Clinton Surges in Latest Polls, Erases Trump Bounce; Trump Ramps Up Feud with Gold Star Parents; Billionaires Backing Clinton Take On Trump.
CAMEROTA: Captain Khan paid the ultimate sacrifice protecting his fellow soldiers from a suicide bomber for which he was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart. Thanks so much for joining us on NEW DAY. We'll see you tomorrow. Time now for "NEWSROOM" with Carol Costello.</s>CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks so much. NEWSROOM starts now. And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thanks so much for joining me. Hillary Clinton rides a big bounce out of her party's convention and recaptures the lead over Donald Trump. Clinton surging in our latest poll, erasing Trump's lead before her convention and now ahead by nine percentage points. But the most important number is on the economy. Clinton jumps ahead of Trump by two points. Less than two weeks ago Trump led on that issue by 11 points. And on trade, Clinton now enjoys a comfortable lead of 10 points. And both candidates are in a dead heat, though, when it comes to terrorism. 48 percent of voters choose Clinton, 48 percent pick Trump. And it's worth noting our surveys took place before Trump's latest scorched earth sound bites over the last 24 hours. We have a lot to cover and Phil Mattingly is here to walk us through all of it. Good morning, Phil.</s>PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. A lot to unpack, no question about it. And it's important to note at the top line that these numbers are coming in the wake of the Democratic National Convention. Obviously Hillary Clinton seeing a bump kind of across the board. But when you dig down into specific issues, Carol, you hit on one of the biggest ones, obviously, the economy. But also look at key kind of flash points of this campaign. On immigration, Hillary Clinton starting to open up a bigger lead there with a 55-43 lead over who would better handle the issue in this poll. But worth noting, and Carol, you mentioned terrorism. Who would handle ISIS better? Now this is another key issue of this campaign an issue where Donald Trump has made very clear, based on his posture, his continual push of strength and power, he believes he can ride this issue to a lot of success in the campaign. Hillary Clinton at 48 percent, Donald Trump at 47 percent. When it comes to terrorism, when it comes to ISIS. This is an issue where there's not a lot of separation between the two of them. And Carol, we've seen how voters throughout this campaign have been very uneasy by what's been happening in the Middle East, by what's been happening in Europe, by the inspired attacks that have happened here in the United States. This is an issue to keep a very close eye on. And while there's been a clear bump for Hillary Clinton in the wake of the convention, still very close on this issue specifically.</s>COSTELLO: And I'm sure Mr. Donald Trump noticed these polls because he came out swinging yesterday.</s>MATTINGLY: Yes. Absolutely. And I think it's one of the things that Donald Trump, when he feels like the pressure is on him, he's going to swing back. And it hasn't necessarily been something Republican official have always appreciated, most notably in the issue that's still being talked about today. The attack that the -- Donald Trump has felt like he's been attacked by Khizr Khan. No question about it by what happened at the Democratic National Convention yesterday and Republican officials have made very clear, they wish he would leave this alone both publicly and behind closed doors. Donald Trump making clear that's not going to happen.</s>DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: He made a deal with the devil. She's the devil. He made a deal with the devil.</s>MATTINGLY (voice-over): Donald Trump ramping up his personal attacks on Hillary Clinton while criticizing Bernie Sanders for supporting the Democratic nominee.</s>TRUMP: She picked a vice presidential candidate who is like the opposite of him.</s>MATTINGLY: And suggesting that if he loses in November, it's because --</s>TRUMP: I'm afraid the election is going to be rigged.</s>MATTINGLY: All as the ongoing feud between Trump and the parents of a slain Muslim U.S. soldier, Captain Humayun Khan, escalates.</s>TRUMP: I have great honor and great feeling for his son, Mr. Khan's son. But -- and, you know, as far as I'm concerned, he's a hero.</s>KHIZR KHAN, FATHER OF DECEASED MUSLIM U.S. SOLDIER: You can attack Muslims, you can attack judges and nobody can question your caliber? Your lack of empathy? And you want to be commander-in-chief?</s>TRUMP: I was very viciously attacked as you know. When you have radical Islamic terrorists probably all over the place, we're allowing them to come in by the thousands and thousands. And I think that's what bothered Mr. Khan more than anything else.</s>KHAN: He says, oh, I am being severely attacked, harshly attacked. Well, this is political season. You're a candidate for an office. And I have same rights as you do.</s>MATTINGLY: The dispute rocking the GOP. Dozens of Republican leaders forced to come out in support of the Khans.</s>SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: We want to honor the families of those who have served and those who have sacrificed, all of us.</s>MATTINGLY: Trump's campaign bombarding their supporters on Capitol Hill with e-mails, urging them to back his position, but instead getting the cold shoulder.</s>REP. MARSHA BLACKBURN (R), TENNESSEE: Our Gold Star families deserve our full and total support.</s>MATTINGLY: Emotions running high at a rally for Trump's running mate Mike Pence, a woman whose son is in the Air Force booed for bringing up the issue.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Trump has disrespected our nation's armed forces and veterans and has disrespect for Mr. Khan and his family is just an example of that.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Will there ever be -- will there ever be a point in time when you're able to look at Trump in the eye and tell him enough is enough?</s>GOV. MIKE PENCE (R), VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: It's all right. Folks, that's what freedom looks like and that's what freedom sound like. OK. I want to honor your son's service to the country and your family's service to the country. I truly do, ma'am.</s>MATTINGLY: And Carol, obviously deft handling a very sensitive issue there from Governor Mike Pence but that's really kind of an example. This is starting to resonate on the campaign trail. That's something that concerns Republicans again who have said repeatedly, we wish they would just leave this alone and move on. They don't want this to be the issue. They want the economy, they want jobs.</s>COSTELLO: Well, here's the thing, though.</s>MATTINGLY: To be the things people are talking about.</s>COSTELLO: Like A Republican congressman just came out this morning and said, you know what, I'm going to vote for Hillary Clinton. What can you tell us about Congressman Richard Hannah?</s>MATTINGLY: And this is a first. And I think when you talk to Clinton campaign officials, they're waiting for this to happen. Maybe the levy starts to break. There's -- a couple important caveats here. Richard Hannah is an upstate New York congressman, a Republican, no question about it. He is retiring. He is from a swing district. So this is not a dyed in the wool conservative who's barking Trump, but he in an opinion piece said that Donald Trump is endlessly flawed. That's a quote. And that he will be supporting Hillary Clinton. But again it's worth noting here, he's retiring. There's not a lot of politics that he has to deal with here. But still it's something. No question about it, the first Republican congressman now officially saying he will vote for Hillary Clinton.</s>COSTELLO: All right. Phil Mattingly, thanks so much. So let's talk about all of this with our panel. With me now, CNN political commentator and Trump supporter Kayleigh McEnany, CNN senior political analyst and senior editor for "The Atlantic," Ron Brownstein, and CNN political commentator and Hillary Clinton supporter, Hilary Rosen. So, Kayleigh, I'll start with you. This Republican congressman, with all the caveats that Phil Mattingly spoke about, does this concern you?</s>KAYLEIGH MCENANY, TRUMP SUPPORTER: I'm not concerned by this. I mean, I fully expect leaders and Congress to not support Donald Trump because he ran against the Washington way. He ran against Congress essentially. He ran against Washington insiders. So I'm never surprised when I see criticism from congressmen or even support for Hillary Clinton. And I went -- I would really challenge the notion that this is a true Republicans because I think Republicans know that Hillary Clinton and the Obama way, that the American people cannot afford four more years of that.</s>COSTELLO: True Republicans. So, Hilary, you're a Clinton supporter. I would suppose that you would say, you know, what else do you expect?</s>HILARITY ROSEN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, here's, I think, the real problem, which is that every time Donald Trump makes a big mistake, whether it's the Mexican judge, whether it's the Jewish star slur, whether it's, you know, Humayun Khan, he has a three point response. The first is to demonstrate dramatic insensitivity to the diversity of America. The second is to insult Hillary Clinton. And the third is to say that he's being cheated. And we've seen this time and time again. And I think what we have is a broad swath of Americans, including thoughtful Republicans, are just sick of it. They think that this demonstrates sort of a lack of preparation for leadership to be commander-in-chief. And so, you know, it's not just any one incident. It's about his character. And I think over and over again we are now seeing this be about his character.</s>COSTELLO: So, Ron, put this into perspective, this Republican congressman who says he's now going to vote for Hillary Clinton but he's going to retire. There are no political consequences for him. Does it matter?</s>RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: I think it does to a point. As Kayleigh says, I mean, you know, one is not a flood. But what you have is a series of voices creating what the -- the phrase I heard the most at the Democratic convention from Clinton strategist was permission structure. And the idea is essentially creating a permission structure not so much for hard core Republicans, but for conservative leaning independents who usually vote Republican to feel that it's OK to vote for Hillary Clinton. And that ranges from Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser for president -- the first President Bush, to Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of -- the former mayor of New York, to Mark Cuban, you know, the billionaire. All of whom are saying to these voters, particularly these white collar white voters, that it is OK to depart from their usual leanings to vote for Hillary Clinton. And it's worth noting that in your new poll, Hillary Clinton is leading among college educated white voters by 10 points over Donald Trump. No Democrat in the history of polling, going back to 1952, has ever won most college educated white voters. And I think that is the kind of permission structure, to use their phrase, that they are trying to create with these kinds of endorsements and defections from Donald Trump.</s>COSTELLO: So, Kayleigh, let's just talk -- I just want to ask Kayleigh this question because Mr. Trump has doubled down on Hillary Clinton. He's called her the devil, right? He called her the devil yesterday. He said the election will be rigged. So, Kayleigh, those attacks might appeal to a certain demographic, but I suspect it won't to educated whites.</s>MCENANY: Well, you know, about the devil comment, he -- that was a metaphor. He said Bernie Sanders made a deal with the devil, and I think he clarified this metaphor by saying by deal with the devil, meaning Hillary Clinton --</s>COSTELLO: No. He said she is the devil.</s>MCENANY: After he said that she made a deal with -- he made a deal, rather, with the devil. So I think he was clarifying his metaphor. That's certainly how I took it. You know, these little things that happen on the side, I think most voters care about their family, I think they care about slow growth, abysmal economic report in the second quarter, 1.2 percent, low wages, ISIS terrorist attacks, every other day it seems like in Europe --</s>COSTELLO: So why isn't Donald Trump talking about that?</s>MCENANY: Well, this is where it's really important. And Newt Gingrich has said this. Donald Trump in order to win needs to bring up the same three or four issues every single day that Americans care about. I think that's really important to stick to the issues. We shouldn't be talking about Khan this week, we shouldn't be, you know, mired in this kind of controversy. And to get out of that, it's going to take Donald Trump really sticking to the issues.</s>BROWNSTEIN: Carol --</s>ROSEN: Donald Trump has to care about actually those issues to be willing to talk about them. What we see over and over again --</s>MCENANY: He does care about them.</s>ROSEN: No. What we see over and over again is that Donald Trump cares about, you know, his thin skin and attacking back when he feels attacked. And so that's not leadership. That's not rising above. And it is critically important that we -- that we realize that Americans do want progress on the economy, they do want change in Washington. But they really also want to feel pride. They want to feel pride in their leaders, pride in how they manage their families. We saw Sally Bradshaw, another prominent Republican in the important state of Florida yesterday saying, I could not look my children in the eye if I voted for Donald Trump.</s>BROWNSTEIN: Yes.</s>ROSEN: The message he sends is not the message I want to deliver.</s>BROWNSTEIN: And Carol?</s>COSTELLO: Ron?</s>BROWNSTEIN: That's an important point. I mean, I think, look, for Hillary Clinton to be even on terror and ISIS and the economy after her own convention which is always a high point for candidates really isn't a great result. It is possible that she will drift back behind among -- to Donald Trump on some of these issues as the -- as the kind of the afterglow of the convention fades away. But this may be a campaign, to Hilary's point, where these kinds of issue assessments are less important than a broader view about the candidate's character and values. I mean, the biggest problem Donald Trump faces in this race, I think is that, you know, 60 percent of voters going in said -- going to the convention said he was not qualified to be president. In your poll 64 percent of college white men and 80 percent of college white women say he does not have the right experience to be president. And the other big hurdle he faces is that people -- many people see him as racially divisive and not reflecting the values of a kind of a modern, tolerant America that has room at the table for all racial and ethnic groups and for women as well as men. So it is entirely possible that on Election Day he may lead on the economy, may lead on terrorism narrowly and may still be facing a significant deficit with the coalition of minorities and college whites who simply view him as both unprepared and not reflecting the values of contemporary America.</s>COSTELLO: OK. So I'm going to --</s>BROWNSTEIN: So that's challenge.</s>COSTELLO: I'm going to pause the conversation right here. I want you all to stay with me because you're going to join me in the next block and thanks so much. Still to come, it's the battle of the billionaires. Hillary Clinton lining up supporters to help her take on Donald Trump. Will it work?