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Interview With Former Senator Rick Santorum; Hillary Clinton Calls for Unity. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired November 09, 2016 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:01]

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: How do you think -- well, what's her mind-set tonight, this first full day to perhaps breathe after this whirlwind two years for her, but, at the same time, having the loss sink in?

SCOTT FARRIS, AUTHOR, "ALMOST PRESIDENT": I'm sure she's shattered. I mean, I'm sure she's absolutely devastated by the loss.

It's a tremendously emotional experience for losing candidates. They all talk about how -- most all of them go in thinking they're going to win. And Hillary Clinton probably had more reason to think that than most. And then to have your to have your great life's ambition turn to ashes in front of you is a tremendously devastating thing.

And that's been true of virtually every losing candidate in history. Henry Clay once said, well, I would rather be right than be president. But we all know he was fibbing. He would much rather have been president.

But you see, again, she is going to just need some time to heal, to think what about to do with her life. And I think the most frustrating thing is that here is somebody who has been at the pinnacle of the public life, had the attention of all the nation for 18 months, earned the votes of 60 million Americans.

And now because of the value we place in America on winning and how disrespectful we are sometimes of people who lose, she is now going to be tuned out. People are not going to care what her opinion is. Again, the party is going to look for a new direction. They have lost. They want to win next time.

They didn't win with Hillary Clinton, so they have got to figure out, who is the new person, what's the new platform? And so it is going to be difficult to understand. Obviously, Hillary Clinton is a historic figure, as the first woman nominee of a major party. But her long, lingering impact on the political process going to be harder to ascertain for a few years.

My sense is, in looking at this, is we are going to see some realignment of the two parties because Donald Trump has completely changed what it means to be a Republican. And we will just have to see what Hillary's role is going forward.

BALDWIN: That is an entire conversation as we look ahead now. Scott Farris, thank you. Kate Andersen Brower, thank you.

Let's move on.

Top of the hour. We are live in our nation's capital. Thank you so much for being with me on this day after this historic presidential election. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

The headline, Hillary Clinton admitting defeat, yet calling for unity in this historic upset, tremendous victory for Donald Trump. He will be the 45th president of the United States. Hillary Clinton told her supporters that they owe the billionaire an open mind as she closed her campaign full of emotion.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This is not the outcome we wanted or we worked so hard for.

And I'm sorry that we did not win this election for the values we share and the vision we hold for our country.

Last night, I congratulated Donald Trump and offered to work with him on behalf of our country. I hope that he will be a successful president for all Americans.

And to all the women, and especially the young women who put their faith in this campaign and in me, I want you to know that nothing has made me prouder than to be your champion.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

CLINTON: I know -- I know we have still not shattered that highest and hardest glass ceiling, but, someday, someone will, and hopefully sooner than we might think right now.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Let's go now to Joe Johns. He is in Clinton's hometown of Chappaqua, New York.

Joe Johns, we know that President Obama also talked about Hillary Clinton's loss to Mr. Trump. What do we know the president said?

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Well, the president, Brooke, really offered a calm, rational assessment of the election and the transition to power, a bunch of different interesting points you can make there.

One of them is that while President Obama was out campaigning for Hillary Clinton, he made it a of point saying he would consider it a personal insult if Donald Trump were elected, that, of course, because Donald Trump had promised to roll back many of the things President Obama put in place and stood for. The second thing, I think it's important to say, is that this is a

president with very good approval numbers. At the same time, the country did not go with the candidate he was pushing to try to succeed him. And he's inviting now to the White House a president-elect with extraordinarily high negatives.

Despite all of those interesting dynamics, President Obama today saying that he is rooting, essentially, for the success of the Donald Trump administration. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Sometimes, you lose an argument. Sometimes, you lose an election.

The path this country has taken has never been a straight line. We zig and zag, and sometimes we move in ways that some people think is forward and others think is moving back. And that's OK.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[15:05:13]

JOHNS: We are in Chappaqua, New York, right now, the home of Hillary Clinton.

And we haven't seen her here today right outside New York City proper, though she gave the speech down in Midtown. The pool of journalists that has followed Hillary Clinton incessantly over the campaign now disbanded. She still has Secret Service protection and trying to find out what she's doing next -- back to you, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Taking a breath. Taking a breath. Joe Johns, thank you so much in Chappaqua.

From Hillary Clinton to the now president-elect Donald Trump. He is also calling for unity as he accepts his new role as one of the most powerful men on Earth.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT-ELECT: Now it's time for America to bind the wounds of division. We have to get together. To all Republicans and Democrats and independents across this nation, I say it's time for us to come together as one united people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: His team is already working on his agenda for his first 100 days in office. And tomorrow he's been invited to meet with President Obama at the White House to work out the transition of power.

Let's go to CNN's M.J. Lee, who is outside Trump Tower there in New York.

What do we know so far as far as transition with the president-elect? M.J. LEE, CNN POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brooke, Donald Trump was elected last night, but those transition efforts are already well under way.

I think, symbolically, that really started a couple of hours ago when we heard President Obama speak from the White House and essentially said that he wanted to make sure that there was a smooth transition of power. And, as you mentioned, the current president, President Obama, and now president-elect Donald Trump will meet at the White House to begin that process officially.

And Donald Trump is also getting under way in the transition process and has a lot of work to do. And starting today, we know from a senior administration official that Donald Trump will begin to get daily highly classified briefings.

And in those briefings, Brooke, he will be, you know, given information that only Donald -- only the president currently is briefed on at such a high level, so that process has already begun. And also we know that the State Department is fully ready to start briefing the transition team, so that's another thing to watch out for as well.

And, of course, the other big question is, how will Donald Trump begin to fill out his administration, fill out some of those key posts, including in the Cabinet. Some names that have already begun to float out there for the role of chief of staff include Chris Christie, Rudy Giuliani, Reince Priebus and Newt Gingrich.

Now, Brooke, before I go, I do want to just quickly set the scene. I am across the street from Trump Tower. And there are rose closures al down Fifty Avenue creating really a bottleneck and a ton of people still outside taking photos of Trump Tower, this building that has become really an iconic landmark during this election.

I can imagine that this sort of a scene is going to be the new normal here, as Donald Trump spends the next two months beginning his preparations to move to Washington, D.C. -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: It's become a new tourist sort of stop along Fifth Avenue, and Thanksgiving around the corner. That is going to be quite the spot in a couple of weeks.

M.J. in New York, thank you so much.

During the final stretch of this campaign, Donald Trump's unfavorable rating actually hit 60 percent. Only 8 percent of voters who said they valued experience supported him over Hillary Clinton.

So let's go to David Chalian, our CNN political director, who was up in the wee hours of the morning and who is with us now this afternoon to explain -- I mean, we talked about Brexit for so long and how those polls were wrong. And it happened again.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: It did, Brooke. Let's take a look at how Donald Trump did it. Remember, we talked a lot about that blue wall in the Upper Midwest, the red -- the Rust Belt here, White House, Michigan, Pennsylvania. Michigan still has some vote-counting to do there, but at least two of those three are definitively going to Donald Trump.

This is now a red wall through the Rust Belt. That is how Donald Trump did it's. And take a look here at some of the key exit poll findings. You mentioned his unfavorability rating. There was great concern among the voters about his qualifications, his temperament, as you said, his favorability rating.

But other items trumped those items. Pardon the pun. Let's first look at top quality that voters were looking about in the candidate was can bring about change.

[15:10:02]

And Donald Trump won those voters looking for change 83 percent to 14 percent. This was 39 percent of the electorate. The other -- the next quality we looked was sort of those voters who said they were dissatisfied or angry at the federal government, Brooke.

This was 69 percent of the electorate. Donald Trump won them by 22 points, 58 percent to Clinton's 36 percent. Let's keep looking at these other Rust Belt issues like trade. This -- 42 percent of the electorate said that engaging other countries in trade takes away U.S. jobs.

Donald Trump talked about it all the time on the trail, Brooke. And he won those voters by 34 points, 65 to 31. And finally white voters without a college degree, non-college white voters went for Donald Trump 67 percent to 28 percent. That is a 39-point gap.

Four years ago, Mitt Romney won those voters against Barack Obama by 26 points. So he expanded his significant lead with this huge swathe of the electorate -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: All right, David Chalian, thank you.

This historic election, it's an upset. It's thrilling for a lot of you, devastating for some. It's turned the polling industry on its head, with a lot of pollsters asking, how the heck did they get it so wrong?

Nearly every survey predicted a Clinton victory. Donald Trump's campaign CEO, Steve Bannon, today explained the factor he thinks Trump tapped into and that so many others underestimated, this:

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

STEVE BANNON, DONALD TRUMP CAMPAIGN CEO: I think that my analogy to the British exit, to the Brexit movement was really what the exit poll showed about people's desire for change, right, desire for real change, just not the type of change that gets talked about on cable TV. So that's when I felt that, well if this is correct, if this is correct, you will see it start to roll across what we called the core four, which is the four we felt we had to win to give ourselves multiple paths to victory, which was Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Iowa.

We always felt that Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, places like that would always be in play because of this populist message.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Let's springboard off of that and have a conversation.

I have got with me here in D.C. CNN politics executive editor Mark Preston, CNN political commentator S.E. Cupp. Reid Wilson is here, national correspondent for "The Hill," and CNN chief political analyst Gloria Borger.

Actually, S.E., my twin in purple on this day after election, let me begin with you. Just listening to Steve Bannon, he talked about he thinks it was people's desire for change. Yes?

S.E. CUPP, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, and specifically not the kind that you hear about on cable news.

And I think that...

BALDWIN: Talk to me about that.

CUPP: That's interesting. He's right, because in polite circles -- and I like to think that cable news is still somewhat polite circle -- you don't openly court white nationalist voters.

And so I think, in identifying the kind of change that maybe other people were embarrassed to acknowledge, maybe a little bit in denial about, in putting that front and center -- and I think Kirsten Powers noted this in an earlier segment, sort of a nostalgia factor to a certain group of people who want to restore what they had and think that the people around them are the reason they don't have it anymore.

I think he's absolutely right that they were willing to have that conversation. They were willing to acknowledge that kind of change that people like us kind of refused to think could win him the election.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: But wasn't this also -- forgive me -- but just sort of the proverbial middle finger to this town and to what this town has represented for so many years and the dysfunction in Congress?

REID WILSON, "THE HILL": And not only to this town, but to the changing face of the American economy.

BALDWIN: Yes. WILSON: The states that he talked about, Pennsylvania, Ohio,

Michigan, they have lost millions of manufacturing jobs that frankly are never coming back.

Those -- they're the car factories and the air conditioner company that moved to Mexico. Those jobs aren't coming back. And that's something that has been at the core of this voter angst, in this case very specific voters in those very specific states, for a very long time, going on 25 years now.

It starts with the things that Donald Trump has railed against, NAFTA, CAFTA, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Those trade deals impact the nation as a whole on a positive. They impact those specific voters very negatively.

CUPP: Well, and my friend Krystal Ball has a great piece up right now on Huffington Post. I know you know her.

It's called -- the headline is the Democratic Party deserved to die. And she notes that the Democrats' response to exactly that anger and those jobs leaving was, well, we will offer you retraining programs for new jobs. And that just didn't satisfy a large group of people.

BALDWIN: You want to jump in?

MARK PRESTON, CNN POLITICAL EDITOR: Yes.

[15:15:00]

I think when we look at -- when we try to go back and explain what happened is that we all got it wrong, we all got it wrong, and we all got it wrong. Right? And the fact of the matter is, anybody that says they didn't get it wrong, they are lying to you, OK?

But I do think that we're seeing, to Reid's point, this change in the political landscape. It's not just the Republican Party. It's the Democratic Party. We saw it with Bernie Sanders. We didn't understand it with that. We didn't understand how a 70-year-old man, a 71-year-old man could actually appeal...

BALDWIN: Do you think she fully appreciated what he did and who he touched, the young people?

PRESTON: I think, at the very end, she realized it, but I don't think that she was able to harness it. And I do think that Donald Trump, one of the big takeaways for me is, if you do get 17,000 people to show up at a rally consistently, those 17,000 people are going to vote.

I never thought they would all vote. I thought that a lot of...

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: People kept saying, oh, stop making the point about all the people at the rallies. That doesn't translate into votes.

PRESTON: And you know what? The anger is there. And that anger fueled them go wait in line and to cast a vote.

BALDWIN: And let me go to Gloria, even though she's not sitting next to us.

I want to hear from you, Gloria Borger, because one other -- something I noted last hour, and I just want to point it out again -- when you look at this past political cycle, you think of Donald Trump and what he's accomplished, he crushed not just one, two political dynasties in the Bush family and now the Clintons.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. And he knocked down a big blue wall.

He crushed not only those political dynasties, but he crushed the political establishment completely, some of whom he has to work with in the Congress. And, by the way, most of them will be lining up at his door to work with him because he won, and a lot of them came in on his coattails now.

So we are going to have this strange marriage of people who didn't want Donald Trump to be president in the Republican Party and now discover that they have to work with him because they understand the chord that he struck.

He ripped the Band-Aid off of politics in this country. And what he exposed was this deep anxiety that Mark was talking about. And another thing I want to point out, I was -- got these numbers today, that Democratic participation in presidential elections has gone down over the last few cycles from 69 million to 66 to 60 million.

And Republican participation has remained the same. So if you're a Democratic pooh-bah and you're kind of looking at this and you're saying, gee, we lost nine million people over the last few cycles, what are we doing wrong here and where are they going and why aren't they coming out?

And that's something Bernie Sanders, I think, spoke to, but it wasn't something that Hillary Clinton tackled particularly well.

BALDWIN: Well, I mean, now it's not just a Republican who will be in the White House. It is a Republican majority across the board, Congress and this house right here on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Do you think -- I mean, if Speaker Paul Ryan was like on his hands and knees for how many months. This is his dream scenario, is it not?

CUPP: Well, this is not his dream candidate, but this is definitely his dream scenario, of course.

You can't understate how extraordinary this wave was. And I think in part it's for all of the things that we have talked about, the economic factors, but it's also that Hillary Clinton was a singularly terrible candidate and not like secretly. The stuff we knew about Hillary Clinton that was going to make her unelectable was stuff we have known for a long time. And I think the Democratic Party really shot... BALDWIN: Underestimated that?

CUPP: Well, it shot itself in the foot by protecting Hillary for as long as it did, refusing to look at any other options, refusing to acknowledge her weaknesses and sort of foisting her on an unwilling electorate.

BALDWIN: You don't think she was self-foisted? You don't think she wanted that?

CUPP: Oh, she absolutely...

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: You're just saying the Democratic Party should have offered up...

PRESTON: She was absolutely protected and insulated.

CUPP: Yes, absolutely.

PRESTON: No doubt about that.

Two things about going forward. Right?

BALDWIN: Yes.

PRESTON: Policy-wise, the Supreme Court, the Republican Party 24 hours was saying to themselves, oh, my God, we have lost the Supreme Court. Well, guess what? They just got the Supreme Court back.

BALDWIN: They got it.

PRESTON: The second thing is, the Democratic National Committee, there's no leader of the Democratic Party right now.

That means the grassroots are going to take that back. And guess what? Donald Trump is going to take over the RNC. You know what that means? That means he is going to help shape the national party and push it back into the grassroots.

So the idea that this is going to be this wall between the establishment here in Washington, D.C., and the grassroots is probably going to be broken down.

BALDWIN: Today, everyone is sort of bleary-eyed. It's almost it's like some people are celebrating a wedding. For others, it's like a funeral.

Walk us through this, final thoughts, Reid?

WILSON: I think if you delve deeper into the numbers, as S.E. mentioned, this is -- the Republican wave was bigger, not only the federal level, but also at the state level.

Consider the fact that states like Kentucky and Iowa are now totally controlled by Republicans. Democratic state executive officeholders lost across the country. This is a huge deal.

And, by the way, I think it's a dream scenario for Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell because Donald Trump comes into the White House with just a very few number of key policy priorities, repeal Obamacare, build a wall with Mexico.

[15:20:04]

And when you don't have that much on your plate, that means that the power to drive the agenda shifts to the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue. I think Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan have a lot more to say about the future of the Republican agenda than maybe they would under pretty much any Republican president.

BALDWIN: Gloria, final question? What do you...

(CROSSTALK)

BORGER: Oh, go ahead.

BALDWIN: No, I just wanted to ask what you would think. Hillary Clinton, other than taking a very long, deep sigh, breath, maybe a good cry, what is next for her?

BORGER: It's really hard to say.

I think clearly now, you know, there was talk if she was getting elected of closing the Clinton Foundation. It seems to me that probably won't happen right now. And I think that she has got to rethink everything.

After you have spent, what, 30 years in public life and suddenly you're not in public life and you have a loss that people think you should have won, you have to reevaluate.

What was so striking to me about Hillary Clinton -- and Dana Bash and I were talking about it earlier with our chief digital editor here in D.C., Rachel Smolkin -- we were talking about the fact that the first thing Hillary Clinton said today was, "I'm sorry," which women always say the first thing when they do something wrong, right, when we lose or...

BALDWIN: Yes, she did.

BORGER: And it was sort of striking to us to hear that from Hillary Clinton, because you could see that she was taking the burden on herself and that she felt that she had disappointed all these people, particularly women who supported her and had worked with her for decades.

So I don't think she's going to rush into doing something completely different. I do think she has to kind of reevaluate where she is in public life and in private life.

BALDWIN: OK, very quickly?

PRESTON: Just very quickly, we talk about dynasties at the top. Let's close it with this.

Chelsea Clinton, we saw her on stage, this rumor she is going to be running at some point in the future, and George P. Bush, who was one of the Bushes who actually got behind Donald Trump.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Mark Preston, thank you. Thank you all so much for throwing that down.

Coming up here, one of Donald Trump's biggest supporters was on the show, looked directly at that camera and told off the Republicans who wouldn't support Trump, saying, shame on you, you signed a pledge. What is he saying now?

Senator Rick Santorum joining me live.

Also ahead, Russia's Vladimir Putin with a very interesting message for Trump after months and months of accusations the two were very cozy.

And Democrats -- Mark Preston mentioned this -- with a couple of names perhaps already looking ahead to, say, 2020. Who is the party's rising star now? And how deep is their bench in a world post-Clinton? Marinate.

I'm Brooke Baldwin. We're in D.C. We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:26:47]

BALDWIN: Welcome back. We're in Washington. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you for being with me with.

Voters from coast to coast have spoken and decided to elect former reality TV star, businessman Donald Trump as the nation's 45th president of the United States.

Mr. Trump's resounding victory has been characterized in a couple of different ways, including voters' ultimate rejection of the Washington establishment, as an uprising of blue-collar frustration, as a racist backlash against the country's first black president. So say some.

So, what really led to this political newcomer's historic victory?

Let's go to Miguel Marquez in the great state of Pennsylvania, one of the mega-states that Donald Trump won.

What have voters been telling you?

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, to say it's a shocker to many Pennsylvanians that this happened is an understatement.

We're actually in Washington County, Pennsylvania, south of Pittsburgh. This is one of many, many small counties. There are 67 counties across Pennsylvania. There are many small counties where Donald Trump just drove out a tsunami of supporters that nobody -- that they weren't on anyone's radar, essentially.

We were at North Strabane precinct yesterday here in Washington County. People stood in line for up to two hours, a little longer at some points during the day, waiting to cast their votes from Donald Trump. The vast majority in places like this voted for Donald Trump.

We spoke to a house painter a short time ago. This will give you an idea of who was out there voting for him. House painter, he says the last two or three years, it's been hard to get over 30 hours of work a week and here's why he voted for Donald Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARQUEZ: You have heard Donald Trump say a lot of wild things, a lot of things that clearly aren't true. How is he different?

BILL BARNES, TRUMP VOTER: He's not a politician. That's the problem.

There's too many professional liars running our country. That's what they are, professional liars. They make of a job out of standing around going, I will do anything you tell me to do, until I get in there. Then all of a sudden, like my sister, so-called great Obamacare? This year, her Obamacare so-called insurance is like $363 a month. This January, it's going up to $686 a month.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MARQUEZ: That sense that this was not a normal politician, that this was somebody who can sort of shake the tree and make all the nuts and the squirrels fall out and change things up in Washington and get rid of the politicians there, that's what they want.

Obamacare also very big for the working-class people here, very, very big concerns about the price of Obamacare and those premiums as they went up.

And, to be fair, Hillary did win some very big cities here, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. But she didn't win them in big enough numbers. The Obama coalition just didn't come out for her. And Trump was able to keep pace a little bit there, but turn out just a wave of supporters in about 58 different counties across Pennsylvania -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: Thank you so much for talking to that voter. I mean, these are the folks who came together and elected now Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States.

Miguel, thank you.

Joining me now, speaking of Pennsylvania, former Pennsylvania