Trump Suggests Major Shift in Immigration Plan; Hillary Clinton Defends Clinton Foundation.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: All right. That does it for us. CNN TONIGHT with Don Lemon starts now.</s>DON LEMON, CNN HOST: We heard Anderson Cooper's exclusive interview with Hillary Clinton and we'll have more on that coming up on this broadcast. But I want to begin with some breaking news, there's a major shift from Donald Trump tonight on immigration and deportation. This is CNN TONIGHT. I'm Don Lemon. Trump in an interview tonight saying, quote, "no citizenship, let me go step further, they'll pay back taxes, they have to pay taxes. There's no amnesty as such, there's no amnesty but we work with them." And in Mississippi tonight he makes this incendiary charge about Hillary Clinton.</s>DONALD TRUMP, (R) U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Hillary Clinton is a bigot who sees people of color only as votes, not as human beings worthy of a better future. She's going to do nothing for African- Americans. She's going to do nothing for the Hispanics. She's only going to take care of herself, her husbands, her consultants, her donors. These are the people she cares about. She doesn't care.</s>LEMON: Clinton firing back tonight, accusing Trump of bigotry as well. So, let's go right to CNN's Jim Acosta, he is with the Trump campaign in Mississippi. Jim, this is a major change in Trump's stance on deportation tonight. Here's what he said in an interview to Fox, OK. I'm going to read it then I want you to respond. He said "No citizenship, let me go step further, they'll pay back taxes, they have to pay taxes, there's no amnesty as such, there's no amnesty, but we work with them." "Now, everybody agrees we get the bad ones out but when I go through and I meet thousands and thousands of people on this subject and I've had very strong people come up to me be really great, great people come up to me and they said, Mr. Trump,. I love you but to take a person who's been here for 15, 20 years and throw them and their family out, it's so tough. And I have it all the time. It's a very, very hard thing." So, Jim, what does he say at this rally, this is a reversal. This is not a softening.</s>JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: No, this is way more than a softening, this is wilting. When it comes to his past position on immigration you recall it was during the primaries he called for a mass deportation force that would round up 11 million illegal immigrants and remove them from this country. Now he is saying that the ones in this country, the undocumented who have been law abiding can stay in this country, as long as they pay back taxes. He is saying that is not amnesty, but there a lot of conservatives inside the Republican Party will say that is amnesty. And so, Donald Trump is going to have to deal with that over these next several days. We understand on Wednesday in Phoenix he's going to be delivering a speech on immigration where we expect him to give some more details on this. He didn't go that much into the details in this speech here in Jackson, Mississippi tonight. He only said that his upcoming shift on immigration will not hurt American jobs and that sort of thing. He didn't talk about the details that he did in this interview on Fox News. But, Don, as you mentioned, one other sort of OMG moment here and Donald Trump had these every couples of weeks, you'll recall a couple of weeks ago when he said President Obama was the founder of ISIS, then later on he said, oh no, I was just being sarcastic about that. Listen to what Donald Trump had to say about Hillary Clinton at this rally here in Jackson where she essentially called her a bigot. Here's what he had to say.</s>TRUMP: Hillary Clinton is a bigot who sees people of color only as votes, not as human beings worthy of a better future. She's going to do nothing for African-Americans; she's going to do nothing for the Hispanics. She doesn't care what her policies have done to your communities.</s>ACOSTA: And, Don, Donald Trump was reading from a teleprompter when he said that. That line "Hillary Clinton is a bigot" was in his prepared remarks. So, this is not something he adlib over the last few days. He's been using a teleprompter at his rallies. But he's been veering off-script and saying all sorts of things. But this was not one of those moments. This was in the script and he prepared or he delivered it as it was prepared. And the other thing that we should point out, Don, is this perfectly tees up Donald Trump for all sorts of criticism over the coming days. You know, this is a candidate who on the onset of his campaign said that Mexicans who are immigrating into this country were rapists. A lot of people said that is a bigoted comment, that is a racist comment. He said a Mexican-American judge could not fairly handle the Trump University case, that was considered by many to be a bigoted comment or a racist comment. And so to come out and call Hillary Clinton a bigot is just going to honor with all of those different episodes throughout the course of this campaign where he himself has open himself to that criticism, Don.</s>LEMON: Yes. And can I see the ad now with him in his own words as the Clinton campaign often does. Thank you very much for that, Jim Acosta, I appreciate it. Now I want to bring in now Mark Preston, CNN politics executive editor, chief political correspondent, Dana Bash; Patrick Healy, the New York Times political correspondent. OK. He didn't essentially call, you know, Dana, we were listening to Jim. He didn't essentially call her a bigot. He called her a bigot tonight, right?</s>DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. He used that word and Jim was reporting it was in the teleprompter. It wasn't something that was a kind of classic Trump, off-the-cuff unscripted remark that gets him into trouble. It was delivered and done on purpose. So, you know, they're trying to be provocative, not something unusual for Donald Trump, but doing so as he is trying to make inroads himself with the African-American community by...</s>LEMON: And with Hispanics.</s>BASH: ... and with Hispanics, with minorities in general by raising questions about what Hillary Clinton and democrats in general have really done for those communities as opposed to the, you know, lip service that they've paid. I mean, you can argue that the merits of that, and we will for the next two months, but that kind of term certainly is getting him the press that he wanted.</s>LEMON: I want you all to listen to Hillary Clinton. This is her with Anderson Cooper just moments ago talking about his responding to Donald Trump's bigot comment.</s>HILLARY CLINTON, (D) U.S. PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It reminds me of that great saying that Maya Angelou had that when someone shows you who they are believe them the first time. And Donald Trump has shown us who he is and we ought to believe him. He is taking a hate movement mainstream. He's brought it into his campaign. He's bringing it to our communities and our country and, you know, someone who has questioned the citizenship of the first African- American president, who has courted white supremacists, who has been sued for housing discrimination against communities of color, who's attacked a judge for his Mexican heritage and promised a mass deportation force is someone who is, you know, very much peddling bigotry and prejudice and paranoia.</s>LEMON: So, Patrick, considering what she just said, you know, and bringing up the litany of things she considers to be bigoted, she says it at the end, is it wise for Donald Trump to go down this I know you are but what am I road?</s>PATRICK HEALY, NEW YORK TIMES POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. It's dangerous. I mean, this is coming at a time when Donald Trump is clearly and pre-drastically softening his language on immigration, where he's trying to make this sort of strange overture to black and Hispanic voters by saying what do you have to lose by voting on me. And then now he's going back to sort of injecting this racially charged language. Now from his point f view she has been and her allies have sort of suggesting that he has been bigoted for a while now. And that stuff like sticks in his craw, sort of always does and now he's sort of hitting back. He's going to Mississippi to sort of like punch her on this, but it's one of those things, Don, that just tends to overshadow everything else that he says, as he's trying to make these, you know, these sort of prepared remark speeches, he's now using teleprompters and having prepared remarks at all of his rallies. He used to be...</s>LEMON: That was in the teleprompter according to Jim.</s>HEALY: It was. It was in the prepared remarks that we got. And he's used to be this sort of free form chaotic sometimes violent rallies. He's really trying to button up and tighten up in the last two weeks. And then he makes a remark like this that clearly calculated but it really overshadows everything.</s>LEMON: What's the strategy behind a remark like this, Mark Preston? Do you believe and is it a working strategy?</s>MARK PRESTON, CNN POLITICS EXECUTIVE EDITOR: No, it's not. And, you know, I just try to look at these campaigns in a very clinical sense, you know. You know, take out emotion from it and just to see what is the strategy behind it. The beginning of the week he gave a lot of praise to the Trump campaign for cancelling that speech on immigration, allowing a lot of the spotlight to be shined directly on Hillary Clinton, directly on her e-mails, directly on the foundation, allow the media to attack Clinton. What we've seen tonight, though, is that after a few days he has now taken the spotlight and he has stolen it back and he has pulled it towards him.</s>LEMON: Yes.</s>PRESTON: To use really racially charged attacks like that by calling Hillary Clinton is bigot is an overreach; it's a big overreach on his part. In many ways, it desensitizes everything else that he's trying to say or calls into question about what he's trying to say. And if those you don't believe that, what it certainly does, is that it overshadows the attacks that he's trying to make on Hillary Clinton as somebody who is not fit to be commander-in-chief.</s>LEMON: OK. And also let's about because that's a turnaround where he, you know, he is, he was on prompter but he was good at, you know, I guess the strategy was for him to be safer and not to say sort of outlandish things, so that's it. But this is a complete turnaround, talking about the deportation thing, Dana. And I'll put it up on the screen, I read part of it but I read it for Jim Acosta earlier. He says, "No citizenship. Let me go a step further. They'll be, they'll pay back taxes, they'll have to pay taxes, there's no amnesty as such. There's no amnesty but we're going to work with them." And then he says, you know, people coming up to him after 15, saying, you know, they've been here for 15 or 20 years, and you can't just take, you know, send people out.</s>BASH: Right.</s>LEMON: What's your reaction to this?</s>BASH: You know, we have -- had we not had the hints starting on Saturday and Sunday from the Trump campaign that he was moving in a direction like this, I would be more shocked. But even though we knew something like this was coming to see those words that came from Donald Trump is still really kind of unbelievable. And I'm just kind of give you context of what it's like to be a former republican opponent of Donald Trump, people who were pushing this and were told by Trump and Trump supporters that that is amnesty period, end of story.</s>LEMON: Is this story -- isn't this already on the books? Is this the policy that's already in place or pretty close to it?</s>BASH: Well, it's what -- it's what people who were pushing for comprehensive immigration reform.</s>LEMON: Reform, right.</s>BASH: Some of them, some of them wanted to go to full on citizenship which he does not.</s>HEALY: But republicans like Paul Ryan have sort of suggested there are some..</s>BASH: Absolutely. Absolutely. But let me just kind of give you a quote which I thought summed it up. A, an ally of Ted Cruz said to me this would be like Ted Cruz, suddenly saying I'm for Obamacare. I mean, that's the way that they look at this at what shifter is.</s>LEMON: Yes.</s>BASH: Because it's such a core issue for Donald Trump.</s>LEMON: It kind of reminds me, though, of 2012 what Mitt Romney saying "I don't like Obamacare and then President Obama saying Obamacare is essentially Romney care.</s>HEALY: Right. It's in Massachusetts.</s>LEMON: But this -- yes, it just hs -- it does has your name on it.</s>HEALY: Yes, and I mean, and this is, you know, and ultimately thinking about Romney, too, kind of an ultimate etch a sketch for Donald Trump. The phrase used about Mitt Romney sort of moving to the general election. Donald Trump won the republican nomination by going to rallies and saying those 11 million illegals gone, they're gone.</s>LEMON: Let's listen. Listen, let's put it up and then we'll talk about it.</s>TRUMP: We're going to keep the families together. We have to keep the families together. But they have to go...</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But you're going to keep them together out?</s>TRUMP: They have to go. We're going to have a deportation force, and you're going to do it humanely.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You're rounding them all up.</s>TRUMP: We're rounding them up in a very humane way in a very nice way and they're going to be happy because they want to be legalized. And I'm sure these are very, very fine people. They're going to go and we're going to create a path where we can get into this country legally.</s>LEMON: So, to your point, Patrick.</s>HEALY: No, it's -- I mean, it's as close to a flip-flop I think as we've seen...</s>LEMON: As close to a flip flop? It is a flip flop. Come on.</s>HEALY: ... you know, in the campaign. Hey, it's not. I'm a New York Times guy. You know, we say it's close to flip-flop. No, I mean, you have a guy who won the nomination saying we're going to deport all 11 million. Now to you Dana's point, he was sort of setting up a softening the other day, that's the direction he was going. The weird thing about this, Don, you're going to be -- this is going to be -- this clip is going to get a lot of play that's coming out on Fox is that he was sort of crowd sourcing the audience as he was talking about all of this. I have to read the transcript three times to get what he was saying. He basically saying and he does this at his rallies sometimes. He says, and what do you think about deporting them all? OK. Now what do you think about keeping some of them if they pay back taxes and they don't have criminal records? And he's sort of tossing out these lines. What's clear, what is clear is that he's considering making changes to soften his position, and he says he's going to be announcing a decision soon, that we have to make a decision soon on this.</s>LEMON: Mark, I want you to listen on this. This is Hillary Clinton what she told Anderson about this change tonight.</s>CLINTON: My understanding is that the comment you just referred to is the third different position he took yesterday on immigration. Somebody has told him, I guess the latest people that he's consulting, how damaging his statements have been, how terrible his deportation plan is, how offensive his views on immigrants have been from the very first day of his campaign. So, he's trying to do, you know, kind of a shuffle here. But I think we need to look at the entire context. We need to believe him when he bullies and threatens to throw out every immigrant in the country. And certainly, when he change his position three times in one day, it sends a message that it's just a desperate effort to try to land somewhere that isn't as, you know, devastating to his campaign as his comments and his positions have been up until now.</s>LEMON: So, Mark Preston, isn't the danger here that he risks turning away some of the core supporters who wanted him to have a hard line and many gives his opponent fodder for more criticism.</s>PRESTON: Well, you know, I think we've become desensitized to Donald Trump saying one thing on Monday, changing it on Tuesday and going back in a different way on Wednesday. And we become desensitized to the fact that his positions constantly change. One thing we're not talking about is the fact that there are a lot of people in the Republican party right now specifically centrist moderates who are looking at Donald Trump and saying, OK, this is the Donald Trump that I want to lead the Republican Party if, in fact, he wins in November. This is the Donald Trump that we're all hoping for after he won the primary that would moderate his positions that we can then get behind. This is the Donald Trump that's OK at the top of the ticket. So, even though we're very critical of the fact that he is changing his positions, it's a change that is actually going to be embraced by more republicans than repulsed by more republicans. And more specifically to your point, Don, those who have joined the Donald Trump campaign, those who are backing him, they have nowhere else to go. They're going to stay with Donald Trump because they still believe that he's going to make America great again. And Donald Trump has become something that he has said over and over and over again that he will never become and that's a politician.</s>LEMON: OK. I have to get to the break. We're going to continue our conversation on the other side of this. We'll be right back. Don't go anywhere.