THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT FOR 'THIS WEEK' ON August 7, 2016 and it will be updated.
MARTHA RADDATZ, ABC HOST: With all these questions about Trump's temperament and staying on message, let's get straight to a top adviser to the Trump campaign, former New York City Mayor Rudi Giuliani.
Mayor Giuliani, your friend and a finalist for Trump's VP slot, Newt Gingrich, told "The Washington Post" this week, "The current race is which of these two is the more unacceptable, because right now, neither of them is acceptable. Trump is helping her to win by proving he is more unacceptable than she is."
Is that the way you see it?
RUDY GIULIANI, FORMER NYC MAYOR: No, not at all.
First of all, 8 points down at this stage, of course you'd rather be ahead, but I remember George Bush the first being 16 points down to Dukakis going into September. So let's, you know, calm down. Everyone -- everyone should calm down about it. There's certainly every opportunity for Trump to win this election.
And I think her comments -- Hillary's comments just don't get the same attention that Trump's do. For example, she lied to a Gold Star mother. She lied to pre -- Patricia Smith, the mother of Sean Smith, who -- who was killed at Benghazi, I believe, because of her incompetence, her incompetence in failing to secure that mission.
And she lied to her on September 14th, 2012, right at the coffin. She said it was due to a video.
So I think that's far more serious -- or at least it said get as much attention as all of the attention that was paid to, you know, the comments that were made about -- about the Khan -- about the Khan family.
RADDATZ: Let's go back to Donald Trump for a moment. He -- he is clearly a man who does not want to walk away from a fight. He does not want to apologize.
So how do you keep him on message?
GIULIANI: Well, he -- I -- I think he was. I think his reaching out and supporting John McCain and Kelly Ayotte in particular, and Paul Ryan, who had been critical of him, you know, a couple of days earlier, shows that he has the ability and the understanding to realize that there are going to be disagreements and you've got to be able to reach out to the entire party.
I think you're going to see a lot more of that in his economic message.
I also think you're going to see him hitting Hillary very hard. That -- you know, she short-circuited?
That was a heck of a comment.
I mean, first of all, she lied. She didn't short-circuit. She lied last week when she said the FBI found that she'd hadn't lied. You read Comey's report, he found she lied in about eight different places. So maybe short-circuit is her euphemism for lying.
But I don't know, did she short-circuit when she didn't protect the Benghazi compound, when she got 20 requests for more help?
Did she short-circuit during the Benghazi situation when, if we had gotten people there, we might have been able to save Sean Smith and the other CIA gentleman's life.
RADDATZ: Mr. Mayor, as you know, there have been about 13 investigations into the Benghazi.
I -- I want to go back to our poll.
You've said this week that the fundamentals are still in Trump's favor. But look at some of these numbers from this poll.
Unfavorable view of Trump, 63 percent. Not qualified to be president, 61 percent. Does not have the personality or temperament to be president, 67 percent.
He now seems to be unacceptable to a fixed majority of Americans.
How can he turn that around?
That's exactly what I've heard the voters say this week, as well.
GIULIANI: Well, he can turn it around by doing to Hillary Clinton what the Democrats have been doing to him. He -- he -- he can say hey, did she short-circuit when she reset the relationship with Putin and now Russia is, according to "The New York Times" article today, Russia is in control in Syria?
I mean we turned -- we turned it over to them.
Did she short-circuit when she advocated for the overthrow of Gaddafi and Libya is now an Islamic State stranglehold?
Did she -- did she short-circuit when she said she's going to raise taxes on the middle class?
Well, first of all, she is going to raise taxes on the middle class. I actually think that's the only truthful thing she's said in about three weeks. But...
RADDATZ: Mayor -- Mayor Giuliani, I -- I want to go back to this again and -- and stick with Trump, if we can, because you are on here as a Trump surrogate.
This week, he was called unfit to be the next commander-in-chief by a very long list of people. Let me read it -- President Obama, a group of former cabinet officers, senior officials and career military officials, a veterans organization with 100,000 strong petition said it on Thursday and the former acting director of the CIA, Mike Morrell, who is my next guest, said it Friday in an op-ed, saying that Trump is dangerous.
Does that not concern you?
GIULIANI: It doesn't concern me at all. The fact is, I find -- I find it a lot more concerning to me that Hillary Clinton was extremely careless in the handling of national security information, not just one or two, but thousands and thousands of pieces of national security information.
I'm a former federal prosecutor, a former associate attorney general. If I had done that, I'd have been prosecuted. It's a clear violation of 18 United States Code Section 791.
What she did were criminal acts. She has displayed the facts...
RADDATZ: As you know, Mr. Mayor, Mr. -- Director Comey said miss -- he would have to prove that there was intentionally transmitted or willfully mishandled classified information. Our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.
GIULIANI: And many reasonable prosecutors have come to the conclusion that they would have brought such a case. I would have brought such a case and I would have won such a case. And I've prosecuted cases like that in my years in the Justice Department.
Hillary Clinton skated because she's running for president. She clearly violated the law.
And now, take Comey's words. She was extremely careless with handling national security information.
You know, if that's written in someone's FBI background report, they don't get a top security clearance?
If she were just an ordinary person, she would be denied a top security clearance because she has proved in her past acts that she is extremely careless in handling national security information.
I don't know, maybe she short-circuited when she wiped out 35,000 emails.
RADDATZ: Mayor Giuliani, Donald Trump has been raising questions about whether this election could be rigged. You've lost elections in the past and never really said anything like that.
Is that an appropriate thing for him to be saying?
Do you believe this election could be rigged?
GIULIANI: I think what he's taking about is the very unfair media coverage that Republicans get. I know all of those of you in the media don't believe this but you really don't treat us the same way.
The allegations by Ms. Smith, a Gold Star mother, about Hillary Clinton lying to her, got about 0.1 of the coverage that the Khan situation got. Hillary's situation in which the FBI, in an extraordinary memo, found her to be extremely careless in handling top security information, my goodness, I wouldn't hire a person as an assistant U.S. attorney if that was in their FBI background.
We're going to make her President of the United States?
Nobody raises that. Nobody makes a very big deal about that. That's not on the news for five days, six days.
So I think what Donald Trump is reflecting is -- and I know the media always discounts this because you don't like to get criticized. But you don't treat us the same way that you treat Democrats. Hillary, Bill, Obama, they get the benefit of the doubt.
And I mean if Trump had said something like I'm going to raise taxes on the middle class, it would be all over the news. You would be questioning his sanity.
RADDATZ: Mr. Mayor, we will look forward to the speech this week by Donald Trump on the economy. We thank you very much for joining us today.
GIULIANI: Thank you, thank you.
RADDATZ: One voice broke through this week in his attack on Donald Trump as we showed you just a moment ago. In his fiercely worded op-ed in "The New York Times," former CIA acting director Michael Morell blasted Trump as unprepared and dangerous and endorsed Hillary Clinton.
Michael Morell joins us now.
Mr. Morell, I want to first get your reaction to what Rudolph Giuliani said.
MICHAEL MORELL, FORMER CIA ACTING DIRECTOR: The one thing that struck me right off the bat was what he said about Benghazi. You know, there is this view out there that she lied about what caused the attack, that she said it was the video.
I think one of the really interesting things that is in early 2014, the Federal Bureau of Investigation walked into the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and they said that we believe the video was a motivation in this attack.
Abu Khattala, who is the only person arrested, said that the video was a motivation.
So this idea that the video played no role, which Republicans keep on repeating over and over and over again just isn't --
(CROSSTALK)
RADDATZ: But she -- but those parents have said she said those things to them. That has resonated among the voters.
MORELL: You know, she said it was terrorism, right, to Chelsea. She said to them it was the video. Those two things can both be true at the same time.
And it turns out right, it turns out that the video did play a role in that attack. And Republicans don't want people to believe that.
RADDATZ: OK, Mr. Morell, you came out in that strong op-ed -- let's go back to that -- in support of Hillary Clinton, saying Donald Trump would be a poor, even dangerous commander in chief and referencing his comments about Vladimir Putin, you said, "In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation."
Recruited an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation -- do you really believe that?
MORELL: Yes, I do. And look at it from Putin's perspective, right. He's a trained intelligence officer, worked for the KGB, very talented, manipulated people much smarter than Donald Trump. He played this perfectly, right. He saw that Donald Trump wanted to be complimented.
He complimented him. That led Donald Trump to then compliment Vladimir Putin and to defend Vladimir Putin's actions in a number of places around the world.
And Donald Trump didn't even understand, right, that Putin was playing him. So, in Putin's mind, I have no doubt that Putin thinks that he's an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation, although Putin would never say that.
From Mr. Trump's perspective, right, he simply heard Putin compliment him. He then responded by complimenting him. He never thought that he might be being played.
RADDATZ: OK. Let's talk about what Donald Trump has said and others, many others, have said about Hillary Clinton's judgment, especially in light of that e-mail server. Listen to what you said about that e-mail last year.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MORELL: I don't think that was a very good judgment.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you believe that at least one or perhaps many foreign intelligence servers have -- services have everything that went to and from that server?
MORELL: The good ones have everything on any unclassified network that the government uses, whether it's a private server or a public one. They're that good.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So that's a yes.
MORELL: Yes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
RADDATZ: So why should America trust her to be commander in chief since she did expose intelligence to foreign governments and passed classified and very top-secret information back and forth?
MORELL: Yes, just one comment on what I said previously.
Since then, the FBI has said that they found no evidence that a foreign government hacked into her server.
RADDATZ: But they didn't rule it out.
MORELL: But I think there's a bigger issue here. I think there's a bigger issue here, right?
I worked with her for four years very closely when she was secretary of state and I was at the CIA. I provided her -- personally provided her some of the most sensitive information that the Central Intelligence Agency has.
She never misused it. She always protected it. I would trust her with the crown jewels of the United States government. And, more importantly, I would trust her with the future security of the country and the future security of my kids.
RADDATZ: But I've got to say again, this is resonating among the voters. Many, many voters I talked to talk about those e-mails. And this week, when she said that FBI -- that Director Comey said everything she said was OK to the American public, he didn't really say that.
So do you think she's handling this well?
MORELL: So I think there's actually a simple explanation here, right?
You know, when she saw those e-mails, she did not see classification markings.
Why?
Because there wasn't any classification markings --
(CROSSTALK)
RADDATZ: I know there's no classification markings.
(CROSSTALK)
MORELL: -- and there -- they were very small. So when she says there wasn't classified information, that's what she means. It wasn't marked. And the two that were marked with little C's, right, she doesn't remember. So she's not trying to mislead anybody.
RADDATZ: And yet, she was on the Senate Armed Services Committee. She was secretary of state. There were eight I think chains of top secret classified material that went back and forth. Right, those particular ones were not marked.
But shouldn't she recognize those with her background?
MORELL: Martha, I think what is important here is that she has said repeatedly that the private server setup was a mistake and if she had to do it over again, she wouldn't, right?
She has said that.
I think the other important point is that she would be the first to tell you that the processes and systems of the State Department for handling classified information need to be enhanced.
And I'll tell you that they need to be enhanced not only at the State Department but they need to be enhanced across government. And I think she will do that when she's President of the United States.
RADDATZ: OK. The Obama administration announced they're close to completing their goal of admitting 10,000 Syrian refugees. Secretary Clinton wants to increase that number to 55,000.
Mr. Trump warns that ISIS terrorists could be among these refugees and some of your most esteemed colleagues have said the same thing. Listen to this.
OK. James Clapper said, "I don't obviously put it past the likes of ISIL to infiltrate operatives among these refugees."
Comey said, "My concern is that there are certain gaps in the data available to us."
We have heard the warnings about lone wolf attacks.
So why take the risk of bringing in more refugees?
MORELL: So I'm concerned, too, about ISIS' ability, right, to infiltrate people. But we have got some very effective, robust processes for vetting people. We brought in thousands of Iraqi refugees after the Iraq War. Not a single one has ever turned out to be a terrorist because the vetting was so good.
So I want the vetting to be solid. But I also want to bring these people in because not bringing them in sends a message, right, to the Muslim world and plays into the ISIS narrative and the Al Qaeda narrative, right, that this is a war between religions. And we can't have that.
RADDATZ: OK, thanks very much for joining us, Mr. Morell.
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