Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Trump Pulls Off Major Upset in Historic Race; Trump: Time To "Bind The Wounds of Division"; Soon: Hillary Clinton Delivers Concession Speech; Republicans Keep Control of House and Senate; Trump Win Sparks Global Market Turmoil. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired November 09, 2016 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:07] CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: And good morning, and thank you so much for joining me. I'm Carol Costello in Washington, D.C.

Hillary Clinton, 90 minutes from now, delivering her concession speech after one of the most historic upsets in modern history. We'll carry that speech live, of course. That speech coming just hours after Donald Trump delivered his own as the nation's next president.

His win, in a word, stunning. Blowing well past the 270 electoral votes needed, crushing Hillary Clinton. Her supporters stunned and heartbroken after one of the most polarizing presidential races in our lifetime.

President Obama congratulating Trump, and due to speak publicly later today.

A victorious Trump changing tone and calling for a divided nation to unite behind his presidency.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: Now it's time for America to bind the wounds of division. We have to get together.

CROWD: Yes. Yes.

TRUMP: To all Republicans and Democrats and independents across this nation, I say it is time for us to come together as one united people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: Trump will become the first Republican president in 11 years to have such a huge advantage. The GOP will control both the house and the senate.

Trump says he will deliver on his campaign promises, stoking great optimism among his supporters and fierce among those who did not see this win coming.

We are covering the campaigns, the fallout, the rattled nerves hanging over this hour's opening bell on Wall Street. But let's begin with CNN's Jeff Zeleny. Good morning, Jeff.

Oh, that's Phil Mattingly. We're starting with you, Phil?

OK. Take it away.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Carol, I'm sorry about that. We are here in midtown Manhattan where Hillary Clinton will be speaking, as you said, in 90 minutes' time.

Carol, this is not a speech she had planned to give, of course, but she will be in a ball room with some supporters and staffers, giving what is described to me as a thank you message but also a message of healing and a message looking forward. And she will, indeed, call on Democrats and her supporters to support this President.

Of course, last night, her thousands of supporters waited in the Javits Center, really not for from here, only blocks from here, waiting for her to come out. She did not. And John Podesta finally came out about 2:00 in the morning.

Carol, I was in that room and the looks on her supporters' faces was one of disbelief. That is now starting to settle in among Democrats, really, across the country and certainly in Washington and her campaign. They are trying to determine what went wrong. They simply, you know, got it wrong in terms of the numbers, in terms of the modeling of turnout, other things.

One adviser tells me this is not the moment for finger pointing. But, Carol, I can tell you there will be a lot of that, a lot of questions, what she could have done. As you said, this is a stunning upset for her. She was on the brink of history. She, in fact, thought that she would win. Her campaign had planned to start announcing a transition. That is an entirely different speech today, Carol.

Donald Trump is doing that just across town here in midtown Manhattan. And she will be giving a speech and then she will be stepping away from public view. Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Jeff Zeleny reporting live for us this morning. Thank you. Now, let's turn our attentions to the Trump camp. CNN's Sara Murray is here with that. Good morning.

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICS REPORTER: Good morning, Carol. Well, this is a surprise, even to Donald Trump's own advisers. And he promised a political revolution, he certainly delivered on that in the early hours of this morning.

And he wakes up today with a very long to-do list. Donald Trump was pretty hands-off when it came to his transition team's planning. He wanted to focus at the task hand, which was winning the presidential election. He didn't want to jinx himself by planning too far ahead. And so his transition seem sort of got the ball rolling, in many ways, without him. There were 22 different departments. They sort of came up with different plans for different agencies. They came up with lists for potential political appointees. The transition team vetted those. And that plan was delivered to Trump Tower last night.

So, today, in the coming days, Donald Trump will begin to look through those plans or begin to look through potential people to build his own cabinet. But I have to tell you, aides are still a little bit in disbelief this morning. They're going to be gathering mid-morning at Trump Tower to sort of plan the next steps. And I think we should just take a moment and look back at last night and see what Donald Trump had to say when he realized that he had won the presidency.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I've just received a call from Secretary Clinton.

(APPLAUSE)

TRUMP: She congratulated us -- it's about us -- on our victory. And I congratulated her and her family on a very, very hard-fought campaign. I mean, she fought very hard.

(APPLAUSE)

[09:05:09] TRUMP: Hillary has worked very long and very hard over a long period of time. And we owe her a major debt of gratitude for her service to our country. I mean that very sincerely.

(APPLAUSE)

TRUMP: Now it's time for America to bind the wounds of division. We have to get together.

CROWD: Yes. Yes.

TRUMP: To all Republicans and Democrats and independents across this nation, I say it is time for us to come together as one united people.

(APPLAUSE)

TRUMP: It's time. I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be President for all Americans, and this is so important to me.

(APPLAUSE)

TRUMP: For those who have chosen not to support me in the past, of which there were a few people --

(LAUGHTER)

TRUMP: -- I'm reaching out to you for your guidance and your help, so that we can work together and unify our great country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MURRAY: Now, there's plenty of interest, of course, about what a Donald Trump administration would look like and how Donald Trump will govern as President, but his campaign aides are saying, whoa, whoa, those questions are going to have to wait for a little while. At least let us sort of savor this victory, wrap our minds around it, at least, in the early hours of today, and figure out what comes next. Carol. COSTELLO: All right. Sara Murray reporting live for us from New

York. We'll hear today too from President Obama. He'll be speaking from the White House. And CNN's Athena Jones has more on that. Good morning.

ATHENA JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. That's right, we will hear from the President after we hear from Secretary Clinton. We're still waiting on the word of exact timing of when the President will speak, but we know he'll come out. He'll talk about the election results. He'll also talk about what needs to be done to unify the country after this bitter-fought election.

We know that the President spoke with Donald Trump earlier this morning, congratulating him. He also spoke with Secretary Clinton expressing his admiration for her strong campaign.

Let me read to you, from the White House, a statement put out just a couple of hours ago. "The President invited the President-elect to meet with him at the White House on Thursday, November 10th, to update him on the transition planning his team has been working on for nearly a year." That statement goes on to say that ensuring a smooth transition is one of the top priorities that President Obama has identified.

But remember, Carol, this is a President who spent months saying that Donald Trump wasn't going to win. He and his wife, the first lady, Michelle Obama did more than two dozen campaign stops, nearly 50 interviews between T.V. and radio and social media, all making the case that Donald Trump was temperamentally unfit to be President and uniquely unqualified.

This is a man, Donald Trump, who, before he was the incoming Commander-in-Chief, he was the birther-in-chief, leading this movement of folks who were questioning the President's citizenship and his legitimacy. He has promised to undo much of President Obama's legacy, so it's certainly going to be an interesting meeting. Carol.

COSTELLO: Yes, it is. Athena Jones reporting live from the White House this morning. Donald Trump managed to pull off one of the most stunning upsets in political history. Still, Hillary Clinton is winning in the popular vote. CNN Politics Executive Editor Mark Preston has been digesting the numbers for us this morning. He's here to show us more. Hi, Mark.

MARK PRESTON, CNN POLITICS EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Hey, good morning, Carol. Well, this is where we began the night last night. As you can see right there, Hillary Clinton, we thought, had about 268 electoral votes going into the first poll closings at 6:00. Donald Trump only 204. And as you said, he had a very, very, very narrow path to victory.

So where did we end up? Well, he got right through that path clearly. Right now, he stands at 289 electoral votes.

So how did he do that? Well, first of all, he won this battleground state right here, Florida. He won the battleground state of North Carolina. He won the battleground state of Ohio. And in addition to that, he put a fracture in the blue wall right up in here in Pennsylvania and then up here in Wisconsin. And as you can see right now, we are still waiting to see what happens here and what happens here in Minnesota and in Michigan.

Now, Carol, at this point, they're still counting votes. We're trying to figure out who will win those states. But you know what, as you talk about the popular vote, let's see where we stand right now.

If you see that right there, Hillary Clinton has a little bit of a lead right now. But she could increase it because, right now, if you look at the state of California, they only have about two-thirds of their vote actually counted at this point. So we would expect her to pick up some there.

And then, of course, up here, is she going to pick up any here? Probably not very much at all up in Minnesota.

And then, of course, over in Michigan right now, they're still counting votes. They still got about 5 percent out that they are trying to figure out.

[09:10:03] And then the last state, of course, is up here in New Hampshire. Could she pick up any here? And they're just about done counting as well.

So for Hillary Clinton, for her to increase her lead in the popular vote, it would have to be here, Carol, in the state of Florida, the very blue state of Florida, Carol.

COSTELLO: OK. So it is possible that Hillary Clinton could win the popular vote but not the electoral vote?

PRESTON: Absolutely, no question about that. It's happened in the past. And this might be one of the elections, Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Mark Preston, thanks to you. Global stocks, well, they're plummeting around the world on news of the Trump win. And you know the opening bell on Wall Street, oh, it dings in just about 20 minutes. The Dow Futures tumbling right now on the news of this election outcome. CNN Business Correspondent Alison Kosik has more. Good morning.

ALISON KOSIK, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. So we are watching Futures dip quite a bit. We are expecting the Dow to fall about 200 points when the opening bell rings in less than 30 minutes. But believe it or not, that's an improvement from what we saw overnight when we saw Futures drop as much as 800 points on the Dow. That's as those returns were coming in about President-elect Trump gaining ground. So, clearly, there is a recovery that we can expect but not at the opening bell.

So why are investors spooked? Well, first of all, it came as a shock that Trump won this election. And secondly, investors are spooked by the unpredictability factor of Donald Trump and his anti-trade policies that he's already talked about on the campaign trail. There's a lot of concern as to how those will affect the U.S. economy, how those will affect the broader economy.

But as far as investors go, as today begins, the way investors are thinking is Trump, at this point, upended the landscape where there' just a lot of question marks going forward. One analyst is saying expect a lot more monster swings between today and inauguration day as we wait to hear more from Trump as to where he stands on policies.

But I want to leave you with one thought, that it doesn't matter who would have won the election. History shows us that there often is a sell-off the day after a presidential election. In fact, when President Obama won the election in 2008, we did see the S&P 500 fall 5 percent the next day. Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Alison Kosik reporting live for us. We'll check back with you when the opening bell rings at about 9:30 Eastern Time. So we have a lot to discuss this morning, right?

Maeve Reston is here, CNN national political reporter. David Chalian joins me. He's our CNN political director. David Gergen is here, former presidential adviser to Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton. And Ryan Lizza is here. He's a Washington correspondent for "The New Yorker." Welcome to all of you.

I want to talk about the popular vote first off, David Chalian. So Hillary Clinton, it's possible she could win the popular vote but not the electoral vote. But that doesn't matter, she's already conceded. There will be no challenges.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Right. And well, that's how we elect presidents, by the Electoral College not by the popular vote. That's the way we've been doing it for a couple of centuries. And this will be, I think, the fourth time in history, if indeed it emerges that way, that the popular vote winner and the Electoral College vote winner are different. And it was rather recent history. This happened with Al Gore in 2000.

COSTELLO: Yes, but we all know what happened then, right? But that's different from --

CHALIAN: Tell me what happened then. I --

(LAUGHTER)

RYAN LIZZA, WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORKER: He won the popular vote and George Bush won the Electoral College.

COSTELLO: No, I know. Right.

CHALIAN: And George Bush served as President. So I think that --

COSTELLO: But we had to wait awhile for that to happen.

CHALIAN: Right, there was a 36-day recount. But I think, Carol, that while that may be an interesting data point, obviously, Hillary Clinton quickly realized last night that it wasn't something that was going to prevent her from beginning the work of trying to heal the country. That's why she placed that concession phone call to Donald Trump so that when he went out to address his supporters, he could reference that phone call, said that it happened, even though she had chosen not to speak last night.

COSTELLO: Yes. So is it strange, David Gergen, that Hillary Clinton chose not to speak last night and won't speak until later this morning?

DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I think it caused some comment, but I think it's very trivial actually. I think it would have been better had she come out last night. She could have done the same thing John Podesta did. You know, just come in, give a brief statement, "Listen, you've all been waiting here a long time, I'm sorry to have kept you. Votes are still being counted. Let's talk again in the morning." I think that would have been a better way to do it.

But, yes, I think she should get some slack on this. You know, I'm sure it was a devastating blow to her to start with. It was also extremely late at night, and this morning's going to be fine.

COSTELLO: So I want to post this question to you because you've been around a long time, served under four presidents. Put this election into context for us. You know, how historic this really is for our country.

GERGEN: Well, I think there are two things about it, you know, that really give us pause this morning. The first, of course, was just the fact that there was an upset that so few saw coming. I think just a handful. The polls were wrong, the media was wrong, the general sense of the country was wrong.

[09:15:06] And I don't think we've seen an upset like this since Harry Truman and he was a sitting president and it was much easier to command the bully pulpit in those days for a president.

But, beyond that, the really important question is the country taking a turn. Are we moving toward becoming a different kind of country, or a different kind of sense of who we are?

I think a lot of Americans woke up this morning thinking, I don't recognize the country that I'm in. This is not the country I thought I grew up in. These are not the values I thought -- and there's going to be jubilation on one side but as you know, among people who thought Hillary was going to win, not that they loved Hillary, but a sense of stability about what kind of country they had.

There are a lot of women today and there are a lot of minorities who feel like he fanned the flames of racism and sexism and they're very, very upset about that. And they're very -- they feel very threatened.

COSTELLO: Right. Because as we all know, Ryan, it's hard to take words back. You can't forget everything that Donald Trump has said in the run-up to that historic day yesterday, right? So how does he calm the fierce of those minorities that are, frankly, scared this morning? LIZZA: That's right. If you are an undocumented immigrant in this

country, Donald Trump has promised to deport you, even if you are a child who was brought here by a parent. If you are thinking about coming to this country as a Muslim, Donald Trump has said he's not going to allow you in the country.

And I think the popular vote does matter. I think that it matters that one of the candidates is likely to get more votes than the other. That matters with a mandate that President-elect Trump will claim.

And I think it's really important to note that Donald Trump is going to be a very powerful president. The executive branch of the government over the last 16 years has increased its powers exponentially. After 9/11, George W. Bush erected a national security state beyond which any president had.

Barack Obama only did small things to rein that in. As Obama's legislative agenda ground to a halt in the last eight years, the executive branch, with executive orders, and other uses, you know, the pen that Barack Obama used, the White House expanding its authority.

None of that has been reined in. So, Donald Trump is going to inherit an extremely powerful White House. He's going to have a Republican Senate and a Republican House. And he's going to have a 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court soon when he points his first Supreme Court nominee.

COSTELLO: Yes, I'm --

LIZZA: I think it's important to note that we have a candidate who is the foreign leader he admired the most is Vladimir Putin. This is someone who's talked about his admiration for the Chinese crackdown in Tiananmen Square. Someone who has talked about punishing his enemies. And he's going to inherit the most powerful White House in American history.

COSTELLO: Speaking of that because I want to read. There's two competing statements from two very different people this morning. One from Mitt Romney, right, who was very against Donald Trump's presidency he tweeted out this morning, "Best wishes for a duly elected president, may his victory speech be his guide and preserving the republic his aim."

Omarosa, one of his top surrogates, said that Donald Trump has an enemies list, and this is what she said in an interview from last night. Quote, "It's so great our enemies are making themselves clear so that when we get into the White House, we know where we stand."

"Lindsey Graham," because he didn't vote for Mr. Trump, "if Lindsey Graham felt his interest was with that candidate, god bless him but let me just tell you Mr. Trump has a long memory and we're keeping a list." So --

RESTON: See there?

COSTELLO: Right? RESTON: Those are -- fighting words. And I think what will be so

interesting to watch here is we know from the campaign trail that Donald Trump has a long memory and an enemy's list and from his history.

Does he now, as he steps into this different role, does he take on a different kind of persona? Does he put some of these personal grievances behind him?

I think there's a lot of -- because of what Brian was saying, a lot of pressure on him now with the Republican House, with the Republican Senate, to really get and unite a very fractured country. He is not the right messenger for that but we did hear a slightly different tone from him last night certainly, maybe the beginning of a different tone.

And this gets to the question that so many voters were worried about, who is he going to surround himself with in the White House? Who will he listen to? Because that's always been the big fear with Donald Trump is that he doesn't listen to anyone. You know, so I think it will -- it will be so interesting to watch just over this next month, what kind of cues he takes and who he takes advice from.

COSTELLO: So, let's say he appoints Rudy Giuliani, for example, as his attorney general, Rudy Giuliani was sort of like, you know, when the crowds were chanting, lock her up, lock her up, he was rah-rahing them.

[09:20:04] So, that's really not off the table.

Kellyanne Conway was asked about that many times whether Donald Trump would move to somehow indict Hillary Clinton and she said, oh, that wasn't discussed. No but it's still on the table. It's still out there.

CHALIAN: Well, and to Maeve's point, I think we need to just watch now about how Donald Trump and those around him transition from a campaign to preparing to govern. And we have to just -- do they leave sort of the red meat rhetoric of the campaign trail behind or does that come as part of it?

You -- history is anything but a guide that the entire election cycle, but there is -- there's always heated rhetoric to fire up the troops in the campaign, and then there's a different phase moving towards governing.

I do think one of the things that Donald Trump said last night, I'm paraphrasing him, but he said in his speech that he really is going to give voice to the voiceless, that there were a lot of people who had not been heard, and are now going to be heard. And I think the real test for him now is, is he just referring to his supporters who helped him achieve this monumental victory, truly astonishing victory, or was he -- was that the more broadening language, and broadening out to also the Clinton supporters who feel that they are voiceless and he's going to be their voice as well?

I think that is what we all need to be looking for in the days ahead.

COSTELLO: Because you do have wonder is he really going to build a wall? Is he really going to make Mexico pay for it? Is he really going to renegotiate our trade deals? Is he really going to make a real enemy of China?

GERGEN: And repeal Obamacare?

COSTELLO: Right. On day one, right?

GERGEN: Yeah.

COSTELLO: And replace it with what? We still don't know.

GERGEN: We don't know. But I think Brian's point is well-taken, and that is he does, because he has a Senate and he has the House and he has the expanded power of the executive that has come through both Bush Jr. and Obama, expanded the powers of the executive, he's got a lot of precedent to fall back on now if he wants to act in that way.

I sort of think that as much as we're watching him, there has to be a continuing conversation and engagement. He has to know where the boundaries are, in terms of the rest of the political system. You know, he's got to be in conversation with Republican senators for example -- I'm sorry, about where he's going, because this is their party too and they're co-equal branch.

I don't think that -- I think it would be a mistake to say, OK, he's got -- let's just sit back here and watch oh, my God, look at what he's going to do now, do you really think he's going to do that over there? Rather it is, you know, it -- this was a close election. And there are sort of standards of decency.

And there are people out there who are really scared of you. But we have not had a president in my lifetime who has scared as many people as we now --

CHALIAN: The policies are changing because he's an outsider.

LIZZA: I think it's important to take him at his word. This idea that oh, it was just political rhetoric to get elected, that's the wrong approach. As journalists, we should listen when he said when he said he wants to deport every undocumented citizen in this country when he said he wants to ban Muslims, believe him.

He has proved everyone wrong in this election. He's not someone that's going to enter the White House with a lack of confidence.

COSTELLO: OK, we'll just have to see. I have to leave it there. Thanks to all of you. I appreciate you being here -- Maeve Reston, David Chalian, David Gergen, and Ryan Lizza.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, Trump's win sending shockwaves through global markets. Now, Wall Street is bracing for a major hit. We're minutes away from the opening bell.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:27:31] COSTELLO: As Donald Trump takes office in January, the GOP will control Congress. Despite concerns down ballot Republicans would take a hit on Election Day, they won virtually all battleground races need to keep the Senate majority, right now holding 51 seats to the Democrats' 47.

CNN's Manu Raju is following this for us this morning.

Hi, Manu.

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: Yes, the fact the Republicans only lost one seat was a huge surprise. We don't know the results of the New Hampshire Senate race between Kelly Ayotte, the Republican senator, and Governor Maggie Hassan. But if the GOP pulls that out, they could be looking at 53-47 Senate, meaning Donald Trump would only need seven votes to break a filibuster.

Now, the one Republican who lost last night was Illinois Senator Mark Kirk, losing to Congressman Tammy Duckworth. Kirk was a major underdog all cycle long. But there were other major GOP victories in Indiana, the former Senator Evan Bayh lost in an effort to win back his old Senate seat to Republican Congressman Todd Young, and in a sign that Donald Trump had some coat tails he managed to help Blunt in Missouri and Richard Burr in North Carolina. Burr in particularly had run what many Republicans viewed as a lackluster campaign but he beat his Democratic opponent by nearly six points.

In the House side, Republicans stemming their losses to single digits, when they looked like they could lose anywhere 15 to 20 seats so Paul Ryan could have a workable majority in the House. We'll hear from him later this hour about what he'd like to do -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Manu Raju reporting live for us this morning. Thanks so much.

(MUSIC)

COSTELLO: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello live in Washington. Thank you so much for joining me to the opening bell on Wall Street.

Investors bracing for one wild day. Global markets taking a major hit after the Trump win, and U.S. stocks plummeted. So what can we expect from the markets today? And the world economy in the weeks and months ahead?

Let's talk about that. I'm joined by Alison Kosik. She's on the floor of the New York stock exchange. Also with me, global economic analyst Rana Foroohar.

Let's start with you, Alison. Good morning.

ALISON KOSIK, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: I would say buckle up as we get ready to hear the opening bell and see how stocks do. Overnight, we did see Dow futures plunge as much as 800 points, and indicating a recovery of sorts if you want to call it that. We are expecting to see the Dow fall anywhere from 200 to 250 points.

Part of the reason is because Trump's win certainly came as a huge surprise for investors. Wall Street doesn't necessarily like surprise. And secondly, Wall Street doesn't really understand what Donald Trump stands for.