate crime. Hopefully they'll get answers as to why someone would do this soon -- Erin.
BURNETT: All right. Boris, thank you very much. And thanks to all of you for joining us. You can watch our show anytime, anywhere on CNN Go.
"AC360" is next.
