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New Day
Trump, Clinton Clash in Ugliest Debate Yet. Aired 6-6:30a ET
Aired October 10, 2016 - 06:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Nobody has more respect for women than I do.
[05:58:09] HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: I think it's clear to anyone who heard it that it represents exactly who he was.
TRUMP: This was locker-room talk.
CLINTON: It's just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country.
TRUMP: Because you'd be in jail.
MARTHA RADDATZ, DEBATE MODERATOR: Your running mate said the United States should be prepared to use military force.
TRUMP: He and I haven't spoken, and I disagree.
CLINTON: With prior Republican nominees, I disagreed with them, but I never questioned their fitness. Donald Trump is different.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo and Alisyn Camerota.
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN HOST: Ah what a world, what a world, what a world. Good morning. Welcome to your NEW DAY. It's Monday, October 10, 6 a.m. in the east.
Up first, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump turning to some very personal ugliness in their attacks, at least on Trump's side. It will likely be remembered as the ugliest presidential debate in U.S. history. Clinton hitting Trump, saying the vulgar remarks in a bombshell video reflect exactly who he is.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Trump trying to excuse his lewd comments about women as, quote, "locker-room" talk." He also threatened to put Clinton in jail over her e-mails if he's elected.
Nine days until the third and final debate and just 29 days until the election. We have complete coverage. So let's begin with CNN's Manu Raju. He is live in St. Louis. Good morning, Manu.
MANU RAJU, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn. Now, the nasty tone of this debate was set, actually, before the
debate even began when Trump showed up at a photo opportunity with several of Bill Clinton's past accusers of sexual misconduct.
And then when the debate actually began, neither candidate shook each other's hand.
Then the insults began. And then when Donald Trump was asked about that "Access Hollywood" tape in which he's talking openly about groping women, he apologized, but he also dismissed it.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RAJU (voice-over): Donald Trump entered last night's debate with one major goal: to end the crisis engulfing his campaign after a tape of his vulgar remarks about groping women from 2005 was uncovered.
TRUMP: This was locker-room talk. I'm not proud of it. I apologize to my family. I apologize to the American people.
RAJU: CNN's Anderson Cooper pressing Trump over his crude comments about forcing himself on women. Trump denying he ever actually did that.
TRUMP: I have great respect for women. Nobody has more respect for women than I do.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: So, for the record, you're saying that you never did that?
TRUMP: Frankly, you hear these things are said, and I was embarrassed by it, but I have tremendous respect for women.
COOPER: Have you ever done those things?
TRUMP: And women have respect for me. And I will tell you, no, I have not.
RAJU: Hillary Clinton linking the tape to his past controversial rhetoric.
CLINTON: I said starting back in June that he was not fit to be president and commander in chief. This is who Donald Trump is. But it's not only women, and it's not only this video that raises questions about his fitness to be our president. Because he has also targeted immigrants, African-Americans, Latinos, people with disabilities, POWs, Muslims and so many others.
RAJU: And as he long threatened, Trump rehashed old Clinton controversies, bringing to the debate three women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct in the 1990s.
TRUMP: If you look at Bill Clinton, far worse. Mine were words, and his was action.
CLINTON: I am reminded of what my friend Michelle Obama advised us all: "When they go low, you go high."
RAJU: And Trump, in an extraordinary remark, threatening to jail Clinton if he becomes president, over her handling of classified material on her private e-mail server as secretary of state.
TRUMP: If I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation.
CLINTON: It's just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country.
TRUMP: Because you'd be in jail.
RAJU: Trump frequently interrupting Clinton throughout the heated exchange.
CLINTON: It's just not true, and so please go...
TRUMP: You didn't delete them?
COOPER: Allow her to respond, please.
CLINTON: Those were personal e-mails, not official.
TRUMP: Oh, 33,000? Yes, right.
CLINTON: Well, we turned over 35,000, so...
TRUMP: Oh, yes, what about the 15,000?
COOPER: Please allow her to respond. She didn't talk while you talked.
RAJU: Clinton becoming visibly frustrated.
CLINTON: OK, Donald. I know you're into big diversion tonight. Anything to avoid talking about your campaign and the way it's exploding, and the way Republicans are leaving you.
RAJU: Trump at times seemingly uncomfortable, pacing around the stage and hovering over Clinton, the billionaire admitting that he wrote off nearly $1 billion in losses and didn't pay federal income taxes in some years.
COOPER: Did you use that $916 million loss to avoid paying personal federal income taxes?
TRUMP: Of course I do. Of course I do.
RAJU: Trump making a stunning admission when pressed about Governor Mike Pence. Flatly contradicting his running mate's call to use military force in Syria.
TRUMP: He and I haven't spoken, and I disagree. I disagree.
RADDATZ: You disagree with your running mate? TRUMP: I think you have to knock out ISIS.
RAJU: Clinton found herself on the defensive, as well, over leaked transcripts of her speeches to banks, including one where she talked about having different positions publicly and privately.
CLINTON: As I recall, that was something I said about Abraham Lincoln. President Lincoln was ting to convince some people; he used some arguments. Convincing other people, he used other arguments.
TRUMP: She lied. Now she's blaming the lie on the late, great Abraham Lincoln. That's one that I haven't heard.
RAJU: The ugly tone of this debate was started with the candidates refusing to shake hands. Ended by both sharing what they respect about each other.
CLINTON: His children are incredibly able and devoted, and I that says a lot about Donald.
TRUMP: She doesn't quit. She doesn't give up. I respect that. I tell it like it is. She's a fighter.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
RAJU: The question today is whether or not Donald Trump's performance was enough to stabilize his campaign and prevent more Republicans from jumping ship. And we'll get an early indication of that later this morning when House Republicans gather on a private conference call to discuss Donald Trump -- Alisyn.
CAMEROTA: Thanks so much, Manu.
So who won last night's debate? Hillary Clinton is two for two now, according to CNN's scientific poll. Fifty-seven percent of debate watchers say Clinton won; 34 percent say Donald Trump won.
Clinton's winning big among women. Nearly 2-1 said she won, and half of men watching agreed.
There is some good news for Trump: 63 percent of debate watchers said he exceeded their expectations, while 39 percent felt Clinton exceeded their expectations.
We should point out that our poll's sample does lean slightly more Democratic than an average CNN poll of all Americans.
CUOMO: All right. Let's discuss. We have our panelists here. CNN political commentator and political anchor of Time Warner Cable News Errol Louis; CNN political analyst and "New York Times" presidential campaign correspondent Maggie Haberman; CNN political analyst and "Daily Beast" Washington bureau chief Jackie Kucinich; CNN political analyst David Gregory; and CNN senior political analyst and senior editor of "The Atlantic" Ron Brownstein.
OK. Time for a commercial. So Maggie, the Trump camp is saying they won. They won, they won,
they won. What are you hearing?
MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I'm hearing exactly that. They won, they won, they won. They put out a very aggressive message last night through all of their supporters, through all of their surrogates, through all of their allies, saying this was his moment of victory. He reclaimed this. You know, he set the tone. He's back in the race.
He certainly stabilized himself for the night. I think that you are potentially seeing the leader of the Senate majority and the House speaker openly disassociating from him today. If he had had a really bad performance.
But I think the fact that he apologized over that videotape, I think, basically staunched the bleeding. That just gets us to today.
You know, Donald Trump, No. 1, has had a real problem performing well over a series of days or even a series of hours, depending on how things are going. And I still don't think this just does undoes the last, you know, the certainly last week, last two weeks and last several months.
And also, it's really worth remembering there are still going to be a lot of people talking about the tactic he used of bringing in these women who had accused her husband of sexual assault or rape, as well as a woman whose rapist Hillary Clinton defended when she herself was a prosecutor. I'm not sure how that all plays.
It seemed to have an effect on Hillary Clinton. She did not perform as well as she did in the first debate. You know, she seemed to miss some punches that she could have hit.
I don't know, ultimately, that this changes the trajectory of this race. But it does stop things for today in place.
CAMEROTA: Errol, before we get to the device that Trump used of bringing in Bill Clinton's accusers, let's listen to how he excused what he, himself, on that tape described as basically how he sexually assaults women. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: This was locker-room talk. I'm not proud of it. I apologize to my family. I apologize to the American people. Certainly, I'm not proud of it. This is locker-room talk.
Yes, I'm very embarrassed by it. I hate it. But it's locker-room talk, and it's one of those things. I will knock the hell out of ISIS. That was locker-room talk. I'm not proud of it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: So, Errol, it wasn't just locker-room talk. He was talking about what he did. He was saying that he could grab women by the genital -- genitals, that he could kiss whoever he wants and force a kiss on them. So did that -- did that...
ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: He said, in fact, that he did do those things.
CAMEROTA: Yes.
LOUIS: And let's keep in mind, I mean, putting aside that, he apparently is in very different locker rooms than almost every man I know.
But and then sort of the quick pivot. He apologized to his family, he said. He said he apologized to the American people.
CUOMO: Ooh.
LOUIS: He didn't apologize to the women involved, which is really what an apology is about. So I think it's actually a misnomer to call it an apology. He -- you know, he has expressed some regrets, and then he does, like, the quick pivot maybe ten seconds later: "I'm going to knock the hell out of ISIS," which has nothing to do with what -- you know, taking responsibility for your own actions. So I think the issue is still out there, frankly.
And the fact that Hillary Clinton chose not to pound him on it for 20 minutes last night when she easily could have and chose not to make the debate all about that, I think it's just a concession to reality. The reality is the tape is still out there. We've been following it since the minute it broke on Friday. But the reality is, it's still filtering out through the rest of the country, and the impact will be found. I keep wanting to say election day, but every day is election day in state after state because of early voting.
CUOMO: Do you agree with Maggie that maybe Clinton was a little spooked by having her past, you know, brought before her eyes, and that's why she didn't drop the hammer on him, every women I hear respond to the things he said on that tape?
JACKIE KUCINICH, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, I think that definitely was a part of it. That said, it does seem to be what the Clinton strategy was going into this, in terms of the video, because they were sort of just letting Donald Trump speak for himself. They were letting Donald Trump -- this moment just sort of happened to him. And she really didn't need anything -- need to say anything last night.
Because as Errol said, I mean, the whole locker-room thing. It's almost like he was "mansplaining": "Oh, ladies, this is how the locker rooms work." And I don't think that plays well. I just don't.
But I will say, when it comes to the e-mails and some of the other tougher things that Hillary Clinton was challenged with, there she was spooked, definitely.
CAMEROTA: Ron, what was your take on the dynamic of last night?
RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I thought for Donald Trump it was kind of a 40 percent solution. I agree with Maggie completely. He was at risk today and this week of a catastrophic bottom falling out, with Republicans renouncing him.
[06:10:16] First of all, on Saturday, more Republicans abandoned his campaign than we've seen for a Republican nominee in any 24-hour period since Teddy Roosevelt and his supporters left the 1912 convention after it re-nominated William Howard Taft. That's not hyperbole. That's literally true. And the risk of that continuing, obviously, would have been annihilating for the Trump campaign.
And I think what he did most successfully, particularly in that middle part of the debate, was remind people he's a Republican. He was at -- he was at his best when he was his most conventional. "I'm going to repeal Obamacare. I'm going to cut taxes. I'm going to repeal the Clean Power Plan. I'm going to appoint conservative justices. I'm going to prosecute Hillary Clinton." That's what a lot of Republicans wanted to hear. It made it harder, I think, for other Republicans to walk away from him today.
But it did very little to expand him from beyond where he is, which is why I said it's a 40-percent solution.
I think Hillary Clinton behaved like someone who thought they were ahead and was trying to reassure the country that she could be a president -- her dominant note was, "I'm going to work for all Americans and work across party lines." It was a cautious performance. I don't think it was much spooked as it was her deciding that they weren't going to take a lot of risks. We'll see if that is premature.
But the fact is that Trump did a lot of what he needed to do in the middle part of the debate. The beginning was just fireworks. The end, he struggled on foreign policy. But in the middle, it was kind of three yards and a cloud of dust, conventional Republicanism, and I think it worked pretty well for him.
CUOMO: Do you think, David, having the women there, what's your take on it? Did that work for him?
DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: You know, I think she was prepared for that. And I think -- I don't think she was spooked. I think she was a lawyer at a deposition. She wanted to commit him to certain things. The fact that he said this was nothing but locker- room talk, you know, three, four times. I don't think she wanted to get in the middle of that. She just wanted it on the record, and now they can go to town without -- in their ads, and they can reach who they want to reach.
I thought what she did deliberately was say, "Look, this is a fitness for office argument." She was speaking very tactically and strategically to a group of voters. I'll say this again: You look at the Pennsylvania numbers out of the "Wall Street Journal"/NBC poll, she's up 12. She's up something like 20 among college-educated voters. If she can keep working that jab, he's not going to grow from where he is.
I think it was striking, and as Ron was saying, it's true, that he staunches the bleeding among those core supporters who want to see him get up and fight.
But you know, Mitt Romney had 99 percent of Republicans in 2012. Is Donald Trump going to be able to get to that figure? He threw his conservative V.P. under the bus on a critical policy area last night.
CAMEROTA: Yes.
GREGORY: He's got Republicans who are leaving him in droves. Is that going to be enough because he showed up a little bit more strongly tonight? And even if he can -- if he can do that, those voters who were looking at a general qualification temperament fitness thing, I think, are still going to be scratching their heads after last night.
CAMEROTA: And we will be talking to Mike Pence later on in the program. Panel, thank you very much for being here.
Up next, though, Donald Trump making an unprecedented threat towards Hillary Clinton if he's elected. What he says he'll do if he gets into the Oval Office.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:17:04] CAMEROTA: Donald Trump making an unprecedented promise last night. He said if elected he'll work to put Hillary Clinton in jail.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We're going to get a special prosecutor, and we're going to look into it because, you know what? People have been -- their lives have been destroyed for doing one-fifth of what you've done. And it's a disgrace. And honestly, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.
RADDATZ: Secretary.
CLINTON: Everything he just said is absolutely false. But I'm not surprised. Go to HillaryClinton.com. We have literally Trump, you can fact check -- fact-check him in real time.
It's just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country.
TRUMP: Because you'd be in jail.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: Let's discuss this and more with our political panel. We have Errol Louis, Maggie Haberman, Jackie Kucinich, David Gregory and Ron Brownstein.
Errol, so much for healing the country after the election, whoever wins. It sounds like he does not want to bury the hatchet.
LOUIS: For sure. And it was a little -- I have to tell you, it felt a little bit like a punch to the gut. Like one more thing that we've never seen in politics before, sinking to a new low. A candidate publicly pledging to jail his opponent if he should win. I mean, that's essentially what he -- what it came down to. Never mind the fact that the case and the facts involved in the case don't come anywhere near justifying what he's talked about. This has been true since they started chanting, you know, "Lock her up" during the convention. A really unfortunate turn of events.
CUOMO: I mean, look, there's no case -- question that this election is suffering from a bad case of confirmation bias, right? I mean, the supporters on both sides only want to hear what they want to hear and they dismiss things.
And you have to look at it objectively, though, with what Trump did last night. He invites a group of women in to drop the hammer, look at the -- he called those women an ugly group of accusers. He said that impeaching Bill Clinton was wrong. Yes, but he was, like, a fully formed individual.
CAMEROTA: Absolutely. I'm saying not last night. He called them repugnant years ago.
CUOMO: His supporters will say, you know, "Well, he wasn't a politician then." That is the most mindless excuse for behavior I've ever heard in my life. He said impeaching Bill Clinton was wrong. He said that it was silly, the allegations were silly.
HABERMAN: Had him at his wedding long after -- well after the impeachment process, and he -- these allegations were well known at the time. So I mean, he -- he had a comment, I think, in 1999 about how Hillary Clinton had gone through more than anybody else had gone through and more than a woman should have to. Yes, he was not a politician, but you would have to assume that he was saying what he thought.
And he also -- it's interesting, his last line of the debate was her tag line. I mean, it's her sort of her slogan. She doesn't give up, she doesn't quit fighting. He has at other points in his campaign said she has no stamina and she's tired, and she's weak.
So I think that, in terms of these women, there is a consistency issue in terms of what he has said. I think that what we've seen is that the Clinton campaign doesn't necessarily want to point to the issues or the instances where he has said something contrary to what he's saying now. But you are correct: he has said disparaging remarks about these women in the past, and he is now holding them up as paragons...
CUOMO: He wanted to put him in his family box last night.
[06:20:02] HABERMAN: Right. I mean, and to Errol's point just about things we haven't heard before, certainly seeing this at a debate was not what we have seen before. Hearing somebody say that their -- an opponent would be in jail, even if what he meant was "I would appoint a special prosecutor," and he was just doing part of his rally chant, because this is pleasing to his base. There's no question it's going to thrill his voters. But that is not something we're used to hearing in American elections. That is something you're used to hearing from authoritarian figures.
CAMEROTA: David Gregory, are you trying -- yes, go ahead.
GREGORY: Because there's a broader point here, which is about criminalizing political differences. This goes back to the Clinton and Bush eras. People who thought President Bush should have been impeached or been charged with war crimes over Iraq, for example.
Here, bad judgment by Hillary Clinton, at the very least, with regard to her e-mails or her views on Iraq, Libya, Syria. And now to talk about throwing her in jail when you have an FBI director who said criminal charges against her is not even a close call. That no prosecutor would have brought them.
I mean, this is a typical case of not just criminalizing judgment, criminalizing political difference. But you can imagine a discussion between two voters. A voter who says, "Gosh, I really can't stand Hillary Clinton. Just don't think she has integrity. I can't believe her."
And, "Oh, really? Trump says he should throw her in jail."
And you can imagine that voter saying, "OK, well, that's kind of crazy. That goes too far."
I think that's a scenario that hurts Donald Trump, because he's going to have a hard time, you know, getting those voters who think he just goes way over the top, as he did in that answer.
CAMEROTA: Jackie, last night, there was another point that Donald Trump seemed to clarify and that was that he did not pay -- it seems that he confirmed -- federal income tax for the past 18 years. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: You have not answered, though, a simple question. Did you use that $916 million loss to avoid paying personal federal income taxes for years?
TRUMP: Of course I do. Of course I do. And so do all of her donors, or most of her donors. But I will tell you that, No. 1, I pay tremendous numbers of taxes. I absolutely used it. And so did Warren Buffett, and so did George Soros.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: So what about that line of attack, where he seemed to confirm what the suspicion was, but he said, "Hey, all rich people do this"?
KUCINICH: Well, right. But, well, right. I mean, that -- there is that. But all rich people aren't running for president.
And we still haven't seen his tax returns. Not to belabor the point, but him saying he pays all those other taxes, we don't know that. He wouldn't even say what he said now if it wasn't for a leak to the "New York Times" so we could actually see that he had this massive loss and took exemption so he, you know, didn't pay taxes. So all of that is enforced. So, you know, thanks to "The New York Times," at least we got that.
CUOMO: He also said part of the rationale was "I know the system, so I can fix the system." Last night he said, Maggie, you know, "And we're going to deal with the carry forward interest." I don't think his plan has anything there to correct the rules of this two-tiered system, you know, that these upper-income people can take for. I don't think it's actually in there.
HABERMAN: No, that's right. And there -- this happens repeatedly where he talks about his tax plan, when he describes it in terms that it isn't.
I don't think that you're going to hear him actually raising this argument very often. I think that the tax comment from him last night was a stumble. I don't think that he intended to confirm this. This has never been part of their strategy. This just is going to open up more questions now for the next four weeks.
CUOMO: And it contradicted both his sons. His sons put out numbers of federal taxes that he has paid.
CAMEROTA: That's exactly right.
HABERMAN: And so, I think that he wasn't quite certain where he wanted to go with that.
CAMEROTA: Ron, what did you think of that moment? And what did you think of the moment where he also publicly diverged from his running mate, Mike Pence, in terms of Syrian policy and what to do there?
BROWNSTEIN: Yes, to think about how -- how I think of that in my head, I think it's more likely that Mike Pence diverged from him initially in the vice-presidential debate. Because what Trump said last night was consistent with what he had said earlier, you know, through the campaign. And it was -- it was Pence who kind of came out with this new kind of assertive position. It will be interesting to ask Mike Pence whether Donald Trump cleared what he said in the first place.
But look, on the taxes, the challenge Donald Trump has in a lot of these areas, as Maggie said, is that he has kind of a populist outsider, "I'm going to shake up the system" persona. But the actual policy is a very conventional Republican tax plan that provides most of its benefits to the wealthiest. And that is, you know, that is going to be kind of the point of the debate, I think, going forward to the extent we get to an issue debate in a campaign that's mostly about personal qualifications.
CAMEROTA: OK. Panel, thank you very much.
Coming up in our 8 a.m. hour, Donald Trump's running mate, Governor Mike Pence, will join us live to talk about last night's debate and whether or not he and Donald Trump are on the same page.
CUOMO: Hurricane Matthew may be gone, but that's a qualified term. For the people in North Carolina, the effects are still very real. Historic flooding, and it may not be over. We'll tell you why.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[06:28:46] CAMEROTA: Here's some breaking news for you. A U.S. Navy destroyer targeted in an attack off the coast of Yemen. The Pentagon says missiles were fired from Houthi-controlled territory at the USS Mason. The missiles did not hit the ship, and no sailors were hurt. Houthi rebels are backed by Iran. This warship was in international waters, more than 14 miles off shore in the southern end of the Red Sea. Houthi rebels deny any involvement.
CUOMO: Matthew is moving away from the East Coast, but the deadly storm's impact still being felt in a very real way. Hard-hit North Carolina, severe widespread flooding there. A staggering 1,000 people had to be rescued from rising waters. At least 17 have died across four states.
CAMEROTA: Samsung is stopping production of the Galaxy Note 7 smartphone over concerns that even replacement versions of this device can burst into flames. AT&T and T-Mobile stopped selling the new devices late last week after customer complaints of fires. Samsung recalled about 2.5 million of the devices worldwide last month, blaming faulty batteries for the issue.
CUOMO: Up next, we break down the body language at last night's debate. This is a Camerota favorite.
CAMEROTA: I can't wait to look at this.
CUOMO: What can we tell from how they moved, and what does it tell about their inner truth? We have an expert...
CAMEROTA: What is that turn right there?
CUOMO: ... who analyzed it. We're going to hear.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
