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Hala Gorani Tonight
Trump Downplays Lewd Remarks As "Locker Room Talk"; Clinton, Trump Trade Insults In Debate; Republican Rift Widens Over Trump Candidacy; Clinton And Trump Spar On Russia And Syria; German Police: Syrian Suspect May Have ISIS Links. Aired 3:30-4p ET
Aired October 10, 2016 - 15:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(HEADLINES)
[15:30:23] CLARISSA WARD, CNN ANCHOR: Hello. I'm Clarissa Ward sitting in for Hala Gorani. We are live from CNN London, and this is THE WORLD RIGHT
NOW.
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are back on the campaign trail after one of the most bruising presidential debates in U.S. history. Trump will take
the stage at any time now in Pennsylvania, but one Republican who won't be at that event or any future Trump rally is House Speaker Paul Ryan.
The top U.S. Republican official says he will no longer defend Trump and will focus instead of preserving his party's hold on Congress. Ryan
scrapped a joint appearance over the weekend after a 2005 tape emerged of Trump bragging about being famous enough to get away with sexual assault.
Trump apologized for those remarks in last night's debate, but he also called it locker-room talk suggesting essentially that men will be men.
CNN moderator, Anderson Cooper, moderator, pressed Trump repeatedly on the issue.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANDERSON COOPER, MODERATOR: Are you saying what you said on that bus 11 years ago that you did not actually kiss women without consent or grope
women without consent.
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I have great respect for women, nobody has more respect to women than I do.
COOPER: So for the record you're saying you never did that.
TRUMP: I said things that frankly -- you hear these things that were said. I was embarrassed by it, but I have tremendous respect for women.
COOPER: Have you ever done those things?
TRUMP: And I will tell you, no, I have not.
HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: What we all saw and heard on Friday was Donald talking about women. What he thinks about women. What
he does to women and he has said that the video doesn't represent who he is. But I think it is clear to anyone who heard it that it represents
exactly who he is.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WARD: Other debate highlights or low lights depending on your point of view included Trump threatening to jail Clinton if he is elected and
calling her the devil.
Clinton accused Trump of diversion tactics saying he is refusing to acknowledge that his campaign is exploding. So who won? According to a
CNN/ORC poll of debate watchers, Clinton did.
But we have to point out that more Democrats were polled than Republicans and despite giving Clinton the edge. The respondents also said that Trump
exceeded their expectations.
Let's bring in now the senior political analyst, David Gergen. David, you have covered so many administrations, have you ever seen anything like this
in U.S. political history?
DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: No, and I don't think anyone else has either unless you go back to the early days of the republic when
we actually had a sitting vice president and a dual, a former treasury secretary that played pretty rough back in the 1700s.
But nonetheless, what I do want to say that this was a very bruising and mudslinging debate that I think embarrassed a lot of Americans. I can't
remember a time when so many people have come up to me and told me how distressed they are by the quality of the campaign itself.
People just turned it off last night, it was highly anticipated debate, even more highly anticipated than the first debate. We set a record
yesterday in the campaign about the number of tweets that went out about politicians yesterday, some $30 million overtime.
But nonetheless, there was a sense of -- this is just indecent, can we get it over with. Trump did better than he did in the first debate. She was
not as commanding as the first debate, and I think he heartened a lot of his supporters.
But even so it appears that he fell short. He didn't really beat her, which is what he needed to do. Of course, Clarissa, today it has been a
bombshell poll just come out that has really was eye opening.
And that is a poll from NBC/"Wall Street Journal," which shows that she's now opened up a two way race, up 14 point lead. That is huge, and it will
probably shrink, but I think it shows how much damage that tape did after Friday.
WARD: Do you think that Trump can still make a comeback? Is there a way to get back on track somehow?
GERGEN: It's very difficult to see what that track is because additional Republicans are now pulling away. The speaker of the House is one of the
single most important Republicans in the country has said and told his colleagues that he will no longer defend Trump.
That he is going to focus on trying to keep the House of Representative in Republican hands. And I think we will see more tapes with some foul
language that will be damaging to Mr. Trump.
But overall, she has a commanding lead now. You look at in the Electoral College, she has a very, very large lead there. We'll have to wait and
see, but last night was make or break for Donald Trump. I think he fell a little short of where he needed to be.
WARD: OK, David Gergen, thank you so much for your insight. We want to hear from a Trump supporter and opponent now. Both of them Republicans.
CNN political commentator, Tara Setmayer is a former communications director on Capitol Hill. She opposes the Republican nominee and we're
also joined by Kelly Riddell, a reporter and editor at the "Washington Times." She is a Trump supporter.
[15:40:04]Kelly, I want to start with you. I mean, it's definitely been a bruising weekend for Donald Trump. Do you think that he made up for it
during last night's debate?
KELLY RIDDELL, POLITICAL COLUMNIST, "WASHINGTON TIMES": Well, I think he stopped the bleeding and that's what he needed to do. It was a bruising 48
hours going into that debate. Hillary Clinton had all of the momentum.
There was a Media Research Center study done on the coverage of Donald Trump's lewd remarks got on that leaked audio and it was over 100 minutes
covered by the nightly newscasts here in the USA.
Whereas Hillary Clinton's leaked Wikileak e-mails where she gave speeches to Wall Street banks saying basically she had one private persona and then
a public persona that got less than a 5 minutes attention by the broadcast networks.
So I think we are seeing a real imbalance in terms of media coverage on both of these scandals (inaudible) and so I understand that's where the
public remarks went to and the media went to, but there really was off putting to see how much was focused on these tapes and not much on --
WARD: But do you not find these tapes egregiously offensive as a woman?
RIDDELL: Yes, I mean, they were very offensive. But I'll be honest like the people who voted for Donald Trump in the primary, and Paul Ryan, they
know Donald Trump's character. When he said that about Megyn Kelly's comment during the primary, Carly Fiorina's face, this is not actually new
information about his character. So the fact that all of these Republicans are now abandoning him. That is just disingenuous to me.
WARD: OK, Tara, I want to talk to you for a moment. Do you think -- I mean, it appears from the outside that the Republican Party is almost
imploding here. What is your take on that and do you think that it can repair the wounds and the damage here, and move forward stronger?
TARA SETMAYER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think we're witnessing an all- out civil war in the Republican Party, and it breaks my heart to see this. The Republicans are innocent in this, they ignored their base, and the base
felt betrayed because leadership didn't stand up to Barack Obama's agenda more.
And SO the Republican base felt ignored and betrayed. So as a result, they swung completely to the other side and had been taken in by Donald Trump
who actually does not represent Republican principles or values at all.
He has been a life-long Democrat. He's taken positions on things like trade. He has a protectionist position on trade. The Republican Party has
been very pro-free trade. He doesn't have a real position on abortion.
He is all over the place on immigration. His foreign policy is incoherent. And so the Republican Party has really compromised themselves in a lot of
ways to try accept Donald Trump and it's come back to bite them.
You know, you talked about the Wikileaks thing. First of all, I don't think we should be making excuses for how vile and disgusting Donald
Trump's tape was on Friday. I don't care if the network news made a bigger deal out of it, they should have.
Was the Wikileaks information important concerning Hillary Clinton? Yes, but people expect politicians to be one way in public and then other way at
other way. That's kind of baked in.
But they don't expect a major presidential candidate to be advocating sexual assault and bragging about it. That is reprehensible and any woman
who makes excuses for that should be ashamed of themselves.
We are Americans first, and common decency, character, integrity, these are things that used to be mandatory and expected by our presidential
candidates.
And the Republican Party by accepting Donald Trump has thrown that to the waste side and I think anyone that went after Bill Clinton in the late
1990s for his sexual exploits, and they should have, turned around to make excuses for Donald Trump to try to say this is just locker room talk is a
hypocrite.
WARD: OK, I just want to say in accordance with what you're talking about and the reaction to the tape, the latest poll in terms of gender says that
64 percent of women think that Clinton won the debate compared to 30 percent of women who think that Trump won the debate.
And the numbers for me, a little more even 49 percent of men think that Clinton won the debate, and 38 percent think that Trump won the debate.
Kelly, just very quickly, last thought, can Trump come back from this?
RIDDELL: Well, I don't know, I don't think he can in terms of -- he needs the GOP base in order to win this election. He needs 90 percent of it.
And this recent poll, the reason why, there is just another one where he fell down 14 points, it's because he can't consolidate the GOP and that's a
real problem for him.
And I agree with Tara on one point that the party is in shambles. But you can't ignore the people that voted for Trump and they didn't -- they voted
on him for trade and issues like immigration.
They voted for him because there is 18,000 coalminers in Barack Obama's administration. Now there's only 6,000 are left. They've lost their jobs.
They haven't seen their wages improve.
[15:45:09]They're in economic despair and Hillary Clinton they don't believe is the answer. They want to change, they want to shake up the
status quo, and they don't like how the corruption stands in Washington, D.C.
And what political clearly says this is -- our party is in collapse, but if you're going to repair it, you have to pay attention to those Trump voters
and you can't just disregard them --
WARD: All right, thank you so much. Sorry, we have to take a break. Thank you so much, both of you. Kelly, Tara, thank you very much.
Coming up, Hillary Clinton says that Russia is backing one candidate in the presidential election and it's not her. We're live in Moscow, next, to see
how Russia is reacting.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WARD: Russia says it is beefing up its naval base in Syria. The port city of Tartus has hosted a Russian naval facility since the cold war. Russian
media is now quoting a top defense official as saying it is expanding the center there into a permanent base.
Russia's role in Syria generated a heated exchange in the U.S. presidential debate last night. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CLINTON: Russia has decided that it is all in in Syria and they've also decided who they want to see become president of the United State too,
well, it's not me. I've stood up to Russia. I've taken on Putin and others and I would do that as president.
TRUMP: So she wants to fight. She wants to fight the rebels. There's only one problem. You don't even know who the rebels are. I don't like
Assad at all, but Assad is killing ISIS. Russia is killing ISIS, and Iran is killing ISIS. And those three have now lined up because of our weak
foreign policy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WARD: Well, let's discuss how this is playing out in Russia, senior international correspondent, Matthew Chance joins us from Moscow. Matthew,
why has this become -- I mean, we haven't really seen anything like this with Russia becoming such a major talking point in a U.S. election, why do
you think that is?
MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It is fascinating, isn't it? It emerged in all sorts of ways. I mean, particularly, of
course, the conflict in Syria, which is the overarching sort of issue in the international affairs at the moment.
Russia is obviously very much integrated in that conflict. It's got its forces there. It's air forces are backing the Syrian regime. It's
essentially turned the situation around on the battlefield.
And the United States is, I think fair to say, upset about that. Not just because of the humanitarian situation but because it means that Russia is
displacing the United States to some extent in the Middle East, certainly in Syria, and that's galling.
[15:50:00]And the other issue is hacking, of course, the Russians have been implicated in this issue of hacking. Accused now by the Obama
administration of infiltrating the servers of the Democratic National Committee, of then leaking those e-mails that was stolen in a partisan way.
But which potentially could have caused damage to the one of the candidates, Hillary Clinton, because they showed the inner workings of the
Democratic Party and how it was working against the potential candidate of Bernie Sanders, Hillary's Democratic rival.
So wherever we look when it comes to American interests, it seems that the Russians are playing a nefarious role. And that is why, I think it has
become such a big issue and now the emergence of Russia in this presidential debate.
WARD: And we heard, of course, the exchange about Syria, Russia's role there is killing ISIS, what do you think Russia's objective is in Syria?
CHANCE: It is clearly not to destroy ISIS although you have to acknowledge that they have been fighting ISIS. They have been bombing them, destroying
ISIS oil infrastructure, killing ISIS militants, and of course, they help the Syrian armed forces take over a historic city that was under ISIS sway
back in April of this year.
So there have been battles against Syria, but undoubtedly that is not the main thrust of the Russian campaign. They're there first and foremost to
do one thing to bolster the position of Bashar al-Assad, Moscow's longtime ally in Damascus, the Syrian president, of course.
And whoever is his opponent whether it's ISIS or whether it is the plethora of other rebel groups, those are the people, those are the group that
Russians are hitting.
And so I think that's where much of this disagreement comes about. Not that the Russians are not striking ISIS at all or that the Syrians are not
striking ISIS at all, just that they're not doing it enough and their emphasis is elsewhere.
WARD: OK, Matthew Chance in Moscow for us tonight. Thank you so much.
To Germany now and the arrest of a Syrian man police say could have had links to ISIS. The 22-year-old was detained after a nationwide manhunt.
Atika Shubert reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is Jaber Al-Bakr, a Syrian refugee in Germany, the subject of a 48-hour
manhunt by German police after they say they found 1.5 kilos of highly explosive material in his room.
It began on Saturday with an intelligence tip-off. Authorities say that Al-Bark was planning an imminent attack. Police raided the home and found
materials they believed were to be used in a suicide vest.
JOERG MICHAELIS, SAXONY STATE POLICE CHIEF (through translator): In the suspect's flat, aside from metallic elements like nuts and two detonators,
we found several hundred grams of substances thought to be explosives, also some in the form of crystalline.
Specialists at the scene from the criminal investigation officer drew the conclusion that it could be TAP, (inaudible), this would be the same as the
substances used in the Paris and Brussels attacks.
SHUBERT: But Al-Bakr slipped through police hands apparently making his way to nearby (inaudible) and police say convinced two fellow Syrian
refugees to put him up for the night, but they recognized him from the news and called police.
Police say when they arrived, Al-Bakr was tied up. Police have not identified the refugees that turned Al-Bakr in, but neighbors woken by the
sound of helicopters were relieved.
MARTINA KUSCHNIS, NEIGHBORHOOD RESIDENT: Because of what had happened I was afraid, but it is good for the suspect being arrested because of a man
from the same country as he was. That I find very notable. One should have a lot of respect for this guy for what he did.
SHUBERT: In August, the Syrian refugee carried the first bombing attack in Germany believed to be linked to ISIS. Since then, several attacks in
Germany have been thwarted. A number of them involving Syrian refugees that entered the country last year.
(on camera): Germany remains high on the list of ISIS terror targets and police are urging members of the public to stay alert. Atika Shubert, CNN,
Berlin.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WARD: We'll have more coming up, stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[15:56:02]
WARD: Here in London, politely queuing is just a part of living in a big city, but there was one particular line of people that required
participants not just to be patient but brave, too. What was it for? CNN's Max Foster has the story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MAX FOSTER, CNN ROYAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Meet a man who's put all his trust in the artist behind the screen. His arm placed through a hole
in the wall is being tattooed, and he's got no idea what the design will be.
CHRIS SEXTON, PARTICIPANT: Getting a tattoo like this is like getting a Christmas gift, you know, (inaudible) what's inside exactly the same thing.
This one you can't throw away or regift.
FOSTER: Celebrity tattoo artist, Scott Campbell, is known for inking A- listers like Orlando Bloom and Penelope Cruz, but this weekend he offered 18 ordinary Londoners a free tattoo. The only condition, they had no say
in what it would be.
SEXTON: That is exactly what I wanted, so I'm thrilled.
FOSTER: Campbell says the project offers people a chance not to take their physical selves too seriously and being a serious artist, he wasn't giving
interviews. People waited around the block for the chance to be selected and then a nervous wait to see what tattoo Campbell had given them.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I have not even heard his voice today so -- he didn't communicate at all.
FOSTER: All seemed happy, at least publicly.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It is beautiful. I was speechless.
FOSTER: Let's hope the feeling lasts because this art is forever. Max Foster, CNN, London.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WARD: This has been THE WORLD RIGHT NOW. Thank you for watching. "QUEST MEANS BUSINESS" is up next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
END
