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Who Won Most Watched Debate Ever?. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired September 27, 2016 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[15:00:00]

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton back on the campaign trail today reacting to fiery face-off.

The first presidential debate drew a record audience, nearly 81 million viewers, becoming the most-watched debate in the 60 years of television history.

Today, the candidates wasted no time putting their own spin on their performances.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Did anybody see that debate last night?

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: Oh, yes.

(LAUGHTER)

CLINTON: One down, two to go.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, I really enjoyed it. It was -- I guess the numbers came out. Over 80 million people watched, so that's one of the biggest shows in the history of television. But we won almost every single poll, CBS and Drudge and Slate and "TIME" magazine and all of them, right? We won all of them.

So -- so, that was a great honor. A very big moment, very important moment talking about a lot of very important subjects, including jobs, immigration.

CLINTON: We had a great, great time last night. And I have to say, I was thrilled that I got a chance to lay out some of the middle-class economic policies and pro-family policies that I have been talking about throughout this campaign.

I'm going to show up. He gets to decide what he's going to do. But I will be there at WashU in Saint Louis and then after that in Las Vegas. If I'm the only person on stage, well, you know, I'm the only person on stage. (CROSSTALK)

QUESTION: What about his stamina?

CLINTON: Anybody who complains about the microphone is not having a good night.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: That last comment was in reference to Donald Trump complaining his microphone was not working.

Despite what you heard Trump say, most accounts, including a CNN poll, found it was Clinton who came out on top. The Democratic nominee just finished a campaign event in Raleigh.

And that's where we find senior correspondent Brianna Keilar.

So, during the debate, Clinton slammed Trump for how he has treated women, including former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, who I'm going to speak with tonight on "360."

She, I understand, just spoke with reporters. What did she say?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right.

Well, she is giving testimony against Donald Trump, basically. I'm told by a campaign source, Anderson, that Machado reached out to the campaign during the primary and that she has been doing some events in Florida. But the campaign thinks this is a narrative.

And it's clearly been very organized, because an online video, a well-produced video, was put out today featuring Machado. And they think this that will help them with Hispanic Americans and especially with women.

This is what Machado said today on a Clinton campaign conference call.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

ALICIA MACHADO, FORMER MISS UNIVERSE: For me, these elections are like a bad dream. You know what I mean? Because I never thought and I never imagined then, 20 years later, I will be in this position, I will be in this moment like, you know, watching this guy again doing stupid things and stupid comments.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

KEILAR: And we should mention the Trump campaign says these are unsubstantiated claims from Machado.

But in the online video, she also says she was supposed to receive 10 percent of the earnings from commercials that she did while she was an employee of the pageant, and she says she didn't.

So, Anderson, the campaign also thinks this speaks to Hillary Clinton's charge that Donald Trump gets rich and doesn't pass it on or doesn't do right by less-well-off people. But it's really the language about women and about Machado's weight that they think is going to work the best.

In this video, there's a sound bite from Donald Trump in the '90s where he's had this sort of verbal altercation very publicly with Machado about her weight, about gaining weight. He says she that weighed 118, 117 pounds when she was crowned Miss Universe, and that she had gone up to 160 or 170. And he's on camera saying -- quote -- "This is someone who likes to eat."

So the campaign thinks this is something that is not going to play well with women. And she really needs their help, especially when it comes to college-educated white women -- Anderson.

COOPER: Brianna Keilar, thanks very much.

Now to my political panel, CNN chief political analyst Gloria Borger, senior Washington correspondent Jeff Zeleny, and Brian Stelter, senior media correspondent and host of CNN's "RELIABLE SOURCES."

Brian, first, let's start with you. Just, the ratings for this, enormous. Did people stay with the debate? Because there was some concern people maybe only watched the first 15 minutes.

BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: They did. They stayed for the entire debate.

The 81 million average you mentioned is for the entirety of the nearly 100 minutes. And looking at the quarter-hour ratings, the best way to tell if there was a drop-off after 10:00, there wasn't. Only a small number of viewers tuned out early.

COOPER: And you hear Donald Trump saying I won all the polls, I won all the polls. He's talking about online polls, which are not real polls.

[15:05:05]

STELTER: They're not.

And I think we should distinguish for the viewers at home. Trump is really misleading his supporters on Twitter and on FOX News and at rallies today by saying that he won these polls. When you say poll, it conjures up the idea of a representative sample of 1,000 people reached by telephone. That's normally how polls work.

What Trump is really talking about are surveys, unscientific surveys where people can vote as many times as they would like. And that does indicate enthusiasm for Trump's campaign, but it's not a poll. And I think viewers hopefully are not misled by Trump when he repeats this over and over again.

COOPER: Just in terms of the debate itself, Gloria, you and I talked about it a lot last night.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: A lot.

COOPER: It's fascinating to me, though, that Donald Trump continues to talk about Machado today and talk about her weight.

BORGER: You know, he cannot admit a mistake.

We have seen this over and over again during this campaign. And when Hillary Clinton raised it, you know, he feels the need -- and even today -- to just defend himself. Hillary Clinton, on the e-mails, said, I made a mistake, let's move on, OK, that was wrong.

And he didn't take the opportunity to challenge her on transparency, I might add. But he doesn't know how to do that. And I'm sure that he was prepped on the misogyny question. Obviously, he was prepped on those questions. And instead he kept coming back to stamina, Rosie O'Donnell. And then he just can't -- he can't get himself out of that rabbit hole.

COOPER: And, Jeff, there certainly were so many opportunities for Donald Trump to pivot to other issues. There's a lot he could have hit Secretary Clinton with that he frankly didn't.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: When I have talked to a lot of Republicans today, starting last night and today, they're disappointed that he did not seize these opportunities, seize these moments.

And it all gets back to preparation. He didn't know enough specifics or didn't bring them up about the e-mail thing, for example. She gave a short answer for a reason. She wanted to get that out of the way, and he could have dug into that. That's one missed opportunity.

Transparency is another missed opportunity. So Republicans who were just on the cusp of being OK with him were disappointed that he didn't bring it last night, as she did. So, of course, he still has two more, so this is not over. This is the -- the winner of the first debate is not always the winner of all three of them, but there's some disappointment.

And if he doesn't change how he prepares, that's a problem for him.

COOPER: The other thing is, you hear -- which Secretary Clinton now has kind of poked fun at him for today -- to be blaming the microphone, saying there were problems with the microphone.

STELTER: I don't blame my keyboard when I write a bad story. Ultimately, it's my fault. Ultimately, it's the person's fault.

COOPER: I talked to one person in the hall who said that they had no problem hearing him. I'm not sure what he believes the problem was.

There was obviously a lot of sniffling that the microphone picked up. I don't know if that is what he is referring to?

STELTER: I will give a more positive take, though, on Trump.

Remember a few months ago, one of the times hen he changed campaign managers, he said, I don't want to pivot, I am who I am.

I appreciate that there's only one version of Donald Trump, that he is he's not trying to play some other part, trying to change characters in the middle of this race. This debate once again showed who he is, for better or worse.

ZELENY: At the beginning, though, he did pivot and he was so serious. And so many Republicans I also talked to said, gosh, we hope people tuned out after 30 minutes. But, as you have reporting, Brian, that's not true.

COOPER: Right. He was very strong early on.

ZELENY: Without question, especially in trade. That's an issue in the Rust Belt, the states he needs to win, Pennsylvania, Ohio and others.

COOPER: All states, by the way, he mentioned by name, which is always...

(CROSSTALK)

BORGER: But he said, you have been around for 30 years, and you haven't solved these problems, so why should we trust you to solve the rest?

(CROSSTALK)

BORGER: But he didn't talk about trust, which is her biggest vulnerability, honesty, didn't raise the Clinton Foundation, which he could have raised on transparency.

So, when you want to talk about pivot, it's not changing who you are. It's just changing the subject and turning it around on her, which I think he could have done.

COOPER: But it's also interesting, because a lot of what he did end up talking about, kind of the stories he ended up talking about are stories we have heard before on the campaign trail when he would -- especially back in the days when he was riffing.

But a lot of the stuff that he uses in his stump speech about going after her on transparency and things in the foundation, none of that came up.

ZELENY: It was a different setting for him. And that's something that someone who worked on the Romney campaign who is open to Trump said they thought he was maybe rattled by the audience.

He's used to these boisterous audiences and sort of like feeding back on those. And it was so quiet in the room last night.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Intentionally. The committee wants it to be like that.

ZELENY: It was a different setting for him, almost like church. And that's not a good venue for him.

COOPER: Wow.

Gloria, Jeff, Brian, thank you. Fascinating stuff.

Coming up next, CNN fact-checkers, the candidates, including claims that were just completely untrue. See what we found on that.

Plus, who has the advantage in the second debate, which is a town hall-style debate. We will talk about that.

This is CNN's special live coverage.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:13:54]

COOPER: Welcome back.

Facts and politics collided on the debate stage as Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton went after each other over policy and at times stretched the truth or even flat-out lied. Some of the biggest moments came during us on stop and frisk, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and climate change.

We wanted to separate the facts from the fictions.

Here is our Tom Foreman.

Tom, the reality check team , they vetted Trump and Clinton's claims. What did you find?

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we found that when it comes to the stop and frisk idea, the idea you can fight violent crime by just stopping more people and frisking them, Trump thinks it works, she doesn't.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: We have to bring back law and order.

Now, whether or not in a place like Chicago you do stop and frisk, which worked very well -- Mayor Giuliani is here -- it worked very well in New York. It brought the crime rate way down. But you take the gun away from criminals that shouldn't be having it.

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Stop and frisk was found to be unconstitutional and, in part, because it was ineffective. It did not do what it needed to do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOREMAN: Well, here's what the facts say.

In New York, from 2002 to 2011, they stepped up this tactic a great deal, and crime was dropping, but they were actually finding very few guns during this whole process out there out of millions of stops.

[15:15:05]

And when they stopped doing stop and frisk, crime kept falling, so in the end, Trump's claim about this is false, Clinton's claim about this is true.

Now, he went after her on a flip-flop over a trade deal which she now opposes called TPP.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: You called it the gold standard of trade deals. You said it's the finest deal you've ever seen.

CLINTON: No.

TRUMP: And then you heard what I said about it, and all of a sudden you were against it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOREMAN: Well, you heard it there. He said you called it the gold standard. She said no. Roll the tape from 2012.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, 2012)

CLINTON: This TPP sets the gold standard in trade agreements to open free, transparent, fair trade, the kind of environment that has the rule of law and a level playing field.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOREMAN: Well, you heard it from her own mouth there. Trump's claim about that is true.

And, lastly, she went after Donald Trump over global warming, saying he's made some outrageous claims about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLINTON: Donald thinks that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. I think it's real.

TRUMP: I did not. I did not. I do not say that.

CLINTON: I think science is real.

TRUMP: I do not say that.

CLINTON: And I think it's important that we grip this and deal with it, both at home and abroad.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOREMAN: She says he did. He says he didn't. Twitter says, look at how many times he used the word hoax about

climate change, and specifically look at this. "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing noncompetitive."

Her claim about that is true.

You can find out a whole lot more about many things that our team checked out. Just go to CNN.com/realitycheck -- Anderson.

COOPER: All right, Tom. Tom, thanks very much.

Coming up next, the missed opportunities and lessons learned from last night's debate and why the next face-off between Trump and Clinton is going to look a lot different. Former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer joins us and former Deputy White House Press Secretary Bill Burton joins me next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:21:29]

COOPER: This just in, Democrats blocking a Republican bill to fund the government and fight the Zika virus because it doesn't include money for Flint, Michigan, the city, of course, still reeling after its water supply was poisoned by lead.

Keep in mind, the government runs out of money Friday at midnight. Congressional leaders still hoping for a compromise bill to avoid another shutdown.

In the presidential race, the second debate a week from Sunday, October 9. It's a town hall format. I will be one of the moderators. Martha Raddatz from ABC is the other. It's a very different setting. And it could be risky if Donald Trump decides more personal.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I'm very happy that I was glad I was able to hold back on the indiscretions with respect to Bill Clinton, because I have a lot of respect for Chelsea Clinton, and I just didn't want to say what I was going to say.

QUESTION: Which is?

TRUMP: Which is, I will tell you maybe at the next debate. We will see.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: I want to bring in Ari Fleischer, former press secretary for President George W. Bush, and Bill Burton, former deputy press secretary for President Barack Obama.

Bill, first of all, just to what Donald Trump was just talking about, if his takeaway from last night is he should have gone after Secretary Clinton on marital issues in the past with her family and plans to do that the next debate, do you think that's a mistake?

BILL BURTON, FORMER OBAMA WHITE HOUSE SPOKESMAN: Oh, it's a huge mistake.

Donald Trump has a very narrow band of supporters that he needs to attract to his campaign. They're college-educated suburban voters who are looking for a reason to vote for Donald Trump for president of the United States. They didn't see anything last night that would suggest that they have permission or they ought to go and do that because he would be a good commander in chief for our country.

And for him to get off that stage, after he did do a couple things well, like prosecute the trade argument, to get off the stage and say, well, next time, I'm going to take this in a different turn that is actually not going to be helpful for me, is a huge mistake.

I think that their strategy is in distress and is not headed down the right path.

COOPER: Ari, clearly, Donald Trump wants to get more women voters, female undecided voters. Secretary Clinton is doing well among that segment. Is that the way to go about it?

ARI FLEISCHER, FORMER GEORGE W. BUSH WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Well, no.

I think that was one of the weirdest moments I have ever seen for somebody in a post-debate to say, I'm really proud of what I didn't say.

It just kind of add up. Now, if he's making a different point, it's not about infidelity, if his point is that Hillary Clinton, who says she's for women's rights, was the lead denouncer of all these women who made accusations against her husband, that she said these women are all liars, then it could be a different type of issue, because it's more of a policy issue about when these matters break, who do you listen to?

But, look, I hope the whole thing stays away from that. Donald Trump has a huge problem with college-educated white women, and what he needs to do is address that problem. He needs to cool it down and show more gravitas.

COOPER: Does he need to prep more? Because clearly there were so many opportunities where, one, Secretary Clinton poked him with a couple things, starting with, your dad gave you $14 million our however much it was, that got under his skin and he just continued to.

And there's a lot of more practiced politicians or debaters who would have pivoted to something against Secretary Clinton.

FLEISCHER: Right. He gave a two-minute answer that did not work defending his, I opposed the Iraq War from the start.

COOPER: Right, going down the rabbit hole of Sean Hannity. FLEISCHER: You have to give a 10-second answer. I call it in and out. Give a 10-second rebuttal and then shift it over to Hillary's weaknesses.

That's where he has to get better at this thing. He's too defensive, too thin-skinned. And Hillary Clinton can take that to the bank if he does it again.

COOPER: Bill, there were -- do you agree that were a lot of opportunities for Donald Trump to pivot against Secretary Clinton that he completely either didn't realize he could have or maybe they had practiced it or talked about it, but he just wasn't capable of it?

[15:25:03]

BURTON: Well, just going back to the trade conversation, I think, as you saw in the beginning of the debate, the first 20 to 30 minutes, Donald Trump did a decent job of talking about something of substance that voters really, truly care about.

The place where he falls down as a candidate is that he doesn't have a lot of substance to talk about different issues, so it makes it hard for him to pivot to other issues when there's no plan or no strategy that he can pivot to.

But he needs to get off the defensive however he can in the next debate, because, if he's on the defensive the entire time, like he was this time, it is going to be as disastrous a performance as he had last night.

COOPER: It's so interesting. I wasn't back -- years ago, I never had really tried mock debates when prepping to be a moderator. I have actually now found them incredibly useful.

Do you think he should be doing some mock debates? Because, clearly, Secretary Clinton has done them.

FLEISCHER: Yes, I think he should.

And whether he does the formality of being at the podium and does an official dress rehearsal, vs. the actual time limits, you have two minutes, you have one minute, and they're firing the questions at him, and then he needs to pivot to his answers, that drilling is absolutely essential.

COOPER: George W. Bush did it, and was very effective. I was talking to Senator, I think Gregg it was, who was playing Al Gore in one of them. And he actually went over to George W. Bush to invade his personal space. And Bush was sort of -- during the practice was like, what are you doing?

And they made a bet that Gore would do that, and Gore did that, and it was very effective for Bush.

FLEISCHER: And Gore was overpracticed, and everything was seen as wooden and stiff, and people just knew Al Gore doesn't mean what he says. And he just -- what Donald Trump also has to do is retain his personality.

So, yes, you can practice, you can drill. In baseball, you take a lot of batting practice. But he can still retain his personality and not be overscripted. I'm not worried about him being scripted. I'm worried about him not being overscripted. He's too underscripted.

COOPER: Bill, do you think the town hall format, does it favor one candidate over or the other?

BURTON: Well, I think you have to be much more adept on your feet.

And to do that, you have to have a better command of information. So, I think Hillary Clinton is going to be very well-prepared for this debate as well.

As Ari -- wherever Ari would take the podium at the White House, just like when I would when my boss was off, you spend a lot of time doing batting practice, because it makes sense to not just hear the question, but hear what a possible follow-up is going to be, and then a follow-up after that, and see how you can parry and deal with it.

What Donald Trump misses by not preparing is thinking through what bits of information does he need in his head in order to continue to prosecute his argument in the most effective way, because right now it's just this word salad.

Listening to him is one thing. If you look at the transcript, it makes very little sense when you look at how sentences are ordered and what information he's presenting.

COOPER: Yes.

FLEISCHER: And it's also you have a checklist of what issues you need to get out there. And for Trump last night, he missed Supreme Court, he missed immigration. That's a fundamental issue.

COOPER: Yes.

Ari Fleischer, Bill Burton, thank you both. Good discussion.

Coming up next, Alicia Machado, Hillary Clinton brought up the former Miss Universe on the debate stage. Machado says Donald Trump once called her Miss Piggy. We went back to -- we went being to the archives. What else did he say about her in the '90s and what did she say about him?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)