This is a rush transcript from "Special Report with Bret Baier," August 26, 2016. This copy may not be in its final form
and may be updated.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
HILLARY CLINTON, DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Neither my husband, my
daughter, nor I have ever taken a penny of salary from the foundation. My
work as secretary of state was not influenced by any outside forces.
PETER SCHWEIZER, AUTHOR OF 'CLINTON CASH': What we now have with these e-
mails coming out from Citizens United and from Judicial Watch is very, very
clearly that if you are a foreign oligarch who gave money to the Clinton
Foundation, the way to get access, the way to get meetings with people, the
way to get action on specific items was to e-mail the Clinton Foundation
and to have them contact the State Department.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BRET BAIER, ANCHOR: The author of "Clinton Cash" there, and Secretary Clinton this
morning talking about the e-mails. And as we reported, more are coming out
soon, by September 13th. This is how the week started, with a focus on
that. It kind of evolved towards the end of the week.
As you look at our average, this is the "Special Report" average of polls.
These are polls that we trust and look at, and this is the average of
polls, and you can see with all four candidates there, Clinton is up 7.2.
There have been other polls out recently, tracking polls like the L.A.
Times, that have Donald Trump up one or two. But these are the polls that
we're looking at for the averages.
Let's bring in our panel: Charles Hurt, political columnist for The
Washington Times; Julie Pace, White House correspondent for the Associated Press, and syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer. OK, Julie, let's start with Clinton and the week that she's had. What about it? Did she shake the e-mail story? Obviously, there are more things that
are yet to drop.
JULIE PACE, ASSOCIATED PRESS: I don't think she
shook the e-mail story and I don't think she's going to be able to shake
the e-mail story. And I think that acknowledgement from the campaign may
be -- that may be starting to sink in for them. They really thought this
would be behind them by this point. It's not going to be because we're
going to have new e-mails that are going to be dropping really right before
her first debate.
And I think this just really gets to why this has been a continual problem
for her, because this was a year ago when this first came up. There were
opportunities for the Clinton campaign to put everything out there, and
they didn't put everything out there. It's just a slow drip, and she's
going to be answering these questions basically through Election Day.
BAIER: Here's Chris Farrell from Judicial Watch, which, by the way, has
been doing an amazing job in trying to press for the release of some of
these documents, and they've been successful.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHRIS FARRELL, JUDICIAL WATCH: Out of the total universe of documents that
the FBI recovered and turned over to the State Department, the State
Department has told Judicial Watch, told us that they have had positive
hits for the search term "Benghazi." So we know that these records that
Mrs. Clinton either hid or destroyed and that have now been recovered are
directly related to "Benghazi."
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BAIER: So just to be clear so everybody understands. These are, Charlie,
the e-mails that were deleted, the 30,000 that originally she and her
attorneys said were personal. Then we find out that there were Clinton
Foundation e-mails in that batch that dealt directly with the State
Department and her interaction with aides. Now we're finding out that
there are Benghazi e-mails in this batch yet to be released, September
13th, and we find out that she not only erased and deleted the e-mails, but
she wiped it clean with something called BleachBit.
CHARLES HURT, THE WASHINGTON TIMES: BleachBit.
BAIER: BleachBit.
HURT: It's just, you know, when you look around, I'm always reminded of
this when people get frustrated with Donald Trump, you know, this is the
reason why people -- the people's regard for institutions in America, but
more than anything, the federal government and politicians, at an historic
low. The Clintons, Hillary Clinton has proved here that she will
shamelessly tell lies. She will lie about lying and she will lie about
lying about lying.
And, you know, there's -- I think that there's -- there comes a point
where, obviously, you know, her support, you know, her core supporters are
not going to defect from her, in part because they don't -- because they're
so appalled by Donald Trump. But it really has -- it's become, you know, a
shirts versus skins sort of thing. And there's not going to be any debate.
And what we saw with that extraordinary speech accusing Donald Trump of
being a racist and trying to promote racism and stuff like that, I think
that's what we have to endure for the next 73, 74 days.
BAIER: And that for a lot of voters I talked to is depressing. It's just
not a good feeling. It doesn't feel good. And I talked to them and they
say, it's just not -- I don't know. It's not going to be fun.
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: You would think in the most
advanced country on the planet, composed of 300 million people, the last
two remaining candidates for the presidency might be of a somewhat higher
quality. And the fact is you're absolutely right. This is an election
that's going to be almost entirely on personality, and it's going to be on
tearing down the personality of the other side. I mean, it's hard to see
issues surfacing here and there. They come by, they float by in the night
and disappear, but it's also about the personality.
Look, we have been speculating for a year about what the e-mail scandal was
all about. And I think we were diverted for a year about a classification.
It's a real issue, a serious issue. But that was never the issue. The
issue we've always asked ourselves here is, why was she hiding this in the
first place? Why did she have a private server? Obviously, it was
concealing. What was she concealing? And the most obvious possible answer
was the foundation. Now we are learning that exactly is what it was. And
as Schweizer said, normally you give money to a candidate, a political
candidate, and you get access. We understand that. The foundation was the
stand in for a campaign. She wasn't campaigning. She was secretary of
state. And you bought. And in of and itself, it's not illegal, but it's
corrupt.
BAIER: The campaign obviously is pushing back hard, saying the foundation
does amazing things around the world, and even to the point where Chelsea
Clinton is going to stay on, even if her mother wins the White House. I
want to turn to Donald Trump and his interview last night on CNN and this
whole two, three-day story on immigration.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: There certainly can be a
softening, because we're not looking to hurt people. We want people. We
have some great people in this country. We have some great, great people
in this country.
There is no path to legalization.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's talk about --
TRUMP: Unless people leave the country -- well, when they come back in, if
they come back in, then they can start paying taxes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So they still have to leave the country?
TRUMP: There is no path to legalization unless they leave the country and
come back.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BAIER: OK. Julie?
PACE: Well, the only thing I know about Donald Trump's immigration policy
this week is that I have no idea what his immigration policy is. I think
you can only assume, based on what he said last night, that he, for
whatever reason, is not comfortable with the idea of softening, which he
himself brought up. This was not media trying to interpret things that he
was saying. He put this out on the table. He got some pushback from some
of his core supporters. And it appears that he is now back to where he
started off, which is with this idea that you would deport people who are
here illegally right now, give some of them an option to come back in.
But this is in a lot of ways classic Donald Trump. He talks out of both
sides of his mouth. He puts a couple ideas out there, and leaves it to the
voters to decide which of those things they want to latch on to.
BAIER: The campaign says there is going to be an immigration speech. We
don't know exactly when it's going to be. He said last night it's going to
be next week, where he lays out all the specifics. But, there would be a
laying out of specifics at some point, one would think.
HURT: But early on, very early on, you know, a year ago, he laid out the
basic tenants of his immigration plan, and it is why so many people, you
know, felt very comfortable with him on a policy level in the primary.
What he has done now is he's fallen into what you could call the amnesty
trap that Republicans always fall into when they decide they want to talk
about everything past the issue of doing the wall and fixing --
BAIER: Let's just be honest. The point is you're not going to be able to
deport 11 million plus illegal immigrants. You can talk all around it, but
the physical logistics of getting those people out of this country, just
are not logistically possible.
HURT: Absolutely. But that is exactly the point. And to be a guy like
Donald Trump selling himself as someone who is a very strategic deal maker,
it is a stupid strategy to talk about that next step. Just talk about the
first step and get that done.
And one thing that I think people privately, conservatives kind of talk
about is, if you did get this done and you did seal the border and you did
fix the problem so we don't do that again the way we did it in 1986, if you
did that, then suddenly the existing illegals here now, they would be in a
better position to get a much better deal out of it, because people aren't
so angry about the fact that the problem still exists.
BAIER: We'll see how far this story continues. It seems like it's worked
its way through this week, at the end of this week.
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