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CNN Live Event/Special
Trump, Biden Clash in Combative & Chaotic Debate. Aired 12-1a ET
Aired September 30, 2020 - 00:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST (voice-over): Welcome back to CNN's coverage of debate night in America. We're getting new information about Joe Biden's take on tonight's debate. Let's check in with Arlette Saenz.
What are you hearing from the Biden camp?
ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, Joe Biden's campaign says that he will participate in the future debates, saying that Joe Biden is going to show up despite what we saw at tonight's debate, where President Trump interrupted and dominated a lot of the evening's debate and conversation.
The Biden campaign knows that the next debate in Miami will be a town hall and says that Biden relishes being able to talk with everyday voters, something he will get the opportunity to do in that debate.
They question whether the president might engage in the same kind of tactics he did tonight when he is in that town hall and the upcoming debate.
One thing that the Biden campaign did acknowledge is that the campaign and commission are constantly talking about formats and rules for these debates but they did not indicate whether there are any specific changes they will try to see in the wake of this debate.
But ultimately, the Biden campaign says that Biden is going to show up; you heard Kamala Harris earlier in the evening also saying that he will never give up a chance to talk to voters and connect with those voters.
So we will expect to see the former vice president at the next two debates in Miami and Nashville but ultimately tonight, the Biden campaign is trying to frame this as a moment where Joe Biden showed himself as capable of being president.
They said there was one person that was a leader on the stage, another person that was a liar, referring to the president. Ultimately, they think the way that that Biden carried himself in the debate will hold some sway with voters, who they are trying to bring into their corner heading into November. BLITZER: Is he staying in Cleveland tonight, heading back to
Wilmington, Delaware?
What's his plan?
SAENZ: Joe Biden is staying overnight here in Cleveland and tomorrow he is kicking off this train tour through Eastern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania. And that train tour is going to take him to some Trump counties in Pennsylvania, a state that helped to take President Trump to the White House back in 2016.
Two of those counties that Biden is going to stop in, the president won by more than 30 points. And we have seen this tactic from Biden, trying to go into these Trump country type of areas, to win over supporters who may have backed the president the last tie around but who perhaps are thinking of a different option this time.
BLITZER: Very interesting indeed. All right, thanks very much, Arlette.
Let's go back to our fact checker, Daniel Dale.
Daniel, the president tried to deflect criticism of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic by claiming that former vice president Biden would shut down the country if he was in office. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He wants to shut down this country and I want to keep it open.
(CROSSTALK)
JOE BIDEN (D-DE), FORMER U.S. VICE PRESIDENT AND PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Wait a minute.
TRUMP: Let me shut you down for a second, Joe. Just for one second. We want to -- he wants to shut down the country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: All right, Daniel, what are the facts?
DANIEL DALE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, this is again false. Joe Biden has not expressed any desire to shut down the country. He's not presented any plan to shut down the country.
Here's what happened. In an August interview with ABC, Biden was talking about the importance of listening to scientists on the pandemic and he was pressed about what he would do if scientists said we need to shut things down.
He said, in that case, he would shut it down. But he did not say that was his intent and he walked back his comments after the interview. He said in September there was going to be no need, in my view, to be able to shut down the whole economy. It's worth noting that presidents cannot themselves shut down the
whole economy. So bottom line, Biden has expressed a willingness to do some sort of shutdown if recommended by scientific experts to combat the virus.
But it's false to say if he wants to shut down or is planning for one -- Wolf.
BLITZER: Let's turn to another key moment, Daniel, in the debate about the coronavirus pandemic, listen to this exchange between the former vice president and the president.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: This is the same man --
(CROSSTALK)
BIDEN: -- by Easter this would be gone away. By the warm weather, it would be gone. Miraculous, it's like a miracle. And by the way, maybe you could inject some bleach in your arm. And that would take care of it. This is the same man.
TRUMP: That was said sarcastically. You know that.
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: That was said sarcastically.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: All right, so, Daniel, the president claimed he was being sarcastic, when you talk about injecting bleach.
Was he?
DALE: He just wasn't, Wolf. He just was not being sarcastic when he mused in April about injecting disinfectant to combat the virus. I real it's kind of weird to fact check whether someone was being sarcastic or not.
But this is an egregious rewriting of history. We all saw what happened. Trump was dead serious. What happened was he looked in the direction of medical experts, including Dr. Deborah Birx, and he, and I quote.
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DALE: "And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning?
"Because you see, it gets in the lungs, it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. So that -- you're going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds -- it sounds interesting to me." So bottom line, Wolf, Trump's sarcasm claim is just false.
BLITZER: Yes, he clearly was not being sarcastic. Daniel, we are going to get back to you soon. More fact checking coming up.
Anderson, over to you.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Let's get some more results from our exclusive instant poll of debate watchers. David Chalian is back with that -- David.
DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Yes, Anderson. That's right. This is a poll of those folks that were watching the debate; not a poll of the country overall but of debate watchers, which was clearly also a more Democratic-leaning audience.
But Joe Biden wins across every category. So we asked, of course, the basic question, who won the debate?
Sixty percent say Joe Biden won the debate; 28 percent say Donald Trump won the debate. I mean, that's -- that's a trouncing there, obviously.
Then we asked across a series of attributes. So we asked, take a look at which candidate actually talked more about solving the country's problems or do you believe had a better plan for solving the country's problems?
Sixty-three percent say Joe Biden, 30 percent say Donald Trump.
How about which candidate better addressed concerns about their candidacies?
Fifty-nine percent, Joe Biden better addressed any concerns these debate watchers had about their candidacy. Only 37 percent for Donald Trump.
Which of these candidates seems to be the stronger leader?
Seems to be a strong leader?
This is a slightly better category for the president; 55 percent for Joe Biden. He still beats the president here. But 43 percent of debate watchers in our poll say that it was Donald Trump who seemed to be the stronger leader.
And then, we also asked these debate watchers, Anderson, did the debate make your mind up?
More likely, would you be more likely to vote for Biden or vote for Trump because of this debate you watched?
Look at the bottom number there. A majority of debate watchers say neither, that the debate did not make it more likely that they would vote for either candidate. A third said, yes, more likely to vote for Joe Biden. Only 11 percent said more likely to vote for Donald Trump. So across the board, all the stuff we talked about going into the
debate, of what Donald Trump needed to do to upend the trajectory in this race, according to these debate watchers in our poll, Anderson, he didn't do them at all. He did not accomplish what he needed to do.
COOPER: David Chalian, I appreciate it.
Let's go to our team here standing by.
Kirsten Powers, do you think Joe Biden did what he needed to do?
Or Donald Trump did what he needed to do?
KIRSTEN POWERS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I actually am going to differ from a lot of people I have been hearing tonight. I think Biden did a great job. I don't think people appreciate how hard it is to keep your cool, stay focused, when you have somebody interrupting you, constantly, bullying you, you know, berating you, being nasty, the way that the president was acting tonight with Biden.
And I think you have to bear in mind that that's what he was dealing with. I mean, I used to do a regular segment with Bill O'Reilly. Bill wasn't even as bad as the president was. And seven minutes was enough, you know, you could barely -- you walk off the set with a migraine.
So the fact that he did this for an hour and a half with the president behaving this way and still landed some really -- made some really good points. I think he was excellent talking about COVID.
I think he had some moments where he really connected with -- with the people who were watching, you know, when he was talking about COVID- 19, when he was talking about how many of you are sitting there with a -- you know, an empty kitchen seat with somebody that you lost.
I think his response is very humane, the way he spoke about his son. I think he actually did well, all things considered.
COOPER: Andrew Yang, what do you think?
ANDREW YANG, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think this was a tremendous night for Joe and the Democrats, because you have to take the context into account. Joe is significantly up in the polls nationwide. A new poll came out that said he is up 9 points up in Pennsylvania.
So Trump needed a positive catalyst and he did not get it. The ratings for this debate will be very, very high. I'm going to suggest that the ratings for the coming debates might not be as high because tonight was not a pleasant viewing experience for a lot of Americans.
And so, really, if you are the Biden campaign, you are thrilled. Joe spoke directly to the American people. The dynamic of the race has not changed, which is great news for Joe, Kamala and the Democrats.
COOPER: Scott Jennings, I mean, people don't want to watch the next two debates.
Do they want the next four years to be like what we just saw tonight?
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. I've been thinking a lot, Anderson, about this "New York Times" poll that came out over the weekend. It actually had Donald Trump at 46 percent job approval, which is pretty good for him. But only 41 percent on the ballot against Joe Biden.
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JENNINGS: And I've been thinking about why would you have a gap like that?
Usually presidential approval translates into your vote share. But he's obviously losing some people who say, I like his policies but are something else, exhausted.
And I am thinking about if those people were watching this debate tonight, how do they feel?
And I also think about debates like this, Anderson, through the lens of audience. And the main thing, keeping an anvil on Trump's head in terms of job approval, all this four years, has been women.
He does fine among men but women have never given him high marks. And I cannot imagine he did anything tonight that any female viewer who was thinking about supporting him would have appreciated.
So if you are looking at it from a raw perspective of what do I have to do to add back to my coalition to get back to where I need to be to win the election?
I didn't find it, tonight.
COOPER: You know, it's interesting because, if people were tuning in to try to figure out which candidate to vote for, if they're undecided -- and it's unclear how many people are still undecided -- nobody really got a sense of what the next four years would look like, certainly, not with Donald Trump. You didn't really get a sense in terms on policy.
If you were looking for any kind of policy guidance of what they're actually hoping to achieve, I'm not sure anybody really got that -- Kirsten.
POWERS: Yes. No. I mean, it seems like the strategy -- you know, if there was a strategy -- and I'd be interested to know what Scott thinks about this. But if there was a strategy, I suspect that it was to just keep hitting Biden and just hit him, hit him, hit him, hit him until he finally couldn't take it because, you know, a lot of people had concerns that Biden, over an hour and a half, maybe, wouldn't hold up that well.
I think he did, actually, hold up pretty well. But if you're Trump, you just think, I'm going to keep hitting him. And you saw how he crumbled a little bit in some of the primary debates. And I'm just going to keep doing that. And it just didn't work. You know, Biden was really able to kind of withstand it. In fact,
Biden kind of started out slow and I felt like, as he was getting hit, he got a little bit sharper.
COOPER: Scott, what do you think?
JENNINGS: I will answer that, Anderson, because I think, Kirsten, on the strategy question, had a good one. I do think that the strategy was to hit Biden and try to get under his skin and try to rattle him so that he would start getting holes, rhetorical holes that he couldn't climb out of.
The problem is he went from being on offense to just being offensive. He never let the strategy breathe. If you are going to hit somebody and then rattle them, you have got to let that rattling take effect.
And Trump just kept interrupting and kept badgering him all night long. So Biden never really had a chance to dig those deep holes. He did make I think a few misstatements on some of the agenda items. But that's not what we are going to remember from this debate. So I think the strategy was there but it was overplayed.
COOPER: Andrew Yang, did you ever imagine a sitting President of the United States, you know, not criticizing, not, you know, repudiating white supremacists?
And, in fact, telling them to stand by, you know, stand down and stand by. I mean, they're -- the only people celebrating, it seems, online tonight about tonight's debate are white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
YANG: That was a really dark and painful moment for millions of Americans, to see our president fail to do the obvious thing, which is to repudiate white supremacists. And instead, he gave them cause to celebrate.
But to me, it was clear that Joe was instructed to try and keep his cool, speak directly to the American people. And he did both of those things.
The other dark moment, beyond the failure to repudiate white supremacists, Anderson, was when Trump raised the specter of fraudulent balloting toward the end, where he raised this ridiculous image of dumping ballots in a river.
But the truth is that we may be counting votes for quite some time after Election Day. And we have to keep Americans' confidence in the integrity of the process high so that we are able to wait for a number of days if that's what it takes.
So that was, to me, another very, very dark and difficult moment to watch because Trump, clearly, is trying to, already, work the American people and say that the outcome should be something that we question.
COOPER: Scott -- I mean, Scott, as a Republican, to -- it's not just he didn't repudiate white supremacists. He told them to stand by. Like, oh, don't -- don't do anything now but stand by because I might need you.
I mean, stand by because if things don't go my way, I'd love you to not stand by any longer and -- and come to a town near you?
I mean, what does that -- can you believe that a President of the United States would say that?
JENNINGS: Well, I'm just going to say, he's going to have to speak for himself on this because he has to clean this up. He has to clear it up. It's the wrong answer. It's always been the wrong answer.
There is a clear, right answer to these questions, which is, anyone who is committing violence, Left, Right, white, Black, up, down, if you're in a city and you're committing violence and you're doing it in the name of white supremacy or Antifa or anything else, you're all the same.
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JENNINGS: You're hurting America. So go home and stop it. It's always been the right answer and it's always been that clear.
And the fact that he can't look into the camera and say it is a problem. And so, I hope that they come out later tonight, tomorrow or whatever and clean it up because everybody who is committing violence deserves condemnation. White supremacists and everyone else in these cities that's doing it, they all deserve it. He knows it and he needs to clean it up.
COOPER: Kirsten, the fact that we are even discussing this, still, given all that happened, you know, with Charlottesville, it's incredible that he still can't answer that question in a way a decent human being would.
POWERS: But I think he answers it honestly --
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: Well, that's true --
POWERS: -- in the sense that that's how he feels, right?
And I think that -- and that's the problem. So you know, the idea that he is going to clean it up -- I mean, maybe, he would do that for political reasons but he's consistently done this throughout.
I mean, he did it in the election last time. He's done it, you know, throughout his presidency. This is -- he does not repudiate this. That -- that is his -- always his first answer, is to either make excuses or to just say, you know, I'm not going to say anything about it.
And he does -- it is -- it is astonishing. It's still astonishing, you know, no matter how many times he does it. I don't think we should ever lose, you know, our ability to be shocked by it.
COOPER: Yes -- Scott. JENNINGS: You know, Anderson, one issue on this, I think Trump's
resistance to this often comes in his innate resistance to being scripted by a media person. So in this case, Wallace was trying to get him to repeat after me.
And as we know, Trump has this internal resistance to allowing anybody in the press to make him say anything. But -- but even if that's your attitude, it cannot trump your better moral judgment about these issues. It's politically wrong. But it's just wrong as the president.
COOPER: I would just give another alternative, which is, A, he actually believes this or, B, that his -- anybody who is praising him or likes him, he's not going to criticize. He wants their votes. He likes the fact that they're stroking his ego.
He supports -- you know, he says he likes, you know, he didn't repudiate QAnon, a baseless, ridiculous, absurd, conspiracy theory, based on anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic tropes.
And the first thing he said when finally asked on the record about it was, well, I hear they say very nice things about me. He doesn't criticize people who support him, no matter how awful they -- if they are neo-Nazis walking through the streets, he's not going to criticize them.
I got to go back to -- to Jake for more -- Jake.
JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Anderson, thanks so much. We want to go back now to our focus group of undecided voters in battleground state Ohio. CNN's Ana Cabrera is with them in Westerville, outside Columbus.
And Ana, the president got some high marks from men on his coronavirus response, specifically his push to have states loosen their restrictions when it comes to COVID.
But before we listen to that, remember, you'll see lines at the bottom of your screen. Green lines for men. Yellow lines for women. Lines going up means that they like what they hear. Down means they didn't like it. Now take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: You got to open these states up. It's not fair. You are talking about almost it's like being in prison and you look what's going on with divorce. Look at what's going on with alcoholism and drugs. It's a very, very sad thing. And he will close down the whole country. This guy will close down the whole country and destroy our country.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: So Ana, what are the men in your focus group telling you about why this resonated with them?
ANA CABRERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, first of all, Jake, I have to say, the men seemed to be much more trigger happy when we were watching this debate, much more strongly agree and strongly disagree throughout the evening. So that was one comment that resonated with a lot of the men here.
And, in part, because we have small business owners here. We have fathers, who want their kids back in school.
Tom (ph), I know you were happy to hear the president talking about reopening the economy.
TOM (PH), DEBATE WATCHER: Yes. I was. My wife and I are small business owners. And this shutdown has hurt us, quite a bit. And I think we've learned. You know, I think we can do both. I think we can reopen and be safe. And it's time to get back to it.
CABRERA: So you don't necessarily think that you have to have the pandemic under control in order to reopen the economy?
TOM (PH): No, I think we know how to be safe. You know, I think we're -- we distance. We wear masks. We -- we understand how to be safe. And that -- and that we can do it and if we do it in restaurants, we can do it in salons, like our business, I think we can do it everywhere.
CABRERA: What about you, Eric (ph)?
Because you -- you said, oh, yes. Oh, yes, I want to reopen this economy. You got to get your kids back to school.
ERIC (PH), DEBATE WATCHER: We got to get the kids back to school. I think, like he said, we can do it safely and effectively if we just all put our heads together, follow the guidelines that were given. And we can reopen safely.
CABRERA: So you have confidence that it is safe enough to put your kids back in school and to reopen these businesses?
ERIC (PH): I would say that if we all follow the guidelines and we do what our part, we can get the schools open again.
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CABRERA: And that's why you said, yes, that was a moment that you felt strong.
Andre (ph), you felt a little bit more torn, you said, in that.
ANDRE (PH), DEBATE WATCHER: Right. I think that it needs -- it's nice -- it would be nice to have the economy opened up. But it needs to be done safely.
I think that there's -- there's -- there's some understanding that needs to be had, that not everybody's comfortable with everything opening up. So I think people can make those decisions. And the ones that want to, can get things going again.
CABRERA: But do you feel like this president has done everything he can to make the conditions safe enough in order to get things reopened so that the virus doesn't spread?
ANDRE (PH): I think there's been a lot of things, like we were talking about earlier. I think the science is being followed. But I think so -- so many people, this is like an unprecedented thing. So many people don't know exactly what to do.
And there's some conflicting information out there about what should be done, what works and what does not work.
CABRERA: Kevin (ph), I know you have been very unhappy with what you've heard throughout the past four years of this presidency.
How has this president's response to the coronavirus impacted you?
And what are your thoughts about how that may impact your vote?
KEVIN (PH), DEBATE WATCHER: Well, I mean, it's been difficult because my mother is in very fragile health. And so, we have to -- we go and me and my siblings take care of things, on a weekly basis, that she can't do for herself.
And because of corona, we have to be very careful about it. And -- and unfortunately, we can be as careful as we want. But if the people around us refuse to be careful, that makes it difficult for us to enter into things without taking a risk of -- of possibly making our loved ones ill and die.
CABRERA: OK.
So there you have it, Jake. You hear how the men feel about the coronavirus. And that's why that was one of those moments that resonated here among the men of our group tonight.
TAPPER: And, Ana, you know, nine out of 10 voters have made up their mind and looking at this one undecided voter in America in your whole group and thinking, make up your mind, make up your mind.
Did tonight's debate help any of these voters decide who they are going to vote for, ultimately?
CABRERA: The answer is yes, Jake. Again, 14 undecided voters going into this debate, I asked them to give me a show of hands before the debate, if they knew who they were going to vote for. And not a single hand went up.
So let me ask the question, again. Show of hands, who has decided who they're going to vote for tonight, based on what they heard in this debate?
One, two, three, four, five, six of our 14 undecided voters have decided tonight.
Show of hands.
Who is planning to vote for Joe Biden?
One, two, three, four.
And show of hands, who plans to vote for Donald Trump?
One, two.
So there you have it. We've got four Joe Biden voters now. And two Donald Trump voters.
I want to get a few reactions as to why is it Joe Biden for you?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think Donald Trump opened the debate with his strongest arguments, which were all lies about Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden's kids. He didn't really state that he had much of a plan. He just came out and started by throwing trash on Hillary Clinton.
All that was discredited disinformation from the -- from Russia. It's just bizarre that he would start with that.
CABRERA: You, also, are planning to vote for Joe Biden, tonight. You made up your mind.
Why?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I mean, even coming into this, I felt that I was leaning toward Joe Biden. I think, for me, just -- I think, for me, my biggest thing was hearing about media (ph) and seeing how we can continue to collaborate together.
I think President Trump didn't convince me that that was his priority in any aspect of his plans. He never really gave anything succinct that really stood out to me personally.
And those things that concern me and the things that are a priority to me, I feel that Joe Biden spoke to. There is no perfect candidate. But there is a candidate who, clearly, is trying and wants to develop actions that will create some results. And I think those results are the things that I look forward to.
CABRERA: OK. Let me get the other Biden voters here and then, I'll come back to our Trump voters.
Christine (ph), why did you decide, tonight, that Biden is your guy?
CHRISTINE (PH), DEBATE WATCHER: I think my 17-year-old daughter said it best. She said to me, the -- Biden is the candidate that the country needs now. I feel like the last three and a half years, with Trump, have just been so divisive. And I saw it, again, tonight in the debate. And it scares me, honestly.
[00:25:00]
CHRISTINE (PH): It embarrasses me as an American to watch that kind of attitude displayed to my children, displayed to us, as Americans. I think we deserve better.
And while I'm not 100 percent confident that Biden, you know, put his message out there in a way that I can stand 100 percent behind, I'm ready. I'm ready to take the chance. And I -- I will stand behind him, before Trump, at this point.
CABRERA: (INAUDIBLE) your hand as well. You are going to be voting for Biden.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. I came in leaning towards Biden. But I was, you know, going to give Trump a chance. You know, when he was -- during his presidency, you know, he came in here with no political background.
And I was like, you know, he had the opportunity to make a lot of changes, not really caring about how people viewed him since he doesn't have that background. I was thinking in particular about health care reform. And I was really hoping to see major changes in that since it's such a hard thing to make everyone happy.
And you needed someone to go in there and just be like, hey, this is what's going to happen so that we have better health care for everyone, you know, across the nation.
CABRERA: And for you, it's very personal.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes, absolutely. You know, I have a child that's autistic and we are very lucky living in the state of Ohio, where you get secondary insurance through Medicaid.
And that makes a world of -- I can't even imagine if we did not have that insurance in place for him to cover all the things that our primary insurance doesn't pick up. So I care deeply about that subject and --
CABRERA: Why did you feel like Biden had a better vision?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't know if he -- you know, with, I think he has -- you know, he seems to maybe care more about health care reform. And I don't know. He may not make any difference, either.
But Trump, you know, he really had the opportunity to do something with that. And he didn't do it. And I'm ready to have someone else try their hand at that. So...
CABRERA: OK. Let's hear from our Trump voters, who are going to vote for Trump tonight.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. So I have to admit. I think Joe Biden did a lot better than I expected him to do tonight. But it really made me mad when he blamed the coronavirus deaths on Trump. I thought that was really unfair.
I don't know that anybody could have prevented any of these deaths. And for him to lay all 200,000 at Trump's feet really kind of made me mad. I didn't -- I did not like that at all. And I don't think it was a -- it was a fair tactic.
CABRERA: And so, did Trump -- it was more what Biden did that turned you off to him to make you vote for Trump?
Or did Trump speak to you tonight, specifically?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, Trump didn't speak to me. I was looking for Biden to kind of win me over and he didn't. He actually turned me off.
CABRERA: OK. So yours would be a vote against Joe Biden for Trump.
And you, also, are planning to vote for Trump after tonight. Why?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, ma'am. Coming into this debate, I was very open minded. Leaning more towards President Trump. But former vice president Joe Biden, I was listening to his counterarguments, how he carried himself. He carried himself in a lot -- in a better manner than Trump did.
Trump -- President Trump was fiery. He was passionate. He provided more of what he did in 47 months versus the 47 years that former V.P. Joe Biden was in. So it happened with the credibility. The unemployment he provided and helped with, along with opening back up America and what he wants to move towards.
CABRERA: OK. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts.
And thanks to all of our group here for participating in our focus group tonight and being part of this experiment and this conversation as we go forward. Eight of our voters are still undecided. And we'll be looking to these candidates to give them a lot more. Jake.
TAPPER: All right. Well, they still have a few more weeks to go. Ana Cabrera, thank you so much. And, please, thank the focus group as well.
Abby, it's interesting because you had 14 undecided voters. Six of them made a decision. And they split for Biden roughly 2:1, 4-2 -- not roughly, 4-2. 2:1.
And actually that is actually what happened in the 2016 election, except reverse. People who were undecided and late deciders, ultimately, went for Trump over Hillary Clinton, went for the challenger, if you will, if Hillary Clinton was the establishment candidate and the Democrats to have the White House.
So it's kind of interesting it's playing out there and polls indicate that's playing out as well.
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Trump is now the establishment. I mean, he is the incumbent. So he is the one who has to say, you know, this is why you need to give me four more years. And it's harder for him to run a sort of adversarial campaign against Joe Biden.
You even actually saw President Trump really struggling to define Joe Biden. He kept trying to define Joe Biden as other people, as the radical Left or as a socialist. But really, he had trouble really saying what is Joe Biden, really? I, also, think what we saw tonight in that focus group was the gender gap. That is literally the 20-point gender gap that we are seeing in all the polls. The president is not winning over women because they cannot deal with his demeanor and his temperament and his way of behaving.
[00:30:09]
DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: I got an e-mail from a Republican pollster who is in the field all the time, across the board for lots of races, who said, "The key group in tonight's debate are those Republicans and independents who like most of Trump's policies but dislike his persona. All they saw tonight was what they hate about Donald Trump."
JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Yes. He was his own tweets come to life.
BASH: He was. He absolutely was. And what you just said about the fact that, you know, the whole likability question and about Hillary Clinton, that is such an important difference that we talked about at the beginning of the night that it's good to underscore, which is when people broke for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, there was a feeling among a lot of those late deciders that they didn't like either of them, but they just said, Eh, we'll go with the guy we don't really know about, not the woman who we've seen in our living rooms for decades.
It's not the case with Joe Biden.
TAPPER: Right.
BASH: He is well-liked comparatively, certainly for a politician who has been in the public life for 47 years. It is very, very different, not just from Hillary Clinton but from Donald Trump.
TAPPER: And polls indicate that among those voters out there who dislike both Biden and Trump, more of them are going to vote for Biden.
BASH: Exactly.
TAPPER: Which is the opposite of what happened with Hillary Clinton.
Coming up next, more results from our instant poll of debate watchers. How are they grading the candidates on the issues after what they heard tonight? Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Many debate watchers had very strong reactions to tonight's chaotic face-off between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden. David Chalian is back with more results from our exclusive instant poll.
David, what else are you getting? DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Yes, remember, Wolf, this is a
poll of debate watchers, not a poll of the country overall. But these debate watchers, we tested a whole bunch of issues, Trump versus Biden and how it came out in the debate. And in nearly every issue except one that we tested, Wolf, Biden bested Trump by 2 to 1.
Take a look. First of all, remember overall, who won the debate? Sixty percent of these debate watchers say Joe Biden, 28 percent say Donald Trump.
Who would better handle the coronavirus outbreak? Sixty-four percent Biden, 34 percent Trump. Who would better handle healthcare? Sixty-six percent Biden, 32 percent Trump.
Who would better handle racial inequality in the U.S., another topic in tonight's debate? Take a look here: 66 percent Biden, 29 percent Trump.
So, again, all those issues, two to one, Joe Biden bests Donald Trump.
Here's the economy. Who would better handle the economy? And it's basically tied here. Fifty percent say Joe Biden; 48 percent say Donald Trump. We've been seeing this in all the national polling in battleground state polling. The economy is clearly the issue where Donald Trump has the best hold with the electorate. It shocks me every day that it's not all he talks about, Wolf.
BLITZER: Very important point, indeed. All right. David Chalian, thank you.
We have another key debate moment to fact check right now. Our excellent fact checker, Daniel Dale, is back.
Daniel, as expected, the president went on the attack against the former vice president's son, Hunter Biden, claiming he was given millions of dollars by the mayor of Moscow. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: He wasn't given tens of millions of dollars --
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He was given tens of millions --
BIDEN: Totally -- totally --
CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: President Trump, you've already -- you've already been --
BIDEN: Totally discredited.
WALLACE: We've already been through this. I think the American people would rather hear about more substantial --
TRUMP: So do I. WALLACE: Well, you know, as the moderator, sir, I'm going to make a
judgment call here.
TRUMP: Three and a half million dollars from the mayor of Moscow.
BIDEN: That's not true.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: All right. So Daniel, any truth to that?
DANIEL DALE, CNN FACT CHECKER: So first thing, the issue is about a payment from the wife of the late mayor of Moscow, not the mayor himself. More broadly, though, Wolf, this is one where we actually can't render a firm verdict. We just don't have proof either way.
It's important to note off the top, though, that Hunter Biden through his lawyer denies this allegation, tells me it's totally false, that he never got sent a payment.
So what is Trump talking about? Well, a partisan report from Senate Republicans just released found that a firm called Rosemont Seneca Thornton got a $3.5 million payment from this Russian businesswoman, Elena Baturina. It was for a consulting agreement, according to the wire transfer.
Now, Hunter Biden cofounded a firm called Rosemont Seneca Advisors, but his lawyer says Hunter was not involved at all, had no interest and no stake in Rosemont Seneca Thornton, a separate partnership. Now, I don't know either way, but that's what they say.
It's also important to note that the Senate Republicans did not themselves provide proof that the money actually went to Hunter Biden and that they have not, regardless, demonstrated that Hunter Biden, who is a businessman, would have done anything wrong in receiving such a payment.
Finally, Wolf, I'll note that, as "Politico" reported in a good story this week, Trump himself tried, as a businessman, to do business with the government of the same later Moscow mayor.
So, bottom line here, I don't really have a bottom line. I can't be firm on this one, but Trump doesn't have proof himself, Wolf.
BLITZER: Very interesting. Let's turn to another familiar line of attack that the president leveled, Daniel, against Mr. Biden as he tries to appeal for suburban votes. Watch this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: But if he ever got to run this country and they ran it the way he would want to run it, we would have our suburbs --
BIDEN: We would run it --
TRUMP: By the way, our suburbs would be gone. And you would see problems like you've never seen.
BIDEN: He wouldn't know a suburb --
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: All right, Daniel. The verdict on that -- that claim?
DALE: Wolf, this is so false I think it's safe to say it's ridiculous. So what is Trump even talking about here? It's an anti-segregation rule from the Obama era. It's called the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule.
And what it does is update a decades-old federal requirement aimed at combatting segregation housing, which is still a problem in today's United States.
Now, contrary to what Trump has said, Wolf, this rule does not mandate low-income housing to be built in the suburbs. It simply requires cities and towns to examine and document racial discrimination in their neighborhoods and create goals to reduce segregation. Again, it's Affirmatively Further Fair Housing.
[00:40:10]
Now, come on. I think we also have to say, look, even some affordable housing, Wolf, doesn't destroy the suburbs. We already have a significant amount of suburban poverty. The suburbs still exist, obviously.
So bottom line here, Wolf, the claim that a Biden presidency means the suburbs are gone is -- is just false.
BLITZER; Excellent work, Daniel. Thank you very much.
Anderson, back to you.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Wolf, thanks very much.
Now let's get a reaction to another over-the-top attack by the president tonight as he responded to Joe Biden raising concerns about Mr. Trump's handling of the pandemic. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: A lot of people died. And a lot more are going to die unless he gets a lot smarter, a lot sooner.
TRUMP: So --
WALLACE: Mister President.
TRUMP: Did you use the word "smart"? So you said you went to Delaware State, but you forgot the name of your college? You didn't go to Delaware State. You graduated either the lowest or almost the lowest in your class. Don't ever use the word "smart" with me. Don't ever use that word. BIDEN: Give me a break.
TRUMP: Because you know what? There's nothing smart about you, Joe. Forty-seven years you've done that.
BIDEN: You must have --
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Yes. "Don't ever use the word 'smart' with me" is what he said. I don't know that a lot of people do use the word "smart" with President Trump, but -- but probably some do.
Andrew, I mean, does -- where does the race go from here? I mean, does -- does anything change tomorrow?
ANDREW YANG, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Again, you have to take a look at the context, Anderson, where the Republicans and Donald Trump needed a boost, and they did not get it tonight.
And Scott, when you talk about the plan for tonight from the Trump team, I guarantee you that this was not the plan. I guarantee you that Trump was not told to be this antagonistic, this negative.
And when he goes back -- as I've been a candidate. You get prepped ahead of time, and then you go back and talk to your team afterwards. I have a feeling right now, their team -- their team is preparing their resumes and looking for -- for an exit door. Because this was not the plan at all on that side.
Whereas Joe was given a plan. He stuck to it. He was told, Keep your cool. Talk to the American people. Don't get dragged into conflicts that are irrelevant to the American people, and he did just that.
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Andrew, nobody is getting a campaign in October. I mean, the reality is, I'm sure the strategy was for Donald Trump to go and try to rattle Joe Biden, to try to get on offense, to try to really rev him up and get him to lose his temper. He has lost his temper in debates that you were in. He screamed at Elizabeth Warren. He challenged a guy in Iowa to a push-up contest. So that was clearly something they had thought about.
But the problem is, there's a moment where you have to let it breathe, and you have to get the person where you want them and then let them dig. And then you come back and bury the hole. I mean, it's a classic sort of debating strategy.
But if you keep talking over them, and you go, and you just keep going on, then it all becomes about you. And that's another thing about the framing of this race. Donald Trump needs a choice: a choice between his ability to recover the economy and Joe Biden's failed record and ideas. Biden needs a referendum on Trump. And Trump's strategy overplaying kept him at the center of the race tonight, which means it's still all about him. And if you believe the polling, that's not a winning hand.
COOPER: So Scott, what would Donald Trump do, or what should he do in a second debate?
JENNINGS: I mean, I don't know. I mean, you go out -- At some point, he has to say, here's what I'm going to do in a second term. Here's Joe Biden. He's captive to the radical left. Here's what they want to do. And America, you may not love it all, but you know my policies are going to get us back to normal faster than his.
That's the simple framing of the race. And everything about the economy and regular life and whatever, it all has to be put in that box. And every day they don't put this race in that box is a lost day.
And by the way, people are voting right now. They don't have unlimited time to make that case, so I guess that's what I would do in the next debate.
COOPER: Kirsten?
KIRSTEN POWERS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, I mean, I think that the plan, to the extent there was a plan, I agree with Scott. I mean, I think it was to go in and try to rattle Biden.
But the thing is with Donald Trump, you can't really have a plan unless there's a teleprompter, right? So once the plan didn't work, he didn't correct for it. It wasn't -- he wasn't able, really, to rattle Biden the way I think he thought he would be able to rattle him.
And honestly, I don't even know how great of a strategy that is in the first place. Because even if Biden had gotten rattled, and I don't know -- then you just would have had two people kind of not acting that great. I don't know how that really helps Trump. I think Trump needs to be focused on the things that people care about.
And I don't think the way -- I mean, I can't even really think of anything substantive that he -- he said in terms of really, you know, defending his -- his record. I mean, he said some things that aren't -- aren't true about his record. We don't have the greatest economy in the history of the world, or the country, obviously. So you know, I think he -- his time would be better spent doing that.
[00:45:18]
And he was able to act like this when he ran the first time, because he was the one who was running against the status quo. And he was the fighter, and he was, you know, kind of taking down all the status quo people, but now he's the status quo. So that strategy can't be the same strategy.
COOPER: I also want to play another exchange that -- that they had. I think we have it ready? Let's take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BIDEN: The question is --
TRUMP: You have a lot of Supreme Court justices, radical left --
BIDEN: Will you shut up, man?
TRUMP: Who is on your list, Joe? Who's on your list?
BIDEN: This is so --
WALLACE: Gentlemen, I think --
BIDEN: This is so unpresidential.
TRUMP: He's not going to give a list.
WALLACE: We have ended the segment. We're going to move on to the second segment.
BIDEN: That was really a productive segment, wasn't it? Keep yapping, man.
TRUMP: The people understand, Joe.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: I don't even know what to make of it. There's a question out of there. But I mean, it -- do you see any changes in a second debate? I mean, obviously, it's up to the Commission on Presidential Debates, which is this nonpartisan group that exists that they're the ones who organize these debates. I'm not even sure -- I mean, do -- there's a lot of -- I've heard people talk about, should mics be able to be cut off? That doesn't seem like a solution that would actually be ever done in a presidential debate.
YANG: Well, they've already settled on these rules, and the next debates are going to be upon us pretty quickly. So I'd imagine we're all going to be subject to similar experiences a couple of weeks from now, Anderson.
If there's a group of people -- there a lot of people upset about tonight, but one group of people that, in my mind, should be very upset are down-ballot Republican candidates, because you're looking at very, very competitive Senate races in South Carolina, in Montana, in Alaska, and anything that depresses turnout for Republicans, which I'm going to suggest tonight might depress turnout, at least in some precincts, is going to increase the chances of a Democratic Senate come 2021. So to me, that's a very, very big, big impact of tonight that probably is not getting talked about enough.
COOPER: We're going to take a break. Still ahead, Daniel Dale has a big-picture look at how President Trump trampled on the facts in tonight's debate. Back in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[00:51:12]
BLITZER: We're breaking down the first Trump-Biden debate. That included a slew of false statements by the president when the face-off wasn't veering off the rails totally. Let's go back to CNN fact checker Daniel Dale. So Daniel, what's your
big takeaway from tonight?
DALE: Wolf, it's that this president is a serial liar who keeps serially lying. This -- this was just so much dishonesty on the biggest stage from the president of the United States.
And Wolf, I had people, you know, tweeting me, texting me, being like, Oh, Daniel Dale is probably on oxygen right now or taking a drink. How is he surviving this?
But the truth is, Wolf, this is always what it's like with Donald Trump. This is what it's been like for five years. Basically, any unscripted event featuring Donald Trump will feature a huge quantity of false claims. And -- and it's both stuff big and little. I mean, we know that -- you know, he stretches numbers. He'll make up that he got the Michigan Man of the Year Award, stuff that, you know, speaks to his character, his level of honesty, but isn't that important, honestly, to the American people's lives.
But what we had tonight was really important deception on things like healthcare, on things like the pandemic, on what Joe Biden might do in office.
I think a few things are especially notable about Trump's dishonesty. One is the frequency. You know, you hear, I hear, people say, Oh, they all lie. Politicians lie and spin.
This is so abnormal. What we heard from Biden was sometimes a little stretching. Sometimes he got numbers wrong. He wasn't always perfect, but he's a conventional -- he's at least a more conventional political spinner. Trump is an unprecedented liar in the Oval Office.
No. 2, the No. 2 thing that I think is noticeable is Trump's imperviousness to fact checking. So again, as I said earlier on your show, this is stuff that we fact-checked before. This wasn't, Oh, he got confused in the moment. Oh, he got that number wrong. This is stuff he says over and over. It is a deliberate strategy of disinformation.
And I also think it's notable just the range of topics that he is inaccurate on. So you know, it's basically everything. There are some topics where he's more dishonest than others. For example, almost everything he says about mail-in voting is dishonest.
But you would be hard-fessed [SIC] -- pressed to find literally any subject on which the American people can right now, and over the last five years, have been able to take Donald Trump at his word. This has been a truth crisis. This is what we've been dealing with. And we continue to deal with it during this campaign.
BLITZER: Excellent work, Daniel. Thank you very much for all the important fact checking.
Jake, Dana, Abby, back to you.
TAPPER: Poor Dan. He needs extra pay for all that fact checking.
One thing that I think is a very important story, and it's hard -- it's hard to ignore it, is the fact that Donald Trump, President Trump, is really at war with the election itself.
PHILLIP: Yes.
TAPPER: With the very concept of democracy. He is spreading all sorts of falsehoods, as Daniel just pointed out, about mail -- vote by mail, which as Joe Biden correctly pointed out, was in five states for roughly a decade, and now lots more states are doing it because of the pandemic.
And he's making it very clear that, if he loses, he is going to challenge the ballots of the American people.
PHILLIP: Yes, I mean, if you ask me, that probably should have been how the debate started. I mean, this is the foundation of democracy, and it kind of came -- was snuck in toward the end.
And I was really disappointed to see that the president wasn't pushed to give firm answers on a couple of basic questions. Will he agree to peacefully transfer power if he loses? He did not answer the question and pivoted to his claims about spying during the transition, et cetera.
And then he also wouldn't say that he would ask his supporters to remain calm while the ballots are being counted.
TAPPER: Quite the opposite.
PHILLIP: He said the opposite. So, I mean, really, these are big deals in this election, in this democracy. It kind of got short shrift, and the president once again refuses to stand up for these basic ideals.
[00:55:05]
TAPPER: And he's been doing this now for a while. This is also, according to pollsters, turning voters off.
BASH: And, look, the thing is, is that he's turning some of his own voters off --
TAPPER: Right.
BASH: -- again and again, in places where they are already voting. North Carolina, for example.
And, you know, privately, I'm sure you both have heard this also from Republicans. They're tearing their hair out, because when the president says over and over again, as he has been now for months, that the way to vote that many of these states are doing and that his own party is helping and encouraging their voters to do --
TAPPER: His own campaign. BASH: -- mail-in, absentee, his own campaign -- it's hard to do it when the guy at the top of the ticket is saying, You know what? It's fraudulent.
TAPPER: And it's hard to -- I said this earlier and I'll say it again before we say goodbye. It's hard to escape the conclusion that -- of anything other than President Trump has come to the realization that he is not going to win, and he wants to drag the rest of the United States down with him -- Wolf.
Oh, OK, Wolf's not there. We're going to take a break, and we're going to be back next week for CNN's live coverage of the vice-presidential debate on Wednesday, October 7.
Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon are right now going to pick up our coverage of tonight's debate after this quick break. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: And here we go.
