Stumping Trump on Foreign Policy
BRIAN STELTER, CNN HOST: Hey, good morning. I'm Brian Stelter. And it's time for RELIABLE SOURCES. We have a fantastic lineup of stories for you this Labor Day weekend from what looks like a campaign at FOX News to label Black Lives Matter a murder movement, to the Colbert-ization of the late show. Yes, Stephen Colbert preparing to step out of character and maybe break some big news with Joe Biden. But let's begin with a name you've heard once or twice on this show before, Donald Trump. All summer, critics have been accusing the political press of letting Trump run amok, reveling in the circus atmosphere of his campaign while giving him a pass on substance. Well, this week, conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt did not give him a pass. He threw Trump some curveballs, and everybody is talking about it. Here's just an example of what happened.</s>HUGH HEWITT, RADIO HOST: Are you familiar with General Soleimani?</s>DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Yes. I -- but go ahead, give me a little -- go ahead, tell me.</s>HEWITT: He runs the Quds Forces.</s>TRUMP: Yes, OK. Right.</s>HEWITT: Do you expect his behavior --</s>TRUMP: And I think the Kurds, by the way, have been horribly mistreated by us.</s>HEWITT: No, not the Kurds, the Quds Forces, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Quds Forces, the bad guys.</s>TRUMP: Yes, right.</s>HEWITT: Do you expect his behavior to change --</s>TRUMP: Oh, I thought you said Kurds, Kurds.</s>HEWITT: No, Quds.</s>TRUMP: Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you said Kurds.</s>STELTER: So, what is it like to stump Trump? Let's ask Hugh Hewitt. He joins me now from Denver. Good morning.</s>HEWITT: Good morning, Brian. Happy birthday weekend to you.</s>STELTER: Thank you. You being here is a great gift. So, tell us your intent with that interview, because you've interviewed Trump many times before, and you told him this time you wanted to ask him some commander-in-chief questions.</s>HEWITT: Yes. I have talked to Donald Trump four times in 30 days. And I don't do gotcha questions. And I'm very open to being criticized by people if they think it's a gotcha question. But when I asked Jeb Bush, would he be hesitant to invade Iraq a third time because of his brother and his father, when I asked Jeb Bush if he was worried about dynastic politics influencing young democracies, these are tough, focused questions. I ask everyone straight, hard- hitting questions. But I have no favorites or disfavorites. So, I didn't think it was really a gotcha question. It was in my mind it was a lead-in to talk with the anti-Iran deal rally that I had done with Ted Cruz the day before.</s>STELTER: Were you surprised he seemed caught off guard?</s>HEWITT: Well, sometimes people are caught off guard, and he had a great interview, by the way. The rest of the interview, he actually had a tough question for me on how would he respond as president if the Chinese were to sink accidentally or intentionally a Japanese or a Philippines vessel, and he gave a very sophisticated I would almost say Nixonian answer about why you don't tell people what you're going to do in certain situations. So, he didn't like some question. He liked the other questions. He took a shot at me, that's fine. I tell people I'm not perfect. I'm just the best on radio. I think I am the best interviewer on radio in the United States. But what's important to me is that people know the debate is coming up. I have no favorite. I have no disfavorite. I'm going to ask them all hard questions because I think the job of hosts is to ask questions that Republican primary viewers, and there are millions of them, and they're across a broad spectrum want answered. And some people want hard questions. Some want softballs. I think I keep in mind the Republican primary voter, who do they want to nominate to run against in all likelihood Hillary Clinton, and how are they going to do that and are they prepared to beat her? So, that's my objective coming up on September 16th when I'm working with Jake Tapper and Dana Bash on the next debate.</s>STELTER: Let me ask you about that in a moment. But let's talk about Trump's reaction to you. Here's what he said on "Morning Joe" on Friday morning.</s>TRUMP (via telephone): By the way, when you say Quds versus Kurds, I thought he said Kurds, this third-rate radio announcer that I did a show. And he was like gotcha, gotcha. Every question was, do I know this one and that one. And, you know, it was like he worked hard on that. But I thought he said Kurds.</s>STELTER: He says he thinks you worked hard to prepare for that interview. Maybe he is just now punching at the messenger.</s>HEWITT: Well, look, I got my Donald Trump tattoo and I'm proud to join Krauthammer and Chuck Todd. But listen, Donald Trump is the great interview of America. I would lead every show with him every time. He has been on four times this month and many other times. He endorsed my book "The Queen" on air. So, I'm like -- you know, if he wants to take a shot at the question, that's fine. If -- in our business, we have to be willing to listen to the criticism. Interesting thing that I did after the conversation with him which I had on air about -- oh, I'm sorry, did you think it was a gotcha question? I didn't.</s>STELTER: Right.</s>HEWITT: I immediately contacted Carly Fiorina before the interview aired, asked her to come on, did not tell her what the questions were and taped an interview of the questions so I could have a control group on whether or not -- because I hate gotcha questions. Who is the president of Nigeria is a gotcha question. I think the difference between Hamas and Hezbollah is significant. But the audience can decide. I will ask them all the same questions.</s>STELTER: And Carly Fiorina received a lot of compliments for the way she answered your questions, some of the same questions.</s>HEWITT: Yes. And she also admitted which is a good thing, sometimes she gets the names confused. Abu Bakr Baghdadi, sometimes Julani, sometimes -- are we talking about Nasrallah and Hezbollah. Are we talking about the guy running Hamas? It's easy to get confused. But what matters to me and where I was going with the interview is Israel is surrounded by proxy states and proxy terrorists of Iran.</s>STELTER: Looking ahead to the debate. You're going to be a questioner. Jake Tapper, the moderator on the September 16th debate. You and Dana Bash will be participating in the questioning. And some people wonder if you'll be fair to Trump. We saw Breitbart.com coming out saying that you can't be fair to Trump, that you're clearly biased. What's your response to them?</s>HEWITT: I'm going to be fair to everyone. I am not biased to anyone. I have no favorites. Same question set I had before. It will not be impacted by Donald Trump's criticism or his praise. People can send me love notes and valentines. They can say horrible things about me. It's not going to change my point of view, which is to ask questions that the Republican primary electorate wants answered. And I hope to do more debates after this. And if the criticism that comes comes and the praise that comes comes, I don't think it should affect our job as journalists. Like I say, I've been doing this for 25 years on television and radio. A lot of times, people have been upset with me. A lot of times, people have been happy with me. It doesn't change my approach and I'm not anti- Donald Trump.</s>STELTER: Hugh, we'll see you at the debate September 16th. Thanks for being here this morning. And before we look ahead to the debate, let's look back, because the Trump show has been, without a doubt, the blockbuster event of the summer. We wanted to trace the arc of the story back to June before he even entered the race. Here we go.</s>CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC: Donald Trump's once again making noise about running for president. Why is anyone taking this talk seriously?</s>TRUMP: They don't think I'm running. Nobody, it's really a funny thing. You maybe surprised.</s>MEGYN KELLY, FOX NEWS: I will only be surprised if you say you are running.</s>GEORGE WILL, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: He will be tempted to run, be predictably shellacked.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do not tell me that Donald Trump is in this to win this, OK? He is a side show.</s>RON REAGAN, COMMENTATOR: This is going to turn a three-ring circus into a freak show.</s>TRUMP: I am officially running for president of the United States.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's running for president. He's running for keep me famous.</s>LOU DOBBS, TV HOST: I thought this was maybe some strategy for a new reality show.</s>CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS: How should Republicans handle Donald Trump?</s>KARL ROVE, GOP STRATEGIST: Ignore him.</s>TRUMP: They all said I'd never run. I announced I was going to run.</s>ROVE: This guy is not a serious candidate.</s>LUKE RUSSERT, NBC NEWS: He has not filed his FEC election papers.</s>TRUMP: Well, he'll never file his forms papers. I filed my form papers. Oh!</s>BRET BAIER, FOX NEWS: He is tapping into something, and angry at politicians, Republicans included.</s>TRUMP: He's a war hero because he was captured.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "Don Voyage", it says. "Trump is toast after insults."</s>KELLY: You've called women you don't like fat pigs, dogs.</s>TRUMP: She starts asking me all sorts of ridiculous questions and, you know, you could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.</s>ANA NAVARRO, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: He creates controversy because that in turn creates media, which in turn keeps him in the headlines.</s>TRUMP: The ratings! They say, if I didn't get ratings, they wouldn't be here.</s>HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I mean, look, it's all entertainment. He is having the time of his life.</s>PAUL BEGALA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Donald Trump is God's gift to the Democratic Party, cable TV pundits and late-night comics. We're having a Trump-gasm.</s>TRUMP: I'm really doing well. I mean, you know, hey, are we leading in every poll? Every single poll.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Putting Donald Trump atop the field of U.S. Republican presidential candidates.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can anyone stop the Trump juggernaut?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's clear that Donald Trump is not what some people think, which is a summer fling.</s>TRUMP: It's the summer of Trump. How good is that for my ego?</s>STELTER: Well, that demonstrates that the summer Trump has confounded the predictions of political talking heads. So, before Labor Day gets here, we thought we'd look back and do some self-examination. It's a clip from mid-July when Trump was taking a lot of heat for seeming to criticize the war record of John McCain. My guests on the program that morning were Nate Cohn, Washington correspondent for "The New York Times", and Rick Wilson, a Republican strategist who has been one of the summer's biggest critics of Trump. Watch.</s>NATE COHN, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Now, what you're going to see the rest of the Republican Party is going to rally against him. That was totally change the way that he is covered for the rest of the campaign. He will now face scrutiny from across the party and from the media. That will eventually blunt his surge in the polls and eventually reverse it.</s>STELTER: Blunt his surge in the polls. Cohn's prediction was that the McCain insults would, quote, "probably mark the moment when Trump's candidacy went from boom to bust." And since that didn't happen, Nate Cohn and Rick Wilson rejoin me right now. Gentlemen, thank you for being here.</s>COHN: Great to be back.</s>RICK WILSON, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Good morning.</s>STELTER: I think this is sounded kind of rare on cable news, to go ahead and look back on what was said before. So, Nate, tell us -- are you surprised that weekend was not more of an infliction point in the race?</s>COHN: Absolutely. I think the clip captures that pretty well. I think that there were two things about what Trump looked like then and what we see now that suggest a much more robust candidacy than it seemed at the time. The first is it looked like Trump was a media-driven candidate. You know, that sounds like it's not important but it really matters in terms of where his support is coming from. If it's just about news coverage and there's nothing else underpinning. Then once the coverage changes, Trump goes away. But I think now we can at least say that he's not just benefiting from media attention. He's driving media attention in really interesting and important ways that allows him to deflect the debate away from maybe things that would otherwise hurt him. The Megyn Kelly thing distracted from his refusal to pledge to stay with the Republican Party. His comments about Jeb Bush speaking Spanish deflected from a very strong attack ad about Jeb Bush -- I'm sorry, about Mr. Trump's record on policy issues that were quite liberal. This is a skill. It's not something that would be like Kim Kardashian, which I think when I was at the show, I joked that Kim Kardashian would benefit from the same media attention. I think that's right to some extent. But Mr. Trump is showing additional skill that wasn't evident at least to me at the time.</s>STELTER: Rick, this was one of those moments where that line, past performance is not a guarantee of future results comes to mind. I mean, you've called Trump a cancer, a giant hair shadow with a delicious hint of fascism. And those are just the quotes I can say on the air. Do you think you've had any impact this summer then?</s>WILSON: You know what? I've come to recognize that the folks in the core of Trump supporters as I like to say, they are post-rational. They don't care what his history, what his record is. They are in love with the celebrity candidate. They're in love with the character Donald Trump plays on TV. They've stopped caring about policy. I do think that the one driver of policy for him is immigration, but the rest of the things -- even when you point out inconsistencies in Trump, they don't care. They're so locked into the dynamic of being with this rebellious media character and the reality TV show that he's creating instead of our normal political dialogue, our normal political discourse, they love it. And the media folks love it and he loves it. We talked about this in the beginning of the summer. The spectacle is great for ratings. It's great -- there is a dynamic there in the fact that he'll call into any show and that everybody will take his calls, you know, has led him to continue to eat up cycles. And the other candidates, you know, they don't have the same privileged position where they can -- you know, Marco Rubio can't call up Sean Hannity and say give me an hour on TV. It's just not going to happen, or Jeb Bush or anybody else. So --</s>STELTER: Maybe it would. I mean, we don't know if we know that for sure. I think some shows would take phone calls from other candidates. But I think you're right to some degree. There is a unique quality to a Trump interview. You're guaranteed to make some news. He is guaranteed to be unpredictable. So, in the minute I have left, we're here all revising our predictions from July. That's great. But a lot of TV pundits are not held accountable very often. There are not a lot of consequences when we or they all get it wrong. So, I wonder if that's a factor in Trump's success -- you know, that voters are tuning out the usual political voices. Rick, to you first. What do you think?</s>WILSON: Well, look, I think there is a certain degree in the Trump base where not only do they not want to listen to the normal political voices, they are now declaring them to be an anathema. They're throwing them off the island. I mean, we are in the point in the conservative movement where the Trump faction believes that FOX News, "The Wall Street Journal", George Will and Brit Hume, Charles Krauthammer are insufficiently conservative and pure. It's a Jacobin kind of feeling, though. They're after people who disagree with Trump, not just ignoring them.</s>STELTER: Nate, what do you think of the idea that because that pundits are not always held accountable. We sometimes forget or move on from what we see here on TV, that people tune it out, they tend not to believe our predictions?</s>COHN: I think that's often true. And I can't blame people for that. I do think, though, that, you know, if you have a well-grounded analytical framework for the way you understand candidates, you're going to be right more often than not and I think it's fair to take risk and apply that, you know, across the board. Sometimes, they'll be wrong but that's part of usually being right.</s>STELTER: Nate and Rick, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for being good sports about this. Coming up here, finding a new foe on FOX News, as a number of anchors and guests are going after the Black Lives Matter movement for what they see as hateful speech. Or was it hateful or misunderstood? Dr. Cornel West and Marc Lamont Hill have a message for the critics when we return.