On November 8, 2016 citizens of the United States of America voted for the next President … and we had front-row seats. The following is our disordered curation of timely features, tweets and video.
For months Donald Trump has been saying he wants a wall built by Hispanics, and on the last day of early voting in Nevada he certainly got one. Donald Trump may have been here this weekend, believing in the polls that show him ahead or competitive here. But like Bruce Willis in “The Sixth Sense” (spoiler alert), he does not realize he is dead. http://www.rgj.com/story/news/politics/2016/11/05/ralston-how-deep-does-blue-wave-go/93349220/
Who are the people to follow on Twitter? What are the relevant hashtags? How long are other countries’ elections? Australia: mammoth eight-week campaign has left many voters with election fatigue
Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority agreed a year ago to make $4 million available for the event — about half is the host fee and half is for expenses. Host universities, or their home cities, generally have to spend millions for the privilege of holding a debate on their turf. (538)
According to a Gallup poll, 84 percent want to offer undocumented immigrants who are living in the U.S. illegally the chance to become citizens. According to that same poll, 76 percent of Republicans favor a path to citizenship, more than the 62 percent who favor building a wall. (538)
Second Presidential Candidate Debate (October 9) The debate will be conducted in a town hall meeting format, will be hosted by ABC’s Martha Raddatz and CNN’s Anderson Cooper at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
Questions: How often will candidates answer the questions? Interrupt each other?
To what degree are the shows ‘amusing ourselves to death’ without so much the amusement
not as bad as ISIS
Wish there were wide angles wishlist: mikes cut offf after 2
boring but there was policy
regal theaters jerry springer contrite
We need to elevate the level of discussion in politics. We’d love to see substance and facts delivered with pizzazz.
First sniff of the night What’s so hard to believe? We have a strong border and if we invest in the borderlands, our borders can be Latinos/Hispanics To repeat the question Locker Room Talk ISIS Embarrassed Empathy Fitness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embarrassment targeted wrong question message respect we will celebrate our diversity michelle 2024 respect women they were on a previous episode indiana judge affordable health care 20 million people got insurance 170 million with insurance http://www.medievaltimes.com absolutely much less expensive muslims san bernardino i have property there there’s always a reason for everything say the name mohammed ali everyone has a place feelings you haven’t answered the question 10-65,000 Syrian refugees Why take the risk? There are a lot of refugees. The four year old boy … Children suffering Russian aggression We are a country founded on religious freedom and liberty Extremely dangerous drugs coming in at a record clip children have safer medicines Let me repeat the question – what would you do in Syria and Aleppo? Trump effect … Bullying is up If you don’t vote for me, I still want to be your president You said that half of Trump supporters were deplorables … how can you unite a country. Problem with him – the inciting of violence at his rallies
Trump is keeping very close to Clinton during the debateElection 2016 55 minutes agoAs the candidates fielded questions during the second presidential debate, viewers couldn’t help but point out that Donald Trump was… Donald Trump pivots from locker room talk to ISISElection 2016 1 hour agoWhen asked about recently released audio from a 2005 interview, in which he alluded to groping women, the Republican candidate denied…
“What is the tipping point? Are we blind? Can we see? How many more mothers, how many more fathers need to shed tears of grief before we do something?” exclaimedRep. John Lewis, D-Ga., who kicked off the sit-in. “We have been too quiet for too long. There comes a time when you have to say something, when you have to make a little noise, when you have to move your feet. This is the time. Now is the time to get in the way. The time to act is now. We will be silent no more.”
40:15-45:34 Difficult to hear the beginning but a young voter curious about voting for a third party candidate 42:00 They’re both in some sense evil and I don’t want to vote for the lesser of two evils.
Embedded Tweets
ICYMI, you can still grab a free Voter Guide at the RJ, 1111 W. Bonanza Rd., between 8am – 5pm, M-F
Such conflicts of interest at the core of the debates reminds us of what Woody Allen said back in one of his earlier, funnier films — that the whole thing is a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham.
LESTER HOLT: Good evening from Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. I’m Lester Holt, anchor of “NBC Nightly News.” I want to welcome you to the first presidential debate. The participants tonight are Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. This debate is sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization. The commission drafted tonight’s format, and the rules have been agreed to by the campaigns. The 90-minute debate is divided into six segments, each 15 minutes long. We’ll explore three topic areas tonight: Achievingprosperity; America’s direction; and securing America. At the start of each segment, I will ask the same lead-off question to both candidates, and they will each have up to two minutes to respond. From that point until the end of the segment, we’ll have an open discussion. The questions are mine and have not been shared with the commission or the campaigns. The audience here in the room has agreed to remain silent so that we can focus on what the candidates are saying. I will invite you to applaud, however, at this moment, as we welcome the candidates: Democratic nominee for president of the United States, Hillary Clinton, and Republican nominee for president of the United States, Donald J. Trump. (APPLAUSE) CLINTON: How are you, Donald?
(APPLAUSE) HOLT: Good luck to you. (APPLAUSE) Well, I don’t expect us to cover all the issues of this campaign tonight, but I remind everyone, there are two more presidential debates scheduled. We are going to focus on many of the issues that voters tell us are most important, and we’re going to press for specifics. I am honored to have this role, but this evening belongs to the candidates and, just as important, to the American people. Candidates, we look forward to hearing you articulate your policies and your positions, as well as your visions and your values. So, let’s begin. We’re calling this opening segment “Achieving Prosperity.” And central to that is jobs. There are two economic realities in America today. There’s been a record six straight years of job growth, and new census numbers show incomes have increased at a record rate after years of stagnation. However, income inequality remains significant, and nearly half of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. Beginning with you, Secretary Clinton, why are you a better choice than your opponent to create the kinds of jobs that will put more money into the pockets of American works? CLINTON: Well, thank you, Lester, and thanks to Hofstra for hosting us. The central question in this election is really what kind of country we want to be and what kind of future we’ll build together. Today is my granddaughter’s second birthday, so I think about this a lot. First, we have to build an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top. That means we need new jobs, good jobs, with rising incomes. I want us to invest in you. I want us to invest in your future. That means jobs in infrastructure, in advanced manufacturing, innovation and technology, clean, renewable energy, and small business, because most of the new jobs will come from small business. We also have to make the economy fairer. That starts with raising the national minimum wage and also guarantee,finally, equal pay for women’s work. CLINTON: I also want to see more companies do profit-sharing. If you help create the profits, you should be able to share in them, not just the executives at the top.
And I want us to do more to support people who are struggling to balance family and work. I’ve heard from so many of you about the difficult choices you face and the stresses that you’re under. So let’s have paid family leave, earned sick days. Let’s be sure we have affordable child care and debt-free college. How are we going to do it? We’re going to do it by having the wealthy pay their fair share and close the corporate loopholes. Finally, we tonight are on the stage together, Donald Trump and I. Donald, it’s good to be with you. We’re going to have a debate where we are talking about the important issues facing our country. You have to judge us, who can shoulder the immense, awesome responsibilities of the presidency, who can put into action the plans that will make your life better. I hope that I will be able to earn your vote on November 8th. HOLT: Secretary Clinton, thank you. Mr. Trump, the same question to you. It’s about putting money — more money into the pockets of American workers. You have up to two minutes. TRUMP: Thank you, Lester. Our jobs are fleeing the country.They’re going to Mexico. They’re going to many other countries. You look at what China is doing to our country in terms of making our product. They’re devaluing their currency, and there’s nobody in our government to fight them. And we have a very good fight. And we have a winning fight. Because they’reusing our country as a piggy bank to rebuild China, and many other countries are doing the same thing. So we’re losing our good jobs, so many of them. When you look at what’s happening in Mexico, a friend of mine who builds plants said it’s the eighth wonder of the world. They’re building some of the biggest plants anywhere in the world, some of the most sophisticated, some of the best plants. With the United States, as he said, not so much. So Ford is leaving. You see that, their small car division leaving. Thousands of jobs leaving Michigan, leaving Ohio. They’re all leaving. And we can’t allow it to happen anymore. As far as child care is concerned and so many other things, I think Hillary and I agree on that. We probably disagree a little bit as to numbers and amounts and what we’re going to do, but perhaps we’ll be talking about that later.
But we have to stop our jobs from being stolen from us. We have to stop our companies from leaving the United States and, with it, firing all of their people. All you have to do is take a look at Carrier air conditioning in Indianapolis. They left — fired 1,400 people. They’re going to Mexico. So many hundreds and hundreds of companies are doing this. TRUMP: We cannot let it happen. Under my plan, I’ll be reducing taxes tremendously, from 35 percent to 15 percent for companies, small and big businesses. That’s going to be a job creator like we haven’t seen since Ronald Reagan. It’s going to be a beautiful thing to watch. Companies will come. They will build. They will expand. New companies will start. And I look very, very much forward to doing it. We have to renegotiate our trade deals, and we have to stop these countries from stealing our companies and our jobs. HOLT: Secretary Clinton, would you like to respond? CLINTON: Well, I think that trade is an important issue. Of course, we are 5 percent of the world’s population; we have to trade with the other 95 percent. And we need to have smart, fair trade deals. We also, though, need to have a tax system that rewards work and not just financial transactions. And the kind of plan that Donald has put forth would be trickle-down economics all over again. In fact, it would be the most extreme version, the biggest tax cuts for the top percent of the people in this country than we’ve ever had. I call it trumped-up trickle-down, because that’s exactly what it would be. That is not how we grow the economy. We just have a different view about what’s best for growing the economy, how we make investments that will actually produce jobs and rising incomes. I think we come at it from somewhat different perspectives. I understand that. You know, Donald was very fortunate in his life, and that’s all to his benefit. He started his business with $14 million, borrowed from his father, and he really believes that the more you help wealthy people, the better off we’ll be and that everything will work out from there.
I don’t buy that. I have a different experience. My father was a small-businessman. He worked really hard. He printed drapery fabrics on long tables, where he pulled out those fabrics and he went down with a silkscreen and dumped the paint in and took the squeegee and kept going. And so what I believe is the more we can do for the middle class, the more we can invest in you, your education, your skills, your future, the better we will be off and the better we’ll grow. That’s the kind of economy I want us to see again. HOLT: Let me follow up with Mr. Trump, if you can. You’ve talked about creating 25 million jobs, and you’ve promised to bring back millions of jobs for Americans. How are you going to bring back the industries that have left this country for cheaper labor overseas? How, specifically, are you going to tell American manufacturers that you have to come back? TRUMP: Well, for one thing — and before we start on that — my father gave me a very small loan in 1975, and I built it into a company that’s worth many, many billions of dollars, with some of the greatest assets in the world, and I say that only because that’s the kind of thinking that our country needs. Our country’s in deep trouble. We don’t know what we’re doing when it comes to devaluations and all of these countries all over the world, especially China. They’re the best, the best ever at it. What they’re doing to us is a very, very sad thing. So we have to do that. We have to renegotiate our trade deals. And, Lester, they’re taking our jobs, they’re giving incentives, they’re doing things that, frankly, we don’t do. Let me give you the example of Mexico. They have a VAT tax. We’re on a different system. When we sell into Mexico, there’s a tax. When they sell in — automatic, 16 percent, approximately. When they sell into us, there’s no tax. It’s a defective agreement. It’s been defective for a long time, many years, but the politicians haven’t done anything about it. Now, in all fairness to Secretary Clinton — yes, is that OK? Good. I want you to be very happy. It’s very important to me. But in all fairness to Secretary Clinton, when she started talking about this, it was really very recently. She’s been doing this for 30 years. And why hasn’t she made the agreements better? The NAFTA agreement is defective. Just because of the tax and many other reasons, but just because of the fact… HOLT: Let me interrupt just a moment, but… TRUMP: Secretary Clinton and others, politicians, should have been doing this for years, not right now, because of the fact that we’ve created a movement. They should have been doing this for years. What’s happened to our jobs and our country and our economy generally is — look, we owe $20 trillion. We cannot do it any longer, Lester. HOLT: Back to the question, though. How do you bring back — specifically bring back jobs, American manufacturers? How do you make them bring the jobs back? TRUMP: Well, the first thing you do is don’t let the jobs leave. The companies are leaving. I could name, I mean, there are thousands of them. They’re leaving, and they’re leaving in bigger numbers than ever. And what you do is you say, fine, you want to go to Mexico or some other country, good luck. We wish you a lot of luck. But if you think you’re going to make your air conditioners or your cars or your cookies or whatever you make and bring them into our country without a tax, you’re wrong. And once you say you’re going to have to tax them coming in, and our politicians never do this, because they have special interests and the special interests want those companies to leave, because in many cases, they own the companies. So what I’m saying is, we can stop them from leaving. We have to stop them from leaving. And that’s a big, big factor. HOLT: Let me let Secretary Clinton get in here. CLINTON: Well, let’s stop for a second and remember where we were eight years ago. We had the worst financial crisis, the Great Recession, the worst since the 1930s. That was in large part because of tax policies that slashed taxes on the wealthy, failed to invest in the middle class, took their eyes off of Wall Street, and created a perfect storm. In fact, Donald was one of the people who rooted for the housing crisis. He said, back in 2006, “Gee, I hope it does collapse, because then I can go in and buy some and make some money.” Well, it did collapse. TRUMP: That’s called business, by the way. CLINTON: Nine million people — nine million people lost their jobs. Five million people lost their homes. And $13 trillion in family wealth was wiped out. Now, we have come back from that abyss. And it has not been easy. So we’re now on the precipice of having a potentially much better economy, but the last thing we need to do is to go back to the policies that failed us in the first place. Independent experts have looked at what I’ve proposed and looked at what Donald’s proposed, and basically they’ve said this, that if his tax plan, which would blow up the debt by over $5 trillion and would in some instances disadvantage middle-class families compared to the wealthy, were to go into effect, we would lose 3.5 million jobs and maybe have another recession. They’ve looked at my plans and they’ve said, OK, if we can do this, and I intend to get it done, we will have 10 million more new jobs, because we will be making investments where we can grow the economy. Take clean energy. Some country is going to be the clean- energy superpower of the 21st century. Donald thinks that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. I think it’s real. TRUMP: I did not. I did not. I do not say that. CLINTON: I think science is real. TRUMP: I do not say that. CLINTON: And I think it’s important that we grip this and deal with it, both at home and abroad. And here’s what we can do. We can deploy a half a billion more solar panels. We can have enough clean energy to power every home. We can build a new modern electric grid. That’s a lot of jobs; that’s a lot of new economic activity. So I’ve tried to be very specific about what we can and should do, and I am determined that we’re going to get the economy really moving again, building on the progress we’ve made over the last eight years, but never going back to what got us in trouble in the first place. HOLT: Mr. Trump? TRUMP: She talks about solar panels. We invested in a solar company, our country. That was a disaster. They lost plenty of money on that one. Now, look, I’m a great believer in all forms of energy, but we’re putting a lot of people out of work. Our energy policies are a disaster. Our country is losing so much in terms of energy, in terms of paying off our debt. You can’t do what you’re looking to do with $20 trillion in debt. The Obama administration, from the time they’ve come in, is over 230 years’ worth of debt, and he’s topped it. He’s doubled it in a course of almost eight years, seven-and-a-half years, to be semi- exact. So I will tell you this. We have to do a much better job at keeping our jobs. And we have to do a much better job at giving companies incentives to build new companies or to expand, because they’re not doing it. And all you have to do is look at Michigan and look at Ohio and look at all of these places where so many of their jobs and their companies are just leaving, they’re gone. And, Hillary, I’d just ask you this. You’ve been doing this for 30 years. Why are you just thinking about these solutions right now? For 30 years, you’ve been doing it, and now you’re just starting to think of solutions. CLINTON: Well, actually… TRUMP: I will bring — excuse me. I will bring back jobs. You can’t bring back jobs. CLINTON: Well, actually, I have thought about this quite a bit. TRUMP: Yeah, for 30 years. CLINTON: And I have — well, not quite that long. I think my husband did a pretty good job in the 1990s. I think a lot about what worked and how we can make it work again… TRUMP: Well, he approved NAFTA… (CROSSTALK) CLINTON: … million new jobs, a balanced budget… TRUMP: He approved NAFTA, which is the single worst trade deal ever approved in this country. CLINTON: Incomes went up for everybody. Manufacturing jobs went up also in the 1990s, if we’re actually going to look at the facts. When I was in the Senate, I had a number of trade deals that came before me, and I held them all to the same test. Will they create jobs in America? Will they raise incomes in America? And are they good for our national security? Some of them I voted for. The biggest one, a multinational one known as CAFTA, I voted against. And because I hold the same standards as I look at all of these trade deals. But let’s not assume that trade is the only challenge we have in the economy. I think it is a part of it, and I’ve said what I’m going to do. I’m going to have a special prosecutor. We’re going to enforce the trade deals we have, and we’re going to hold people accountable. When I was secretary of state, we actually increased American exports globally 30 percent. We increased them to China 50 percent. So I know how to really work to get new jobs and to get exports that helped to create more new jobs. HOLT: Very quickly… TRUMP: But you haven’t done it in 30 years or 26 years or any number you want to… CLINTON: Well, I’ve been a senator, Donald… TRUMP: You haven’t done it. You haven’t done it. CLINTON: And I have been a secretary of state… TRUMP: Excuse me. CLINTON: And I have done a lot… TRUMP: Your husband signed NAFTA, which was one of the worst things that ever happened to the manufacturing industry. CLINTON: Well, that’s your opinion. That is your opinion. TRUMP: You go to New England, you go to Ohio, Pennsylvania, you go anywhere you want, Secretary Clinton, and you will see devastation where manufacture is down 30, 40, sometimes 50 percent. NAFTA is the worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere, but certainly ever signed in this country. And now you want to approve Trans-Pacific Partnership. You were totally in favor of it. Then you heard what I was saying, how bad it is, and you said, I can’t win that debate. But you know that if you did win, you would approve that, and that will be almost as bad as NAFTA. Nothing will ever top NAFTA. CLINTON: Well, that is just not accurate. I was against it once it was finally negotiated and the terms were laid out. I wrote about that in… TRUMP: You called it the gold standard. (CROSSTALK) TRUMP: You called it the gold standard of trade deals. You said it’s the finest deal you’ve ever seen. CLINTON: No. TRUMP: And then you heard what I said about it, and all of a sudden you were against it. CLINTON: Well, Donald, I know you live in your own reality, but that is not the facts. The facts are — I did say I hoped it would be a good deal, but when it was negotiated… TRUMP: Not. CLINTON: … which I was not responsible for, I concluded it wasn’t. I wrote about that in my book… TRUMP: So is it President Obama’s fault? CLINTON: … before you even announced. TRUMP: Is it President Obama’s fault? CLINTON: Look, there are differences… TRUMP: Secretary, is it President Obama’s fault? CLINTON: There are… TRUMP: Because he’s pushing it. CLINTON: There are different views about what’s good for our country, our economy, and our leadership in the world. And I think it’s important to look at what we need to do to get the economy going again. That’s why I said new jobs with rising incomes, investments, not in more tax cuts that would add $5 trillion to the debt. TRUMP: But you have no plan. CLINTON: But in — oh, but I do. TRUMP: Secretary, you have no plan. CLINTON: In fact, I have written a book about it. It’s called “Stronger Together.” You can pick it up tomorrow at a bookstore… TRUMP: That’s about all you’ve… (CROSSTALK) HOLT: Folks, we’re going to… CLINTON: … or at an airport near you. HOLT: We’re going to move to… CLINTON: But it’s because I see this — we need to have strong growth, fair growth, sustained growth. We also have to look at how we help families balance the responsibilities at home and the responsibilities at business. So we have a very robust set of plans. And people have looked at both of our plans, have concluded that mine would create 10 million jobs and yours would lose us 3.5 million jobs, and explode the debt which would have a recession. TRUMP: You are going to approve one of the biggest tax cuts in history. You are going to approve one of the biggest tax increases in history. You are going to drive business out. Your regulations are a disaster, and you’re going to increase regulations all over the place. And by the way, my tax cut is the biggest since Ronald Reagan. I’m very proud of it. It will create tremendous numbers of new jobs. But regulations, you are going to regulate these businesses out of existence. When I go around — Lester, I tell you this, I’ve been all over. And when I go around, despite the tax cut, the thing — the things that business as in people like the most is the fact that I’m cutting regulation. You have regulations on top of regulations, and new companies cannot form and old companies are going out of business. And you want to increase the regulations and make them even worse. I’m going to cut regulations. I’m going to cut taxes big league, and you’re going to raise taxes big league, end of story. HOLT: Let me get you to pause right there, because we’re going to move into — we’re going to move into the next segment. We’re going to talk taxes… CLINTON: That can’t — that can’t be left to stand. HOLT: Please just take 30 seconds and then we’re going to go on. CLINTON: I kind of assumed that there would be a lot of these charges and claims, and so… TRUMP: Facts. CLINTON: So we have taken the home page of my website, HillaryClinton.com, and we’ve turned it into a fact-checker. So if you want to see in real-time what the facts are, please go and take a look. Because what I have proposed… TRUMP: And take a look at mine, also, and you’ll see. CLINTON: … would not add a penny to the debt, and your plans would add $5 trillion to the debt. What I have proposed would cut regulations and streamline them for small businesses. What I have proposed would be paid for by raising taxes on the wealthy, because they have made all the gains in the economy. And I think it’s time that the wealthy and corporations paid their fair share to support this country. HOLT: Well, you just opened the next segment. TRUMP: Well, could I just finish — I think I… (CROSSTALK) HOLT: I’m going to give you a chance right here… TRUMP: I think I should — you go to her website, and you take a look at her website. HOLT: … with a new 15-minute segment… TRUMP: She’s going to raise taxes $1.3 trillion. HOLT: Mr. Trump, I’m going to… TRUMP: And look at her website. You know what? It’s no difference than this. She’s telling us how to fight ISIS. Just go to her website. She tells you how to fight ISIS on her website. I don’t think General Douglas MacArthur would like that too much. HOLT: The next segment, we’re continuing… CLINTON: Well, at least I have a plan to fight ISIS. HOLT: … achieving prosperity… TRUMP: No, no, you’re telling the enemy everything you want to do. CLINTON: No, we’re not. No, we’re not. TRUMP: See, you’re telling the enemy everything you want to do. No wonder you’ve been fighting — no wonder you’ve been fighting ISIS your entire adult life. CLINTON: That’s a — that’s — go to the — please, fact checkers, get to work. HOLT: OK, you are unpacking a lot here. And we’re still on the issue of achieving prosperity. And I want to talk about taxes. The fundamental difference between the two of you concerns the wealthy. Secretary Clinton, you’re calling for a tax increase on the wealthiest Americans. I’d like you to further defend that. And, Mr. Trump, you’re calling for tax cuts for the wealthy. I’d like you to defend that. And this next two-minute answer goes to you, Mr. Trump. TRUMP: Well, I’m really calling for major jobs, because the wealthy are going create tremendous jobs. They’re going to expand their companies. They’re going to do a tremendous job. I’m getting rid of the carried interest provision. And if you really look, it’s not a tax — it’s really not a great thing for the wealthy. It’s a great thing for the middle class. It’s a great thing for companies to expand. And when these people are going to put billions and billions of dollars into companies, and when they’re going to bring $2.5 trillion back from overseas, where they can’t bring the money back, because politicians like Secretary Clinton won’t allow them to bring the money back, because the taxes are so onerous, and the bureaucratic red tape, so what — is so bad. So what they’re doing is they’re leaving our country, and they’re, believe it or not, leaving because taxes are too high and because some of them have lots of money outside of our country. And instead of bringing it back and putting the money to work, because they can’t work out a deal to — and everybody agrees it should be brought back. Instead of that, they’re leaving our country to get their money, because they can’t bring their money back into our country, because of bureaucratic red tape, because they can’t get together. Because we have — we have a president that can’t sit them around a table and get them to approve something. And here’s the thing. Republicans and Democrats agree that this should be done, $2.5 trillion. I happen to think it’s double that. It’s probably $5 trillion that we can’t bring into our country, Lester. And with a little leadership, you’d get it in here very quickly, and it could be put to use on the inner cities and lots of other things, and it would be beautiful. But we have no leadership. And honestly, that starts with Secretary Clinton. HOLT: All right. You have two minutes of the same question to defend tax increases on the wealthiest Americans, Secretary Clinton. CLINTON: I have a feeling that by, the end of this evening, I’m going to be blamed for everything that’s ever happened. TRUMP: Why not? CLINTON: Why not? Yeah, why not? (LAUGHTER) You know, just join the debate by saying more crazy things. Now, let me say this, it is absolutely the case… TRUMP: There’s nothing crazy about not letting our companies bring their money back into their country. HOLT: This is — this is Secretary Clinton’s two minutes, please. TRUMP: Yes. CLINTON: Yeah, well, let’s start the clock again, Lester. We’ve looked at your tax proposals. I don’t see changes in the corporate tax rates or the kinds of proposals you’re referring to that would cause the repatriation, bringing back of money that’s stranded overseas. I happen to support that. TRUMP: Then you didn’t read it. CLINTON: I happen to — I happen to support that in a way that will actually work to our benefit. But when I look at what you have proposed, you have what is called now the Trump loophole, because it would so advantage you and the business you do. You’ve proposed an approach that has a… TRUMP: Who gave it that name? The first I’ve — who gave it that name? (CROSSTALK) HOLT: Mr. Trump, this is Secretary Clinton’s two minutes. CLINTON: … $4 billion tax benefit for your family. And when you look at what you are proposing… TRUMP: How much? How much for my family? CLINTON: … it is… TRUMP: Lester, how much? CLINTON: … as I said, trumped-up trickle-down. Trickle-down did not work. It got us into the mess we were in, in 2008 and 2009. Slashing taxes on the wealthy hasn’t worked. And a lot of really smart, wealthy people know that. And they are saying, hey, we need to do more to make the contributions we should be making to rebuild the middle class. CLINTON: I don’t think top-down works in America. I think building the middle class, investing in the middle class, making college debt-free so more young people can get their education, helping people refinance their — their debt from college at a lower rate. Those are the kinds of things that will really boost the economy. Broad-based, inclusive growth is what we need in America, not more advantages for people at the very top. HOLT: Mr. Trump, we’re… TRUMP: Typical politician. All talk, no action. Sounds good, doesn’t work. Never going to happen. Our country is suffering because people like Secretary Clinton have made such bad decisions in terms of our jobs and in terms of what’s going on. Now, look, we have the worst revival of an economy since the Great Depression. And believe me: We’re in a bubble right now. And the only thing that looks good is the stock market, but if you raise interest rates even a little bit, that’s going to come crashing down. We are in a big, fat, ugly bubble. And we better be awfully careful. And we have a Fed that’s doing political things. This Janet Yellen of the Fed. The Fed is doing political — by keeping the interest rates at this level. And believe me: The day Obama goes off, and he leaves, and goes out to the golf course for the rest of his life to play golf, when they raise interest rates, you’re going to see some very bad things happen, because the Fed is not doing their job. The Fed is being more political than Secretary Clinton. HOLT: Mr. Trump, we’re talking about the burden that Americans have to pay, yet you have not released your tax returns. And the reason nominees have released their returns for decades is so that voters will know if their potential president owes money to — who he owes it to and any business conflicts. Don’t Americans have a right to know if there are any conflicts of interest? TRUMP: I don’t mind releasing — I’m under a routine audit. And it’ll be released. And — as soon as the audit’s finished, it will be released. But you will learn more about Donald Trump by going down to the federal elections, where I filed a 104-page essentially financial statement of sorts, the forms that they have. It shows income — in fact, the income — I just looked today — the income is filed at $694 million for this past year, $694 million. If you would have told me I was going to make that 15 or 20 years ago, I would have been very surprised. But that’s the kind of thinking that our country needs. When we have a country that’s doing so badly, that’s being ripped off by every single country in the world, it’s the kind of thinking that our country needs, because everybody — Lester, we have a trade deficit with all of the countries that we do business with, of almost $800 billion a year. You know what that is? That means, who’s negotiating these trade deals? We have people that are political hacks negotiating our trade deals. HOLT: The IRS says an audit… TRUMP: Excuse me. HOLT: … of your taxes — you’re perfectly free to release your taxes during an audit. And so the question, does the public’s right to know outweigh your personal… TRUMP: Well, I told you, I will release them as soon as the audit. Look, I’ve been under audit almost for 15 years. I know a lot of wealthy people that have never been audited. I said, do you get audited? I get audited almost every year. And in a way, I should be complaining. I’m not even complaining. I don’t mind it. It’s almost become a way of life. I get audited by the IRS. But other people don’t. I will say this. We have a situation in this country that has to be taken care of. I will release my tax returns — against my lawyer’s wishes — when she releases her 33,000 e-mails that have been deleted. As soon as she releases them, I will release. (APPLAUSE) I will release my tax returns. And that’s against — my lawyers, they say, “Don’t do it.” I will tell you this. No — in fact, watching shows, they’re reading the papers. Almost every lawyer says, you don’t release your returns until the audit’s complete. When the audit’s complete, I’ll do it. But I would go against them if she releases her e-mails. HOLT: So it’s negotiable? TRUMP: It’s not negotiable, no. Let her release the e-mails. Why did she delete 33,000… HOLT: Well, I’ll let her answer that. But let me just admonish the audience one more time. There was an agreement. We did ask you to be silent, so it would be helpful for us. Secretary Clinton? CLINTON: Well, I think you’ve seen another example of bait-and- switch here. For 40 years, everyone running for president has released their tax returns. You can go and see nearly, I think, 39, 40 years of our tax returns, but everyone has done it. We know the IRS has made clear there is no prohibition on releasing it when you’re under audit. So you’ve got to ask yourself, why won’t he release his tax returns? And I think there may be a couple of reasons. First, maybe he’s not as rich as he says he is. Second, maybe he’s not as charitable as he claims to be. CLINTON: Third, we don’t know all of his business dealings, but we have been told through investigative reporting that he owes about $650 million to Wall Street and foreign banks. Or maybe he doesn’t want the American people, all of you watching tonight, to know that he’s paid nothing in federal taxes, because the only years that anybody’s ever seen were a couple of years when he had to turn them over to state authorities when he was trying to get a casino license, and they showed he didn’t pay any federal income tax. TRUMP: That makes me smart. CLINTON: So if he’s paid zero, that means zero for troops, zero for vets, zero for schools or health. And I think probably he’s not all that enthusiastic about having the rest of our country see what the real reasons are, because it must be something really important, even terrible, that he’s trying to hide. And the financial disclosure statements, they don’t give you the tax rate. They don’t give you all the details that tax returns would. And it just seems to me that this is something that the American people deserve to see. And I have no reason to believe that he’s ever going to release his tax returns, because there’s something he’s hiding. And we’ll guess. We’ll keep guessing at what it might be that he’s hiding. But I think the question is, were he ever to get near the White House, what would be those conflicts? Who does he owe money to? Well, he owes you the answers to that, and he should provide them. HOLT: He also — he also raised the issue of your e-mails. Do you want to respond to that? CLINTON: I do. You know, I made a mistake using a private e- mail. TRUMP: That’s for sure. CLINTON: And if I had to do it over again, I would, obviously, do it differently. But I’m not going to make any excuses. It was a mistake, and I take responsibility for that. HOLT: Mr. Trump? TRUMP: That was more than a mistake. That was done purposely. OK? That was not a mistake. That was done purposely. When you have your staff taking the Fifth Amendment, taking the Fifth so they’re not prosecuted, when you have the man that set up the illegal server taking the Fifth, I think it’s disgraceful. And believe me, this country thinks it’s — really thinks it’s disgraceful, also. As far as my tax returns, you don’t learn that much from tax returns. That I can tell you. You learn a lot from financial disclosure. And you should go down and take a look at that. The other thing, I’m extremely underleveraged. The report that said $650 — which, by the way, a lot of friends of mine that know my business say, boy, that’s really not a lot of money. It’s not a lot of money relative to what I had. The buildings that were in question, they said in the same report, which was — actually, it wasn’t even a bad story, to be honest with you, but the buildings are worth $3.9 billion. And the $650 isn’t even on that. But it’s not $650. It’s much less than that. But I could give you a list of banks, I would — if that would help you, I would give you a list of banks. These are very fine institutions, very fine banks. I could do that very quickly. I am very underleveraged. I have a great company. I have a tremendous income. And the reason I say that is not in abraggadocios way. It’s because it’s about time that this country had somebody running it that has an idea about money. When we have $20 trillion in debt, and our country’s a mess, you know, it’s one thing to have $20 trillion in debt and our roads are good and our bridges are good and everything’s in great shape, our airports. Our airports are like from a third world country. You land at LaGuardia, you land at Kennedy, you land at LAX, you land at Newark, and you come in from Dubai and Qatar and you see these incredible — you come in from China, you see these incredible airports, and you land — we’ve become a third world country. So the worst of all things has happened. We owe $20 trillion, and we’re a mess. We haven’t even started. And we’ve spent $6 trillion in the Middle East, according to a report that I just saw.Whether it’s 6 or 5, but it looks like it’s 6, $6 trillion in the Middle East, we could have rebuilt our country twice. And it’s really a shame. And it’s politicians like Secretary Clinton that have caused this problem. Our country has tremendous problems. We’re a debtor nation. We’re a serious debtor nation. And we have a country that needs new roads, new tunnels, new bridges, new airports, new schools, new hospitals. And we don’t have the money, because it’s been squandered on so many of your ideas. HOLT: We’ll let you respond and we’ll move on to the next segment. CLINTON: And maybe because you haven’t paid any federal income tax for a lot of years. (APPLAUSE) And the other thing I think is important… TRUMP: It would be squandered, too, believe me. CLINTON: … is if your — if your main claim to be president of the United States is your business, then I think we should talk about that. You know, your campaign manager said that you built a lot of businesses on the backs of little guys. And, indeed, I have met a lot of the people who were stiffed by you and your businesses, Donald. I’ve met dishwashers, painters, architects, glass installers, marble installers, drapery installers, like my dad was, who you refused to pay when they finished the work that you asked them to do. We have an architect in the audience who designed one of your clubhouses at one of your golf courses. It’s a beautiful facility. It immediately was put to use. And you wouldn’t pay what the man needed to be paid, what he was charging you to do… TRUMP: Maybe he didn’t do a good job and I was unsatisfied with his work… CLINTON: Well, to… TRUMP: Which our country should do, too. CLINTON: Do the thousands of people that you have stiffed over the course of your business not deserve some kind of apology from someone who has taken their labor, taken the goods that they produced, and then refused to pay them? I can only say that I’m certainly relieved that my late father never did business with you. He provided a good middle-class life for us, but the people he worked for, he expected the bargain to be kept on both sides. And when we talk about your business, you’ve taken business bankruptcy six times. There are a lot of great businesspeople that have never taken bankruptcy once. You call yourself the King of Debt. You talk about leverage. You even at one time suggested that you would try to negotiate down the national debt of the United States. TRUMP: Wrong. Wrong. CLINTON: Well, sometimes there’s not a direct transfer of skills from business to government, but sometimes what happened in business would be really bad for government. HOLT: Let’s let Mr. Trump… CLINTON: And we need to be very clear about that. TRUMP: So, yeah, I think — I do think it’s time. Look, it’s all words, it’s all sound bites. I built an unbelievable company. Some of the greatest assets anywhere in the world, real estate assets anywhere in the world, beyond the United States, in Europe, lots of different places. It’s an unbelievable company. But on occasion, four times, we used certain laws that are there. And when Secretary Clinton talks about people that didn’t get paid, first of all, they did get paid a lot, but taken advantage of the laws of the nation. Now, if you want to change the laws, you’ve been there a long time, change the laws. But I take advantage of the laws of the nation because I’m running a company. My obligation right now is to do well for myself, my family, my employees, for my companies. And that’s what I do. But what she doesn’t say is that tens of thousands of people that are unbelievably happy and that love me. I’ll give you an example. We’re just opening up on Pennsylvania Avenue right next to the White House, so if I don’t get there one way, I’m going to get to Pennsylvania Avenue another. But we’re opening the Old Post Office. Under budget, ahead of schedule, saved tremendous money. I’m a year ahead of schedule. And that’s what this country should be doing. We build roads and they cost two and three and four times what they’re supposed to cost. We buy products for our military and they come in at costs that are so far above what they were supposed to be, because we don’t have people that know what they’re doing. When we look at the budget, the budget is bad to a large extent because we have people that have no idea as to what to do and how to buy. The Trump International is way under budget and way ahead of schedule. And we should be able to do that for our country. HOLT: Well, we’re well behind schedule, so I want to move to our next segment. We move into our next segment talking about America’s direction. And let’s start by talking about race. The share of Americans who say race relations are bad in this country is the highest it’s been in decades, much of it amplified by shootings of African-Americans by police, as we’ve seen recently in Charlotte and Tulsa. Race has been a big issue in this campaign, and one of you is going to have to bridge a very wide and bitter gap. So how do you heal the divide? Secretary Clinton, you get two minutes on this. CLINTON: Well, you’re right. Race remains a significant challenge in our country. Unfortunately, race still determines too much, often determines where people live, determines what kind of education in their public schools they can get, and, yes, it determines how they’re treated in the criminal justice system. We’ve just seen those two tragic examples in both Tulsa and Charlotte. And we’ve got to do several things at the same time. We have to restore trust between communities and the police. We have to work to make sure that our police are using the best training, the best techniques, that they’re well prepared to use force only when necessary. Everyone should be respected by the law, and everyone should respect the law. CLINTON: Right now, that’s not the case in a lot of our neighborhoods. So I have, ever since the first day of my campaign, called for criminal justice reform. I’ve laid out a platform that I think would begin to remedy some of the problems we have in the criminal justice system. But we also have to recognize, in addition to the challenges that we face with policing, there are so many good, brave police officers who equally want reform. So we have to bring communities together in order to begin working on that as a mutual goal. And we’ve got to get guns out of the hands of people who should not have them. The gun epidemic is the leading cause of death of young African- American men, more than the next nine causes put together. So we have to do two things, as I said. We have to restore trust. We have to work with the police. We have to make sure they respect the communities and the communities respect them. And we have to tackle the plague of gun violence, which is a big contributor to a lot of the problems that we’re seeing today. HOLT: All right, Mr. Trump, you have two minutes. How do you heal the divide? TRUMP: Well, first of all, Secretary Clinton doesn’t want to use a couple of words, and that’s law and order. And we need law and order. If we don’t have it, we’re not going to have a country. And when I look at what’s going on in Charlotte, a city I love, a city where I have investments, when I look at what’s going on throughout various parts of our country, whether it’s — I mean,I can just keep naming them all day long — we need law and order in our country. I just got today the, as you know, the endorsement of the Fraternal Order of Police, we just — just came in. We have endorsements from, I think, almost every police group, very — I mean, a large percentage of them in the United States. We have a situation where we have our inner cities, African- Americans, Hispanics are living in he’ll because it’s so dangerous. You walk down the street, you get shot. In Chicago, they’ve had thousands of shootings, thousands since January 1st. Thousands of shootings. And I’m saying, where is this? Is this a war-torn country? What are we doing? And we have to stop the violence. We have to bring back law and order. In a place like Chicago, where thousands of people have been killed, thousands over the last number of years, in fact, almost 4,000 have been killed since Barack Obama became president, over — almost 4,000 people in Chicago have been killed. We have to bring back law and order. Now, whether or not in a place like Chicago you do stop and frisk, which worked very well, Mayor Giuliani is here, worked very well in New York. It brought the crime rate way down. But you take the gun away from criminals that shouldn’t be having it. We have gangs roaming the street. And in many cases, they’re illegally here, illegal immigrants. And they have guns. And they shoot people. And we have to be very strong. And we have to be very vigilant. We have to be — we have to know what we’re doing. Right now, our police, in many cases, are afraid to do anything. We have to protect our inner cities, because African-American communities are being decimated by crime, decimated. HOLT: Your two — your two minutes expired, but I do want to follow up. Stop-and-frisk was ruled unconstitutional in New York, because it largely singled out black and Hispanic young men. TRUMP: No, you’re wrong. It went before a judge, who was a very against-police judge. It was taken away from her. And our mayor, our new mayor, refused to go forward with the case. They would have won an appeal. If you look at it, throughout the country, there are many places where it’s allowed. HOLT: The argument is that it’s a form of racial profiling. TRUMP: No, the argument is that we have to take the guns away from these people that have them and they are bad people that shouldn’t have them. These are felons. These are people that are bad people that shouldn’t be — when you have 3,000 shootings in Chicago from January 1st, when you have 4,000 people killed in Chicago by guns, from the beginning of the presidency of Barack Obama, his hometown, you have to have stop-and-frisk. You need more police. You need a better community, you know, relation. You don’t have good community relations in Chicago. It’s terrible. I have property there. It’s terrible what’s going on in Chicago. But when you look — and Chicago’s not the only — you go to Ferguson, you go to so many different places. You need better relationships. I agree with Secretary Clinton on this. TRUMP: You need better relationships between the communities and the police, because in some cases, it’s not good. But you look at Dallas, where the relationships were really studied, the relationships were really a beautiful thing, and then five police officers were killed one night very violently. So there’s some bad things going on. Some really bad things. HOLT: Secretary Clinton… TRUMP: But we need — Lester, we need law and order. And we need law and order in the inner cities, because the people that are most affected by what’s happening are African-American and Hispanic people. And it’s very unfair to them what our politicians are allowing to happen. HOLT: Secretary Clinton? CLINTON: Well, I’ve heard — I’ve heard Donald say this at his rallies, and it’s really unfortunate that he paints such a dire negative picture of black communities in our country. TRUMP: Ugh. CLINTON: You know, the vibrancy of the black church, the black businesses that employ so many people, the opportunities that so many families are working to provide for their kids.There’s a lot that we should be proud of and we should be supporting and lifting up. But we do always have to make sure we keep people safe. There are the right ways of doing it, and then there are ways that are ineffective. Stop-and-frisk was found to be unconstitutional and, in part, because it was ineffective. It did not do what it needed to do. Now, I believe in community policing. And, in fact, violent crime is one-half of what it was in 1991. Property crime is down 40 percent. We just don’t want to see it creep back up. We’ve had 25 years of very good cooperation. But there were some problems, some unintended consequences. Too many young African-American and Latino men ended up in jail for nonviolent offenses. And it’s just a fact that if you’re a young African-American man and you do the same thing as a young white man, you are more likely to be arrested, charged, convicted, and incarcerated. So we’ve got to address the systemic racism in our criminal justice system. We cannot just say law and order. We have to say — we have to come forward with a plan that is going to divert people from the criminal justice system, deal with mandatory minimum sentences, which have put too many people away for too long for doing too little. We need to have more second chance programs. I’m glad that we’re ending private prisons in the federal system; I want to see them ended in the state system. You shouldn’t have a profit motivation to fill prison cells with young Americans. So there are some positive ways we can work on this. And I believe strongly that commonsense gun safety measures would assist us. Right now — and this is something Donald has supported, along with the gun lobby — right now, we’ve got too many military- style weapons on the streets. In a lot of places, our police are outgunned. We need comprehensive background checks, and we need to keep guns out of the hands of those who will do harm. And we finally need to pass a prohibition on anyone who’s on the terrorist watch list from being able to buy a gun in our country. If you’re too dangerous to fly, you are too dangerous to buy a gun. So there are things we can do, and we ought to do it in a bipartisan way. HOLT: Secretary Clinton, last week, you said we’ve got to do everything possible to improve policing, to go right at implicit bias. Do you believe that police are implicitly biased against black people? CLINTON: Lester, I think implicit bias is a problem for everyone, not just police. I think, unfortunately, too many of us in our great country jump to conclusions about each other. And therefore, I think we need all of us to be asking hard questions about, you know, why am I feeling this way? But when it comes to policing, since it can have literally fatal consequences, I have said, in my first budget, we would put money into that budget to help us deal with implicit bias by retraining a lot of our police officers. I’ve met with a group of very distinguished, experienced police chiefs a few weeks ago. They admit it’s an issue. They’ve got a lot of concerns. Mental health is one of the biggest concerns, because now police are having to handle a lot of really difficult mental health problems on the street. CLINTON: They want support, they want more training, they want more assistance. And I think the federal government could be in a position where we would offer and provide that. HOLT: Mr. Trump… TRUMP: I’d like to respond to that. HOLT: Please. TRUMP: First of all, I agree, and a lot of people even within my own party want to give certain rights to people on watch lists and no- fly lists. I agree with you. When a person is on a watch list or a no-fly list, and I have the endorsement of the NRA, which I’m very proud of. These are very, very good people, and they’re protecting the Second Amendment. But I think we have to look very strongly at no-fly lists and watch lists. And when people are on there, even if they shouldn’t be on there, we’ll help them, we’ll help them legally, we’ll help them get off. But I tend to agree with that quite strongly. I do want to bring up the fact that you were the one that brought up the words super-predator about young black youth. And that’s a term that I think was a — it’s — it’s been horribly met, as you know. I think you’ve apologized for it. But I think it was a terrible thing to say. And when it comes to stop-and-frisk, you know, you’re talking about takes guns away. Well, I’m talking about taking guns away from gangs and people that use them. And I don’t think — I really don’t think you disagree with me on this, if you want to know the truth. I think maybe there’s a political reason why you can’t say it, but I really don’t believe — in New York City, stop-and-frisk, we had 2,200 murders, and stop-and-frisk brought it down to 500 murders. Five hundred murders is a lot of murders. It’s hard to believe, 500 is like supposed to be good? But we went from 2,200 to 500. And it was continued on by Mayor Bloomberg. And it was terminated by current mayor.But stop-and- frisk had a tremendous impact on the safety of New York City. Tremendous beyond belief. So when you say it has no impact, it really did. It had a very, very big impact. CLINTON: Well, it’s also fair to say, if we’re going to talk about mayors, that under the current mayor, crime has continued to drop, including murders. So there is… TRUMP: No, you’re wrong. You’re wrong. CLINTON: No, I’m not. TRUMP: Murders are up. All right. You check it. CLINTON: New York — New York has done an excellent job. And I give credit — I give credit across the board going back two mayors, two police chiefs, because it has worked. And other communities need to come together to do what will work, as well. Look, one murder is too many. But it is important that we learn about what has been effective. And not go to things that sound good that really did not have the kind of impact that we would want. Who disagrees with keeping neighborhoods safe? But let’s also add, no one should disagree about respecting the rights of young men who live in those neighborhoods. And so we need to do a better job of working, again, with the communities, faith communities, business communities, as well as the police to try to deal with this problem. HOLT: This conversation is about race. And so, Mr. Trump, I have to ask you for five… TRUMP: I’d like to just respond, if I might. HOLT: Please — 20 seconds. TRUMP: I’d just like to respond. HOLT: Please respond, then I’ve got a quick follow-up for you. TRUMP: I will. Look, the African-American community has been let down by our politicians. They talk good around election time, like right now, and after the election, they said, see ya later, I’ll see you in four years. The African-American community — because — look, the community within the inner cities has been so badly treated. They’ve been abused and used in order to get votes by Democrat politicians, because that’s what it is. They’ve controlled these communities for up to 100 years. HOLT: Mr. Trump, let me… (CROSSTALK) CLINTON: Well, I — I do think… TRUMP: And I will tell you, you look at the inner cities — and I just left Detroit, and I just left Philadelphia, and I just — you know, you’ve seen me, I’ve been all over the place. You decided to stay home, and that’s OK. But I will tell you, I’ve been all over. And I’ve met some of the greatest people I’ll ever meet within these communities. And they are very, very upset with what their politicians have told them and what their politicians have done. HOLT: Mr. Trump, I… CLINTON: I think — I think — I think Donald just criticized me for preparing for this debate. And, yes, I did. And you know what else I prepared for? I prepared to be president. And I think that’s a good thing. (APPLAUSE) HOLT: Mr. Trump, for five years, you perpetuated a false claim that the nation’s first black president was not a natural-born citizen. You questioned his legitimacy. In the last couple of weeks, you acknowledged what most Americans have accepted for years: The president was born in the United States. Can you tell us what took you so long? TRUMP: I’ll tell you very — well, just very simple to say. Sidney Blumenthal works for the campaign and close — very close friend of Secretary Clinton. And her campaign manager, Patti Doyle, went to — during the campaign, her campaign against President Obama, fought very hard. And you can go look it up, and you can check it out. TRUMP: And if you look at CNN this past week, Patti Solis Doyle was on Wolf Blitzer saying that this happened.Blumenthal sent McClatchy, highly respected reporter at McClatchy, to Kenya to find out about it. They were pressing it very hard. She failed to get the birth certificate. When I got involved, I didn’t fail. I got him to give the birth certificate. So I’m satisfied with it. And I’ll tell you why I’m satisfied with it. HOLT: That was… (CROSSTALK) TRUMP: Because I want to get on to defeating ISIS, because I want to get on to creating jobs, because I want to get on to having a strong border, because I want to get on to things that are very important to me and that are very important to the country. HOLT: I will let you respond. It’s important. But I just want to get the answer here. The birth certificate was produced in 2011. You’ve continued to tell the story and question the president’s legitimacy in 2012, ’13, ’14, ’15… TRUMP: Yeah. HOLT: …. as recently as January. So the question is, what changed your mind? TRUMP: Well, nobody was pressing it, nobody was caring much about it. I figured you’d ask the question tonight, of course. But nobody was caring much about it. But I was the one that got him to produce the birth certificate. And I think I did a good job. Secretary Clinton also fought it. I mean, you know — now, everybody in mainstream is going to say, oh, that’s not true. Look, it’s true. Sidney Blumenthal sent a reporter — you just have to take a look at CNN, the last week, the interview with your former campaign manager. And she was involved. But just like she can’t bring back jobs, she can’t produce. HOLT: I’m sorry. I’m just going to follow up — and I will let you respond to that, because there’s a lot there. But we’re talking about racial healing in this segment. What do you say to Americans, people of color who… (CROSSTALK) TRUMP: Well, it was very — I say nothing. I say nothing, because I was able to get him to produce it. He should have produced it a long time before. I say nothing. But let me just tell you. When you talk about healing, I think that I’ve developed very, very good relationships over the last little while with the African-American community. I think you can see that. And I feel that they really wanted me to come to that conclusion. And I think I did a great job and a great service not only for the country, but even for the president, in getting him to produce his birth certificate. HOLT: Secretary Clinton? CLINTON: Well, just listen to what you heard. (LAUGHTER) And clearly, as Donald just admitted, he knew he was going to stand on this debate stage, and Lester Holt was going to be asking us questions, so he tried to put the whole racist birther lie to bed. But it can’t be dismissed that easily. He has really started his political activity based on this racist lie that our first black president was not an American citizen. There was absolutely no evidence for it, but he persisted, he persisted year after year, because some of his supporters, people that he was trying to bring into his fold, apparently believed it or wanted to believe it. But, remember, Donald started his career back in 1973 being sued by the Justice Department for racial discrimination because he would not rent apartments in one of his developments to African-Americans, and he made sure that the people who worked for him understood that was the policy. He actually was sued twice by the Justice Department. So he has a long record of engaging in racist behavior. And the birther lie was a very hurtful one. You know, Barack Obama is a man of great dignity. And I could tell how much it bothered him and annoyed him that this was being touted and used against him. But I like to remember what Michelle Obama said in her amazing speech at our Democratic National Convention: When they go low, we go high. And Barack Obama went high, despite Donald Trump’s best efforts to bring him down. HOLT: Mr. Trump, you can respond and we’re going to move on to the next segment. TRUMP: I would love to respond. First of all, I got to watch in preparing for this some of your debates against Barack Obama. You treated him with terrible disrespect. And I watched the way you talk now about how lovely everything is and how wonderful you are. It doesn’t work that way. You were after him, you were trying to — you even sent out or your campaign sent out pictures of him in a certain garb, very famous pictures. I don’t think you can deny that. But just last week, your campaign manager said it was true. So when you tried to act holier than thou, it really doesn’t work. It really doesn’t. Now, as far as the lawsuit, yes, when I was very young, I went into my father’s company, had a real estate company in Brooklyn and Queens, and we, along with many, many other companies throughout the country — it was a federal lawsuit — were sued. We settled the suit with zero — with no admission of guilt. It was very easy to do. TRUMP: I notice you bring that up a lot. And, you know, I also notice the very nasty commercials that you do on me in so many different ways, which I don’t do on you. Maybe I’m trying to save the money. But, frankly, I look — I look at that, and I say, isn’t that amazing? Because I settled that lawsuit with no admission of guilt, but that was a lawsuit brought against many real estate firms, and it’s just one of those things. I’ll go one step further. In Palm Beach, Florida, tough community, a brilliant community, a wealthy community, probably the wealthiest community there is in the world, I opened a club, and really got great credit for it. No discrimination against African- Americans, against Muslims, against anybody. And it’s a tremendously successful club. And I’m so glad I did it. And I have been given great credit for what I did. And I’m very, very proud of it. And that’s the way I feel. That is the true way I feel. HOLT: Our next segment is called “Securing America.” We want to start with a 21st century war happening every day in this country. Our institutions are under cyber attack, and our secrets are being stolen. So my question is, who’s behind it? And how do we fight it? Secretary Clinton, this answer goes to you. CLINTON: Well, I think cyber security, cyber warfare will be one of the biggest challenges facing the next president, because clearly we’re facing at this point two different kinds of adversaries. There are the independent hacking groups that do it mostly for commercial reasons to try to steal information that they can use to make money. But increasingly, we are seeing cyber attacks coming from states, organs of states. The most recent and troubling of these has been Russia. There’s no doubt now that Russia has used cyber attacks against all kinds of organizations in our country, and I am deeply concerned about this. I know Donald’s very praiseworthy of Vladimir Putin, but Putin is playing a really… (CROSSTALK) CLINTON: … tough, long game here. And one of the things he’s done is to let loose cyber attackers to hack into government files, to hack into personal files, hack into the Democratic National Committee. And we recently have learned that, you know, that this is one of their preferred methods of trying to wreak havoc and collect information. We need to make it very clear — whether it’s Russia, China, Iran or anybody else — the United States has much greater capacity. And we are not going to sit idly by and permit state actors to go after our information, our private-sector information or our public-sector information. And we’re going to have to make it clear that we don’t want to use the kinds of tools that we have. We don’t want to engage in a different kind of warfare. But we will defend the citizens of this country. And the Russians need to understand that. I think they’ve been treating it as almost a probing, how far would we go, how much would we do. And that’s why I was so — I was so shocked when Donald publicly invited Putin to hack into Americans. That is just unacceptable. It’s one of the reasons why 50 national security officials who served in Republican information — in administrations… HOLT: Your two minutes have expired. CLINTON: … have said that Donald is unfit to be the commander- in-chief. It’s comments like that that really worry people who understand the threats that we face. HOLT: Mr. Trump, you have two minutes and the same question. Who’s behind it? And how do we fight it? TRUMP: I do want to say that I was just endorsed — and more are coming next week — it will be over 200 admirals, many of them here — admirals and generals endorsed me to lead this country. That just happened, and many more are coming. And I’m very proud of it. In addition, I was just endorsed by ICE. They’ve never endorsed anybody before on immigration. I was just endorsed by ICE. I was just recently endorsed — 16,500 Border Patrol agents. So when Secretary Clinton talks about this, I mean, I’ll take the admirals and I’ll take the generals any day over the political hacks that I see that have led our country so brilliantly over the last 10 years with their knowledge. OK? Because look at the mess that we’re in. Look at the mess that we’re in. As far as the cyber, I agree to parts of what Secretary Clinton said. We should be better than anybody else, and perhaps we’re not. I don’t think anybody knows it was Russia that broke into the DNC. She’s saying Russia, Russia, Russia, but I don’t — maybe it was. I mean, it could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, OK? TRUMP: You don’t know who broke in to DNC. But what did we learn with DNC? We learned that Bernie Sanders was taken advantage of by your people, by Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Look what happened to her. But Bernie Sanders was taken advantage of. That’s what we learned. Now, whether that was Russia, whether that was China, whether it was another country, we don’t know, because the truth is, under President Obama we’ve lost control of things that we used to have control over. We came in with the Internet, we came up with the Internet, and I think Secretary Clinton and myself would agree very much, when you look at what ISIS is doing with the Internet, they’re beating us at our own game. ISIS. So we have to get very, very tough on cyber and cyber warfare. It is — it is a huge problem. I have a son. He’s 10 years old. He has computers. He is so good with these computers, it’s unbelievable. The security aspect of cyber is very, very tough. And maybe it’s hardly doable. But I will say, we are not doing the job we should be doing. But that’s true throughout our whole governmental society. We have so many things that we have to do better, Lester, and certainly cyber is one of them. HOLT: Secretary Clinton? CLINTON: Well, I think there are a number of issues that we should be addressing. I have put forth a plan to defeat ISIS. It does involve going after them online. I think we need to do much more with our tech companies to prevent ISIS and their operatives from being able to use the Internet to radicalize, even direct people in our country and Europe and elsewhere. But we also have to intensify our air strikes against ISIS and eventually support our Arab and Kurdish partners to be able to actually take out ISIS in Raqqa, end their claim of being a Caliphate. We’re making progress. Our military is assisting in Iraq. And we’re hoping that within the year we’ll be able to push ISIS out of Iraq and then, you know, really squeeze them in Syria. But we have to be cognizant of the fact that they’ve had foreign fighters coming to volunteer for them, foreign money, foreign weapons, so we have to make this the top priority. And I would also do everything possible to take out their leadership. I was involved in a number of efforts to take out Al Qaida leadership when I was secretary of state, including, of course, taking out bin Laden. And I think we need to go after Baghdadi, as well, make that one of our organizing principles. Because we’ve got to defeat ISIS, and we’ve got to do everything we can to disrupt their propaganda efforts online. HOLT: You mention ISIS, and we think of ISIS certainly as over there, but there are American citizens who have been inspired to commit acts of terror on American soil, the latest incident, of course, the bombings we just saw in New York and New Jersey, the knife attack at a mall in Minnesota, in the last year, deadly attacks in San Bernardino and Orlando. I’ll ask this to both of you. Tell us specifically how you would prevent homegrown attacks by American citizens, Mr. Trump? TRUMP: Well, first I have to say one thing, very important. Secretary Clinton is talking about taking out ISIS. “We will take out ISIS.” Well, President Obama and Secretary Clinton created a vacuum the way they got out of Iraq, because they got out — what, they shouldn’t have been in, but once they got in, the way they got out was a disaster. And ISIS was formed. So she talks about taking them out. She’s been doing it a long time. She’s been trying to take them out for a long time. But they wouldn’t have even been formed if they left some troops behind, like 10,000 or maybe something more than that. And then you wouldn’t have had them. Or, as I’ve been saying for a long time, and I think you’ll agree, because I said it to you once, had we taken the oil — and we should have taken the oil — ISIS would not have been able to form either, because the oil was their primary source of income. And now they have the oil all over the place, including the oil — a lot of the oil in Libya, which was another one of her disasters. HOLT: Secretary Clinton? CLINTON: Well, I hope the fact-checkers are turning up the volume and really working hard. Donald supported the invasion of Iraq. TRUMP: Wrong. CLINTON: That is absolutely proved over and over again. TRUMP: Wrong. Wrong. CLINTON: He actually advocated for the actions we took in Libya and urged that Gadhafi be taken out, after actually doing some business with him one time. CLINTON: But the larger point — and he says this constantly — is George W. Bush made the agreement about when American troops would leave Iraq, not Barack Obama. And the only way that American troops could have stayed in Iraq is to get an agreement from the then-Iraqi government that would have protected our troops, and the Iraqi government would not give that. But let’s talk about the question you asked, Lester. The question you asked is, what do we do here in the United States? That’s the most important part of this. How do we prevent attacks? How do we protect our people? And I think we’ve got to have an intelligence surge, where we are looking for every scrap of information. I was so proud of law enforcement in New York, in Minnesota, in New Jersey. You know, they responded so quickly, so professionally to the attacks that occurred by Rahami. And they brought him down. And we may find out more information because he is still alive, which may prove to be an intelligence benefit. So we’ve got to do everything we can to vacuum up intelligence from Europe, from the Middle East. That means we’ve got to work more closely with our allies, and that’s something that Donald has been very dismissive of. We’re working with NATO, the longest military alliance in the history of the world, to really turn our attention to terrorism. We’re working with our friends in the Middle East, many of which, as you know, are Muslim majority nations. Donald has consistently insulted Muslims abroad, Muslims at home, when we need to be cooperating with Muslim nations and with the American Muslim community. They’re on the front lines. They can provide information to us that we might not get anywhere else. They need to have close working cooperation with law enforcement in these communities, not be alienated and pushed away as some of Donald’s rhetoric, unfortunately, has led to. HOLT: Mr. Trump… TRUMP: Well, I have to respond. HOLT: Please respond. TRUMP: The secretary said very strongly about working with — we’ve been working with them for many years, and we have the greatest mess anyone’s ever seen. You look at the Middle East, it’s a total mess. Under your direction, to a large extent. But you look at the Middle East, you started the Iran deal, that’s another beauty where you have a country that was ready to fall, I mean, they were doing so badly. They were choking on the sanctions. And now they’re going to be actually probably a major power at some point pretty soon, the way they’re going. But when you look at NATO, I was asked on a major show, what do you think of NATO? And you have to understand, I’m a businessperson. I did really well. But I have common sense. And I said, well, I’ll tell you. I haven’t given lots of thought to NATO. But two things. Number one, the 28 countries of NATO, many of them aren’t paying their fair share. Number two — and that bothers me, because we should be asking — we’re defending them, and they should at least be paying us what they’re supposed to be paying by treaty and contract. And, number two, I said, and very strongly, NATO could be obsolete, because — and I was very strong on this, and it was actually covered very accurately in the New York Times, which is unusual for the New York Times, to be honest — but I said, they do not focus on terror. And I was very strong. And I said it numerous times. And about four months ago, I read on the front page of the Wall Street Journal that NATO is opening up a major terror division. And I think that’s great. And I think we should get — because we pay approximately 73 percent of the cost of NATO. It’s a lot of money to protect other people. But I’m all for NATO. But I said they have to focus on terror, also. And they’re going to do that. And that was — believe me — I’m sure I’m not going to get credit for it — but that was largely because of what I was saying and my criticism of NATO. I think we have to get NATO to go into the Middle East with us, in addition to surrounding nations, and we have to knock the hell out of ISIS, and we have to do it fast, when ISIS formed in this vacuum created by Barack Obama and Secretary Clinton. And believe me, you were the ones that took out the troops. Not only that, you named the day. They couldn’t believe it. They sat back probably and said, I can’t believe it. They said… CLINTON: Lester, we’ve covered… TRUMP: No, wait a minute. CLINTON: We’ve covered this ground. TRUMP: When they formed, when they formed, this is something that never should have happened. It should have never happened. Now, you’re talking about taking out ISIS. But you were there, and you were secretary of state when it was a little infant. Now it’s in over 30 countries. And you’re going to stop them? I don’t think so. HOLT: Mr. Trump, a lot of these are judgment questions. You had supported the war in Iraq before the invasion. What makes your… TRUMP: I did not support the war in Iraq. HOLT: In 2002… TRUMP: That is a mainstream media nonsense put out by her, because she — frankly, I think the best person in her campaign is mainstream media. HOLT: My question is, since you supported it… TRUMP: Just — would you like to hear… HOLT: … why is your — why is your judgment… TRUMP: Wait a minute. I was against the war in Iraq. Just so you put it out. HOLT: The record shows otherwise, but why — why was… TRUMP: The record does not show that. HOLT: Why was — is your judgment any… TRUMP: The record shows that I’m right. When I did an interview with Howard Stern, very lightly, first time anyone’s asked me that, I said, very lightly, I don’t know, maybe, who knows? Essentially. I then did an interview with Neil Cavuto. We talked about the economy is more important. I then spoke to Sean Hannity, which everybody refuses to call Sean Hannity. I had numerous conversations with Sean Hannity at Fox. And Sean Hannity said — and he called me the other day — and I spoke to him about it — he said you were totally against the war, because he was for the war. HOLT: Why is your judgment better than… TRUMP: And when he — excuse me. And that was before the war started. Sean Hannity said very strongly to me and other people — he’s willing to say it, but nobody wants to call him. I was against the war. He said, you used to have fights with me, because Sean was in favor of the war. And I understand that side, also, not very much, because we should have never been there. But nobody called Sean Hannity. And then they did an article in a major magazine, shortly after the war started. I think in ’04. But they did an article which had me totally against the war in Iraq. And one of your compatriots said, you know, whether it was before or right after, Trump was definitely — because if you read this article, there’s no doubt. But if somebody — and I’ll ask the press — if somebody would call up Sean Hannity, this was before the war started. He and I used to have arguments about the war. I said, it’s a terrible and a stupid thing. It’s going to destabilize the Middle East. And that’s exactly what it’s done. It’s been a disaster. HOLT: My reference was to what you had said in 2002, and my question was… TRUMP: No, no. You didn’t hear what I said. HOLT: Why is your judgment — why is your judgment any different than Mrs. Clinton’s judgment? TRUMP: Well, I have much better judgment than she does. There’s no question about that. I also have a much better temperament than she has, you know? (LAUGHTER) I have a much better — she spent — let me tell you — she spent hundreds of millions of dollars on an advertising — you know, they get Madison Avenue into a room, they put names — oh, temperament, let’s go after — I think my strongest asset, maybe by far, is my temperament. I have a winning temperament. I know how to win. She does not have a… HOLT: Secretary Clinton? TRUMP: Wait. The AFL-CIO the other day, behind the blue screen, I don’t know who you were talking to, Secretary Clinton, but you were totally out of control. I said, there’s a person with a temperament that’s got a problem. HOLT: Secretary Clinton? CLINTON: Whew, OK. (LAUGHTER) Let’s talk about two important issues that were briefly mentioned by Donald, first, NATO. You know, NATO as a military alliance has something called Article 5, and basically it says this: An attack on one is an attack on all. And you know the only time it’s ever been invoked? After 9/11, when the 28 nations of NATO said that they would go to Afghanistan with us to fight terrorism, something that they still are doing by our side. With respect to Iran, when I became secretary of state, Iran was weeks away from having enough nuclear material to form a bomb. They had mastered the nuclear fuel cycle under the Bush administration. They had built covert facilities. They had stocked them with centrifuges that were whirling away. And we had sanctioned them. I voted for every sanction against Iran when I was in the Senate, but it wasn’t enough. So I spent a year-and-a-half putting together a coalition that included Russia and China to impose the toughest sanctions on Iran. And we did drive them to the negotiating table. And my successor, John Kerry, and President Obama got a deal that put a lid on Iran’s nuclear program without firing a single shot. That’s diplomacy. That’s coalition-building. That’s working with other nations. The other day, I saw Donald saying that there were some Iranian sailors on a ship in the waters off of Iran, and they were taunting American sailors who were on a nearby ship. He said, you know, if they taunted our sailors, I’d blow them out of the water and start another war. That’s not good judgment. TRUMP: That would not start a war. CLINTON: That is not the right temperament to be commander-in- chief, to be taunted. And the worst part… TRUMP: No, they were taunting us. CLINTON: … of what we heard Donald say has been about nuclear weapons. He has said repeatedly that he didn’t care if other nations got nuclear weapons, Japan, South Korea, even Saudi Arabia. It has been the policy of the United States, Democrats and Republicans, to do everything we could to reduce the proliferation of nuclear weapons. He even said, well, you know, if there were nuclear war in East Asia, well, you know, that’s fine… TRUMP: Wrong. CLINTON: … have a good time, folks. TRUMP: It’s lies. CLINTON: And, in fact, his cavalier attitude about nuclear weapons is so deeply troubling. That is the number-one threat we face in the world. And it becomes particularly threatening if terrorists ever get their hands on any nuclear material. So a man who can be provoked by a tweet should not have his fingers anywhere near the nuclear codes, as far as I think anyone with any sense about this should be concerned. TRUMP: That line’s getting a little bit old, I must say. I would like to… CLINTON: It’s a good one, though. It well describes the problem. (LAUGHTER) TRUMP: It’s not an accurate one at all. It’s not an accurate one. So I just want to give a lot of things — and just to respond. I agree with her on one thing. The single greatest problem the world has is nuclear armament, nuclear weapons, not global warming, like you think and your — your president thinks. Nuclear is the single greatest threat. Just to go down the list, we defend Japan, we defend Germany, we defend South Korea, we defend Saudi Arabia, we defend countries. They do not pay us. But they should be paying us, because we are providing tremendous service and we’re losing a fortune. That’s why we’re losing — we’re losing — we lose on everything. I say, who makes these — we lose on everything. All I said, that it’s very possible that if they don’t pay a fair share, because this isn’t 40 years ago where we could do what we’re doing. We can’t defend Japan, a behemoth, selling us cars by the million… HOLT: We need to move on. TRUMP: Well, wait, but it’s very important. All I said was, they may have to defend themselves or they have to help us out. We’re a country that owes $20 trillion. They have to help us out. HOLT: Our last… TRUMP: As far as the nuclear is concerned, I agree. It is the single greatest threat that this country has. HOLT: Which leads to my next question, as we enter our last segment here (inaudible) the subject of securing America. On nuclear weapons, President Obama reportedly considered changing the nation’s longstanding policy on first use. Do you support the current policy? Mr. Trump, you have two minutes on that. TRUMP: Well, I have to say that, you know, for what Secretary Clinton was saying about nuclear with Russia, she’s very cavalier in the way she talks about various countries. But Russia has been expanding their — they have a much newer capability than we do. We have not been updating from the new standpoint. I looked the other night. I was seeing B-52s, they’re old enough that your father, your grandfather could be flying them. We are not — we are not keeping up with other countries. I would like everybody to end it, just get rid of it. But I would certainly not do first strike. I think that once the nuclear alternative happens, it’s over. At the same time, we have to be prepared. I can’t take anything off the table. Because you look at some of these countries, you look at North Korea, we’re doing nothing there. China should solve that problem for us. China should go into North Korea. China is totally powerful as it relates to North Korea. And by the way, another one powerful is the worst deal I think I’ve ever seen negotiated that you started is the Iran deal. Iran is one of their biggest trading partners. Iran has power over North Korea. And when they made that horrible deal with Iran, they should have included the fact that they do something with respect to North Korea. And they should have done something with respect to Yemen and all these other places. And when asked to Secretary Kerry, why didn’t you do that? Why didn’t you add other things into the deal? One of the great giveaways of all time, of all time, including $400 million in cash. Nobody’s ever seen that before. That turned out to be wrong. It was actually $1.7 billion in cash, obviously, I guess for the hostages. It certainly looks that way. So you say to yourself, why didn’t they make the right deal? This is one of the worst deals ever made by any country in history. The deal with Iran will lead to nuclear problems. All they have to do is sit back 10 years, and they don’t have to do much. HOLT: Your two minutes is expired. TRUMP: And they’re going to end up getting nuclear. I met with Bibi Netanyahu the other day. Believe me, he’s not a happy camper. HOLT: All right. Mrs. Clinton, Secretary Clinton, you have two minutes. CLINTON: Well, let me — let me start by saying, words matter. Words matter when you run for president. And they really matter when you are president. And I want to reassure our allies in Japan and South Korea and elsewhere that we have mutual defense treaties and we will honor them. It is essential that America’s word be good. And so I know that this campaign has caused some questioning and worries on the part of many leaders across the globe. I’ve talked with a number of them. But I want to — on behalf of myself, and I think on behalf of a majority of the American people, say that, you know, our word is good. It’s also important that we look at the entire global situation. There’s no doubt that we have other problems with Iran. But personally, I’d rather deal with the other problems having put that lid on their nuclear program than still to be facing that. And Donald never tells you what he would do. Would he have started a war? Would he have bombed Iran? If he’s going to criticize a deal that has been very successful in giving us access to Iranian facilities that we never had before, then he should tell us what his alternative would be. But it’s like his plan to defeat ISIS. He says it’s a secret plan, but the only secret is that he has no plan. So we need to be more precise in how we talk about these issues. People around the word follow our presidential campaigns so closely, trying to get hints about what we will do. Can they rely on us? Are we going to lead the world with strength and in accordance with our values? That’s what I intend to do. I intend to be a leader of our country that people can count on, both here at home and around the world, to make decisions that will further peace and prosperity, but also stand up to bullies, whether they’re abroad or at home. We cannot let those who would try to destabilize the world to interfere with American interests and security… HOLT: Your two minutes is… CLINTON: … to be given any opportunities at all. HOLT: … is expired. TRUMP: Lester, one thing I’d like to say. HOLT: Very quickly. Twenty seconds. TRUMP: I will go very quickly. But I will tell you that Hillary will tell you to go to her website and read all about how to defeat ISIS, which she could have defeated by never having it, you know, get going in the first place. Right now, it’s getting tougher and tougher to defeat them, because they’re in more and more places, more and more states, more and more nations. HOLT: Mr. Trump… TRUMP: And it’s a big problem. And as far as Japan is concerned, I want to help all of our allies, but we are losing billions and billions of dollars. We cannot be the policemen of the world. We cannot protect countries all over the world… HOLT: We have just… TRUMP: … where they’re not paying us what we need. HOLT: We have just a few final questions… TRUMP: And she doesn’t say that, because she’s got no business ability. We need heart. We need a lot of things. But you have to have some basic ability. And sadly, she doesn’t have that. All of the things that she’s talking about could have been taken care of during the last 10 years, let’s say, while she had great power. But they weren’t taken care of. And if she ever wins this race, they won’t be taken care of. HOLT: Mr. Trump, this year Secretary Clinton became the first woman nominated for president by a major party. Earlier this month, you said she doesn’t have, quote, “a presidential look.” She’s standing here right now. What did you mean by that? TRUMP: She doesn’t have the look. She doesn’t have the stamina. I said she doesn’t have the stamina. And I don’t believe she does have the stamina. To be president of this country, you need tremendous stamina. HOLT: The quote was, “I just don’t think she has the presidential look.” TRUMP: You have — wait a minute. Wait a minute, Lester. You asked me a question. Did you ask me a question? You have to be able to negotiate our trade deals. You have to be able to negotiate, that’s right, with Japan, with Saudi Arabia. I mean, can you imagine, we’re defending Saudi Arabia? And with all of the money they have, we’re defending them, and they’re not paying? All you have to do is speak to them. Wait. You have so many different things you have to be able to do, and I don’t believe that Hillary has the stamina. HOLT: Let’s let her respond. CLINTON: Well, as soon as he travels to 112 countries and negotiates a peace deal, a cease-fire, a release of dissidents, an opening of new opportunities in nations around the world, or even spends 11 hours testifying in front of a congressional committee, he can talk to me about stamina. (APPLAUSE) TRUMP: The world — let me tell you. Let me tell you. Hillary has experience, but it’s bad experience. We have made so many bad deals during the last — so she’s got experience, that I agree. (APPLAUSE) But it’s bad, bad experience. Whether it’s the Iran deal that you’re so in love with, where we gave them $150 billion back, whether it’s the Iran deal, whether it’s anything you can — name — you almost can’t name a good deal. I agree. She’s got experience, but it’s bad experience. And this country can’t afford to have another four years of that kind of experience. HOLT: We are at — we are at the final question. (APPLAUSE) CLINTON: Well, one thing. One thing, Lester. HOLT: Very quickly, because we’re at the final question now. CLINTON: You know, he tried to switch from looks to stamina. But this is a man who has called women pigs, slobs and dogs, and someone who has said pregnancy is an inconvenience to employers, who has said… TRUMP: I never said that. CLINTON: …. women don’t deserve equal pay unless they do as good a job as men. TRUMP: I didn’t say that. CLINTON: And one of the worst things he said was about a woman in a beauty contest. He loves beauty contests, supporting them and hanging around them. And he called this woman “Miss Piggy.” Then he called her “Miss Housekeeping,” because she was Latina. Donald, she has a name. TRUMP: Where did you find this? Where did you find this? CLINTON: Her name is Alicia Machado. TRUMP: Where did you find this? CLINTON: And she has become a U.S. citizen, and you can bet… TRUMP: Oh, really? CLINTON: … she’s going to vote this November. TRUMP: OK, good. Let me just tell you… (APPLAUSE) HOLT: Mr. Trump, could we just take 10 seconds and then we ask the final question… TRUMP: You know, Hillary is hitting me with tremendous commercials. Some of it’s said in entertainment. Some of it’s said — somebody who’s been very vicious to me, Rosie O’Donnell, I said very tough things to her, and I think everybody would agree that she deserves it and nobody feels sorry for her. But you want to know the truth? I was going to say something… HOLT: Please very quickly. TRUMP: … extremely rough to Hillary, to her family, and I said to myself, “I can’t do it. I just can’t do it. It’s inappropriate. It’s not nice.” But she spent hundreds of millions of dollars on negative ads on me, many of which are absolutely untrue. They’re untrue. And they’re misrepresentations. And I will tell you this, Lester: It’s not nice. And I don’t deserve that. But it’s certainly not a nice thing that she’s done. It’s hundreds of millions of ads. And the only gratifying thing is, I saw the polls come in today, and with all of that money… HOLT: We have to move on to the final question. TRUMP: … $200 million is spent, and I’m either winning or tied, and I’ve spent practically nothing. (APPLAUSE) HOLT: One of you will not win this election. So my final question to you tonight, are you willing to accept the outcome as the will of the voters? Secretary Clinton? CLINTON: Well, I support our democracy. And sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. But I certainly will support the outcome of this election. And I know Donald’s trying very hard to plant doubts about it, but I hope the people out there understand: This election’s really up to you. It’s not about us so much as it is about you and your families and the kind of country and future you want. So I sure hope you will get out and vote as though your future depended on it, because I think it does. HOLT: Mr. Trump, very quickly, same question. Will you accept the outcome as the will of the voters? TRUMP: I want to make America great again. We are a nation that is seriously troubled. We’re losing our jobs. People are pouring into our country. The other day, we were deporting 800 people. And perhaps they passed the wrong button, they pressed the wrong button, or perhaps worse than that, it was corruption, but these people that we were going to deport for good reason ended up becoming citizens. Ended up becoming citizens. And it was 800. And now it turns out it might be 1,800, and they don’t even know. HOLT: Will you accept the outcome of the election? TRUMP: Look, here’s the story. I want to make America great again. I’m going to be able to do it. I don’t believe Hillary will. The answer is, if she wins, I will absolutely support her. (APPLAUSE) HOLT: All right. Well, that is going to do it for us. That concludes our debate for this evening, a spirit one. We covered a lot of ground, not everything as I suspected we would. The next presidential debates are scheduled for October 9th at Washington University in St. Louis and October 19th at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. The conversation will continue. A reminder. The vice presidential debate is scheduled for October 4th at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia. My thanks to Hillary Clinton and to Donald Trump and to Hofstra University for hosting us tonight. Good night, everyone.
transcript
Here is the transcript of the second US presidential debate held live from St Louis, Missouri. Raddatz : Good evening. I’m Martha Raddatz from ABC news. Cooper : And I’m Anderson Cooper from CNN, we want to welcome you to Washington University in St. Louis for the second presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump sponsored by the Commission on presidential debates. Tonight’s debate is a town hall format which gives voters the chance to directly ask the candidates questions. Martha and I will ask follow-up questions but the night really belongs to the people in this room and to people across the country who committed questions online. The people you see on this stage were chosen by the Gallup organization, are all from the St. Louis area and told Gallup they have not committed to a candidate. Each of them came here with questions they wanted to ask and we saw the questions for the first time this morning. Anderson and I and our team from ABC and CNN are the only ones who have seen them. Both candidates will have two minutes to answer each audience and online question we hope to get to as many questions as we can. We asked the audience not to slow things down with any applause, except for now. Ladies and gentlemen, the Republican nominee for president, Donald J. Trump and the democratic nominee for president, Hillary Clinton. Cooper : Thank you very much for being here. We will begin with a question from one of the members in our town hall. Each of you will have two minutes to respond to this question. Secretary Clinton, you won the coin toss so you’ll go first. Our first question comes from patrice Brock. Patrice? Brock : Thank you and good evening. The last presidential debate could have been rated as MA, mature audiences per TV parental guidelines. Knowing that educators assign viewing the presidential debates as students’ homework, do you feel you are modelling appropriate and positive behavior for today’s youth? Clinton : Thank you. Are you a teacher? Yes, I think that’s a very good question because I heard from lots of teachers and parents about some of our concerns about some of the things being said and done in this campaign. And I think it is very important for us to make clear to our children that our country really is great because we are good. And we are going to respect one another, lift each other up. We are going to be looking for ways to celebrate our diversity and we are going to try to reach out to every boy and girl as well as every adult to bring them into working on behalf of our country. I have a positive and optimistic view of what we can do together. That’s why the slogan of my campaign is stronger together. Because I think if we work together, if we overcome the divisiveness that sometimes sets Americans against one another and instead we make some big goals and I’ve set forth some big goals, getting the economy to work for everyone, not just those at the top. Making sure we have the best education from preschool through college and making it affordable and so much else. If we set those goals and we go together to try to achieve them, there is nothing, in my opinion, America can’t do. I hope we will all come together in this campaign. Obviously I’m hoping to earn your vote, I’m hoping to be elected in November and I can promise you I will work with every American. I want to be the president for all Americans regardless of your political beliefs, what you look like, your religion. I want us to heal our country and bring it together. Because that’s, I think, the best way to get the future that our children and grandchildren deserve. Cooper : Mr. Trump you have two minutes. Trump : Well I’ll actually agree with that. I agree with everything she said. I began this campaign because I was so tired of seeing such foolish things happen to our country. This is a great country. This is a great land. I have gotten to know the people of the country over the last year and a half that I have been doing this as a politician. I cannot believe I’m saying that about myself, but I guess I have been a politician. And my whole concept was to make America great again. When I watch the deals being made. When I watch what’s happening with some horrible things like Obamacare where your health insurance and health care is going up by numbers that are astronomical: 68%, 59%, 71%. When I look at the Iran deal and how bad a deal it is for us, it’s a one-sided transaction, where we’re giving back $150 billion to a terrorist state, really the number one terrorist state, we’ve made them a strong country from, really, a very weak country just three years ago. When I look at all of the things that I see and all of the potential that our country has, we have such tremendous potential. Whether it’s in business and trade, where we are doing so badly. Last year we had an almost $800 billion trade deficit. In other words, trading with other countries. We had an $800 billion deficit. It’s hard to believe. Inconceivable. You say who’s making these deals? We’re going to make great trade deals, we‘re going to have a strong border, we’re going to bring back law and order. Just today, policeman was shot. Two killed. And this is happening on a weekly basis. We have to bring back respect to law enforcement. At the same time we have to take cake of people on all sides. We need justice. But I want to do things that haven’t been done, including fixing and making our inner cities better for the African-American citizens that are so great and for the Latinos, hispanics, and I looking forward to doing- It’s called make America great again. Cooper : Thank you Mr. Trump. The question from Patrice was about ‘Are you both modeling positive and appropriate behaviors for today’s youth?’ We received a lot of questions online, Mr. Trump about the tape that was released on Friday, as you can imagine. You called what you said ‘locker room banter’. You described kissing women without consent, grabbing their genitals. That is sexual assault. You bragged that you have sexually assaulted women. Do you understand that? Trump : No, I didn’t say that at all. I don’t think you understood what was said. This was locker room talk. I am not proud of it. I apologize to my family, I apologized to the American people. Certainly, I am not proud of it. But this is locker room talk. You know, when we have a world where you have ISIS chopping off heads, where you have them, frankly, drowning people in steel cages, where you have wars and horrible, horrible sights all over and you have so many bad things happening, this is like medieval times. We haven’t seen anything likes this. The carnage all over the world and they look and they see, can you imagine the people that are frankly doing so well against us with ISIS and they look at our country and see what’s going on. Yes, I am very embarrassed by it and I hate it, but it’s locker room talk and it’s one of those things. I will knock the hell out of ISIS. We are going to defeat ISIS. ISIS happened a number of years ago in a vacuum that was left because of bad judgment. And I will tell you, I will take care of ISIS. We need to get on to much more important and bigger things. Cooper : For the record, are you saying that what you said on the bus 11 years ago, that you did not actually kiss women without consent or grope women without consent? Trump : I have great respect for women. Nobody has more respect for women than I do. Cooper : So for the record, you’re saying you never did that? Trump : Frankly, you hear these things. They are said. And I was am embarrassed by it. But I have respect for women— Cooper : —Have you ever done those things? Trump : — And they have respect for me. And I will tell you, no I have not. And I will tell you, that I’m going to make our country safe and we’re going to have borders which we don’t have now. People are pouring into our country and they’re coming in from the Middle East and other places. We’re gonna make America safe again, we’re gonna make America great again but we’re gonna make America safe again and we’re gonna make America wealthy again. Because if you don’t do that, it just, it sounds harsh to say, but we have to build up the wealth of our nation. Other nations are taking our job and they’re taking our wealth. Cooper : Thank you very much. Secretary Clinton, do you want to respond? Clinton : Well, like everyone else, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking over the last 48 hours about what we heard and saw. You know, with prior Republican nominees for president, I disagreed with them on politics, policies, principles, but I never questioned their fitness to serve. Donald Trump is different. I said starting back in June that he was not fit to be president and commander in chief. And many Republicans and independents have said the same thing. 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’s clear to anyone who heard it, that it represents exactly who he is. Because we have seen this throughout the campaign. We have seen him insult women. We have seen him rate women on their appearance, ranking them from one to ten, we’ve seen him embarrass women on TV and on Twitter. We saw him after the first debate, spend nearly a week denigrating a former miss universe in the harshest, most personal terms. So, yes, 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. So this is who Donald Trump is. And the question for us, the question our country must answer is that this is not who we are. That’s why to go back to your question, I want to send a message. We all should, to every boy and girl and indeed, to the entire world. That America already is great, but we are great because we are good. And we will respect one another and we will work with one another and we will celebrate our diversity. These are very important values to me because this is the America that I know and love. And I can pledge to you tonight that this is the America that I will serve if I’m so fortunate enough to become your president. Raddatz : We want to get to some questions. Trump : I’d like to respond to that. I assume I can. Raddatz : Yes, you can respond to that. Trump : It’s just words, folks. It’s just words. These words, I have been hearing for many years. I heard them when they were running for the Senate in New York where Hillary was going to bring back jobs to upstate New York and she failed. I’ve heard them where Hillary is constantly talking about the inner cities of our country which are a disaster education-wise, job-wise, safety-wise, in every way possible. I’m going to help the African-Americans, I’m going to help the Latinos, hispanics. I am going to help the inner cities. She has done a terrible job for the African-Americans. She wants their vote and she does nothing. And then she comes back four years later, we saw that firsthand when she saw United States senator, she campaigned where— Raddatz : Mr. Trump, Mr. Trump, I want to get to audience questions and online questions. Trump: She is allowed to do that, but I’m not? Sounds fair, sounds fair. Raddatz : You will get to respond right now. This tape is generating intense interest. In just 48 hours it has become the single most talked about story of the entire 2016 election on Facebook with millions and millions of people discussing it on the social network. As we said a moment ago, we do want to bring in questions from voters around the country via social media. And our first stays on this topic. Jeff from Ohio asks on Facebook, Trump says the campaign has changed him. When did that happen? So Mr. Trump, let me add to that, when you walked off that bus at age 59, were you a different man or did that behavior continue until just recently? And you have two minutes for this. Trump : That was locker room talk. I’m not proud of it. I am a person who has great respect for people, for my family, for the people of this country and certainly I am not proud of it, but that was something that happened. If you look at Bill Clinton, far worse. Mine are words and his was action. His words, what he has done to women. There’s never been anybody in the history of politics in this nation that has been so abusive to women. So you can say any way you want to say it, but Bill Clinton is abusive to women. Hillary Clinton attacked those same women, and attacked them viciously, four of them here tonight. One of the women, who is a wonderful woman at 12 years old was raped. At 12. Her client, she represented, got him off and she is seen laughing on two occasions laughing at the girl who was raped. Kathy Shelton, that young woman, is here with us tonight. So don’t tell me about words. I am, absolutely, I apologize for those words, but it is things that people say, but what President Clinton did, he was impeached, he lost his license to practice law, he had to pay an $850,000 fine to one of the women. Paula Jones who is also here tonight. And I will tell you that when Hillary brings up a point like that and she talks about words that I said 11 years ago, I think it’s disgraceful and I think she should be ashamed of herself, if you want to know the truth. Raddatz : Please hold the applause. Secretary Clinton, you have two minutes. Clinton : Well, first let me start by saying that so much of what he just said is not right, but he gets to run his campaign any way he chooses. He gets to decide what he wants to talk about instead of answering people’s questions, talking about our agenda, laying out the plans that we have that we think can make a better life and a better country. That’s his choice. When I hear something like that, I am reminded of what my friend Michelle Obama advised us all. When they go low, you go high. ( Applause ) And look, if this were just about one video, maybe what he is saying tonight would be understandable. But everyone can draw their own conclusions at this point about whether or not the man in the video or the man on the stage respects women. But he never apologizes for anything to anyone. He never apologized to Mr. And Mrs. Khan, the gold star family whose son, Captain Khan died in the line of duty in Iraq and Donald insulted and attacked them for weeks over their religion. He never apologized to the distinguished federal judge who was born in Indiana, but Donald said he couldn’t be trusted to be a judge because his parents were “Mexican.” He never apologized to the reporter that he mimicked and mocked on national television and our children were watching. And he never apologized for the racist lie that President Obama was not born in the United States of America. He owes the president an apology and he owes our country an apology and he needs to take responsibility for his actions and his words. Trump : Well you owe the president an apology because as you know very well, your campaign, Sidney Blumenthal, he’s another real winner that you have and he’s the one that got this started along with your campaign manager and they were on television just two weeks ago, she was saying exactly that. So you really owe him an apology. You’re the one that sent the pictures around, your campaign sent the pictures around with President Obama in a certain garb, that was long before I was ever involved. So you actually owe an apology. Number two, Michelle Obama. I’ve gotten to see the commercials that they did on you and the I’ve gotten to see some of the most vicious commercials I’ve ever seen, of Michelle Obama talking about you, Hillary. So you talk about framed, go back and take a look at those commercials. A race where you lost, fair and square, unlike the Bernie Sanders race where you won, but not fair and square, in my opinion and all you have to do is take a look at WikiLeaks and just see what they said about Bernie Sanders and see what Debra Wasserman Schultz had in mind, because Bernie Sanders, between superdelegates and Debra Wasserman Schultz, he never had a chance and I was so surprised to see him sign on with the devil. But when we talk about apology, I think the one that you should really be apologizing for, the thing that you should be apologizing for are the 33,000 emails that you deleted and that you acid washed and the two boxes of emails and other things last week that were taken from an office and are now missing. And I tell you what, I didn’t think I would say this, but I’m going to and I hate to say it. But if I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation. Because there has never been so many lies, so much deception. There has never been anything like it. And we’re gonna have a special prosecutor. When I speak, I go out and speak, the people of this country are furious. In my opinion, the people that have been long time workers at the FBI are furious. There has never been anything like this where emails, and you get a subpoena. You get a subpoena, and after getting the subpoena you delete 33,000 emails and then you acid wash them or bleach them, as you would say. Very expensive process. So we’re gonna get a special prosecutor and we’re gonna look into it. Because you know what, people have been—their lives have been destroyed for doing 1/5 of what you have done. And it’s a disgrace, and honestly, you oughta be ashamed of yourself. Raddatz : Secretary Clinton,I will let you respond. Clinton : Everything he just said is absolutely false, but I’m not surprised. In the first debate, I told people it would be impossible to be fact checking Donald all the time. I would never get to talk about anything I’d want to do and how we’re really, going to really, make lives better for people. So once again, go to Hillaryclinton.com. We have literally Trump—you can fact check him in real time. Last time at the first debate ,we had millions of people fact checking so I expect we will have millions more fact checking because, you know, 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 would be in jail. ( Applause ) Cooper : We want to remind the audience to please not talk out loud. Please do not applaud. You are just wasting time. Raddatz : And Secretary Clinton, I do want to follow-up on emails. You’ve said your handling of your emails was a mistake, you’ve disagreed with the FBI Director James Comey calling your handling of classified information “extremely careless”. The FBI said there were 110 classified emails which were exchanged, eight of which were top secret and it was possible hostile actors did gain access to those emails. You don’t call that extremely careless? Clinton: Well, Martha, first let me say, and I said it before but I will repeat it because I want everyone to hear it. That was a mistake and I take responsibility for using a personal email account. Obviously, if I were to do it over again, I would not. I am not making any excuses, it was a mistake. And I am very sorry about that, but I think it’s also important to point out where there are some misleading accusations from critics and others. After a year long investigation, there is no evidence that anyone hacked the server I was using and there is no evidence that anyone can point to at all, anyone who says otherwise has no basis, that any classified materials ended up in the wrong hands. I take classified materials very seriously and always have. When I was on the Senate Armed Services Committee, I was privy to a lot of classified material. Obviously, as secretary of state I had some of the most important secrets that we possess, such as going after Bin Laden. So, I am very committed to taking classified information seriously and as I said, there is no evidence that any classified information ended up in the wrong hands. Trump : And yet she didn’t know the word, the letter C on a document. Right? She didn’t even know what that letter meant. You know, it’s amazing. I’m watching Hillary go over facts and she is going after fact after fact and she’s lying again because she said she, you know, what she did with emails was fine. You think it was fine to delete 33,000 emails? I don’t think so. She said that 33,000 emails had to do with her daughter’s wedding, number one and a yoga class. Well, maybe we will give three or three or four or five or something. 33,000 emails deleted and now she’s saying there wasn’t anything wrong. And more importantly, that was after getting a subpoena. That wasn’t before. That was after. She got it from the United States Congress, and I will be honest. I am so disappointed in congressmen, including Republicans, for allowing this to happen. Our Justice Department where her husband goes on to the back of an airplane for 39 minutes, talks to the Attorney General days before a ruling has to be made on her case. But for you to say that there was nothing wrong with you deleting 39,000 emails, again, you should be ashamed of yourself. What you did, now this was after getting a subpoena from the United States Congress— Cooper : We have to move on. Secretary Clinton you get to respond, then we have to move on. Trump : Hold on, wait a minute, if a member of the private sector did that, they’d be in jail. Let alone, after getting a subpoena from the United States Congress. Cooper : Secretary Clinton, you get to respond then we have to move on to a audience question. Clinton : It’s just not true. Trump : You didn’t delete them? Clinton : They were personal emails and not official. We turned over 35,000. Trump : What are about the other 15,000. Cooper : Please allow her to respond. She didn’t talk while you talked. Clinton : Yes, that’s true. I didn’t. Trump : Because you had nothing to say. Clinton : I didn’t in the first debate and I’m gonna try not to on this debate because I would like to get to the questions people brought to us tonight. Trump : And get off this question. Clinton : Okay, Donald. I know you are into big diversion tonight, anything to avoid talking about your campaign and the way it’s exploding, and the way Republicans are leaving you, but— Trump : Let’s see what happens. Cooper : Let her respond. Clinton : Let’s get to the issues that people care about tonight. Let’s get to their question. Anderson : We have a question here from Ken Karpowitz, it’s a question about health care. Trump : I’d liked to know Anderson, Why aren’t you bringing up the emails? I’d like to know. Cooper : We brought up the emails. Trump : No it hasn’t, it hasn’t and it hasn’t been finished at all. Cooper : Ken Karpowitz has a question. Trump : One on three. Karpowicz : The Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare, it is not affordable. Premiums have gone up, deductibles have gone up, copays has gone up, prescriptions have gone up and the coverage has gone down. What will you do to bring the cost down and make coverage better? Cooper : That first one goes to secretary Clinton. You started out the last one to the audience. Clinton : He wants to start it, he can start it. No, go ahead, Donald. Trump : No, I’m a gentlemen, Hillary. Go ahead. Cooper : Secretary Clinton. Clinton : I think Donald was about to say he’s gonna solve it by repealing it and getting rid of the Affordable Care Act. And I’m going to fix it because I agree with you. Premiums have gotten too high, copays, deductibles, prescription drug costs and I have laid out a series of actions that we can take to try to get those costs down. But here’s what I don’t want people to forget when we’re talking about reigning in the cost that has to be the highest priority of the next president. When the affordable care act passed, it wasn’t just that 20 million people got insurance who didn’t have it before. But that, in and of itself is a good thing. I meet these people all the time and they tell me what a difference having that insurance meant to them and their families. But everybody else, the 170 million of us who get health insurance through our employers got big benefits. Number one, insurance companies can’t deny you coverage because of a preexisting condition. Number two, no lifetime limits which is a big deal if you have serious health problems. Number three, women can’t be charged more than men for our health insurance, which is the way it used to be before the affordable care act. Number four, if you are under 26 and your parents have a policy, you can be on that policy until the age of 26, something that didn’t happen before. So I want very much to save what works and is good about the affordable care act. But we’ve got to get costs down, we’ve got to provide some additional help to small businesses so that they can afford to provide health insurance. But if we repeal it as Donald has proposed and start over again, all of those benefits I mentioned are lost to everybody. Not just people who get health insurance on the exchange. And then we would have to start all over again. Right now we are at 90% health insurance coverage. That’s the highest we have ever been, in our country. I want to get to 100% and get cost down and quality up. Cooper : Secretary Clinton, you are out of time. Mr. Trump, You have two minutes. Trump : It is such a great question and it’s maybe the question I get almost, more than anything else. Outside of defense. Obamacare is a disaster. You know it, we all know it. It’s going up at numbers that nobody’s ever seen, worldwide. It’s-nobody has ever seen numbers like this for health care. It’s only getting worse. In 17, it implodes by itself. Their method of fixing it is to go back and ask Congress for more money. More, more money and we have right now almost $20 trillion in debt. Obamacare will never work. It’s very bad, very bad health insurance, far too expensive, and not only expensive for the person that has it, unbelievably expensive for our country. It’s going to be one of the biggest line items very shortly. We have to repeal it and replace it with something absolutely much less expensive. And something that works, where your plan can actually be tailored. We have to get rid of the lines around the state, artificial lines, where we stop insurance companies from coming in and competing because they wanted President Obama and whoever was working on it, they want to leave those lines because that gives the insurance companies, essentially monopolies. We want competition. You will have the finest health care plan there is. She wants to go to a single player plan which would be a disaster. Somewhat similar to Canada. If you ever noticed, the Canadians, when they need a big operation, when something happens, they come into the United States in many cases. Because their system is so slow, it’s catastrophic in certain ways. But she wants to go to single payer, which means the government basically rules everything. Hillary Clinton has been after this for years. Obamacare was the first step, Obamacare is a total disaster and not only are your rates going up by numbers that nobody’s ever believed, but your deductibles are going up. So that unless you get hit by a truck, you will never be able to use it. It’s a disastrous plan and it has to be repealed and replaced. Cooper : Secretary Clinton, let me follow-up with you, your husband called Obamacare “the craziest thing in the world”, saying small business owners are getting killed, premiums doubled, coverage is cut in half. Was he mistaken or was his mistake simply telling the truth? Clinton : No. I mean, he clarified what he meant and it’s very clear. Look, we are in a situation in our country where if we were to start all over again, we might come up with a different system. But we have an employer-based system: that’s where the vast majority of people get their health care. And the affordable care act is meant to try to fill the gap between people who are too poor and couldn’t put together any resources to afford healthcare, namely people on medicaid. Obviously, Medicare which is a single payer system which takes care of our elderly, and does a great job doing it, by the way, and then all the people who were employed, but people who were working but didn’t have the money to afford insurance and didn’t have anybody, an employer or anybody else to help them. That was the slot that the Obamacare approach was to take. And like I say, 20 million people now have health insurance. So, if we rip it up and throw it away, what Donald is not telling you is we turn it back to the insurance companies the way it used to be. And that means that insurance companies get to do pretty much whatever they want including saying look, I’m sorry, you have diabetes, you had cancer— Cooper : —Your time is up— Clinton : —Your child had asthma, you may not be able to have insurance because you can’t afford it. So let’s fix what’s broken about it, but let’s not throw it away and give it back to the insurance companies. That’s not going to work. Cooper : Mr. Trump, let me just follow-up— Trump : I want to—just one thing. Hillary, everything is broken about it. Everything. Number two, Bernie Sanders said Hillary Clinton has very bad judgment. This is a perfect example of it. Trying to save Obamacare— Cooper : —Mr. Trump, you’ve said you want to end Obamacare, you’ve also said you want to make coverage accessible for people with preexisting conditions. How do you force insurance companies to do that if you are not mandating that everyone has insurance? Trump : You’re going to have plans. Cooper : What does that mean? Trump : Well, I’ll tell you what it means. You’re gonna have plans that are so good because we’re going to have so much competition in the insurance industry, once we break out the lines and allow the competition to come. Cooper : Are you going to have a mandate that Americans have to have health insurance? Trump : Excuse me. President Obama by keeping those lines, the boundary lines around each state and it was almost done until just towards the end of the passage of Obamacare. Which by the way was a fraud. You know that. Because Jonathan Grouper, the architect of Obamacare was said, he said it was a great lie, it was a big lie. President Obama said you keep your doctor, keep your plan. The whole thing was a fraud and it doesn’t work. But when we get rid of those lines, you have competition and we will be able to keep preexisting, we’ll also be able to help people that can’t get, don’t have money because we are going to have people protected. And Republicans feel this way. Believe it or not, we’re going to block grant into the states we’re going to block grant into medicaid so we will be able to take care of people without the necessary funds to cake care of themselves. Cooper : Thank you Mr. Trump. Raddatz : We go to Gorbah Hameed for a question for both candidates. Hamed : Hi. There are 3.3 million Muslims in the United States and I’m one of them. You’ve mentioned working with Muslim nations. But with Islamophobia on the rise, how will you help people like me deal with the consequences of being labelled as a threat to the country after the election is over? Raddatz : Mr. Trump, you’re first. Trump : You are right about Islamophobia and that’s a shame. But one thing we have to do is, we have to make sure that, because there is a problem. I mean, whether we like it or not and we can be politically correct, but whether we like it or not, there is a problem. And we have to be sure that Muslims come in and report when they see something going on. When they see hatred going on, they have to report it. As the example in San Bernardino. Many people saw the bombs all over the apartment of the two people that killed 14 and wounded many, many people. Horribly wounded, they will never be the same. Muslims have to report the problems when they see them. And, you know, there is always a reason for everything. If they don’t do that, it’s a very difficult situation for our country. Because you look at Orlando and you look at San Bernardino and you look at the World Trade Center. Go outside and you look at Paris, look at that horrible thing. These are radical Islamic terrorists and she won’t even mention the word and nor will President Obama. He won’t use the term radical Islamic terrorist, no. To solve a problem you have to be able to state what the problem is or at least, say the name. She won’t say the name and President Obama won’t say the name. But the name is there. It’s radical Islamic terror. And before you solve it, you have to say the name. Raddatz : Secretary Clinton. Clinton : Thank you for asking your question and I’ve heard this question from a lot of Muslim Americans across our country. Because unfortunately there has been a lot of very divise, dark things said about Muslims. And even someone like Captain Khan, the young man who sacrificed himself defending our country in the United States Army has been subject to attack by Donald. I want to say just a couple of things. First: We’ve had Muslims in America since George Washington. And we’ve had many successful Muslims. We just lost a particularly well-known one with Muhammad Ali. My vision of America is an America where everyone has a place, if you are willing to work hard, do your part and you contribute to the community. That’s what America is. That’s what we want America to be for our children and our grandchildren. It’s also very short-sighted and even dangerous to be engaging in the kind of demagogic rhetoric that Donald has about Muslims. We need American Muslims to be part of our eyes and ears on our front lawns. I’ve worked with a lot of Muslim groups around America. I’ve met with a lot of them and I’ve heard how important it is for them to feel that they are wanted and included and part of our country. Part of our homeland security. And that’s what I want to see. It’s also important, I intend to defeat ISIS,to do so in a coalition with majority Muslim nations. Right now, a lot of those nations are hearing what Donald says and wondering why should we cooperate with the Americans and this is a gift to ISIS and the terrorists. Violent jihadist terrorists. We are not at war with Islam and it is a mistake, and it plays into the hands of the terrorists, to act as though we are. So I want a country where citizens like you and your family are just as welcome as anyone else. Raddatz : Thank you, secretary Clinton. Mr. Trump, in December you said this: ‘Donald J. Trump is calling if are a total and complete shut down of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on. We have no choice. We have no choice.’ Your running mate said the Muslim ban is no longer your position. Is that correct and if it is, was it a mistake to have a religious test? Trump : First of all, Captain Khan is an American hero and if I were president at that time he would be alive today because, unlike her who voted for the war without knowing what she was doing, I would not have had our people in Iraq. Iraq was a disaster. So he would have been alive today. The Muslim ban is something that in some form has morphed into an extreme vetting from certain areas of the world. Hillary Clinton wants to allow— Raddatz : Why did it morph into that. No answer the question. Would you please explain whether or not the Muslim ban still stands? Trump : It is called extreme vetting. We are going to areas like Syria where they are coming in by the tens of thousands because of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton wants wants to allow a 550% increase over Obama. People are coming into our country like we have no idea who they are, where they are from, what their feelings about our country is and she wants 550% more. This is going to be the great Trojan horse of all time. We have enough problems in this country. I believe in building safe zone, I believe in having other people pay for them, as an example the [Arabian] Gulf states who are not carrying their weight but they have nothing but money and take care of people. But I don’t want to have, with all the problems this country has and all of the problems you see going on, hundreds of thousands of people come in from Syria where we know nothing about them. We know nothing about their values and we know nothing about their love for our country. Raddatz : Secretary Clinton, let me ask you about that. You have asked for an increase from 10 to 65,000 Syrian refugees. We know you want tougher vetting. That’s not a perfect system. So why take the risk of having those refugees come into the country? Clinton : First of all, I will not let anyone into our country that I think poses a risk to us. But there are a lot of refugees, women and children, think of that picture we all saw of that 4-year-old boy with the blood on his forehead because he’d been bombed by the Russian and Syrian air forces. There are children suffering in this catastrophic war, largely, I believe because of Russian aggression. And we need to do our part. We, by no means, are carrying anywhere near the load that Europe and others are. But we will have vetting that is as tough as it needs to be from our professionals, our intelligence experts and others. But it is important for us as a policy not to say, as Donald has said, we’re going to ban people based on a religion. How do you that? We are a country founded on religious freedom and liberty. How do we do what he has advocated without causing great distress within our own country? Are we going to have religious tests when people fly into our country and how do we expect to be able to implement those? So I thought that what he said was extremely unwise and even dangerous and indeed you can look at the propaganda on a lot of the terrorist sites and what Donald Trump says about Muslims is used to recruit fighters. Because they want to create a war between us. And the final thing I say, this is the 10th or 12th time he denied being for the war in Iraq. We have it on tape, the entire press corps has looked at it, it’s been debunked but it never stops him from saying whatever he wants to say. Go to Hillaryclinton.com. Trump : It has not been debunked. I was against the war in Iraq. Clinton : Go to Hillaryclinton.com and you can see it. Trump : It has not been debunked and you voted for it and shouldn’t have. Raddatz : I would like to move on. Trump : Excuse me, she just went about 25 seconds over her time. Can I respond? Raddatz : She did not. Very quickly please. Trump : Hillary Clinton in terms of having people come into our country. We have many criminal illegal aliens. When we want to send them back to their country, their country says: we don’t want them. In some cases they are murderers, drug lords, drug problems and they don’t want them. And Hillary Clinton when she was Secretary of State said, that’s okay, we can’t force them back into their country. Let me tell you, I’m going to force them right back into their country. They are murderers and some very bad people. And I will tell you very strongly, when Bernie Sanders said she had bad judgment, she has really bad judgement because we are letting people into this country that are gonna cause problems and crime like you’ve never seen. We’re also letting drugs pour through our southern border at a record clip. At a record clip. And It shouldn’t be allowed to happen. ICE just endorsed me. They never endorsed a presidential candidate. The border patrol agents, 16,500 just recently endorsed me. And they endorsed me because I understand the border. She doesn’t. She wants amnesty for everybody. Come right in. Come right over. It’s a horrible thing she is doing. She’s got bad judgment and honestly, so bad that she should never be president of the United States. That I can tell you. Raddatz : Thank you Mr. Trump. I want to move on. This next question comes from the public through the bipartisan open debate coalition’s online forum where Americans submitted questions that generated millions of votes. This question involves WikiLeaks’ release of purported excerpts of Secretary Clinton’s paid speeches speeches, which she has refused to release. In one line in particular, in which you Secretary Clinton purportedly say, ‘You need both a public and private position on certain issues.’ So, two from Virginia asks: ‘is it okay for politicians to be two-faced? Is it acceptable for a politician to have have a private stance on issues?’ Secretary Clinton? Two minutes. Clinton : Right. As I recall, that was something I said about Abraham Lincoln after having seen the wonderful Steven Spielberg movie called Lincoln. It was a master class watching president Lincoln get the congress to approve the 13th amendment. It was principled and it was strategic and I was making the point that it is hard, sometimes, to get the congress to do what you want to do. And you have to keep working at it and yes, president Lincoln was trying to convince some people, he used some arguments, convincing other people, he used other arguments. That was a great, I thought, a great display of presidential leadership. But, you know, let’s talk about what’s really going on here, Martha because our intelligence community just came out and said in the last few days that the Kremlin, meaning Putin and the Russian government, are directing the attacks, the hacking on American accounts to influence our election. And WikiLeaks is part of that as are other sites where the Russians hack information, we don’t even know if it’s accurate information and then they put it out. We have never in the history of our country been in a situation where an adversary, a foreign power, is working so hard to influence the outcome of the election, and believe, they’re not doing it to get me elected. They are doing it to try to influence the election for Donald Trump. Now, maybe because he praised Putin, maybe because he says he agrees with a lot of what Putin wants to do, maybe because he wants to do business in Moscow. I don’t know the reasons, but we deserve answers, and should demand that Donald release all of his tax returns so that people can see what are the entanglements and the financial relationships— Raddatz : We will get to that later. Secretary Clinton, you are out of time. Trump : I think I should respond because, so ridiculous. Look, now she is blaming —she got caught in a total lie. Her papers went out to all her friends at the banks, Goldman Sachs and everybody else. And she said things, WikiLeaks, that just came out. And she lied. Now she’s blaming the lie on the late great Abraham Lincoln. That’s when-okay, Honest Abe never lied. That’s the good thing. That’s the big difference between Abraham Lincoln and you. That’s a big, big difference. We’re talking about some difference. But, as far as other elements of what you were saying, I don’t know Putin. I think it would be great if we got along with Russia because we could fight ISIS together, as an example, but I don’t know Putin. But I notice, any time anything wrong happens, they like to say the Russians, well she doesn’t know if it’s the Russians doing the hacking. Maybe there is no hacking, but there is—now Russia—and the reason they blame Russia is they think they’re trying to tarnish me with Russia. I know nothing about Russia—I know about Russia, but I know nothing about the inner workings of Russia. I don’t deal there, I have no businesses there, I have no loans from Russia. I have a very very great balance sheet. So great that when I did the old post office, on Pennsylvania Avenue, the United States government because of my balance sheet, which they actually know very well, chose me to do the old post office between the White House and Congress. They chose me to do the old post office—one of the primary things, in fact, perhaps the primary thing was balance sheet. But I have no loans with Russia. You could go to the United States government and they would probably tell you that because they know my sheet very well in order to get that development, I had to have—now the taxes are a very simple thing. As soon as I have – first of all, I pay hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes. Many of her friends took bigger deductions. Warren Buffett took a massive deduction, Soros, who’s a friend of hers took a massive deduction. Many of the people that are giving her all this money so that she can do many more commercials than me, gave her – took massive deductions. I pay hundreds of millions in taxes, but, but as soon as my routine audit is finished, I’ll release my returns. I’ll be very proud to. Raddatz : Thank you Mr. Trump. Cooper : Actually on the topic of taxes, we have a question from Spencer Moss. Moss : Good evening. My question is what specific tax provisions will you change to ensure the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share in taxes? Cooper : Mr. Trump, you have two minutes. Trump : One thing I’d do is get rid of carried interest. The—one of the greatest provisions for people like me, to be honest with you, I give up a lot when I run because I knockout the tax code. And she could have done this years ago, by the way. She is – she was a United States senator. She complains that Donald Trump took advantage of the tax code. Well, why didn’t you change it, why didn’t you change it when you were a senator? The reason you didn’t is that all your friends take the same advantage that I do. And they do, you have provisions in the tax code, that frankly, we could change. But you wouldn’t change it because all of these people gave you the money so you can take negative ads on Donald Trump. But, and I say that about a lot of things. I heard Hillary complaining about so many different things over the years, I wish we would have done this. But she’s been there for 30 years, she’s been doing this stuff, she never changed, and she never will change. She never will change. We are getting rid of carried interest provisions. I’m lowering taxes, actually, because I think it’s so important for corporations because we have corporations leaving, massive corporations, and little ones. The little ones can’t form. We are getting rid of regulations, which goes hand in hand with the, lowering the taxes. But we’re bringing the tax rate down from 35% to 15%. We are cutting taxes for the middle class and I will tell you, we are cutting them big league for the middle class. And I’ll tell you, Hillary Clinton is raising your taxes, folks, she can look at me, she is raising your taxes, really high and what that’s going to do is a disaster for the country. But she is raising the taxes and I’m lowering the taxes. That in itself is a big difference. We are going to be thriving again. We have no growth in this country. There is no growth. If China has a GDP of 7% it’s like a national catastrophe. We’re down at 1%, and that’s like no growth. And we are going lower, in my opinion. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that our taxes are so high. Just about the highest in the world, and I’m bringing them down to one of the lower in the world. And I think it’s so important. One of the most important things we can do. But she is raising everybody’s taxes massively. Cooper : Secretary Clinton you have two minutes. The question was, what specific tax provisions would you change to ensure the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share of taxes. Clinton : Well, everything you’ve heard from Donald is not true. I’m sorry I have to keep saying this, but he lives in an alternative reality. And it is sort of amusing to hear somebody who hasn’t paid federal income taxes in maybe 20 years talking about what he’s going to do, but I’ll tell you what he’s going to do. His plan will give the wealthy and corporations the biggest tax cuts they have ever had. More than the Bush tax cuts by at least a factor of two. Donald always takes care of Donald and people like Donald. And this would be a massive gift. And indeed the way that he talks about his tax cuts would end up raising taxes on middle class families. Millions of middle class families. Now, here’s what I want to do. I have said nobody who makes less than $250,000 a year and that’s the vast majority of Americans, as you know will have their taxes raised. Because I think we have got to go where the money is and the money is with people who have taken advantage of every single break in the tax code. And yes, when I was a senator, I did vote to close corporate loopholes. I voted to close, I think, one of the loopholes he took advantage of when he claimed a billion dollar loss that enabled him to avoid paying taxes. I want to have a tax on people who are making a million dollars, it’s called the Buffett rule. Yes, Warren Buffett is the one who’s gone out and said somebody like him should not be paying a lower tax rate than his secretary. I wanna have a surcharge on incomes above 5 million. We have to make up for lost times, because I want to invest in you, I want to invest in hard working families. And I think it has been unfortunate, but it’s happened, that since the great recession, the gains have all gone to the top. And we need to reverse that. People like Donald who paid zero in taxes, zero for our vets, zero for our military, zero for health and education. That is wrong. And we’re going to make sure that nobody, no corporation and no individual can get away without paying his fair share to support our country. Cooper : Mr. Trump, I want to give the chance to respond. I just want to tell our viewers what she’s referring to. In the last month, taxes were the number one issue on Facebook for the first time in the campaign. The New York Times published three pages of your 1995 tax returns that show you claimed a $960 million loss, which means you could have avoided paying personal federal income taxes for years. You’ve said you pay state taxes, employee taxes, real estate taxes, property taxes. You have not answered, though, a simple question. Did you use that $960 million loss to avoid paying personal federal income taxes? Trump : Of course I did. Of course I did. And so do all of her donors, or most of her donors. I know many of her donors. Her donors took massive tax write offs. A lot lot of my write off was depreciation and a lot of other things Hillary Clinton as a senator allowed and she always allowed because the people that give her all this money, they want it. That’s why. See, I understand the tax code better than anybody that’s ever run for president. Hillary Clinton is extremely complex. Hillary Clinton has friends that want all of these provisions, including, they want the carried interest provision, which is very important to Wall Street people, but they really want the carried interest provision, which I believe Hillary is leaving, and it’s very interesting why she is leaving carried interest. But I will tell, you that, number one, I pay tremendous numbers of taxes. I absolutely used it and so did Warren Buffett and so did George Soros and so did many of the other people that Hillary is getting money from. Now, I won’t mention their names because they are rich, but they’re not famous. So we won’t make them famous. Cooper : Can you say how many years you have avoided paying personal federal income taxes? Trump : No. but I pay tax and I pay federal tax too. But I have a write off, a lot of it is depreciation, which is a wonderful charge. I love depreciation. You know, she has given it to us. Hey, if she had a problem, for 30 years she’s been doing this, Anderson, I say it all the time, she talks about health care. Why didn’t you do something about it? She talks about taxes. Why didn’t she do something about it? She doesn’t do anything about anything other than talk. With her, it’s all talk and no action. And again, Bernie Sanders, it’s really bad judgment. She has made bad judgment not only on taxes, she’s made bad judgements on Libya, on Syria, on Iraq. Her and Obama whether you like it or not, the way they got out of Iraq, the vacuum they left, that’s why ISIS formed in the first place. They started from the little area and now they are in 32 different nations, Hillary. Congratulations. Great job. Cooper : I want you to respond, Clinton : Well, here we go again. I have been in favor of getting rid of carried interest for years starting when I was a senator from New York. But that’s not the point here. Trump : Why didn’t you do it? Why didn’t you do it? Clinton : Because I was a senator with a Republican president. Trump : You could have done it. If you were an effective senator, you could have done it. But you were not an effective senator. Cooper : Please allow her to respond. She didn’t interrupt you. Clinton : You know, under our constitution, presidents have something called veto power. Look, he has now said repeatedly 30 years this and 30 years that. So let me talk about my 30 years in public service. I’m very glad to do so. Eight million kids every year have health insurance because when I was first lady I worked with Democrats and Republicans to create the children’s health insurance program. Hundreds of thousands of kids now have a chance to be adopted because I worked to change our adoption and foster care system. After 9/11, I went to work with Republican mayor, governor and president to rebuild New York and to get health care for our first responders who were suffering because they had run towards danger and gotten sickened by it. Hundreds of thousands of National Guard and reserve members have healthcare because of work that I did and children have safer medicines because I was able to pass a law that required the dosing to be more carefully done. When I was secretary of state, I went around the world advocating for our country, but also advocating for women’s rights to make sure that women had a decent chance to have a better life and negotiated a treaty with Russia to lower nuclear weapons. 400 pieces of legislation have my name on it as a sponsor or cosponsor when I was a senator for eight years. I worked very hard and was proud to be reelected in New York by an even bigger margin than I had been elected the first time. And as president, I will take that work, that bipartisan work, that finding common ground. Because you have to be able to get along with people to get things done in Washington. And I have proven that I can and for thirty years, I’ve produced results for the people. Raddatz : We’re going to move on to Syria. Both of you have mentioned that. Trump : But she said a lot of things that were false. I think we should— Raddatz : Mr. Trump, we will go on. Mr. Trump, we are going to move on. The heart breaking video of a 5-year-old Syrian boy named Omran sitting in an ambulance after being pulled from the rubble after an airstrike in Aleppo focused the world’s attention on the horrors of the war in Syria, with 136 million views on Facebook alone. But there are much worse images coming out of Aleppo every day now where in the past few weeks alone 400 have been killed, at least 100 of them children. Just days ago, the State Department called for a war crimes investigation of the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad and of its ally, Russia, for their bombardment of Aleppo. So this next question comes from social media, through Facebook. Diane from Pennsylvania asks If you were president, what would you do about Syria and the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo? Isn’t is a lot like wasn’t it like the Holocaust when the U.S. waited too long before we helped? Secretary Clinton, we will begin with your two minutes. Clinton : The situation in Syria is catastrophic and everyday that goes by, we see the results of the regime, by Assad in partnership with the Iranians on the ground and the Russians in the air, bombarding places in particular aleppo, where there are hundreds of thousands of people, probably about 250,000 people still left. And there is a determined effort by the Russian Air Force to destroy Aleppo in order to eliminate the last of the Syrian rebels who are really holding out against the Assad regime. Russia hasn’t paid any attention to ISIS. They are interested in keeping Assad in power. So I, when I was secretary of state advocated, and I advocate today a no-fly and safe zones. We need some leverage with the Russians because they are not going to come to the negotiating table for a diplomatic resolution unless there is leverage over them. And we have to work more closely with our partners and allies on the ground. But I want to emphasize that what is at stake here is the ambitions and aggressiveness of Russia. Russia has decided it is all in in Syria, and they’ve also decided who they want to see become President of the United States too and it’s not me. I stood up to Russia; I’ve taken on Putin and others and I would do that as president. I think wherever we can cooperate with Russia, that’s fine and I did, as Secretary of State, that’s how we got a treaty reducing nuclear weapons, it’s how we got the sanctions on Iran that put a lid on the nuclear weapons program without firing a single shot. So I would go with more leverage than we have now. But I support the efforts to investigate for crimes, war crimes, committed by the Syrians and the Russians and try to hold them accountable. Raddatz : Thank you Secretary Clinton. Mr. Trump. Trump : First of all, she was there as Secretary of State with the so-called line in the sand. Clinton : No I wasn’t, I was gone. I hate to interrupt you. At some point we need to get the facts out. Trump : You were still in contact with the White House. And perhaps sadly, Obama probably still listened to you. I don’t think he would listen to you very much anymore. Obama draws the line in the sand. It was laughed at all over the world what happened. Now, with that being said, she talks tough against Russia, but our nuclear program has fallen way behind and they have gone wild with their nuclear program. Not good. Our government shouldn’t have allowed that to happen. Russia is new in terms of nuclear and we are old and tired and exhausted in terms of nuclear. A very bad thing. Now, she talks tough. She talks really tough against Putin and against Assad. She talks in favor of the rebels. She doesn’t even know who the rebels are. You know, every time we take rebels whether it’s in Iraq or anywhere else, we’re arming people. And you know what happens? They end up being worse than the people. Look at what she did in Libya with Qaddafi. Qaddafi is out. It’s a mess. And by the way, ISIS has a good chunk of their oil. I’m sure you’ve probably have heard that. It was a disaster. The fact is almost everything she has done has been a mistake and it’s been a disaster. But if you look at Russia, just take a look at Russia and look at what they did this week, and I agree she wasn’t there, but possibly she’s consulted. We sign a peace treaty and everyone’s all excited, but what Russia did with Assad and by the way with Iran who you made very powerful with the dumbest deal perhaps I have seen in the history of making, with the $150 billion and with the $1.7 billion in cash, which is enough cash to fill up this room, but look at that deal. Iran and Russia are against us. So she wants to fight. She wants to fight for rebels. There’s one problem. You don’t even know who the rebels are. So what’s the purpose? Raddatz : Mr. Trump, your two minutes is up. Trump : I don’t like Assad at all, but Assad is killing ISIS. Russia is killing ISIS and Iran is killing ISIS and they have lined up because of weak foreign policy. Raddatz : Mr. Trump, let me repeat the question. If you were president, what would you do about Syria and the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo, and I want to remind you what your running mate said. He said provocations by Russia need to be met with American strength and that if Russia continues to be involved in airstrikes along with the Syrian government forces of Assad, the United States of America should be prepared to use military force to strike the military targets of the Assad regime. Trump : Okay. He and I haven’t spoken, and I disagree. Raddatz : You disagree with your running mate? Trump : I disagree. Right now, Syria is fighting ISIS. We have people that want to fight both at the same time. But Syria is no longer Syria. Syria is Russia and it’s Iran who she made strong and Kerry and Obama made into a powerful nation and a rich nation, very quickly, very, very quickly. I believe we have to get ISIS. We have to worry about ISIS before we can get too much more involved. She had a chance to do something with Syria, they had a chance, and that was the line. Raddatz : What are do you think will happen if Aleppo falls? Trump : Aleppo is a disaster, humanitarian wise. Raddatz : What will happen if it falls? Trump : I think that it basically has fallen, okay? It basically has fallen. Let me tell you something: you take a look at Mosul. The biggest problem I have with the stupidity of our foreign policy. We have Mosul, they think a lot of the ISIS leaders are in Mosul. So we have announcements out of Washington and coming out Iraq. We will be attacking Mosul in three weeks or four weeks. So all of these bad leaders from ISIS are leaving Mosul. Why can’t they do it quietly? We can’t they do the attack and make it a sneak attack and after the attack is made inform the American public that we have knocked out the leaders; we’ve have a tremendous success. People leave. Why do they have to say we are going to be attacking Mosul within the next four to six weeks, which is what they’re saying. How stupid is our country? Raddatz : There are sometimes reasons the military does that. Psychological warfare. Trump : I can’t think of any. Raddatz : It might be to get civilians out. Trump: I can’t think of any. I have 200 generals and admirals who endorsed me. I have 21 congressional Medal of Honor recipients who endorse me. We talk about it all the time. They understand. Why can’t they do something secretively where they go in and knock out the leadership. Why would these people stay there? I’ve been reading there for weeks about Mosul… Raddatz : Tell me what your strategy is it. Trump: That it’s the harbor between Raqqa and Mosul, this is why where they think the ISIS leaders are. Why would they be staying…they are not staying there anymore. They are gone. Because everybody is talking about how Iraq which is us with our leadership goes into fight Mosul. With the 200 admirals and generals, they can’t believe it. General George Patton and General Douglas MacArthur are spinning in their grave at the stupidity of what we are doing in the Middle East. Raddatz : I’m going to go to Secretary Clinton, you want Assad to go, you advocated arming rebels, but it looks like that may be too late for Aleppo. You talk about diplomatic efforts, those that failed, ceasefires have failed. Would you introduce the threat of U.S. military force beyond a no-fly zone against the Assad regime to back up diplomacy? Clinton : I would not use American ground forces in Syria. I think that would be a very serious mistake. I don’t think American troops should be holding territory which is what they would have to do as an occupying force. I don’t think that is a smart strategy. I do think the use of special forces, which we’re using, the use of enablers and trainers in Iraq, which has had positive effects, are very much in our interests. So I do support what is happening. Raddatz : What would you do different than than President Obama is doing? Trump : Everything. Clinton : Martha, I hope that by the time I am president that we will have pushed ISIS out of Iraq. I do think that there is a good chance that we can take Mosul. And you know, Donald said he knows more about ISIS than the generals. No, he doesn’t. There are a lot of very important planning going on and some of it is to signal to the Sunnis in the are,a as well as Kurdish Peshmerga fighters that we all need to be in this. And that takes a lot of planning and preparation. I would go after Baghdadi . I would specifically target Baghdadi. Because I think our targeting of Al Qaeda leaders, and I was involved in a lot of those operations, highly classified ones, made a difference. I think that could help. I would consider arming the Kurds. The kurds have been our best partners in Syria, as well as Iraq. And I know there’s a lot of concern about that in some circles, but they should have the equipment they need so that Kurdish and Arab fighters on the ground are the principal way we take Raqqa after pushing ISIS out of Iraq. Trump : You know that’s funny. She went over a minute over and you don’t stop her. When I go one second over— Raddatz : You had many answers. Trump : It’s very interesting. Cooper : We have a question from James Carter. Carter : My question is, do you believe you can be a devoted president to all the people in the United States. Cooper : That question begins for Mr. Trump. Trump : Absolutely. I mean, she calls our people deplorable. A large group. And irredeemable. I will be a president for all of our people. And I’lll be a people that will turn our inner cities around and will give strength to people and will give economics to people and will bring jobs back. Because NAFTA, signed by her husband, is perhaps the greatest disaster trade deal in the history of the world. Not of this country. It stripped us of manufacturing jobs. We lost our jobs, we lost our money, we lost our plants. It is a disaster. And now she wants to sign TPP, even though she said now she’s for it. She called it the gold standard. And by the way, at the last debate she lied. Because it turns out that she did say the gold standard, and said she didn’t say it. They actually said that she lied. Okay. And she lied. Because it turned out she did say the gold standard and she said she didn’t say it. But she lied about a lot of things. I would be a president for all of the people. African-Americans, the inner cities. Devastating what’s happening to our inner cities. She’s been talking about for years. As usual, she talks about it, nothing happens. She doesn’t get it done. Same with the Latino Americans. The Hispanic Americans. The same exact thing. They talk. Theydon’t get it done. You go into the inner cities, it’s 45% poverty. African-Americans now 45% poverty in the inner cities. The education is a disaster. Jobs are essentially nonexistent. I mean, I’ve been saying in big speeches where I have 20 and 30,000 people. What do you have to lose? It can’t get worse? She has been talking about the inner cities for 25 years. Nothing is going to ever happen. Let me tell you, if she is president of the United States, nothing’s going to happen. it’s going to be talk. All of her friends, the taxes we are talking about. And i would just get it by osmosis. She is not doing me favors, but by doing all the others favors, she is doing me favors. But I will tell you the is all talk and it doesn’t get done. All you have to do is take a look at her senate run, take a look at upstate New York. Cooper : Your two minutes is up. Trump : It turned out to be a disaster. Cooper : You have two minutes. Clinton : Well, 67% of the people voted to reelect me when I ran for my second term, and I was very proud and very humbled by that. Mr. Carter, I have tried my entire life to do what I can to support children and families. You know, right out of law school I went to work for the children’s defense fund. Donald talks a lot about the 30 years I’ve been in public service. I’m proud of that. You know, I started off as a young lawyer working against discrimination against African-American children and schools and in the criminal justice system. I worked to make sure that kids with disabilities could get a public education, something I cared very much about. I worked with Latinos, one of my favorite jobs in politics was down in south Texas registering Latino citizens to be able to vote. So I have a deep devotion, to use your absolutely correct words, to making sure that every American feels like he or she has a place in our country. And I think when you look at the letters that I get, a lot of people are worried that maybe they wouldn’t have a place in Donald Trump’s America. They write me and one woman wrote me about her son, Felix. She adopted him from Ethiopia when he was a toddler. He is 10 years old now. This is the only country he has ever known. And he listens to Donald on TV and he said to his mother one day: ‘will he send me back to Ethiopia if he gets elected?’ You know children listen to what is being said to go back to the very, very first question. There is a lot of fear. In fact teachers and parents are calling it the Trump effect. Bullying is up and a lot of people are feeling uneasy, a lot of kids are expressing their concerns. First and foremost, I will do everything I can to reach out to everybody. Democrats, Republicans, independents, and people across our country. If you don’t vote for me, I still want to be your president. I want to be the best president I can be for everyone. Cooper : Secretary Clinton, your two minutes is up. I want to follow on with something Donald Trump said to you. A comment you made last month. You said half of Donald Trump supporters are quote deplorables. Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, islamophobic. You later said you regretted saying half. You didn’t express regret for using the term deplorables. To Mr. Carter’s question, how can you unite a country if you’ve written off tens of millions of Americans? Clinton : Well within hours I said I was sorry about the way I talked about that because my argument is not with his supporters, it’s with him and the divisive campaign he has run and the inciting of violence at his rallies and the very brutal kinds of comments about not just women, but all Americans. All kinds of Americans. And what he said about African-Americans and Latinos, about Muslims, about POWs, about immigrants, about people with disabilities, he’s never apologized for. So I do think that a lot of tone and tenor… I am proud of the campaigns Bernie Sanders and I ran. We ran a campaign based on issue, not insults. He is supporting me 100% because we talked about what we wanted to do. We might have had differences and we had a lot of debate, but we believed that we could make the country better and I was proud of that. Trump : We have a divided nation. We have a very divided nation. You look at Charlotte, you look at Baltimore, you look at the violence taking place in the inner cities. Chicago. You look at Washington, D.C. We have an increase in murder within our cities, the biggest in 45 years. We have a divided nation because of people like her. Believe me, she has tremendous hate in her heart. When she said deplorables, she meant it. And when she said irredeemable, they’re irredeemable! You didn’t mention that, but when she said they’re irredeemable, to me that might have been worse. She’s got tremendous hatred. And this country cannot take another four years of Barack Obama and that’s what you are getting with her. Cooper : Mr. Trump, let me follow-up with you. In 2008, you wrote in one of your books that the most important characteristic of a good leader is discipline. You said if a leader doesn’t have it, quote he or she won’t be one for long. In the days after the first debate, you sent out a series of tweets from 3:00 A.M. To 5:00 A.M. including one that told people to check out a sex tape. Is that the kind of discipline… Trump : No it wasn’t check out a sex tape. It was take a look at this person she build up to be this wonderful, uh, girl scout, who was no girl scout. Cooper : You mentioned ‘‘sex tape.’ Trump : Just so you understand: When she said 3 o’clock in the morning, take a look at Benghazi. She said who is going to answer the call at 3 o’clock in the morning, guess what? She didn’t answer. Because when ambassador Stevens — she said she was awake of at 3:00 in the morning. And she also sent a tweet out at 3 o’clock in the morning, but I won’t mention that. But he said she will be awake, the famous thing ‘we’re going to answer the call at 3:00 in the morning. Guess what happened, Ambassador Stevens, Ambassador Stevens sent 600 requests for help and the only one she talked to was Sidney Blumenthal who’s her friend and not a good guy, by the way. So she shouldn’t be talking about that. Now, tweeting happens to be a modern day form of communication. You can like it or not. Between Facebook and Twitter, I have 25 million people. It’s a very effective way of communication. So you can put it down, but it’s an effective form of communication. I’m not unproud of it to be honest with you. Cooper : Secretary Clinton, does Mr. Trump have the discipline to be a good leader? Clinton : No. Trump : I’m shocked to hear that. Clinton : Well, it’s not only my opinion, but it’s the opinion of many others. National security experts, Republicans, former Republican members of congress. But it’s in part because those of us who have had the great privilege of seeing this job up close and know how difficult it is and it’s not just because I watched my husband take a $300 billion deficit and turn it into a $200 billion surplus and 23 million new jobs were created and incomes went up for everybody. Everybody. African-American incomes went up 33%. And it’s not just because worked with George W. Bush after 9/11 and I was very proud that when I told them what the city need and what we needed to recover, he said you got it and he never wavered. He stuck with me. And I have worked and i admire President Obama. He inherited the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. That was a terrible time for our country. Cooper : we have to move along. Clinton : 9 million people lost their jobs, five million homes were lost. Raddatz : Secretary Clinton—we are moving on. Clinton : And $13 trillion in family wealth was wiped out. We are back on the right track. He would send us back into a recession with his tax plan. Raddatz : Secretary Clinton we are moving to an audience question, we are almost out of time and we have another question. Mr. Trump, we are moving on. Trump : We have the slowest growth and our country is a disaster. Raddatz : Mr. Trump, we want to get to the audience. Thank you very much, both of you. We have another audience question. Beth Miller has a question for both candidates. Miller : Good evening. Perhaps the most important aspect of this election is the Supreme Court justice. What would you prioritize size as the most important aspect of selecting a Supreme Court justice? Raddatz : We begin with your two minutes, Secretary Clinton. Clinton : Thank you. You are right. This is one of the most important issues in this election. I want to appoint Supreme Court justices who understand the way the world really works, who have real life experience. Who have not just been in a big law firm and maybe clerked for a judge and then gotten on the bench, but maybe they tried more cases. Actually understand what people are up against. Because I think the current court has gone in the wrong direction. I would want to see the Supreme Court reverse Citizens United and get dark unaccountable money out of our politics. Donald doesn’t agree with that. I would like the Supreme Court to understand that voting rights are a big problem in many parts of the country. That we don’t do always do everything we can to make it possible for people of color and older people and young people to be able to exercise their franchise. I want a Supreme Court that will stick with Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose, and I want a Supreme Court that will stick with marriage equality. Now, Donald put forth of the names of people he would consider. And among the ones that he has suggested are people who would reverse Roe v. Wade and reverse marriage equality. I think that would would be a terrible mistake and take us backwards. I want a Supreme Court that doesn’t always side with corporate interests. I want a Supreme Court that understands because you are wealthy and you can give more money to something doesn’t mean you have more rights or should have any more rights than anything else. So I have clear views about what I want to see to change the balance on the Supreme Court and I regret deeply that the senate has not done its job and they have not permitted a vote on the person that President Obama, a highly qualified person. They have not given him a vote to be able to have the full complement of nine Supreme Court justices. I think that was a dereliction of duty. I hope they will see their way to doing it, but if I am so fortunate as to be president, I will immediately move to make sure that we fill that. We have nine justices and that they get to work on behalf of our people. Raddatz : Secretary Clinton. Thank you. You are out of time. Mr. Trump? Trump : Justice Scalia, great judge, died recently and we have a vacancy. I am looking to appoint judges very much in the mold of justice Scalia. I am looking for judges and have actually picked 20 of them. So that people would say: Highly respected. Highly thought of and actually very beautifully reviewed by just about everybody. But people that will respect the Constitution of the United States. And I think that this is so important. Also, the Second Amendment which is totally under siege by people like Hillary Clinton. They’ll respect the second amendment and what it stands for and what it represents. Now, Hillary mentioned contributions. Just so you could, I will have in my race more than $100 million put in of my money. Meaning, I’m not taking all of this big money from all of these corporations like she is doing. What I ask is this: so I am putting in… by the time it’s finished, I’ll have more than 100 million dollars invested. Pretty much self-funding mine. We’re raising money for the Republican party and we’re doing tremendously on the small donations. $61 average or so. I ask Hillary: why doesn’t she make $250,000 by being in office? She used the power of her office to make a lot of money. Why isn’t she funding.. Not for a hundred million, why don’t you put 10 or 20 or 25 or $30 million into your campaign. It’s $30 million less for special interests that will tell the you exactly what to do and it would really be a nice sign to the American public. Why aren’t you putting some money in? You have a lot of it. You made a lot of it because of the fact that you’ve been in office. You made a lot while you were secretary of state, actually. So why aren’t you putting your own money into your campaign, just curious? Raddatz : We will get on to one more question. Clinton : The question was about the supreme court. I respect the second amendment, but I believe there should be background checks and we should close the gun show loophole and close the online loophole… Raddatz : We have one more question. Cooper : We have one more question from Ken Bone about energy policy. Bone : What steps will your energy policy take to meet our energy needs, while at the same time remaining environmentally-friendly and minimizing job loss for fossil power plant workers? Cooper : Mr. Trump, two minutes. Trump : Such a great question because energy is under siege by the Obama administration. Under absolute siege. The EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, is killing these energy companies. And foreign companies are now coming in. Buying so many of our different plants and then rejiggering the plant, so they take care of their oil. We are killing, absolutely killing our energy business in this country. Now I am all for alternative forms of energy including: wind and solar, etc. But we need much more than wind and solar. And you look at the miners, Hillary Clinton wants to put the miners out of business. There is a thing called clean coal. Coal will last for 1,000 years in this country. Now we have natural gas, and so other things because of technology, we have unbelievable, we have found over the last seven years, we found tremendous wealth right under our feet. So good, especially when you have $20 trillion in debt. I will bring our energy companies back and they will be able to compete and they’ll make money and pay off our national debt and budget deficits which are tremendous. But we are putting our energy companies out of business. We have to bring back our workers. You take a look at what’s happening to steel and the cost of steel and China dumping vast amounts steel all over the United States, which essentially is killing our steelworkers and steel companies. We have to guard our energy companies, we have to make it possible. The EPA is so restrictive that they are putting our energy companies out of business. And all you have to do is go to a great place like West Virginia or places like Ohio which is phenomenal or places like Pennsylvania and you see what they are doing to the people, miners and others in the energy business. It’s a disgrace. It’s an absolute disgrace. Cooper : Your time is up. Secretary Clinton, two minutes. Clinton : Well, that was very interesting. First of all, China is illegally dumping steel in the United States and Donald Trump is buying it to build his buildings, putting steelworkers and American steel plants out of business. That’s something that I fought against as a senator and something I would have a trade prosecutor to make sure we don’t get taken advantage of by China on steel or anything else. You know because it sounds like you are in the business or you’re aware of people in the business. You know that we are now for the first time energy independent. We are not dependent on the Middle East, but the Middle East controls a lot of prices. So the price of oil has been way down and that has a damaging effect on a lot the oil companies, right? We are however producing a lot of natural gas that serves as a bridge to more renewable fuels and I think that’s an important transition. We’ve got to remain energy independent. It gives us much more power and freedom than to be worried about what goes on in the Middle East. We have enough worried over there without having to worry about that. So I have a comprehensive energy policy, but it really does include fighting climate change because I think that is a serious problem. And I support moving towards more clean renewable energy as quickly as we can. Because I think we can be the 21st century clean energy superpower and create millions of new jobs and businesses. But I want to be sure that we don’t leave people behind. That’s why I’m the only candidate from the very beginning of this campaign who had a plan to help us revitalize coal country. Because those coal miners and their fathers and grandfathers, they dug that coal out, a lot of them lost their lives. They were injured. But they turn the lights on and powered our factories. I don’t want to walk away from them. So we’ve got to do something for them. But the price of coal is down worldwide. We have to look at this comprehensively and that’s what I have proposed. I hope you will go to hillaryclinton.com and read my entire policy. Raddatz : We sneak in one more question from Karl Becker. Becker : My question to both of you is, regardless of the current rhetoric, would either of you name one positive thing that you respect in one another? Raddatz : Mr. Trump, would you like to go first? Clinton : Well, I certainly will, because I think that’s a very fair and important question. Well, I respect his children. His children are incredibly able and devoted and I think that says a lot about Donald. I don’t agree with nearly anything else he says or does, but I do respect that and think that is something that as a mother and a grandmother is very important to me. So I believe that this election has become in part so conflict-oriented, so intense because there is a lot at stake. This is not an ordinary time and this is not an ordinary election. We are going to be choosing a president who will set policy for not just four or eight years, but because some of the important decisions we have to make at home and around the world from the Supreme Court to energy and so much else, and so there is a lot at stake it’s one of the most consequential elections that we’ve had — and that’s why I tried to put forth specific policies and plans — trying to get it off of the personal and put it on to what it is on I want to do as president. And that’s why I hope people will check on that for themselves. So that they can see that yes, I spent 30 years, actually a little more, working to help kids and families and I want to take all that experience to the White House and do that every single day. Raddatz : Mr. Trump? Trump : Well, I consider her statement about my children to be a very nice compliment. I don’t know if it was meant to be a compliment, but it is a great… I’m proud of my children. They have done a wonderful job and they have been wonderful, wonderful kids. So I consider that a compliment. I will say this about Hillary. She doesn’t quit and she doesn’t give up. I respect that. I tell it like it is. She is a fighter. I disagree with much of what she is fighting for, I do disagree with her judgment in many cases, but she does fights hard and doesn’t quit and she doesn’t give up, and I consider that a very good trait. Raddatz : Thanks to both of you. Cooper : I want to thank the university here and this concludes the town hall meeting. Thank you to Washington university and everybody who watched. Raddatz : Tune in on October 19 for the final debate at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. Good night, everyone.
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