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Trump, Clinton Trade Personal Attacks; Pence: I Never Considered Withdrawing; Source: Ryan Sticking with Trump For Now; CNN Poll: 57% of Viewers Say Clinton Won Debate; Trump Threatens To Jail Clinton If Elected; Trump: "Of Course" I Used $916M Loss To Avoid Taxes. Aired 9-9:30 ET

Aired October 10, 2016 - 09:00   ET

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


[09:00:00] GOV. MIKE PENCE (R-IN), VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: And we're going to continue to present this campaign as a choice between two futures, a stronger America and abroad that stands by our constitutional principles.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Got it. Thank you, Governor Mike Pence. We did lose the window there. NEWSROOM with Carol Costello starts right now.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: But you gave it the old college try. Thanks so much, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: We tried.

COSTELLO: You did. NEWSROOM starts now.

And good morning, I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me. It's being called the ugliest presidential debate ever, and it began with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton not even bothering to shake hands. And the tone from there only got nastier.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: For you to say that there was nothing wrong with you deleting 39,000 e-mails, again, you should be ashamed of yourself.

HILLARY CLINTON, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: OK, Donald. I know you're into big diversion tonight, anything to avoid talking about your campaign and the way it's exploding and the way Republicans are leaving you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: These morning the House Speaker Paul Ryan holding conference call with fellow House Republicans. The topic? The bombshell tapes of Trump's lewd and sexually aggressive comments. Just as multiple sources tell us Ryan is sticking with the Party's nominee at least for now.

One thing we do know, Mike Pence, he says he's going to stay on the ticket with Trump. Today, he will campaign in North Carolina as Trump focuses on Pennsylvania, a crucial swing state. The Democrats are hitting Michigan, Ohio, and Colorado.

Oh, we have a lot to cover this morning including new information about the Republican House conference call just two hours away now. CNN's Senior Political Reporter Manu Raju live in St. Louis with all of that. Good morning.

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: Good morning, Carol. Now, Republicans are assessing the strength of Donald Trump's debate performance. Just in a couple of hours, Republicans will hold that private conference call and determine whether or not more Republicans will jump ship like we saw a number do over the weekend.

One person in particular, House Speaker Paul Ryan. I am told by a Ryan official that there's been no change in Ryan's position at this time, meaning that he is still supporting Donald Trump at this moment. Now, of course, all of this comes after that very, very contentious bitter debate performance, and Donald Trump, right now, trying to make sure that it was enough to salvage his campaign.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RAJU (voice-over): Donald Trump entered last night's debate with one major goal, to end the crisis engulfing his campaign, after a tape of his vulgar remarks about groping women from 2005 was uncovered.

TRUMP: This was locker room talk. I'm not proud of it. I apologized to my family. I apologize to the American people.

RAJU (voice-over): CNN's Anderson Cooper pressing Trump over his crude comments about forcing himself on women, Trump denying he ever actually did that.

TRUMP: I have great respect for women. Nobody has more respect for women than I do. I'm saying I said --

ANDERSON COOPER, DEBATE MODERATOR: So for the record, you're saying you never did that?

TRUMP: -- things and frankly, you hear these things I said. And I was embarrassed by it, but I have tremendous respect for women, and women have respect for me.

COOPER: Have you ever done those things?

TRUMP: And I will tell you, no, I have not.

RAJU (voice-over): Hillary Clinton linking the tape to his past controversial rhetoric.

CLINTON: I said, starting back in June, that he was not fit to be President and Commander-in-Chief. This is who Donald Trump is. But it's not only women and it's not only this video that raises questions about his fitness to be our president, because he has also targeted immigrants, African-Americans, Latinos, people with disabilities, POWs, Muslims and so many others. RAJU (voice-over): And as he long threatened, Trump rehashed old

Clinton controversies, bringing to the debate three women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct in the 1990s.

TRUMP: If you look at Bill Clinton, far worse. Mine are words and his was action.

CLINTON: I am reminded of what my friend, Michelle Obama, advised us all. When they go low, you go high.

RAJU (voice-over): And Trump, in an extraordinary remark, threatening to jail Clinton if he becomes President over her handling of classified material on her private e-mail server as Secretary of State.

TRUMP: If I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation.

CLINTON: It's just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country.

TRUMP: Yes, because you'd be in jail.

RAJU (voice-over): Trump frequently interrupting Clinton throughout the heated exchange.

CLINTON: It's just not true. And, so, please, go to --

TRUMP: Oh, you didn't delete them.

COOPER: Allow her to respond, please.

CLINTON: -- personal e-mails, not official --

TRUMP: All 33,000? Yes, right.

CLINTON: -- not -- well, we turned over 35,000. So it was --

TRUMP: Oh, yes, what about the over 15,000?

COOPER: Please allow her to respond. She didn't talk while you talked.

RAJU (voice-over): Clinton becoming visibly frustrated.

[09:05:10] CLINTON: OK, Donald. I know you're into big diversion tonight, anything to avoid talking about your campaign and the way it's exploding and the way Republicans are leaving you.

RAJU (voice-over): Trump, at times, seemingly uncomfortable, pacing around the stage and hovering over Clinton. The billionaire admitting that he wrote off nearly $1 billion in losses and didn't pay Federal income taxes in some years.

COOPER: Did you use that $916 million loss to avoid paying personal Federal income taxes for years? TRUMP: Of course, I do. Of course, I do.

RAJU (voice-over): Trump making a stunning admission when pressed about Governor Mike Pence, flatly contradicting his running mate's call to use military force in Syria.

TRUMP: He and I haven't spoken and I disagree. I disagree.

MARTHA RADDATZ, DEBATE MODERATOR: You disagree with your running mate?

TRUMP: I think we need to knock out ISIS.

RAJU (voice-over): Clinton found herself on the defensive, as well, over leaked transcripts of her speeches to banks, including one where she talked about having different positions publicly and privately.

CLINTON: As I recall, that was something I said about Abraham Lincoln. President Lincoln was trying to convince some people, he used some arguments. Convincing other people, he used other arguments.

TRUMP: She lied. Now, she's blaming the lie on the late, great Abraham Lincoln. That's one that I haven't --

RAJU (voice-over): The ugly tone of this debate which started with the candidates refusing to shake hands, ended by both sharing what they respect about each other.

CLINTON: His children are incredibly able and devoted, and I think that says a lot about Donald.

TRUMP: She doesn't quit. She doesn't give up. I respect that. I tell it like it is. She's a fighter.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

RAJU: Now, in the aftermath of the release of that "Access Hollywood" video in which Donald Trump is boasting about groping women, there was a lot of speculation about what his running mate Mike Pence would do.

Of course, Mike Pence canceled on appearing at an event on Saturday in Wisconsin because of the controversy of Donald Trump's remarks. But speaking just a few moments ago to our colleague, Alisyn Camerota, on "NEW DAY," Mike Pence made it clear that he never considered dropping off the ticket.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PENCE: It's absolutely false to suggest that, at any point in time, we considered dropping off this ticket. It's the greatest honor of my life to have been nominated by my party to be the next vice president of the United States of America.

And, look, politics is a very tough business. I get that. This is my first time, Alisyn, at the national level. And the fact is that, you know, as I said on Saturday, you know, I couldn't condone, I couldn't defend those remarks. I encouraged Donald Trump on Friday to apologize for them. He did.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: Now, in a lot of ways, Carol, that really is signal to the rest of the Republican Party, Mike Pence wanting to get the Party back together again after such a damaging weekend, and also send a signal to his former House Republican colleagues that maybe it's not time to jump ship, give Donald Trump another chance, and he can right the ship going forward.

And that may be one reason why, too, that Paul Ryan also at this moment is still supporting Donald Trump. Carol.

COSTELLO: All right, Manu Raju reporting live from St. Louis. Thanks so much. So let's talk about all of this.

With me now, Lynn Sweet, Washington bureau chief of the "Chicago Sun- Times"; Ron Brownstein, he's a CNN senior political analyst and senior editor for "The Atlantic"; CNN's Politics Executive Editor Mark Preston; and Errol Louis, he's a CNN political commentator and a political HOST at New York 1. Welcome to all of you.

Whew. OK. So, Errol, the Republican leadership will hold this conference on Trump in just about two hours, and apparently Trump needed to stop the bleeding. Did he do that last night?

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think he did. And as far as being in free fall, remember, there was a lot of commentary right up until the debate yesterday about whether or not they would take extraordinary means to try and pressure him out of the race, whether or not there would be more defections, people withdrawing their endorsements, whether or not he could, in fact, continue at all effectively with the campaign. This discussion now, I think, is going to have a different tone because of his performance last night.

On the other hand, it's a little too early to start popping champagne at Trump Tower because you've got some real questions about how much, in the way of resources, they're really going to commit to the presidential side of the fall campaign as opposed to all of the down ballot races that they're so concerned about.

COSTELLO: But here's the thing, Mark. So Republicans were very upset that Donald Trump was going to bring these three Clinton accusers to the debate. The original plan, by the way, according to Rudy Giuliani this morning, was to put those Clinton accusers in the VIP box, so they would have to shake hands with Bill Clinton.

So what does Trump do? He does this live Facebook thing with these three accusers, right?

MARK PRESTON, CNN POLITICS EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Right.

COSTELLO: And then he invites them to the debate, and you know, I guess the Debate Commission didn't want them in the VIP box so they sat where they sat.

PRESTON: Right.

COSTELLO: So how did he stop the bleeding in that sense?

[09:10:09] PRESTON: Well, Errol's right in the fact that we're not having gushing blood coming out right now. I mean, the fact is, don't expect Paul Ryan to come out --

COSTELLO: So he's closed the bleeding to a trickle?

PRESTON: Well, I mean, listen, I'm of the mindset that Donald Trump has bled out so much right now that it's almost impossible for him to win the election if just look at the electoral map right now and what he needed to do. And quite frankly, what Hillary Clinton needs to do over the next 30 or so days, is to reach out to the middles specifically.

I know we talked a lot about that, but what is the middle? The middle is the suburbs and ex-burbs of Philadelphia. It's women voters who are on the fence. It is White male voters, that they've been going back and forth on the college educated White male voters. We're also seeing that in major cities in Florida as well.

Look, Donald Trump, just to put it simply, he wins in Ohio, wins North Carolina, needs to win Florida. On top of that, he will either need to win Pennsylvania or Virginia to win the election.

COSTELLO: OK. OK.

PRESTON: That's hard.

COSTELLO: So just on the topic of women in those states, because he needs women, right, Lynn Sweet? So Anderson Cooper very pointedly asked Donald Trump about those comments that he made on the bus, and he said, no, I didn't grope anyone. It was locker room talk. He apologized again.

And Hillary Clinton made quick work of that, right, because she put out a campaign ad on this very thing this morning. Let's listen and then we'll talk.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Described kissing women without consent.

TRUMP: No, I didn't say that at all. I don't think you understood what was said.

You know I'm automatically attracted to beautiful women -- I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait.

This was locker room talk.

COOPER: Grabbing their genitals. TRUMP: Grab them by the (inaudible).

And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.

TEXT: No, I didn't say that at all. I don't think you understood what was said. This was locker room talk.

If he believes this is locker room talk, how can we believe he's sorry?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: So, Lynn, this web ad, and what Trump said last night about those comments on the bus, did he stop the bleeding with female voters in suburban Philadelphia who are not sure about him at all and dislikes the way he talks about women?

LYNN SWEET, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES: My guess is, Carol, there's nothing he said last night that would change a woman's mind who was offended by this, and otherwise would have wanted to have been with Trump except that he didn't really seem to own up to it.

Because here's the point, he was at work. He wasn't in a locker room. He was in a workplace. He was getting ready -- he was mic-ed up, and the reason we have the tape is because he was going to do a show. He was experienced in television.

Carol, we wear hot mics all the time. You know that you need judgment for what you do. That's another part of this. So people, I think, on this one, you don't need to be an expert in foreign policy or STEM education or the intricacies of Medicare and Medicaid to understand that he was just trying to put a label on it, minimize it, and therefore try to dismiss it. And people see through that, specifically, I think, the very woman whose votes he needs to win.

COSTELLO: So, Ron, I mean, there was a Republican exodus after these comments over the weekend, right?

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. Yes. Right.

COSTELLO: So will all of those Republicans now jump back on board because of what Trump said at the debate last night?

BROWNSTEIN: No. No. That was building. And just to put this into perspective, we're now talking about nearly one-third of Republican senators and almost one-third of Republican governors, saying they will not vote for their Party's nominee. That is unprecedented.

There has never been anything like that, I believe, in the history of the Party. Not in 1964 with Barry Goldwater, not even in 1912 when Theodore Roosevelt bolted the Party after the renomination of William Howard Taft. The dissension and the fracture was not as wide.

Now, will that cause mass defection among hardcore Republican partisan voters? No, probably not. But what it does do is it contributes to the problem we've been talking about in the suburbs. As we've talked about before, Donald Trump is the first Republican

ever at risk of losing college educated White voters. This never happened in the history of polling going back to 1952.

And if you look at Pennsylvania, which we've been talking about, and the poll that came out yesterday, the Marist poll, he is trailing not only by 34 points among college educated White women, which is an extraordinary number. But perhaps even more extraordinary, he's trailing by 15 points in Pennsylvania among college educated White men who usually vote very heavily Republican.

And I think those are the sort of voters who are getting the signal from all of this defection, voters who are usually leaning Republican, that it's OK in this instance not to go with the Party's nominee because so many leaders within the Party are doing so as well.

COSTELLO: OK. Something else that Trump said last night that that appeals greatly to his base. In fact, they were probably thrilled when he said it. He said that he would open up an investigation if he became President into Hillary Clinton's e-mail controversy, and he would send her to jail. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[09:15:05] TRUMP: If I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation, because there has never been so many lies, so much deception, there has never been anything like it.

CLINTON: It's just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country.

TRUMP: Because you'd be in jail.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Secretary Clinton --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: OK. So Errol, he said, so you'd be in jail. Number one, a president doesn't have the power to do that. That's what the courts are for in the United States of America. Right?

LOUIS: Right.

COSTELLO: But still, Trump's core supporters would probably say yes, go --

LOUIS: We heard some of that.

COSTELLO: -- but is that what independent voters want to do?

LOUIS: Of course, not.

COSTELLO: First thing in a presidency is open up this hearing?

LOUIS: No, of course. In fact when you played that I was glad you got a little bit of the howl from the crowd because it reflects the howl we heard at the Republican National Convention. It is an applause line. It's purely emotional.

It has nothing to do with the laws, the facts, nothing to do with anything really or anything that's likely to happen. For people who are really worried about the election kind of and our politics going completely off the rails, it has a little echo of authoritarian rule.

I don't know if that's a real wide concern right now. But, it's, it's showing what I think Donald Trump was doing most of last night, which was trying to shore up his base, give them the red meat, give them their applause line, whether or not it's rational, factual or anything else. A really unpleasant moment frankly.

COSTELLO: OK, you guys stick around. I'm going to have to get a break in, but I want to continue our conversation after the break because still to come, yes, there were accusations, ugly rhetoric. But it wasn't completely doom and gloom. Yes, the candidates actually said nice things about each other. We'll talk about that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:21:03]

COSTELLO: It is such an ugly election. Trump calls Clinton a liar and a criminal, even the devil. Clinton calls Trump a sexist and unhinged. So it was an oddly breathtaking moment when a voter asked both candidates to come up with something good to say about the other.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLINTON: Look, I respect his children. His children are incredibly able, and devoted, and I think that says a lot about Donald. I don't agree with nearly anything else he says or does, but I do respect that.

TRUMP: I will say this about Hillary. She doesn't quit. She doesn't give up. I respect that. I tell it like it is. She's a fighter. I disagree with much of what she's fighting for. I do disagree with her judgment, and many cases, but she does fight hard, and she doesn't quit, and she doesn't give up. And I consider that to be a very good trait.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: All right. So let's talk about that and more. Errol Louis is back so is Lynn Sweet, Ron Brownstein and Mark Preston. So Mark, Donald Trump actually answered the question. I'm not so sure that Hillary Clinton did.

MARK PRESTON, CNN POLITICS EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Well, it was predictable what she said. It was -- I mean, literally when the question was asked, we were sitting around watching, said going right to the children because the children have been praised throughout the whole campaign, and they do seem like they're very well put together --

COSTELLO: She didn't say he was a great father and he raised his children to be the respectful adults they are now.

PRESTON: She didn't, but she walked a fine line and that was the -- that was the good thing she could find in Donald Trump. Now what his answer was caught us all off guard quite frankly, because it really did give us a window into his mind, and his thinking, which is exactly where he is in this campaign, fight, fight, fight.

He looked at her and said God, she's given me quite a run right now for this and I like the fact that she is a fighter. And that's the way he seems to have conducted himself his entire life.

COSTELLO: Interesting. So Lynn, might she use that in a campaign ad?

SWEET: I think that would be low on the list because she's got a lot of stuff that might be better. Also, I want to point out that Donald Trump, before he talked about she is a fighter when he talked about her kids he addressed it. I don't know if it was meant to be a compliment but it's great.

He is so combative, Carol, that he can't even take a compliment about his children without trying to turn that into a character flaw of Hillary Clinton. And, and, she wasn't -- sincere when he was complimenting getting the compliment for his kids, so, you know maybe he'll use a commercial, the compliment that Hillary Clinton made for his kids.

COSTELLO: OK. All right. Let's switch gears and talk taxes because Ron, I thought that Donald Trump's answers to whether he didn't pay federal income tax for the past 20 years it was interesting. So listen to this exchange.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON COOPER, MODERATOR: You have not answered though a simple question. Did you use that $916 million loss to avoid paying personal federal income taxes?

TRUMP: Of course, I do. Of course, I do and so do all of her donors or most of her donors. But I will tell you that number one I pay tremendous numbers of taxes. I absolutely used it and so did Warren Buffett, and so did George Soros.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: So, Ron, he essentially admitted, well, yes, I didn't pay federal income taxes because why wouldn't I? And by the way, so did your rich friends. They used loopholes, too.

BROWNSTEIN: Look I think in polling it's pretty clear Americans think a lot of rich people find ways to avoid paying taxes. The important point is it doesn't mean that they like it.

And for Donald Trump the risk here is that so much of his appeal is that he is kind of a traitor to his class, that he is a rich guy who has worked the system, but will now fight for you to make it work better for you. The problem he runs into with taxes is it reinforces the narrative about not paying small business, about investors getting stiffed even in the videotape about the way he interacts with women.

I mean, the common story is that Donald Trump seems to pursue what is best for himself without much regard for what it means for other people.

The idea of not paying taxes, no civic responsibility to contribute to education or the military, or the roads I think reinforces a core Clinton argument that you can't really trust him to fight for you and I think that's where it hurts him more than on the specifics of how much taxes he pays.

COSTELLO: So, so on the subject of trust and what politicians say publicly and what they think privately, Hillary Clinton was asked about that because in a Wall Street speech she told these powerful bankers that yes, she sometimes this one thing privately and says other things publicly. Donald Trump had a great response to that charge. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLINTON: That was something I said about Abraham Lincoln, after having seen the wonderful Steven Spielberg movie called "Lincoln." It was a master class, watching President Lincoln get the Congress to approve the 13th amendment.

It was principled, and it was strategic and I was making the point that it is hard sometimes to get the Congress to do what you want to do. And you have to keep working at it.

TRUMP: She lied. Now she's blaming the lie on the late, great Abraham Lincoln. Honest Abe. Honest Abe never lied. That's the good thing. That's the big difference between Abraham Lincoln and you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: So, so Errol, first of all, Errol -- the late, great Abraham Lincoln. But Hillary Clinton's answer was so quintessentially what a Democrat would say in answering that question. It was all over the place, and it was, you know, tried to intellectualize it and seriously, yes, we're all one person at work and in private we're another person?

LOUIS: Well, I thought actually a more accurate reading of it would have been you know there's this position that I hold, and then there's where the public is and I'm trying to bring the two together. That's what she was getting at. This is what happens in diplomacy and governance especially on big issues like the 13th amendment. She couldn't bring herself to simply say that and of course, it left a big, wide opening for him to say I know about Abe Lincoln and senator, you're no Abe Lincoln.

COSTELLO: All right. I wish he would have put it that way. That would have been even better. That would have been fantastic. Thank you so much. I got to leave it there. Lynn Sweet, Ron Brownstein, Errol Louis, Mark Preston, thanks to all of you.

All right, still to come the unsaid debate moments now going viral. We'll talk about them next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)