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Ryan Holds GOP Conference Call on Trump Today; Trump, Clinton Brawl in "Ugliest Debate Ever"; New Clinton Video Slams Trump's "Locker Room" Defense. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired October 10, 2016 - 10:00   ET

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

[10:00:00]

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN HOST: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me. Just one hour from now, the House Speaker Paul Ryan will hold a conference call with fellow House Republicans, the goal, to check the mood of those lawmakers after a tumultuous few days. This is multiple sources tell us Ryan is sticking with the party's nominee, that would be Donald Trump, at least for now.

Trump's running mate, Mike Pence, says he will not abandon the ticket. Today he's campaigns in North Carolina as Trump focuses on Pennsylvania, a crucial swing state. The Democrats are hitting Michigan, Ohio and Colorado.

The blitz comes on the morning after a debate so ugly that Trump and Hillary Clinton didn't even shake hands at the beginning. And the tone only got nastier from there.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This was locker room talk. I'm not proud of it. I apologized to my family. I apologized to the American people. Certainly I'm not proud of it.

I have great respect for women. Nobody has more respect for women than I do. --

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: So for the record, you're saying you never did that? --

TRUMP: I said things that frankly, you hear these things. They are said. And I was embarrassed by it but I have tremendous respect for women.

HILLARY CLINTON, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: 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, POW's, Muslims and so many others.

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

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

TRUMP: And I'll tell you what. I didn't think I would say this, but I'm going to say it. And I hate to say it. But 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: Because you would be in jail.

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

TRUMP: You didn't delete them? --

CLINTON: They were personal e-mails and not official. Well, we turned over 35,000. --

TRUMP: Oh, yes. What about the other 15,000? --

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

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.

COOPER: Did you use that $916 million loss to avoid paying personal federal income taxes?

TRUMP: Of course I do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: OK. So we have a lot to cover this morning including new details on that conference call among House Republicans now less than one hour away. Our CNN senior political reporter Manu Raju in St. Louis with more on that. Good morning.

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: Good morning, Carol.

Now, House Republicans leaders are expected to tell their members today that if you don't want to support Donald Trump, you don't feel like you have to. You can run away from him if you need to. Because right now, this party is in self-preservation mode, particularly after this weekend's developments in that video of Donald Trump and that "Access Hollywood" interview with Billy Bush bragging about groping women.

The Republicans obviously we saw over the weekend running away from him. But that debate performance may have stopped some of the bleeding, at least what I'm hearing this morning in talking to Republican officials. They are not expecting a mass exodus today. They believe that Donald Trump at least cleared a hurdle to keep some of the party behind him. One person, very important person is House Speaker Paul Ryan. Of course, we know that he had a very difficult time getting behind him initially, later, endorsed Donald Trump.

Right now, a source with Paul Ryan's office tells me that there's no change in Paul Ryan's position, meaning he's still supporting Donald Trump for now. Now, one reason why is because -- potentially why is because Mike Pence, who is Donald Trump's running mate, who is also very close to House Republicans and Paul Ryan, also making a show of unity this morning speaking to our colleague, Alisyn Camerota.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. MIKE PENCE, (R) VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: 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. 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, clearly Mike Pence trying to make a show of unity and bring this party back together again. It will take a long ways to go to actually

[10:05:16] get everybody on board behind Trump. They want to prevent mass defections. So, we will see what happens in that conference call. But right now we are not getting much indication that the Republican Party leadership is planning to bolt. They may stand by right now. But Donald Trump still on thin ice with much of his party, Carol.

COSTELLO: OK. So Manu, you stay right there because as we have said, in just an hour the House Speaker Paul Ryan, he is the most powerful Republican in the country, will hold that conference call. And they are going to talk Trump. Wouldn't you love to be a fly on the wall? I know five people who definitely would.

So, Manu Raju is one. Also joining me, Patricia Murphy, a columnist for "The Daily Beast," and "Roll Call," Larry Sabato is the director for the University of Virginia, Center for Politics, CNN senior political reporter Nia-Malika Henderson is here and so is Mark Preston, he is CNN's politics executive editor. Welcome to all of you.

So Manu, I'm going to start with you because you have a lot of great sources on Capitol Hill. You are our congressional correspondent. So what did Mr. Trump say last night to make Paul Ryan feel more comfortable?

RAJU: Well, I'm not sure if it's exactly something that he said about the video. Because one thing that Republicans wanted to hear was a lot of contrition. They wanted to hear him come out and say he was apologetic about you know what he said. We didn't get a lot of that from Donald Trump last night. In fact, he sort of dismissed the controversy. He did apologize but then he said, you know, this is a distraction and this is you know locker room talk, really dismissing it.

But I think what Republicans at large feels that he's able to shift the narrative. Turn the narrative back to Hillary Clinton and make it not about the video tape anymore. It almost rallied the base behind him. So, and in some ways it's not necessary that Paul Ryan is more comfortable. In a lot of ways he's sort of boxed in because if Paul Ryan right now were to rescind his endorsement, it would create such an uproar within his party, especially after Trump really you know, rallying the base last night with such a bombastic performance against Hillary Clinton that it would be a really big problem for the Republican Party leadership to bolt right now. They had their chance on Saturday. Right now, the narrative has shifted. There's a feeling that Trump is doing a little bit better and that makes it a lot harder for party leadership to just rebel right now, Carol.

COSTELLO: So Nia-Malika, the Republicans that jumped off the Trump train since you know they heard those comments of what Trump said on that bus. They were also upset, many of them, that Mr. Trump was going to bring in these women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct in the past. They were very much against that. They very want the debate to return to the issues which it kind of didn't last night.

So again, what did Mr. Trump do to stop the bleeding, so to speak, among those, you know those Republicans' minds, who have jumped off the Trump train?

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: Yes. I was in contact during the debate with some Republicans and their feeling was because Hillary Clinton didn't knock Donald Trump out of the debate last night, it wasn't a, you know, A+ performance from her. She didn't effectively end his candidacy last night. They felt he was able to hold his own, to prosecute a case against Hillary Clinton, and so therefore, they feel like there's reason to hang around. And that there wouldn't be a mass exodus as Manu talked about.

Also, I do think you're right, I mean, the kind of tabloid nature of his press conference before the debate. And some of the things he said in the debate. Also unexpected to only the press conference among many Republicans, not necessarily unexpected that he mentioned it but unexpected that those folks were there in the audience, I think certainly was distasteful to a lot of Republicans.

But listen, at this point, they are turning their attention to saving the senate, trying to obviously keep the house and that's -- they were having meetings even on that press conference was happening. Some of the Republicans I was talking to, strategizing about how to save the senate. They feel like he has turned the page from the video so that's good news for the Trump campaign. --

COSTELLO: I'm just curious, so Patricia, so in inviting these Clinton accusers to the debate, was that a winning strategy, then? Is that what this means, that you know essentially their presence rattled Hillary Clinton. She wasn't on her A-game and it reminded voters of the Clinton past?

PATRICIA MURHY, COLUMNIST "THE DAILY BEAST" AND "ROLL CALL": Well, I think, you know if Donald Trump's goal was to rattle Hillary Clinton, get her off her game, I think he probably did do that. But that shouldn't be his goal right now. His goal is to win more voters over than he has already. He is losing this race in key battleground states. He's losing particularly we all know this, among college educated white women. Mitt Romney won that group by six points. Donald Trump is losing them by 25 points. Those are numbers you

[10:10:16] cannot and will not make up this group. And we know their concerns about Donald Trump are about his temperament, they call him a bully. They don't like the language he's used.

So instead of going the other direction, he really doubled down on that. He brought in the Bill Clinton accusers. He called Hillary Clinton a liar nine times. He dismissed what many women consider to be talk about sexual assault as just locker room banter, it's just words. That is so deeply offensive to women, to parents, to anybody who has a son or daughter trying to raise them up to be better. He may have won over hardcore Trump supporters, -- should I just publicly denounce him, yes, he stopped that bleeding. But he did not win over the women voters that he needed last night.

COSTELLO: So Mark what will this call really be like?

MARK PRESTON, CNN POLITICS EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Well, I mean, certainly there's going to be some concern, Carol, you know, from rank and file members who are concerned about running for re-election. And Paul Ryan, I think is probably going to say to them listen, you got to do what you got to do which he has basically said anyway from the very beginning. As Manu pointed out, he has reluctantly endorsed Donald Trump, took him a while. It was really a push and a pull.

You know, in terms of the Hillary Clinton knockout punch last night, I think that's a narrative that is almost too easy, Carol. Because I don't think she could have delivered the knockout punch last night. The only person who could have knocked himself out last night was Donald Trump. He's still got core support. And had she gone for the knockout punch, it could have boomeranged back on her. Remember, there were at least three women in that audience, right? Three women that were there, that accused her husband of sexually attacking them basically, tough position to be in.

COSTELLO: So Larry, you know, you have been around a long time. So as you were watching the debate last night, because here's the thing that's really strange. So most people believe that Hillary Clinton won the debate, but they say really, it was Donald Trump who won because he performed above expectations, but the bar was so low that -- is that really winning?

LARRY SABATO, DIRECTOR UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA CENTER FOR POLITICS: Carol, if you can have a debate where both candidates won for different reasons, that was last night's debate. Donald Trump knocked the Republican Party, won the debate because he did stop some of the bleeding. And he's made it much more difficult for the Republican leadership find some reason, some way to get him off the ticket. I don't believe they ever could have anyway. So he's in a better position and his base, not the Republican base as a whole, but his personal base loved those attacks on Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton.

Here's why Hillary Clinton won. As your polls showed, people respected the way she approached the debate substantively, factually, better than Donald Trump. And most of all, the last thing Hillary Clinton wanted was to face another candidate to have a substitution made. She is beautifully positioned, at my shop, the crystal ball. We have her now at 341 electoral votes. You only need 270. I have listened to what Mark Preston has been saying the last couple of days. He's absolutely correct. This election, I'm not going to say it's cooked and done but I smell it cooking.

COSTELLO: OK. So we are going to talk much more about that after a break. You guys are going to stick around with the exception of Manu Raju, who sadly has to get back to work and talk with his sources. But we do appreciate it Manu.

Still to come in the "Newsroom," they clashed but did they convince those undecided voters to change their minds?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:17:35] COSTELLO: Last night's debate was tense, at times even uncomfortable. Donald Trump's main goal, try and stop the -- current crisis inside his campaign after a lewd and sexually aggressive video surfaced. While Trump tried to do damage control, we also learned something new about his taxes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

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

COOPER: 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: OK. So essentially, Patricia, what Mr. Trump is saying, look, I used the tax loopholes available to me within the law and so do other wealthy people like Hillary Clinton and her buddies. So what's wrong with that?

MURPHY: You know it's a surprisingly effective defense. I have to say, Mike Pence said the same thing in the vice presidential debate. And Donald Trump asking other people, other Americans, "Do you not take all of your personal deductions?" I think if people think that these deductions were legal and they always do stress that they were legal, then they kind of can't find a quarrel with the people who take the deductions. They can find a quarrel with the system.

I think Donald Trump actually effectively put that back on Hillary Clinton and said look, you voted for all this stuff. I haven't had a chance to fact check yet that to make sure that that's true. But this is really, seeming to animate Democrats significantly but Republicans I talked to and even independents, they kind of just write it off. They're like look he's doing what anybody else would do. And so this is not sticking to Donald Trump the way I thought it would and the way I think the Clinton campaign thought it would.

COSTELLO: I do wonder about those working class Americans, right, who are taking it in the chin right at the moment. Do they buy into that? -- Do they think it's OK that Donald Trump uses the tax code for his benefit and they don't get the same benefits, Nia-Malika?

HENDERSON: You know, I think it depends on what working class voters you're talking about. There's a big divide in this country in this terms of the working class. Working class white voters are voting by and large for Donald Trump and working class African-American voters and Latino voters are voting by and large for Hillary Clinton. So there is likely a divide in terms of how they view this tax return issue.

I think probably the better argument for the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democrats more generally in terms of the tax returns is that billion dollar loss and what that says about

[10:20:16] Donald Trump's business acumen, right? I mean, he is selling himself as a world class businessman, as someone who's worth $10 billion and he's incredibly successful but then you have that billion dollar loss because of his bankruptcies and his bad business deals. And that I think is maybe a more effective argument, particularly when you look at his pretty effective defense. I agree with Patricia that people don't want to pay taxes and Donald Trump is no exception to that. But if you get at his business record, that might be a more effective argument.

COSTELLO: OK. So Hillary Clinton, she was asked whether she thought things in private that she didn't express publicly, right? You know and how does she handle that? And she oddly brought up Abraham Lincoln and Trump pounced. 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 Mark, first of all, it was kind of a strange argument, right? Abraham Lincoln, and then it was so convoluted that you were left going what, and then Donald Trump hit her.

PRESTON: The late great Abe Lincoln. That's what you say about baseball players you know from the 1950s. I'm sure Larry would follow me on that.

You know, here's the thing about this. She's incredibly vulnerable. She is a very flawed candidate. She has a lot of political liabilities. That answer was ridiculous. I needed a map to kind of follow what path she was going down. And then I still think I got lost in that as I think most of the viewers did.

The e-mail issue that she brought up was a disaster last night. She has a lot of problems. But for her right now, Donald Trump is a greater flawed candidate and for him, he has inflicted all his own wounds.

COSTELLO: So I know, I'm just thinking of the many comments that I got about last night's debate from viewers. They were sort of repulsed by the whole thing. But we got into that a little bit earlier so I won't bring that up again.

On the subject of what Mr. Trump said about women, you know, on that bus with Billy Bush and he again apologized last night, Larry, he did, and he said it was -- he marked it up as "locker room talk," you know, sometimes men say things that they regret and he did, but Hillary Clinton's camp has already put out a web ad about this. So let's watch that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: You described kissing women without consent.

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

I'm automatically attracted to beautiful -- 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 --

Locker room talk

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

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

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: So Larry, effective?

SABATO: We are already headed, Carol, for the largest gender gap ever recorded in American presidential history at least since we have had that kind of data. And I think it's in cement at this point. The cement is drying or maybe it has dried. And that sex talk tape only reinforced the drying. So you know, in that sense, I suppose it's useful for the Clinton camp to remind not just women, but also men who are offended by that kind of thing. It's going to continue to hurt Trump all the way up to Election Day.

COSTELLO: All right. I have to leave it there, Patricia Murphy, Larry Sabato, Nia-Malika Henderson and Mark Preston. Thanks to all of you.

Still ahead in the "Newsroom," chalk it up to locker room talk? Yep. Donald Trump tries to put out the firestorm over that lewd video but is Larry right? We'll talk about that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:29:12] COSTELLO: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me. Last night's town hall style affair was designed to be all about the voters, real Americans asking real questions important to them. Cue Ken Bone.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KEN BONE, ST. LOUIS GUY AND INTERNET SENSATION: What steps will your energy policy take to meet our energy needs while at the same time reminding environmentally friendly and minimizing job loss for fossil power plant workers?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: America instantly fell in love from his question to the disposable camera he whipped out at the end of the debate to capture his experience. With me now is Ken Bone, St. Louis guy and internet sensation. Welcome, Ken.

BONE: Thank you, Carol. Thanks very much for having me this morning.

COSTELLO: Thanks for being -- I see you're still wearing your red sweater.

BONE: I don't see how I could not have worn the red sweater this morning. It's more famous than me. I just had to bring myself along.

COSTELLO: Can you believe you've become an internet sensation?

BONE: I went from last night having --