tv New Day CNN September 29, 2016 3:00am-4:01am PDT
3:00 am
remains defiant. he believes he was the winner in monday night's debate. advisers are moving to sharpen donald trump's debate prep and attacks on hillary clinton. they feel he left things out monday night in the debate. those ties to wall street or corporate interest also include the surrogates. now a surrogate called last night, i'm told a private call. the point was made. it's time to go on offense and, frankly, they want surrogates to stop talking about any type of debate failures that might have existed. they want them on script and on the attack. even if that means, as you noted, bringing up bill clinton's infidelities. so, trump two speeches in swing states today and more events today. mostly scripted, but, of course, it's donald trump. occasionally he goes off script, including talking about hillary clinton's health. take a listen. >> you see all the days off that hillary takes.
3:01 am
day off. day off, day off. all those day offs and then she can't even make it to her car. isn't it tough? >> donald trump in iowa yesterday and i'm in iowa today. early voting starts in iowa today and hillary clinton will be in des moines later. a serious effort on ramping up the efforts to get that early vote out. iowa swing state. a pu so that effort is going to increase about ten fold in the days ahead. that early vote is crucial, as campaigns try to bank those votes, guys. >> all right, thanks so much for all of that. hillary clinton voting in iowa where early voting begins today. millennial voters with the help of the first lady, bernie sanders and chelsea clinton. cnn's chris is live in washington with more.
3:02 am
good morning, chris. >> good morning, alisyn. hillary clinton trying to dip in the fountain of youth urging millennials to vote for her in november. many of whom passionately supported bernie sanders in the primary and a campaign stop at the university of new hampshire yesterday sanders tried to use his mojo to help his former rival and clinton worked to make the election less about her and more about issues that resonate with young voters. things like college affordability and climate change. >> this election is enormously important for the future of our country. it is imperative that we elect hillary clinton as our next president. >> it's not just my name on the ballot. every issue you care about. >> but she has a lot of work to do. a recent bloomberg poll shows clinton leading trump among
3:03 am
young voters by four points with third-party candidate gary johnson grabbing 11%. now, four years ago, president obama won young voters by 29 points, according to exit polls. yesterday first lady michelle obama told a crowd in pennsylvania that a vote for a third party candidate was essentially a vote for donald trump. the clinton camp is set to turn up the volume on that mestag men the coming months. hitting key battleground states like ohio, pennsylvania and wisconsin as the clinton campaign tries to turn out young voters. chris alisyn, back to you guys. >> let's discuss it with our panel of experts. alex burns and "washington post" political reporter philip bump and mark preston. so, here we go, alex. he said, i'm not going to go there. i'm not going to talk about it. that's exactly what he's doing. can we explain this simply by who he has telling him what to
3:04 am
do? you have bannon and brightbeit. attacking the clintons on a personal basis for, what, 5 y25 years? >> remember the people around donald trump and i would add roger stone to that list, a guy who has been around donald trump longer than anyone and written an entire book about bill clinton and his affairs and hillary clinton's alleged involvement in helping cover them up. i think it's clear that donald trump himself when he's faced with adversity likes to escalate the conflict to the greatest extent possible and in this kind of situation i think it's difficult for someone like that who likes to fight and likes to fight harshly and in personal terms to resist the impulse to go there and go there fast. we saw him pretty publicly wrestling with that all of yesterday and all the day before. first saying i wouldn't go there because that wouldn't be nice and then kind of going there and he didn't bring it up, again, in
3:05 am
his speeches yesterday. but feels like it's only a matter of time. >> philip, let's talk about all the reporting this morning that his aides and advisors around him are trying to figure out how to gently break it to him that he did not win and they're delicately dancing around the idea that he may have to prep more next time. can't anybody tell the emperor he has no. >> they tried to nuance and massage what he's doing and the most recent team with kellyann conway and bannon keeping him on script and being a more traditional sort of candidate. but then you saw something like monday night where clearly he didn't do well during the debate. but, you know, his take away from that was no doubt frustration. and now he feels as though, to alex's point, he needs to do something to lash out. he is very angry at hillary clinton and now and feel like
3:06 am
they're losing control of donald trump and his ability to constrain himself and i think that's a risk. >> let's play how he sees his performance in the debate. listen to this. >> we had a debate the other night and every single online poll had me winning by sometimes a landslide. and i'm winning by massive margins in many cases and one was 80% to 20%. but, i'm winning all of these polls, how many were there seven or eight or nine. hundreds of thousands of votes and then i have to sit back and you have to sit back and hear how those polls don't mean anything, but when they poll 300 people, that means a lot, right? >> here's what matters about this. not that he thinks he did well. that's his prerogative. it's rare for a politician to think they took a beating. he doesn't understand the difference between a poll and an online contest and he seems to be free to tell people this, which is completely inaccurate.
3:07 am
>> he has no problem lying. right, that's clearly what we're seeing. we've seen this throughout the campaign. when we get tathis point right here, when you're talking about these polls. he looks at these polls and he sees them and he starts to believe them and then he believes it more and believes it more and goes out to the rallies and says it. >> why shouldn't he believe it? for people who aren't in our business, well, you had a million people vote. he won 70-30. doesn't he win? >> we'll take a step back. whenever you see a poll from a news organization or fox news or nbc, "new york times" or "washington post." there is a scientific methodology how you get respondents to answer your questions and then they weighed it and it's way above my head how they all do it. there are smart people who do it. it is a science. these online polls are, click, let's go on to the drudge report and who won. and keep on clicking and clicking and calling your friends and clicking. that is not scientific. >> this is how for the entire
3:08 am
2012 republican primaries online polls show that ron paul won every single debate. who has the most motivated online presence on these specific websites, right. so, when you think about trump winning only, trump winning 80% of the votes of people who visit the drudge report, i'm surprised it was only 80% of the people. >> okay. so, let's talk about october 9th. the next debate. this one in st. louis. who is going to box him in and tell him that he might need a new strategy for that one? >> literally no evidence that anyone can do that. you know, when you get him in a speech and he has the teleprompters and he can read off the teleprompters. he seems to be doing okay with that. there's no teleprompters. it's a town hall and hillary clinton did a good job in the first debate in getting under his skin and she can put him on the defensive and he will not get out of that box. but then, secondarily, you saw the clinton campaign lined up
3:09 am
this attack with the beauty queen right at the end. so, they are very strategic in how they're using these debates. no one has been able to contain donald trump. they have not shown any ability to change what he does. >> and philip's right, everyone they brought in who has been a hired gun has been unable to get him to be disciplined or a good politician. the only ones who potentially, potentially could do it is his children. and i used the word potentially in quotes under lined bolded because they haven't been able to get him there. of the three, probably the daughter. probably the daughter. but the question is at this point, has he gone so far over the cliff right now, gone so far that he can't come back? >> well, i'll tell you what. here's the good news for donald trump. he's not gary johnson. what a horrible time the libertarian nominee had. first it was aleppo and then this happened with chris matthews last night.
3:10 am
>> foreign leader you like? >> i am having an aleppo moment. >> name anyone. >> who is your favorite leader. >> any foreign leader. >> merkel. >> it went on. >> okay, if you're bill weld, what are you thinking to yourself if you're governor bill weld? >> you take the mike off and say, gary, see you next time and walk off. >> he couldn't name a foreign leader. does this just tell you, alex, he has not spent a lot of time paying attention to the outside world. >> i think it does tell you that. i think it also really surprisingly tells you that, you know, in some ways similar to the way describing donald trump and gary johnson has not done the kind of hard prep work and homework that is required to run
3:11 am
for president of the united states. it is just a gigantic missed opportunity in this election when you have two major party candidates that are so broadly disliked and distrusted for different ways and different reasons that you have this candidate on paper that seems like a credible alternative. >> he is a nice guy. very smart. successful in business. but it's just more proof that change is not always good in and of itself. just because you put somebody else in there, doesn't mean it will have good results. that's the concern. you have to know what you're talking about to be president of the united states. >> but, yet, millennials are responding tahim ao him and his numbers have ticked up a little bit. >> millennials are responding to there is another guy on the ballot. if you have a guy you hate, you hate and then somebody you never heard of. i think that's where gary johnson is. clinton versus trump, that's their choice.
3:12 am
>> guys, stick around. we have more questions for you. president obama facing tough questions from the military and veterans about their quality of health care at the va and why their commander in chief will not say the words islamic terrorism. we have the most dramatic moments from that exclusive cnn town hall event, next.
3:13 am
3:15 am
3:16 am
this was a really big moment. president obama coming face-to-face with military vets and their families at a cnn town hall last night. everyone checked their politics at the door for this. the president was tackling really intense questions about terrorism and deadly health care delays that face vets all too often. plenty of raw and powerful moments. we have cnn white house correspondent michelle kaczyn i kaczynski. she has the highlights. >> it was different and unexpected. the talk didn't immediately go to politics. there was not a single question
3:17 am
about donald trump or the election. these were tough questions to the president and, at times, extremely emotional. in an intimate, solemn space. members of the military and their families addressed their commander in chief directly. >> are we doing anything now greater to combat islamic jihadists. >> reporter: discussing some of the thorniest challenges of our time. iraq, syria, terrorism. president obama asked this by a gold star mother. >> why do you still refuse to use the term islamic terrorist? >> reporter: one of the most, thorough blunt explanations we heard. >> do i think that if somebody uses the phrase islamic terrorism that it's a huge deal? no. but i don't want to validate what they do. i don't want to -- if you had an
3:18 am
organization that was going around killing and blowing people up and said we're on the vanguard of christianity. as a christen, i'm not going to let them claim my religion and say you're killing for christ. i would say that's ridiculous. >> reporter: the president emphasized that worldwide terror attacks haven't increased substantially, though little comfort after the horror of paris, belgium, orlando, bangladesh, turkey and the list goes on. but this group has witnessed its own suffering, too. and it quickly became personal, emotional. >> mr. president, i stand before you today with my husband's flag because it was always his desire to meet you. >> reporter: donna coates wife of veteran barry who lost his battle with cancer after waiting a year for. >> i am now a widow and my
3:19 am
family, we will never be the same. >> reporter: we now have a situation where about 80% of individuals who interact with the va are satisfied that they're getting timely treatment. i want that to be 100%. and that requires more work. >> reporter: and amanda souza who lost her marine veteran husband to post-traumatic stress and suicide. >> this was his livelihood and he was too scared to go get help because he did not want to risk being labeled as unstable or weak. >> reporter: there was this surprising question about women in combat from marine lawrence sorano who earned a bronze star in iraq. >> a study by the marine corps that mixed gender combat units performed noticeably worse and women had staggering higher rates of injury. mixed gender units took up to
3:20 am
159% longer to evacuate a casualty than all-male units. as a wife of a marine who deploys to combat often, that added time can be the difference between my husband living or dying. why were these tangible, negative consequences disregarded? >> i don't think any studies are going to be disregarded. i don't want a military, an institution that starts with the premise that women can't do something. if it turns out they can't do something, then we'll deal with that specific situation. but i don't want to start off with that assumption. >> this is not an easy crowd for the president, depending on which recent poll you look at. the approval rating for the president among u.s. troops is anywhere from 15% to 30%. they support donald trump over hillary clinton 2 to 1. and in a poll at the beginning of this year, one-fifth of u.s. troops who responded felt like they didn't even want to vote at all, given the choices. they don't feel like either
3:21 am
major party really has their best interest in mind. the president wanted to make the case that his administration does and that there are policies that reflect that. alisyn and chris. >> what a thought-provoking night and material you just laid out there. thank you for that. we're back with our panel now. questions from the crowd there. i mean, wow. what moments. and let's just start, let's just dive in and start with one about his answer on islamic terrorism and whey he's been reluctant, al, to use that term. he's been dogged by this for years and why didn't he say this six years ago? he has a reason but he didn't spell it out before. >> he mentioned from time to time he doesn't want to give validation or legitimacy to the claims to people who call themselves islamic terrorism. the president won't call the problem what it is. >> because they feel he's protecting the, you know, he's
3:22 am
protecting islam. i mean, they feel, they have turned it. he should have been saying that every single time. >> i do think we'll hear more about this in the presidential debates at some point, on the presidential campaign. trump brings it up almost every event that i hear him, almost every speech that i hear him give. there is this sort of, i think, far fetched idea that if you only called it islamic terrorism, it would be so much easier for us to confront it. what it is this larger narrative about the president shying away from conflict and i think what you heard last night was him taking that notion off. >> simplicity sells and a lot of this stuff is complex. when you're sitting with an audience of the people who pay the price. you know, the old saying, war is old men talking and young men dying. it's very simple for the people in that room. they are the ones who have to pay the check of our politicians. and when they hear hedging, they don't like it. they don't get to hedge when they go into war. one of the things that is
3:23 am
easily, politically manipulated. not always genuine. these pa these people are not done right when wae send them away and they're not done right when they are sent back home. does the president deserve time for going there. no good news in that room for him. >> i don't know if he deserves credit. he is commander in chief. commanding the military. it's very clear, though, that's not what obama envisioned at the end of his presidency. he came into the presidency and he was going to end the war in iraq and afghanistan and get us out of that and focus on the economy and health care but he gets dragged back in for a variety of reasons. never left afghanistan and gets dragged back in and this isn't the conversation he wants to be having right now. absolutely, his responsibility and his duty to have that conversation. >> trying to make it a nonpartisan night but things sneak in. here is a moment when the president is talking about a religious test is so anti-american. listen to this.
3:24 am
>> you're an american and you are, you know, subscribing to the ideals and the creed and the values that we believe in as a country. you know, then, we don't have a religious test in this country. >> just to interject, you were clearly talking aboutt the republican nominee donald trump. >> no, i wasn't. i would just say this, jake -- it's not unique to the republican nominee. and, again, i'm trying to be careful. we're on a military base. i don't want to insert partisan politics into this. >> how do you avoid partisan politics in this climate? >> a lot to unpack there. clearly, he was talking about donald trump and the fact that donald trump is trying to keep muslims out of the country. you know what was interesting about this setting and we've done about 20 of these town halls. political town halls this year roughly. this is the most moving one.
3:25 am
what's interesting about it is we've never really seen men and women in uniform asking questions of their commander in chief on national television, yet alone international television. you know to your point, chris. these are the ones who have to pay the check. but i will say this. this past weekend i was with several higher ranking military officials and they still think that we all get it wrong about what they're doing over in iraq and what they're doing in afghanistan. that we in the media are not telling the story correctly and that the civilians who are making decisions back here have no clue really what is going on. a big divide still. >> i hope people watched it last night because something political that people should be painfully aware of after last night. syria is not going away. the president is a very nuanced thinker and he has really been put through it on syria. i don't know if you'll remember, but early on he was thinking about bombing the first wave of
3:26 am
alleged chlorine attacks by the assad regime. and he's gone from there to now saying last night, i don't know what we can do short of finding a way to make these people stop killing each other over there. the president of the united states inherits that problem day one. it's going to get bad and there is going to be huge pressure to send the people in that room back into a hell hole to create some notion of stability, alex, that would be as much farce as it is fact. >> this is where you see the big tensions in american politics. not unique to syria and really play out. americans show that they don't want the united states getting involved in new foreign wars right now. at the same time when they turn on their television and see images of these atrocities happening in a place like syria. they feel it shouldn't be happening in the world that the united states leads and the next president will have to unpack that. >> gentlemen, thank you. great to talk to you this morning. coming up in just a few minutes, two of the people who
3:27 am
3:31 am
we have an update on a story we first told you about several months ago. the public is getting its first look and it is disturbing. a body camera video of a police shooting that wound up taking the life of a 6-year-old autistic boy and critically wounding his father. happened in louisiana last november. the two officers are facing charges in the shooting. it all happened after the officers chased a driver following an argument at a bar and cornered him in a dead end. we want to warn you, this video is disturbing, but it is also probably our best look at the truth. here it is. a police body camera capturing two louisiana marshals opening fire on this suv. >> shots fired. >> reporter: the officers now facing murder charges.
3:32 am
seen here shooting 18 rounds at the vehicle. >> show me your hands. >> reporter: backup quickly arriving at the scene discovering 6-year-old jeremy marts buckled in the passenger seat. >> i have no idea. whenever i pulled on the side -- >> on the passenger side. >> reporter: the driver and boy's father, christopher few seen stepping out of the car, still alive. but severely injured. minutes later, the officer wearing the body camera heard speaking to one of the marshals who opened fire. >> was he hit at all? >> who? >> the driver. >> i never saw a kid in the car. >> reporter: then walking over to the young boy and checking his pulse. marshals arrested shortly after the shooting. prosecutors credit the body cam video with helping them build
3:33 am
their case. >> it is the most disturbing thing i've seen. and i will leave it at that. >> reporter: the attorneys for the marshals argue that they were acting in self-defense. claiming the driver rammed into a deputy's vehicle before they opened fire. but this video presented by prosecutors in court wednesday does not show that. but, instead, shows the driver's hands up before police released a hail of bullinates to the car claiming jeremy's life. >> i mean, that is the most sickening, heartbreaking thing that we could ever see and thank goodness those marshals justice is prevailing. those marshals were arrested. but the idea that they were scared, that the marshals were scared or angry or whatever it was that made them fire all those rounds into the car, that's why everybody calls for better police training because you can't just be chasing a car and start firing. >> well, look, these situations are often complicated and the prosecutors aren't basing their whole case on the video, but
3:34 am
this is certainly part of it. the kid winds up changing everything because of the absolute sense of loss when a child, an innocent is killed. you're also going to hear the perspective from people who see this saying, what if you switched the races. i remember when this story first happened, oh, these guys got arrested right away, black cops and a white victim. what if they were white cops. every one of these cases needs independent analysis. one thing is clear and it's why we showed you this. that camera makes a difference every time. it could help the officers and exonerate them. it could help show there was excessive force. the cameras should be a must. meanwhile, an explosive report in "newsweek" raising some new questions about donald trump. did he violate the trade embargo with cuba?
3:35 am
we have cleea closer look for y next. an important message for americans eligible for medicare. are you receiving all the benefits available to you? do you know there is money available to lower your medicare prescription costs? now is the time to find the coverage that's right for you ... at the right price. the way to do that is to explore your options. you can spend hours doing that yourself ...
3:36 am
or you can call healthmarkets ... and let us do the legwork for you - with no cost or obligation. we'll search a variety of plans from nationally recognized companies to find the coverage that's the best fit for you. ... at a price that fits your budget. and we'll do it at no charge to you. plus you may be able to save money on prescriptions. we'll tell you if you qualify. why pay a penny more than you have to for an insurance policy? let us find you the right plan, at the right price and see if you qualify to lower your prescription costs. put our free service to work for you at no charge. call this number and make sure you're getting all the benefits you deserve. call now!
3:37 am
3:39 am
company violated the u.s. trade agreement by secretly conducting business there. joining us now is the person behind this report and contributing editor for "vanity fair" we should note we reached out to trump campaign and had no response. you reached out for a response and did not get it. give us the headline. what is done wrong here in your estimation? >> well, at the time the embargo was in, embargo is still in. trump in 1998 through one of his companies tried to arrange for dealings in cuba. and they sent a consultant down. the cost of the entire endeavor was $68,000. at a time when american companies are not allowed to spend a penny in cuba. in fact, nobody was allowed to spend a penny in cuba.
3:40 am
you had to have a license and sponsorship by a charity. none of that took place and what's the most outrageous element to it is that, you know, seven months after they cut the check paying for this trip to cuba and meetings with bankers and government officials and so on, trump gets up at a political rally in his first run for president and says, i will never put any money in cuba until castro's gone. and they'd already done it. >> we have, actually, an excerpt from an op-ed that donald trump wrote in 1999 about this very topic for "miami herald." yes, the embargo was costly and i would make millions of dollars, but i'd rather lose those millions than lose my self-respect. take a financial hit than become a backer of one of the most brutal dictators and to me the embargo question is no question
3:41 am
at all. of course, we should keep the embargo in place and keep it until castro is gone. so, curt, how do you know that donald trump knew about these business dealings in cuba in 1998? >> there are several reasons. number one, this was something that was being handled at the very top of the company. the documents make that very clear. you know, the people's names are on it. we're talking about the president chief executive. the chief financial officer. >> of donald trump's company. so, does it say his name on it, on the documents? >> well, the people who were there say trump, number one, trump knew all about it. number two, the person who the consulting firm that did the job was working directly with donald trump. and, number three, you know, there's no way that you were going to have a $68,000 check cut out of the top levels of the
3:42 am
trump company without donald trump knowing about it. >> there are three layers of defense that i'm sure you have anticipated. one is, he didn't know. you just addressed that. the second one will be, everybody does this. as the company sends consultants down there just to see if they can get a hold on what might be the possibilities once castro is gone that nothing was done until that point. it was always done in terms of speculation for when the situation changes. fair defense? >> no. because there's a way to do it that is very hard to do, which is that you have to go to the government and you have to get a license. and there are very specific ways in which you qualify for a license. going down to explore possible business is not. it is illegal to go down to cuba and buy a bottle of soda. if you do not have a license and
3:43 am
you're not sponsored by a charitable organization. and one of the most outrageous things in this is, you know, in the documents i have, after the trip is taken, after the $68,000 is expended, there is a memo talking about, well, how to make it look like it was legal. we have to find a charity that agreed to have sponsored it. and here's a suggestion of a charity we can use. >> yeah. >> and, you know, in the end, they clearly knew what the rules were and they just flouted them completely. >> so, if they break the law and if donald trump knew about it, why no repercussions? >> the organization that is in charge of enforcement here is called ofac and they are woefully understaffed on enforcement. it's widely known. if you get cigars over the internet, you might get something. but it's widely known that if you break this, the probability of getting caught is extremely
3:44 am
low. and even if you do get caught, you might not get prosecuted. and even if you get prosecuted, you'll probably just end up having to pay a fine. so, the upside here -- this was at a time when they went. this is at a time when they were talking about dropping the embargo. a lot of push to end the embargo and president clinton, then president clinton, had been, had already started to adjust the terms of the embargo and loosen it up. and, so, flying down at that moment, it was, it was laying the groundwork for some future deal they could do. and you can't do 's illegal. they didn't have a sponsoring firm and they spent their own money. both are forbidden by law. >> it's a cover story in "newsweek." thanks so much, curt, for
3:45 am
sharing it with us. >> thanks for having me. the yankees beat the red sox with a walk-off grand slam. why are the guys from boston the ones celebrating? >> because everybody loves the yankees. even the sox. >> that's not why. most allergy pills only control one inflammatory substance. flonase controls 6. and six is greater than one. flonase changes everything. ♪ before it became a medicine, it was an idea. an inspiration. a wild "what-if." so scientists went to work. they examined 87 different protein structures. had 12 years of setbacks and breakthroughs, 4,423 sleepless nights, and countless trips back to the drawing board.
3:46 am
3:48 am
3:49 am
>> the red sox are a.l. east division champs even though they lost a heartbreaker to the yankees last night. the sox up 3-0 in the bottom of the ninth. bases loaded for mark teixeira. he unloads on this one. walkoff grand slam. he is retiring at the end of the season. after getting back to the clubhouse they shook off the loss and had a big champagne party. a.l. east champs for the first time since 2013. patriots take on the bills this sunday. the last game that they have to play without tom brady. he will be back next week. he's been vacationing with his wife, gisele, in italy. in the meantime, not a bad way to spend your suspension. the patriots not letting on who they will be starting at quarterback this weekend. hey, dolphins at bengals. both teams a disappointing 1-2. one team will get back on track.
3:50 am
>> what a moment for teixeira. he went out saying i hope this is the last home run i ever hit because he is retiring this season. >> what a way to do it. president obama was being questioned and confronted by military families at cnn's town hall. it was very emotional and the president was very engaged and very engaged. we want to talk to two people who got a chance to ask the commander in chief pressing questions, next. official truck of the nfl. follow the breaking news stream on bleacher stream app. offensive line of the week. inum. of all the full-size, half ton pickups, it's got the highest gas mileage, best payload, and 12,200 pounds of towing power. plus, no body rust. and this is the safest f-150 ever built. the only pickup to pull the government's 5-star safety rating and earn an iihs top safety pick.
tv-commercial
3:51 am
3:54 am
3:55 am
accountable for the difference between life and death. if families like mine, they're tired of waiting. >> i don't want to in any way sugar coat the fact that there have been significant problems in the va that have accumulated over decades. since i came into office, just to give you some sense of perspective, we have increased the va budget by 85%. no president has increased the va budget faster and more aggressively than i have because i believe that we've got to meet the sacred vow that we make to our troops that if you are fighting for us when you come home, you're going to get good service. >> that woman, donna coates joins us now as well as brandon rumba who also asked the president a question. thank you for being here. what a night. we watched how emotional it was and provocative and you all posed such direct questions to
3:56 am
the president. donna, let me start with you. what message did you want to get across to president obama? >> accountability. in the military, there's no such thing as chain of command and it also goes in businesses from the lowest to the greatest. and i think that i would have faired better if i would have just heard him say last night, you know, i am so sorry. i dropped the ball. my administration has not done what we were supposed to have done. it's called accountability and responsibility. and if our chief and commander of our armd fored forces cannot out and say, i'm sorry. it just happened under my administration and i wish i could change it, but i can't. how in the world can we expect the contracted doctors and the va employees to say, okay, i made a mistake. i'm sorry. what can i do to fix it?
3:57 am
>> yeah. and, donna, just for people who might have missed the town hall. you were telling him about your husband, who was waiting for a colonoscopy and by the time he got one he had a tumor that metastasized. what did you want the president to take away from your story about your husband? >> well, not only was it the wait times at the va, that was not just the only problem there. the other problem with that is he was misdiagnosed several times. so, i think that we need to put better, our very best positions at the va. our veterans deserve that. they deserve the treatment and they deserve the best treatment that they can get. >> the president did say after you told him your family's story that he would try to get to the bottom of it for you and he would try to figure out the
3:58 am
status of that doctor who misdiagnosed your husband. so, we hope that you will follow up and that the president will follow up with you. please, let us know when that happens. brandon, i want to play the moment of you confronting the president. let's listen to this. >> what can we do to take the burden off of these service members and, also, at the same time, increase the number of citizens that serve our country? >> i'd like to see a situation in which we're more actively recruiting and lifting up the need for all of us to serve in some ways. there may be ways in which we can modify our recruitment efforts so that we're casting a wider net. >> brandon, we see you there in the shot on crutches. we should let everyone know you lost both legs to an ied in afghanistan. what did you think about that moment with the president?
3:59 am
>> you know, it's always great to have the opportunity to speak to him directly. over the last four or five years, you know, i had many opportunities to, you know, ask him questions and talk about things. you know, dealing directly with veterans and he's been very responsive for the most part. and every single time it seems like we keep getting further and further. >> but, brandon, what did you think about his answer to your question. you don't want to always have to be carrying the burden. the people who do three tours, four tours and we need to get more actively involved in recruiting. does that go far enough? >> i think it's a good start. we can definitely do more. he didn't try to walk around the question as much as a lot of people thought he probably would have. i was pretty satisfied with it just knowing that he realizes that and knows it is an issue and it is causing a bigger issue later. you know, right now we're seeing guys coming home, you know,
4:00 am
ptsd, depression. so many things are going wrong and it's coming down to, you know, multiple tours and not having the resources that they need. so, you know, talking about the va and all the other things that we spoke about. it all stands together. >> brandon, we only have a few seconds left. what do you think the answer is? if you could share it with the president beyond better recruitment? >> we have a country that is so patriotic, but like you said when it comes time to put in the work, not everybody wants to do that. we need more people to step up. men and women. everybody that's here to be held accountable for everything that's going on. you know, not only in our country but all over the world. if you want to have a say in what is, you know, what is best for our country, you need to stand up and do the right thing. >> thank you for taking part in that. thank you for sharing your personal story with us and all of the viewers and we do want to follow up and find out what action the president takes, particularly with you, donna, after your question to him. thank you, we will stay in
135 Views
Uploaded by TV Archive on
![](http://athena.archive.org/0.gif?kind=track_js&track_js_case=control&cache_bust=1346485343)