Should Clinton Foundation Shut Down?; Trump Attempts to Reach African-American Voters; Trump Reshuffles Campaign Team.
BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Here we go, top of the hour. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thanks so much for being with me. Right now, Donald Trump's hosting a roundtable over at Trump Tower here in Manhattan on national security and immigration, discussing solutions, for example, on how to defeat ISIS. He is also expected to receive his first classified intelligence briefing, that happening at some point today. This all is on the heels of a new shakeup, a major shakeup within his campaign, the new man in charge, Steve Bannon, who runs Breitbart News. He is adored by many on the far right for its combative and steadfastly conservative talking points and really so much more. First, though, let me bring in Sara Murray, our CNN politics reporter, who is there outside of Trump Tower. The different forms and phases of the Trump campaign and who has been at the top, why this change now? What's happening?</s>SARA MURRAY, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it is interesting, Brooke, because Donald Trump has actually been on message for the last couple of days, framing himself as the security candidate, the law and order candidate. Like you said, he is having this roundtable in Trump Tower today and this classified briefing later. But the frustration surrounding Trump, surrounding his advisers about how this campaign was being run, about the fact that he's so far behind in so many of these battleground states just hit its limit this week. Over the weekend, Donald Trump had a couple conversations with folks about his frustration and their frustration with how the campaign was being run. And then on Tuesday, there was a meeting between Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, as well as Paul Manafort, the campaign chief, right-hand man, Rick Gates, and then Steve Bannon, as you said, the new CEO, and Kellyanne Conway, essentially Steve and Kellyanne are going to be the new people. These are going to be the ones who are running the show. And this really gives Donald Trump the freedom to go back to basics, to run again as a political outsider and to say, look, I'm going to be myself, I'm going to run my campaign the way I want to run it. Trump still believes that he has a shot at winning this. But if he doesn't, he feels like he can at least look back and say this was the type of campaign I wanted to run vs. right now, where he's been sort of one foot in the establishment lane, one foot in the outsider lane. We have seen plenty of frustration from his advisers and from other Republicans about sort of his inability to really broaden the tent and become palatable to the political class -- Brooke.</s>BALDWIN: Sara Murray, thank you so much. By the way, Hillary Clinton on the stump in battleground state of Ohio today. She's in Cleveland. She's just laid out an economic and tax plan she says is vastly different from her rival. Her plan largely targets the 1 percent, promising a 30 percent minimum tax on millionaires. Meantime, Donald Trump promising lower taxes across the board, including the wealthiest Americans, and Hillary Clinton wasted no time hitting him on precisely that.</s>HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Ohio would gain 376,000 jobs under my plans and lose more than 123,000 jobs under Donald Trump's plans.</s>CLINTON: And it's hard -- it's not hard to see why, because he wants to give tax cuts to big corporations, millionaires, Wall Street money managers. He's even created a new tax loophole that we call the Trump loophole, because it's really good for Trump. It would let millionaires and billionaires cut their tax rate in half on a lot of their income.</s>BALDWIN: The Trump campaign, by the way, just responded, saying this -- quote -- "Clinton continues to push her broken tax plan on the American public. For an economy desperate for a jump-start, Clinton's plan will only act as a straitjacket. Recession, losses and declining wages will all be the features of the Clinton economy." On this, let's go to our senior CNN Washington correspondent, Joe Johns, there in Cleveland after her speech there. You're talking to voters in Ohio. Whose message is resonating?</s>JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Well, number one, I can tell you that Hillary Clinton is up about 4 percentage points here in Ohio. So, that sort of speaks for itself. But one of the big questions here in Ohio is the extent to which Hillary Clinton is getting that four-point lead from things is he doing, as opposed to things Donald Trump is doing to himself, if you will. Nonetheless, you heard the essential message that she brings here to Ohio. And when you listen to some of the facts she puts out there, number one, she says Donald Trump hasn't released his tax forms like some other candidates have done. She also talks about the fact that she says he would get or his family would get an estate tax benefit of something like $4 billion at the end of the day. But the underlying message in all of that is Hillary Clinton suggesting once again that Donald Trump is out for himself. That's the message they hope is resonating here in Ohio and the other battleground states. Meanwhile, the news here in large part is about Hillary Clinton and the campaign's reaction to the shakeup over in the Trump campaign, the hiring of the Breitbart chief to run the campaign, essentially. Hillary Clinton talked a little bit about that right out here just a little while ago. Listen.</s>CLINTON: I think it is fair to say that Donald Trump has shown us who he is. He can hire and fire anybody he wants from his campaign. They could make him read new words from a teleprompter.</s>CLINTON: But he is still the same man who insults Gold Star families, demeans women, mocks people with disabilities, and thinks he knows more about ISIS than our generals.</s>CLINTON: There is no new Donald Trump. This is it.</s>JOHNS: So, the attack here, Brooke, essentially is that Donald Trump decided to move to the right, instead of the middle, as some others had suggested. But even Trump himself has said that if he had moved to the middle, it would be another problem completely. Robby Mook, the campaign manager, saying also today in a conference call that Trump had decided to -- quote -- "double down on his most nasty, small and divisive instincts" -- Brooke.</s>BALDWIN: That's right. That's right. That's what we have out of Brooklyn responding to all of this. Joe Johns, thank you in Cleveland. Back to the Trump shakeup Joe was just reporting on, and the new sort of chief in the Trump campaign, Steve Bannon. I want you to listen to a reporter for "Bloomberg Businessweek" I just interviewed last hour. He's Josh Green. He wrote this incredibly detailed piece interviewing Steve Bannon for weeks on end just a year ago. Here was our conversation.</s>JOSH GREEN, "BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK": Bannon is just a charismatic wild man, mile-a-minute talker. He's a man who has had this bizarre series of careers, from Naval officer, to Goldman Sachs banker, to Sarah Palin filmmaker, who fell in with Andrew Breitbart, the late conservative provocateur, and wound up taking over the Breitbart News Network after Breitbart died. So, he's sort of insinuated himself into the center of this alt-right world of splinter conservatives.</s>BALDWIN: Let's start there. Let me bring on Leon Wolf. He is the managing editor for the conservative Web site RedState.com. Matt Schlapp is with us. He's a former George W. Bush political director and a Trump supporter. And with me here in New York, CNN politics executive editor Mark Preston. Gentlemen, welcome. And, Matt, as a Trump supporter, let me just begin with you. You say bringing Mr. Bannon on is an excellent, excellent idea. Tell me why.</s>MATT SCHLAPP, FORMER WHITE HOUSE DIRECTOR OF POLITICAL AFFAIRS: Yes. I think what's happening here is, first of all, Kellyanne Conway was already on the Trump team and she's going to take an elevated role. As we get to this last phase of the campaign, messaging becomes critical, especially as they start to -- in earnest with their television advertising. And I think, for Bannon, anyone who knows him -- I know him well -- have a very high regard for him. He is a doer and he is a manager, but he also understands than digital economy better than most entrepreneurs. And I think the fact is, is that as they get into this advertising phase of the campaign, it is not going to be about the 1980s. It's got to be about the 21st century. Steve understands that well. So, I think you are going to see this focus on messaging hit on every single aspect. And I think all these changes are very positive.</s>BALDWIN: He's a doer. But when you also read about him, you read words like political assassin and in the realm of dark politics. You just heard the Robby Mook quote from Joe. People are all over the map on this guy. Leon Wolf, what do you think?</s>LEON WOLF, MANAGING EDITOR, REDSTATE.COM: Well, you know, I do want to say that insofar as the idea is to go back to letting Trump be Trump, I think that's probably a good move for the Trump campaign. The managed Trump is not working. He's terrible and painful to listen to on a teleprompter. He still makes gaffes. He's just now boring to watch. So, insofar as this is going to reflect that, I think it is a good call for the Trump campaign. I don't know that hiring Bannon specifically is the right medicine that they want to take, because I just don't know who Bannon's shtick reaches that is not already firmly committed within the Trump kind of ambit there. I feel like that audience is not the audience that Trump has a problem with, even within the Republican Party, as he definitely does have problems with Republican Party voters.</s>BALDWIN: I'm listening to you. And I also want to get some of our CNN reporting on. And, Mark Preston, you know this. This is from our senior White House correspondent, Jim Acosta, from a Trump campaign source, when we think about Bannon, especially ahead of debate prep, et cetera, for Trump. This debate -- this campaign source adding the fear with some insight of the campaign is that the conservative firebrand Bannon will want to -- quote -- "dig up every coffin for the debates with Clinton."</s>MARK PRESTON, CNN POLITICAL EDITOR: Right, so a combative nature. And as you saw just a few moments ago as well, we showed who was advising Trump, formally, informally. And if you put Bannon in the same category as Roger Stone and the same category at Roger Ailes, you are talking about now a strategy that is going to go right after Hillary Clinton in certainly a more aggressive way than we have seen Donald Trump. I know that's silly to say a more aggressive way than what we have seen from Donald Trump because he's been rather aggressive against Hillary Clinton. But I do think you are going to see it become more pointed attacks on Hillary Clinton. Paul Manafort, who's now moved into this other role or moving back to his original role, however you want to interpret what the Trump campaign is saying, or, quite frankly, he's been ousted, he was supposed to be the connection to the establishment. Bannon is not the connection to the establishment. So, at a time when Trump is still trying to deal with making the establishment come on board, they are now really trying to fire up the grassroots even more.</s>BALDWIN: On that, Leon, here's my question. If perhaps this will put more distance -- well, let me just ask you, do you think this move will put more distance between Donald Trump and the RNC?</s>WOLF: I have to think that it will. Just from the people that I know who are kind of within that circle -- and I haven't talked to any of them yet today since this news broke late last night. But the news that a guy like Bannon is going to be brought into a very prominent role in the campaign is certain to kind of spike Republican establishment nervousness through the roof. I mean, I think that the Republicans like Paul Ryan and Reince Priebus do want Trump to focus on being more aggressive towards Hillary and stop the kind of random, sporadic attacks he has on other Republicans. But I don't know that a lot of the stuff that Bannon is likely to bring to the table, which is essentially a rehash of the stuff that didn't work against Bill Clinton in the '90s, is really what they're looking to dredge up in terms of this election and going after Hillary Clinton in that respect. So, I definitely do think it will cause some additional angst within the halls of people who are even right now deciding, are we going to pull victory funds away from Donald Trump?</s>BALDWIN: And then perhaps focus down-ballot, although the let Trump be Trump mantra was really successful for him in the primaries. Matt, I heard you were -- you were shaking your head there.</s>SCHLAPP: Yes. No, I think we are missing the story here. Everyone's viewing this as somehow Trump is going to retool and become kind of like an attack machine on Hillary Clinton, and that's a bad thing.</s>BALDWIN: What's the story?</s>SCHLAPP: By the way, that is what Republicans thought was the biggest virtue of Donald Trump, is he could really take the fight to her. And what we have seen over the last three weeks is, she's done a pretty good job of taking the fight to him. He's on his heels. And I think Donald Trump realizes that. He wants to get on his forward foot. I think Bannon will understand that. I think this is not a question about, do you go after Hillary Clinton or not? The facts are on the table. We all know this campaign is about Washington and the fact that Hillary Clinton's been a part of Washington for three decades. Now, can we make more effectively the case that she's not the right person to fix Washington? I think the combination of Bannon with Kellyanne as the campaign manager, I think that sharpens the message. That is what this is about.</s>BALDWIN: OK, quickly.</s>PRESTON: Just a couple things. One is, it is not so much taking the attack to Hillary Clinton. It is, what attacks are you going to try to lodge against her? And I think that might get the nervousness within the Republican establishment. And having Kellyanne Conway with Donald Trump day to day, minute to minute, that will give a little bit of relief, I think, to GOP establishment folks who have worked with her over the years. We will see how he does.</s>BALDWIN: OK, Mark Preston, thank you. Matt Schlapp, Leon Wolf, thank you all so much. And by the way, tonight, you will have a chance to get to know the Green Party presidential ticket in a live town hall. Do not miss Jill Stein and her running mate, Ajamu Baraka, answering questions at 9:00 Eastern only here on CNN. Coming up next: Donald Trump is calling for more policing as he is out and about, perhaps trying to court more African-American voters, some African-American voters. And in the middle of it, he called Hillary Clinton a bigot. And he says Democrats have failed the African-American community. We want to talk about that. Also ahead, "The Boston Globe" today, on the editorial page, calling on the Clintons to shut down their foundation if she wins the White House -- why President Bill Clinton admits changes would have to come.