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Trump Refuses to Say He'll Accept Election Results; Trump & Clinton Tangle in Final Debate. Aired 5-5:30a ET
Aired October 20, 2016 - 05:00 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 CANDIDATE: I will tell you at the time. I'll keep you in suspense.
HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: He is talking down our democracy. I am appalled.
TRUMP: She should not be allowed to run.
CLINTON: Every time Donald thinks things are not going in his direction, he claims whatever it is, it's rigged against him.
TRUMP: He was guilty of a very, very serious crime.
CLINTON: When I was in the Situation Room, he was hosting "The Celebrity Apprentice".
TRUMP: The one thing you have over me is experience. But it's bad experience.
CLINTON: You're not up to doing the job.
ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Chris Cuomo and Alisyn Camerota.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. Welcome to your NEW DAY. It is Thursday, October 20th, 5:00 in the East.
Up first, defiant Donald Trump refusing to say if he will accept the election results. He said, "I'll keep you in suspense", shocking comments overshadowing the final debate, casting doubt over our democracy.
Hillary Clinton called Trump's comments horrifying.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: And the RNC and some GOP lawmakers coming out to say that they will respect the will of the people. This final debate was heavy on substance and personal attacks.
So, did the candidates change any minds? We have only 19 days left until Election Day. We have it all covered for you this morning. So, let's begin with CNN political reporter Manu Raju. He is live in Las Vegas.
It's been a long night there, Manu.
MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: Yes, good morning, guys.
Donald Trump, of course, needed a commanding performance to reverse the sharply declining poll numbers that we have seen since last month's first presidential debate.
[05:00:03] And for the first half hour, he delivered a precise argument that actually could rile up conservative voters on issues like abortion and the Supreme Court.
But then Hillary Clinton got under s skin on the issue of Russia and then this happened.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RAJU (voice-over): Donald Trump refusing to say he will accept the election results.
TRUMP: I will look at it at the time. I'm not looking at anything now. I'll look at it at the time.
WALLACE: Are you saying you're not prepared now to commit to that principle?
TRUMP: What I'm saying is that I will tell you at the time. I'll keep you in suspense.
CLINTON: Well, Chris, let me respond to that, because that's horrifying. You know, every time Donald thinks things are not going in his direction, he claims whatever it is, is rigged against him.
RAJU: Trump suggesting Hillary Clinton's e-mail use is disqualifying.
TRUMP: She shouldn't be allowed to run. It's called -- she is guilty of a very, very serious crime.
RAJU: Clinton changing the subject of her Wall Street speeches to Russia and pressuring the GOP nominee to condemn Russia for hacking and stealing Democratic records. Trump taking the bait.
CLINTON: Will Donald Trump admit and condemn that the Russians are doing this and make it clear that he will not have the help of Putin in this election, that he rejects Russian espionage against Americans, which he actually encouraged in the past?
TRUMP: I don't know Putin. He said nice things about me. If we got along well, that would be good. If Russia and the United States got along well and went after ISIS, that would be good.
He has no respect for her. He has no respect for our president. And I'll tell you what: We're in very serious trouble. WALLACE: Wait, but --
TRUMP: From everything I see, has no respect for this person.
CLINTON: Well, that's because he'd rather have a puppet as president of the United States.
TRUMP: No puppet.
WALLACE: You condemn their interference?
TRUMP: Of course I condemn.
RAJU: Throughout the night, Trump repeatedly interrupting and attacking her.
(CROSSTALK)
CLINTON: A very clear fact --
TRUMP: Wrong.
Excuse me. My turn.
(CROSSTALK)
Such a nasty woman.
RAJU: Trump did have a strong start, sparring with Clinton on issues that play well with conservatives, like abortion.
TRUMP: Based on what she is saying and based on where she's going and where she's been, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month on the final day. And that's not acceptable.
CLINTON: Using that kind of scare rhetoric is just terribly unfortunate. You should meet with some of the women that I met with. Women I've known over the course of my life. This is one of the worst possible choices that any woman and her family has to make and I do not believe the government should be making it.
RAJU: Trump even going as far as claiming his pro-life Supreme Court picks would automatically overturn Roe v. Wade, something he can't guarantee.
Later, Clinton hitting back on immigration.
CLINTON: When it comes to the wall that Donald talks about building, he went to Mexico, he had a meeting with the Mexican president. Didn't even raise it. He choked.
TRUMP: First of all, I had a very good meeting with the president of Mexico. Very nice man.
RAJU: Trump raising eyebrows with this response to the question of deporting millions of undocumented immigrants. TRUMP: Once the border is secured at a later date, we'll make a
determination as to the rest. But we have some bad hombres here and we're going to get them out.
RAJU: And once again rejecting the growing number of accusations from several women of making unwanted advances.
TRUMP: Because those stories are all totally false, I have to say that. And I didn't even apologize to my wife, who's sitting right here, because I didn't do anything. I didn't know any of these -- I didn't see these women.
These women -- the woman on the plane, the -- I think they want either fame or her campaign did it. And I think it's her campaign.
CLINTON: Donald thinks belittling women makes him bigger. He goes after their dignity, their self-worth, and I don't think there is a woman anywhere who doesn't know what that feels like. So, we now know what Donald thinks and what he says and how he acts toward women. That's who Donald is.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
RAJU: Now, immediately after the debate, Republican officials tried to clean up Donald Trump's remarks that he wouldn't accept -- that he may not accept the election results, including Kellyanne Conway, the campaign manager, and RNC chairman Reince Priebus, saying that, of course, he will.
But Republican critics of Donald Trump were quick to jump on Donald Trump's remarks. Lindsey Graham, one of the most prominent Republican critics saying this in a statement, "Like most Americans I have confidence in the election system. During this debate, Mr. Trump is doing the party and country a great disservice by continuing to say the election is out of his hands and rigged against him. If he loses, it will not be because the system is rigged, but because he failed as a candidate."
[05:05:06] So, clearly, that remark overshadowing the conversation and also putting Republicans in a difficult spot going forward -- Chris and Alisyn.
CUOMO: And you also saw a division, Manu, between what the party was saying in the form of Reince Priebus and Kellyanne Fitzpatrick, now Kellyanne Conway, obviously. You know, Team Trump wants to keep a little suspense to this and I don't know what it's going to do for him.
So, what did the viewers think of last night's debate? Obviously, we do a poll overnight to figure out what happened. These polls are scientific, but they are different, because they overnight and there's a little difference in the sample, 52-39. That's where viewers came down o it. That means that Clinton won all three of them, according to our poll.
More than half polled say the debate is not going to change their minds. In fact, in the recent poll, 88 percent of people say nothing will change their mind about who they will vote for.
Now, you see Trump and Clinton split on the debate, made you more likely to vote for. A little bit of a subtle indication there. Now, again, the debate watchers in our poll do skew slightly for the Democrats. Mike Pence did win our overnight poll also, but it is skewed.
CAMEROTA: Absolutely. So, let's discuss all of this with our panel.
We have CNN senior political analyst and senior editor for "The Atlantic", Ron Brownstein CNN political analyst David Gregory, CNN political analyst and Washington bureau chief for the "The Daily Beast", Jackie Kucinich, and "Washington Post" reporter, Abby Phillip.
Great to have you here.
David, was the defining moment for you the "I'm going to keep voters in suspense" about what's going to happen the day after Election Day?
DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, I thought, you know, after a strong hour after momentum for Trump as more of a Republican, sounding more like a conservative, I think this was a death blow for him. You know, not abiding by the traditions of the country to accept the election results. Somebody wants to make America great again and wants to undermine our democracy.
I just think it goes to the core of that problem for Trump which is most Americans don't think he has the temperament to be president. I think that was just the best evidence you could find.
CUOMO: Why is the suggestion that it could be rigged so I have to wait and see, why isn't that compelling enough to offset what David is saying?
JACKIE KUCINICH, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: This is not a stay tuned answer. This is not reality TV show. This is foundational for the United States democracy. And when he said that, which is I think -- you saw on Twitter. Republicans sort of the air went out, it's like, oh, God --
CUOMO: They said no, no, no. The election will be legit. The election will be legit.
Let's play the moment just so that everybody who didn't see it last night can absorb the context of when it came and how it came.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WALLACE: Do you make the same commitment that you will absolutely -- sir, that you will absolutely accept the result of this election?
TRUMP: I will look at it at the time.
WALLACE: Are you saying you're not prepared now to commit to that principle?
TRUMP: What I'm saying is that I will tell you at the time. I'll keep you in suspense.
CLINTON: Well, Chris, let me respond to that, because that's horrifying. You know, every time Donald thinks things are not going in his direction, he claims whatever it is, is rigged against him.
That is not the way democracy works. We have been around for 240 years. We had free and fair elections. We've accepted the outcomes when we may not have liked them. And that is what must be expected of anyone standing on a debate stage during a general election.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CUOMO: So, you see the context there, Abby, for how it came up and why it came up. Do you think he was just upset that Wallace was coming at him, you know? And this is his tendency, you know, if you are trying to check him and make him say something, he may double down in the other direction?
ABBY PHILLIP, THE WASHINGTON POST: I mean, that's a really great question. What that seemed to me poor preparation and also stubbornness on his part, because on some level, this is the obvious question. This has been discussed all week. Everybody knew it was coming.
He knew what the answer should have been. Mike Pence knows the answer. Kellyanne Conway knows what the answer should have been but he refused to say it because he doesn't believe it. And that's the problem. There is no willingness to stick with the plan and move forward according to what everybody knows is the right thing to do. He's going to go with his instincts and in this case, it sort of backed him into a corner.
CAMEROTA: Ron? What's your take on all of this?
RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, look, I agree with what David said. I mean, you are talking about a candidate whose single greatest obstacle is that consistently, really for over a year now, roughly 60 percent have said they don't think he has the judgment, the values, the experience and the temperament to succeed as president. And then, he offers an answer that was such a departure from what we have ever seen before from a candidate and just sort of underscores and reconfirms all of that.
You know, this debate, like all of the debate, he has been at his best when he has been the most generic, when he was basically a generic Republican for the first 45 minutes of the debate, you know, I'll be strong abroad.
[05:10:04] I'll cut spending at home. I'll be socially conservative. He carried that argument very effectively.
But when he got Trump-y, when he was kind of the most uniquely personal, you know, she shouldn't be allowed to run, such a nasty woman, Russia is not really involved and ultimately this, that is when he does the most circumscribed his support back to the base, which at the moment is leaving him looking up in most polls at 40 percent. CAMEROTA: So, because he said that, it forced all of his surrogates
come up to clean up on aisle nine. So, let's watch what they said in response afterwards.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. MIKE PENCE (R), VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I've said before that we'll certainly accept the outcome of the election.
DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: You want Mr. Trump to make that clear?
PENCE: Well, he said in the first debate.
JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: And then he took it back.
PENCE: Well, he said it in the first debate, folks.
IVANKA TRUMP, DAUGHTER OF DONALD TRUMP: Of course, I think my father thing. That is the type of person he is. He'll either win or he won't win, and I believe he will accept the outcome either way.
CONWAY: Donald Trump will accept the results of the election because he's going to win the election, so they'll be easy to accept. Absent evidence of widespread abuse and irregularity, yes, I would say that. But I actually think I'd be saying to him, congratulations, Mr. President. And I'll see you there in two weeks.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GREGORY: This is so hard. It's as if everyone is saying, don't listen to him. Don't listen, he is just the guy who wants to be the leader of the free world. You can't actually listen to what he said, this is what he means.
CUOMO: Abby?
PHILLIP: And actually if you don't win, you lose. You don't just not win.
CUOMO: That is not in your vocabulary.
KUCINICH: Second place --
PHILLIP: It's very -- you know, but that's -- this is the problem. Nobody wants to tell Donald Trump if you lose, you have to concede.
GREGORY: I think they have told him. I think they have told him. Then in a moment, he's like, no, we'll see. I'll take a look at it.
CUOMO: I wonder if it's -- you used a good word, Abby. I wonder if a little bit of it was stubbornness, that Wallace was on it, you know, he cut him off. Trump wanted to say something, Wallace cut him, so let me finish my question. He doesn't like that. We do know that very well. So, he then -- maybe he got into that mode, Ron Brownstein, where, you know, oh, you're going to check me, now I'm going to check you. You want to me say something, oh, I'm not going to say it, and he just wound up putting himself in a hole where another first. I have never seen staffers trying to clean up something like this.
He respects democracy. Sure he does. Don't listen to what he said.
BROWNSTEIN: Of course. I think all of that is true. But if he had gone the other way and said what everybody else said, it kind of under cuts what he has been saying on the stump for the last week.
And there's another issue here, Chris, which is that look at New Hampshire, look at Pennsylvania, look at even Wisconsin and North Carolina. These are states where the Republican Senate nominees are running several points ahead and thus, probably several hundred thousand votes ahead of Trump on Election Day. Some of them may win the state even if he loses the state.
Is the implication of Donald Trump's remarks last night that those victories, those Republican Senate victories are illegitimate? I mean, how does he square the race is stolen against him if there are Republicans on the ballot running potentially hundreds of thousands of votes ahead of him.
So, I mean, the whole thing implodes on it self and fits in with so many of what we have seen in the last debate where he is speaking more toward mobilizing the disaffected base or having any vision of how you reach beyond it to what most analyst and most parties would say are the actual swing voters, primarily the suburban white collar whites where he's underperforming any Republican nominee ever, hard to believe a six, you know, column headline in "The Wall Street Journal" saying you're not going to necessarily accept the results of the election is going to improve your vote with the voters who are most available to you, basically college educated white men usually vote Republican.
GREGORY: He was losing as he came into the final debate and didn't do anything to change the reality of the race except for this one deft blow, where if you are trying to reach that audience that Ron is talking about, those swing voters, it's the last thing that somebody is going to look at and say, oh, yes, now, he's got the judgment.
CAMEROTA: Well, I mean, particularly since lots of pundit said for the first half an hour, he seemed the most disciplined. They had seen him. He did seem prepared. He had an answer about the Supreme Court. All of the answers at first, you know, obviously if you look at Twitter as a temperature of the viewers, people thought he was doing well.
CUOMO: It is also a low bar for him. Even in the media. He had a whole year to keep getting chances he may be able to be president. Nobody gets a second chance to show they can be president. Let alone a 13th.
Now, coming up on NEW DAY, we're going to hear from both campaigns. Obviously, each side is in crazy spin mode this morning. So, keep your head straight.
We're going to have the Democratic vice presidential nominee there. You see him on your screen. Tim Kaine, senator out of Virginia.
And we have Kellyanne Conway, who I'm sure is going to have a very busy morning. She's going to be with us at 7:00 a.m. Eastern.
CAMEROTA: But up next, the personal attacks came from both candidates at the debate last night.
[05:15:01] So, we'll look at the contentious moments as Clinton and Trump clashed on experience and abortion and Vladimir Putin. Our panel discussions all of that next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CUOMO: All right. This was the one to watch last night. Not only was it the last one, you really go to see some stark contrast.
You didn't see it? Don't worry. We have the big moments. Here's a taste.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CLINTON: What we want to do is to replenish the Social Security Trust Fund --
TRUMP: Such a nasty woman.
From everything I see, has no respect for this person.
CLINTON: Well, that's because he'd rather have a puppet as president of the United States.
TRUMP: No puppet. No puppet.
CLINTON: And it's pretty clear --
TRUMP: You're the puppet!
And once the border is secured, at a later date, we'll make a determination as to the rest. But we have some bad hombres here, and we're going to get them out.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CUOMO: Hombres is David's favorite word of the morning. Mine is the facial expression, when he's saying, no puppet.
[05:15:00] No puppet. No puppet. He did not want to be called that.
All right. So, we have David Gregory, Jackie Kucinich, Abby Phillip, and Ron Brownstein with us this morning.
So, we'll go through it like big moments of conflict here and we'll get a take from each of you on it. David, we'll start with you. Abortion was argued in an interesting way last night. Not only did Donald Trump say, oh, yes, my judges will overturn Roe v. Wade, which is not usually talked about. They talked about late-term abortion. Here is Trump's case.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Based on what she is saying and based on where she's going and where she's been, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month on the final day. And that's not acceptable.
CLINTON: Using that kind of scare rhetoric is just terribly unfortunate. This is one of the worst possible choices that any woman and her family has to make and I do not believe the government should be making it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CUOMO: So, score that for us?
GREGORY: Well, I think as some of the others on the panel will weigh in in terms of how this procedure actually happens. I mean, I think what was striking to me about the first couple of sections, this was a strong ideological divide on the Supreme Court and abortion. He came off as much more conservative than he actually is. That line was good for the base and initial reminder to conservatives that, hey, this guy may be one of us.
A litmus test for abortion on Supreme Court nominee. You got a strong ideological divide, which I thought was part of what made the first hour strong for him.
CAMEROTA: But, Jackie, he is wrong. In this country, we do not allow abortions one day before the due date at nine months. Did Hillary Clinton miss an opportunity to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's wrong?
KUCINICH: Yes, she did. That said, she also -- she did, but I can see why she didn't really go after him, because she really just went through her own talking points there and why she wanted to say why she was different and provide a contrast rather than call him on the carpet for something like abortion.
And let's be honest, this is an issue that Donald Trump hasn't been consistent on. He actually had an answer this time. It sounded more like you would hear at a CPAC speech rather than presidential debate. It was so far right what he was saying.
PHILLIP: Except that I also think that Donald Trump was so vague o the issue. I mean, the idea of talking about late term abortion and the ninth month really kind of gets away from the point of the debate which is at which point is the fetus viable. That is the point where he did not express whether he knew what he believed the point to be or the dividing line that ideological dividing line.
I don't think he did anything there, but he was going for the shock factor of saying rip the baby out. That is the word that stuck in everyone's minds. I think Hillary Clinton probably thought, you know, the point is get away from that. Explain why this is a woman's decision and move on.
CUOMO: Again, Abby, another good indicative phrase. Ron, he was going for it last night. He was trying to make things happen. You know, in sports, they say you are forcing an opportunity. That seemed to happen.
So, it came up last night about experience. He has used this thick well. He used 30 years, 30 years. You could argue is not accurate in terms of the time Clinton has spent. But she adopted 30 years also and had a new answer. Here's the exchange.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I say the one thing you have over me is experience, but it's bad experience, because what you've done has turned out badly.
For 30 years, you've been in a position to help.
CLINTON: Back in the 1970s, I worked for the Children's Defense Fund. And I was taking on discrimination against African-American kids in schools. He was getting sued by the Justice Department for racial discrimination in his apartment buildings.
In the 1980s, I was working to reform the schools in Arkansas. He was borrowing $14 million from his father.
And on the day when I was in the Situation Room, monitoring the raid that brought Osama bin Laden to justice, he was hosting the "Celebrity Apprentice." So I'm happy to compare my 30 years of experience.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CUOMO: Ron Brownstein, score that.
BROWNSTEIN: Yes. Look, no, it was a strong comeback for her. But overall, that exchange worked for both candidates. I mean, despite all the other problems he has in polls, Donald Trump's strongest asset is that voters do see him as an agent of change.
And for the voters who are drawn to him and believe the political system has failed to deal with their problems and problems of the country. The idea he is a wrecking ball from outside the political system is not a demerit, it's the prime asset.
On the other hand, she has an enormous lead. When you ask who has the experience and the qualifications as president, they each kind of played to that offsetting strength in the exchange. Others said the first hour of the debate was quite interesting, first 45 minutes maybe was quite interesting because you had two heavyweights who are each kind of scoring their points before Trump kind of veered off into all of the issues that cause him trouble.
[05:25:04] And, by the way, Chris, your first point is worth under scoring. I don't think we've ever had a Republican nominee explicit say before that if you nominate me, you are going to see Roe v. Wade eventually overturned because of the justices I will appoint. It is worth underscoring, that is a majority position in the country. There's not a majority that wants to see Roe v. Wade overturned and it is something that he committed to I think he more explicitly than ever any Republican nominee before.
GREGORY: Again, what's so interesting about this, is that let's remember the context for the debate. He was losing coming into this. So, the fact that he could double down on his greatest strength, as Ron said, which was being an outsider was a real plus for him. if he was going to try to add and not just subtract. But then an issue here like with abortion, going in that direction and saying the litmus test for the Supreme Court nominee, only provide further alienates for him as a candidate from millennial voters, from women and from political independents.
CUOMO: And Wallace gave him several chances. He kept hearing his answer and, I'm asking you why you feel that way it has to be overturned? He gave him his chances.
CAMEROTA: Yes. At some point, we will talk about Chris Wallace and how he orchestrated the entire debate.
Panel, thank you. We'll see you in a little while.
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump versus the truth. We are fact- checking some of their most note-worthy claims from that final debate last night. That's next.
CUOMO: Another first.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
