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New Day
Donald Trump Wins Presidency of United States; Hillary Clinton to Give Concession Speech; Interview with Kellyanne Conway; Global Markets Drop on Trump Win; Interview with Congressman Sean Duffy. Aired 8-8:30a ET
Aired November 09, 2016 - 08:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[08:00:00] DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Working together, we will begin the urgent task of rebuilding our nation and renewing the American dream. I've spent my entire life in business looking at the untapped potential in projects and in people all over the world. That is now what I want to do for our country.
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CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Hillary Clinton conceding the race on the phone. She hasn't addressed the American people yet. We are expecting that to happen soon. We do now know that President Obama called Trump to congratulate him. The two men plan to meet on Thursday.
Republicans had a big, big night, even beyond the presidency. They keep the Senate. They keep the House. Markets around the world were expected to react negatively to Trump. They did so in heavy fashion. There's been a little bit of a pullback on that. We're monitoring the markets to see how they open here in the U.S. this morning.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: We have the best political team in the business covering it all. So let's begin with John Berman who is here to break down all of the numbers. How did this go, John?
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Alisyn, a little bit after 8:00 a.m. on the east coast, Donald Trump has 289 electoral votes, more than enough. He is now the president-elect. He will be the 45th president of the United States.
We're still waiting on three states to be called right now. In Michigan, Donald Trump leads by about 15,000 votes. In Minnesota, Hillary Clinton, she has a slight lead of about 42,000 votes. And then New Hampshire, just take a look at New Hampshire. For those up all night watching this, right now Donald Trump is 856 votes ahead. That's actually grown since the last time we checked, gone from about 300 to 800. We are not going to call these races any time soon until we hear from those state officials. It's just too close to make those determinations. And they won't change the outcome. Donald Trump has won this race.
As of now, Hillary Clinton 218 electoral votes. The key overnight, her blue wall crumbling. Donald Trump picke up wins in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. No Republican has won Pennsylvania since 1988. No Republican has won Wisconsin since Ronald Reagan. Hillary Clinton did not even visit Wisconsin after the convention. Democrats thought they had it in the bag. They didn't.
Now, one of the big surprises overnight, Donald Trump, it turns out, he had coattails. The Republicans will keep control of both chambers of Congress. The senate, they're going to have at least 51 seats. They don't need Mike Pence to break a tie. They have at least 51, and that number could grow. And in the House of Representatives, Republicans once again will be in charge. Right now we project the Democrats will pick up about six seats, but that is way below the number that they had hoped for, particularly a few weeks ago when they thought they may get 20, 25 seats. Republicans still at least 235 votes in that amber. A lot of Republicans, or at least some Republicans, swept into office despite the fact that they didn't even support Donald Trump. Alisyn?
CAMEROTA: OK, John, thanks so much for all of that.
Well, the White House releasing a statement in just the past hour about these stunning election results. And it reads in part, "The president invited the president-elect to meet him at the White House on Thursday, November 10th, to update him on the transition planning his team has been working on for nearly a year. Ensuring a smooth transition of power is one of the top priorities the president identified at the beginning of the year, and meeting with the president-elect is the next step."
Sara Murray is live at Trump Tower in New York with more. What's the scene there, Sara?
SARA MURRAY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning. Donald Trump delivered on his political revolution, but he wakes up this morning with a very long to-do list. He now has a transition to go through. He has to pick a cabinet. He has to essentially prepare for a Donald Trump administration. And this is something sources say Donald Trump has not been spending a lot of time on in the lead-up until Election Day. He really wanted to focus on the task at hand. He wanted to win the election.
Meanwhile the transition team, separate from the campaign, was just sort of heads-down, grinding it out, pulling together what they would need for Donald Trump to sort of hit the ground running. That included a first 100 day plan. It also included 22 different departments submitting plans to Senator Jeff Sessions, Governor Chris Christie, to sort of look over what they would want to do with these agencies, regulations Donald Trump would roll back on day one unilaterally.
But they also submitted lists for each potential cabinet position, so top three picks. All of these people who have been vetted by the transition team, potential people Donald Trump could put in the cabinet. We are going to hear a lot of these names bandied about in the coming days. So that is why I just want to throw the note of caution out there that Donald Trump is just now going to begin to sort through these things. He's going to begin to narrow down people who would want in these top slots. Even if aides are cautioning it's still very early and it won't be until later this morning that his aides get together here at Trump Tower and sort of figure out where they go next.
CUOMO: Well, we know where one person is going next. Sara Murray, thank you very much. We just heard breaking news in to CNN that Hillary Clinton is going to speak at 9:30 a.m. eastern, after conceding the race to Donald Trump by phone in the early morning hours. CNN's senior Washington correspondent Jeff Zeleny has the details. Jeff?
[08:05:08] JEFF ZELENY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Chris, good morning. We are hearing that the speech will come at 9:30 this morning at the New Yorker hotel here in midtown Manhattan. This is not a speech she expected to be giving. She, of course, thought she would be winning this morning. All those conventions were totally wrong, by her campaign, by others.
I am told by her aides that this will be a speech to talk about the healing the divisions in the country, and the need for Americans to support their new president. But last night you can see the pictures here. Thousands of here supporters were shell-shocked in the wee hours of the morning as they left the Javits Center right here in Manhattan, what her campaign thought would be a victory party that turned into anything but.
As we know now she did not give a concession speech last night, still hoping that her blue wall across Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania would save her candidacy. That didn't happen. So after 2:00 a.m., her aides said she wanted to give a more thoughtful speech. That is the speech they said is coming this morning here.
But so many questions inside her campaign about what went wrong. Her advisers tell me this morning now is not the time for finger pointing here. You can bet those questions will be asked. A, did she not campaign enough? B, did they not see this message of this movement of change coming? Was President Obama not helpful on the campaign trail? Was there anything they could have done? Her advisers say those questions will be saved for a later date.
But Chris and Alisyn, the Democratic party now is the divided party here. And that is something that it's out of power in Washington. That is the next conversation moving forward. So we'll hear from her at 9:30.
CUOMO: A lot of division. A lot of different roads that need to find their way forward and we'll stay on it. Jeff, thank you very much.
Joining us now is Donald Trump's campaign manager Kellyanne Conway. Congratulations my friend, it's good for you to be with us this morning. And, I immediately am going to pick you for information. Tell us about the calls that you got from Hillary Clinton and from President Obama and the call to you from Huma Abedin. Tell us about all of these experiences. KELLYANNE CONWAY, TRUMP CAMPAIGN MANAGER: OK. Well, thank you Chris. It's a great day for us here in Trump Tower. So, we were already headed over to the Hilton to do what we had been doing all night long which was watch the returns, wait for all the states to be called, and eventually the next President-elect of the United States to be announced. And, as we were preparing to do that backstage, my phone rang and said Huma Abedin. I was happy to talk to it. I had a nice exchange with Huma, who I respect very much. And, she said Secretary Clinton would like to talk to Mr. Trump. So, I handed him the phone and they had a maybe a one minute conversation, very gracious, very warm. I heard Mr. Trump's side of it, and he commended her for being smart and tough and running a very hard fought campaign. And, I'm told Secretary Clinton congratulated Donald Trump on his victory and conceded to him.
CAMEROTA: Kellyanne, tell us about your night before that. What was the moment where jaws were dropping? Was it after Donald Trump won North Carolina, was it Florida? What was the moment where your realized things were really breaking your way?
CONWAY: So, it's been feeling this way for a couple of weeks now, and I think last night empirically it's when this silly exit polls faded into view -- out of view and when the actual election results started to be announced because those really reflect what people did. And, I think when we saw we were able to protect our core four as I've been calling it, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Iowa, then we knew we were on to something because we had a lot of people in our counties giving us information about returns. We were able to compare Mitt Romney's returns to last nights and what we were hearing.
And, we knew we went into yesterday -- we knew we went into Election Day behind in the early vote. This is not unusual for Republicans. But, in a place like Florida, we had cut the early vote deficit that Governor Romney had against President Obama in half. In North Carolina we were happy with our early vote, even though we were losing it. We were happy with where it was relative to Governor Romney's in 2012.
And, so, we -- we knew if we had a strong day of turn out, we could protect those core four. Then, it was a matter of flipping a blue state, or two. And, this is something that we've had in our sights for months, really taking the case right to Pennsylvania, it's just always felt right for Donald Trump. Donald Trump, Mike Pence, they spent a lot of time there, the Trump family. Melania Trump was there last week. So it's a state where we felt the Trump message would do very well.
We also felt that Hillary Clinton promising to put coal miners out of work or steel workers, that wasn't going to go well in a place like Pennsylvania. Michigan, Wisconsin the same thing. So, it just all started to come together.
CUOMO: So, I loved your tweet last night, "Stop saying all the pollsters didn't see it," because, obviously Kellyanne is a pollster and she obviously saw it. New Hampshire, Michigan and Minnesota still too tight to call. Won't change the race from Clinton's perspective, but would deliver a hefty mandate to Donald Trump if each breaks his way. How important are they?
[08:10:02] CONWAY: Well they're important, and they're places where we were in waning days, sometimes under a hell of criticism Chris. "Why are you going to Minnesota?" Well, maybe we saw that Minnesota was tight. And internally we saw Minnesota was negative three for us and thought, let's go there, because, if you work for Donald Trump, it's never a choice between this state and that state. It's just a matter of adding more stops to the calendar since he's so willing to be campaigning practically 24/7. It's the complete mystery to all of us, president or no president, when this man sleeps. We still don't know. So, if he's willing to do six stops a day, if Governor Pence is willing to do five or six stops a day, it's easy to add when you see something blossoming in the internal polling.
The other thing is, I talked about it on CNN, again criticized for doing so, but we saw two things that ended up being true. One is the undercover Trump voter, these people who want to take the country and union into a different direction, have an unfavorable opinion of Hillary Clinton, but don't look the part of a Republican presidential voter. Maybe they voted for President Obama twice, maybe they voted for President Bill Clinton twice, maybe they vote for Democrats in the off year. But it's the combination of the message and the messenger this year and their reluctance to go for more of the same and vote for Hillary Clinton that really made them available to us.
The second thing that we saw was that Hillary Clinton just had a very difficult and it turns out impossible time to bust through her ceiling of 45, 46, 48 percent in some of these states that President Obama carried twice with more than 50 percent. So, seeing her -- that deficit for her gave us an opportunity to at least try to get to parity with her. We ended up putting Mr. Trump and Governor Pence and our ad money in those states where -- where we saw that happening.
CAMEROTA: So, Kellyanne, let's talk about Secretary Clinton and let's talk about some of Donald Trump's campaign promises. One of them was to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton. Is that going to happen?
CONWAY: We didn't discuss that last night and he did not discuss that with Hillary Clinton on the phone.
CAMEROTA: But, I mean for voters who want to know whether or not there will still be division or whether there will be unity. That was one that was a real rallying cry for some of his supporters and a battle cry for him, and I think that this morning, you know, Democrats, obviously are waking up somewhat despondent, and they want to know what to expect. Do you expect that those sorts of investigations from Donald Trump will continue?
CONWAY: Well, on your point that we need unity, that was precisely the theme of Trump's victory speech last night, Alisyn.
CUOMO: True.
CONWAY: He went -- he went way out to make sure everybody heard him loudly and clearly that he will be the President for all Americans, and that includes many that did not vote for him and did not expect him to be their President. He also went a little bit farther. He said we need to heal and bind the wounds of a nation. Obviously, he's spoken to President Obama. Obviously, he's spoken to Secretary Clinton. They are two leaders that we would like to lean upon to help us do that, and we certainly hope that we can do that. We certainly hope that a number of Democrats today feel the same way and even the nonvoters, people who don't really bother with the system. This is for all Americans.
CUOMO: What do you do with the disconnect, Kellyanne? What do you do with you know -- of course you want to conciliate, of course you want to bring people together, that is the responsible thing for the President-elect to do, and I agree with you, he did it well. But, there is such a stark contrast between the message he campaigned on, which was certainly one of division to many people's perspective, maybe more than half the country at latest count of the popular vote. How much will we hear from the President-elect clarifying what he will and will not do that matches up with what he promised during the campaign?
CONWAY: Well, respectfully I disagree that he ran on division. He ran on many things, he had a lot of policy proposals that people were hearing and liking. I mean if you look at the last couple of weeks, the divisive negative campaign belonged to Hillary Clinton. I have to tell you as Donald Trump's campaign manager, I was mystified, really excited and heartened but mystified as to why she would go all negative instead of maybe explaining what her answer to Obamacare might be and the Affordable Care Act. So it was a huge risk on their part I thought, and it didn't pay off.
But on Mr. Trump and what he would do, he's going to work with everyone. And you say how can you -- how can you bridge the rift? I think, Chris, that we ought to realize that where we may disagree politically and ideologically, people have far more in common in this country than they may realize when they're in the heat of the political battle. And we need to come together as Americans. We need to recognize that we -- there's an essential goodness in Americans. We have a certain wisdom and discernment. And I saw it all across the country in travelling with Mr. Trump. People just, they love this country and they love each other and they really do want the best. And I think people just looking to askance at each other because they have a different political point of view is very unfortunate.
[08:15:01] And I really hope, because I've heard a lot it on CNN for the last year and a half, I really hope, you know, that some people will tamp it down, you know, lay down the verbal fire arms, tamp it down and give this guy a chance. Give him a chance as your President- elect like we all did with President Obama and we all did with President Bill Clinton et cetera. Give him a chance and be there for him. Come together as a nation.
CAMEROTA: But are you saying that the divisive rhetoric was on cable news and not at some of Mr. Trump's rallies? I mean, let's --
CONWAY: No, I didn't say that.
CAMEROTA: So let's be honest --
CONWAY: I didn't say that.
CAMEROTA: Mr. Trump did have some divisive language. We all have it. We have the tapes that we could rerack.
So, everybody loves the idea of moving forward and coming to the as a country, of course, and what I hear you saying unless you correct me if I'm wrong is that you will not press ahead with any sort of investigation or prosecution of Hillary Clinton because that would not be in keeping with unity.
CONWAY: I have not discussed that with him, Alisyn, especially since he became the next president of the United States. But let me repeat that there's divisiveness all the way around. And I think that throwing constantly isms -- you know, you can just go back and reflect for a moment on the avalanche, I mean unprecedented deluge of negative criticism that we've received here at the Trump campaign has been laid upon his shoulders. It's truly been unprecedented.
You know what? It backfired by and large. Because people ended up saying, stop telling me what's important to me. Stop telling me what to think and whom to vote for and who is disqualified.
Look at what the Clinton campaign did for weeks, for months. They would try to tell people, this is what's important to you, temperament, or this comment that many years ago. Or that comment yesterday. This is the next thing is important to you.
And meanwhile people are saying, you know what's important to me? Whatever is important -- I honestly think to the whole political elite media, class all of us, nearly all of us privileged people who have a platform, Alisyn and Chris, I think the big lesson of yesterday is, stop listening so much to each other and start listening to the people. They have fabulous stories to tell, they're good-hearted.
And I think we've got a lot more in common in this country that we don't. And you see President-elect Trump making that promise.
CUOMO: Well, listen, those are the right words to hear on this day, and I can assure you, that this country, because you got over half the country voted for Hillary Clinton, they're all eager to hear it and to see them put into action moving forward.
Let me ask you a question, you're still in the afterglow, you deserve to enjoy it. This was hard-fought. Transition is going to take time.
Do you see the urgency being domestic or foreign right out of the box? Because you do have these complicated military situations abroad. And you do have complicated political situations at home. But is one of them going to be a more urgent priority early on?
CONWAY: I think it has to be all of the above, Chris.
CUOMO: Hard to do it all. That's why I asked. CONWAY: Well, but look, good leaders surround themselves with people
who can help them to do that. That's just always the case with our presidents, and it's -- you're right, it's difficult to know where to start, because manything seem like a hot mess here and abroad.
But, Mr. Trump has been very clear about what his priorities are and they do include both a domestic and a foreign agenda. But I think I just have to say on his behalf all of the above, because, as president you can't pick and choose and sequence on what you're going to work on, so many urgencies.
But we've got a lot of folks hurting in this country. And a lot of folks who feel like they've been left behind, they don't have a voice, feel like they're struggling to decide whether to meet the new hikes in Obamacare premiums, food or rent.
And then you've got people around the globe, they're very concerned about the advance of terrorism, about the changes in their country, maybe economically. And so, we need a president -- I think he said very clearly last night he said, I'd like to tell the world community, I will always put America first, but I also will deal with you fairly.
And in other words, we'll be a partner around the globe. And he means that. And we need a president who looks upon everything that way.
CAMEROTA: What do you expect from the meeting with President Obama on Thursday? Is there any message that Donald Trump will give to him?
CONWAY: I'll let those two world leaders decide that, Alisyn. I think that they will talk about the things they can maybe work on together in the future. And how to build on what successes President Obama has, and frankly, how to tackle te infinite to-do list that he will leave behind. I mean, that has to be -- that has to be a priority.
And yet I would note that yesterday's election brought together Republicans in the House, the Senate and the presidency, for all the talk about how Donald Trump is going to drag down the House and Senate -- Good God how many people sat on your networks and said with a straight face, he was going to cost the Republicans everything not nailed to the ground and instead they won everything.
That tells you something about where America wants to go, though. He's being given a mandate. And that mandate is going to be somewhat different than what we've had. It's a repudiation of some of the things we've had.
But President Obama, for his successes, there are things I'm sure they can discuss.
[08:20:00] I know President Obama, and President-elect Trump very much --
CAMEROTA: We lost our satellite. Our thanks to Kellyanne Conway for coming on NEW DAY.
CUOMO: Very hard-fought battle. And just hours into it. And it's amazing how much played already.
CAMEROTA: Well, meanwhile, global markets are down on the news of Donald Trump's victory. So, how will U.S. markets open today?
CNN business correspondent Alison Kosik is live at the New York Stock Exchange keeping an eye on it all -- Alison.
ALISON KOSIK, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn.
Less than 90 minutes to go before the opening bell. A 250 point drop on the Dow is an improvement from what we saw happen overnight as we were watching those returns come in. Globally, we're also seeing a recovery in the trading going on there right now. Global markets down less than about 1 percent across the board. As countries try to figure out what a Trump presidency means for them.
The Mexican peso, we're keeping an eye on that because that came a barometer for Donald Trump during his candidacy. That continues to fall sharply against the dollar and that's because of the big concerns about what Trump's trade policies are going to be, and his protectionist sentiment during the campaign.
One thing to leave you with, o keep in mind, what usually happens the day after Election Day, you do usually see stocks fall. Case in point, when President Obama was elected in 2008, we did see the S&P 500 fall 5 percent the day after -- Chris and Alisyn.
CUOMO: All right, Alison. Thank you very much.
The markets go up and down. Volatility was expected. It was sharp but we'll keep an eye on it.
So, in his first speech as president-elect, Donald Trump talked very differently than he has the rest of his campaign. He talked about binding the wounds, and being together.
We're going to speak with a Trump supporter, Wisconsin's re-elected congressman, Sean Duffy. What will that mean, next.
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[08:26:00] ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.
CUOMO: If this election had a theme, it was division. So, the question now for the winner, President-elect Trump is, how do you heal?
Let's bring in Wisconsin Congressman Sean Duffy. He's a Donald Trump supporter. He also won his bid for re-election last night.
Congratulations, my friend. Good luck in your new term.
REP. SEAN DUFFY (R), WISCONSIN: Hey, thank you, Chris. It's great to be on with you this morning.
CUOMO: So, you whooped up on your opponent last night. Donald Trump has a big and maybe even a more big mandate at the end of all the counting. We still don't have Minnesota, Michigan and New Hampshire tallied completely.
The popular vote just about divided. Clinton even a little bit ahead now. So you got a divided situation. You have to figure out how to come together.
A little trickier with Donald Trump because his campaign was so heavy on exacerbating divisions.
How do we move together going forward?
DUFFY: I think more than division, it's about pointing out the stark difference between what's been happening over the last eight years, Chris. He was talking about truly fixing healthcare. How do we secure our border? Issues that I think a lot of Americans tapped into and agreed with.
But moving forward what I saw when I came in in 2010 is if you think you can just have one party rule in Washington, or in state government, it never works. You have to bring the other side in, and you have to work together on common purpose. And if you look at the way this is going to be structured in Congress, yes, Republicans going to keep control of the House and the Senate, but in the Senate, the way the rules work is, you need 60 senators to pass most bills.
And so whether it's going to be, you know, seven or eight senators, nine senators that are Democratic are going to have to buy into what Republicans are trying to move through the House, the Senate, and to Mr. Trump's desk. And that means you have to work together to get common purpose, common buy-in if you're going to move the country forward.
And if you go my way or the highway, you will see Republicans have a historic loss across America in two years from now. We need to fight for the ideas that we ran on. But also bring Democrats along with us, and include some of their ideas in the packages that we put together.
CUOMO: Well, I get you in terms of the how you do business, and the need for progress and constructive work down in D.C. I think that's all good.
What I need your help on is something we talked about a lot during the election. I would often come to you with what Trump was saying. And the anxiety and you would constantly wave me off and say look I don't agree with everything Trump says but this is the campaign and it's an ugly time, let's see what happens when it's over.
So, what is your message? To those who are afraid this morning? Again you got over half the country in the popular vote went against Trump. What do you say to them who feel they're on the outside? They're excluded? They're on the list? They're in the swamp?
What do you say to them?
DUFFY: First of all, it was a tough-fought race. And mean things were said on both sides of the aisle.
CUOMO: True, true.
DUFFY: And had the race gone another way, half of the people would have disagreed with Mrs. Clinton.
And so, as we look forward, we know these races are rough and tumble, and mean and hard things are said. It always happens. But then once you win, you have to get about the business of governing, and governing means bringing other folks in to move the country forward.
And I think Mr. Trump understands that and will do it and hearing Kellyanne on your show just in the last segment, I think one of his top advisers understands that very well.
But that doesn't mean, Chris, that you don't fight for the things that you ran on. I mean I do think as Mr. Trump said, to have a country, you do have to have a border.
CUOMO: Sure.
DUFFY: That doesn't mean you have to check in your compassion and your heart. You still have a heart. But you want to secure it.
We want to crush ISIS. Take the fight to them instead of bringing the fight over here.
All ideas that I think half of America has said we agree with and I think the biggest message here is President Obama tried to sell America on a bigger government, some might argue a more collectivist government, and I think wholeheartedly in this cycle, America said that's not the right path forward for us. We think we can get more opportunity, better wages, more upward mobility if you have a more American-style free enterprise system.
And I think that's the big message coming out of tonight.