MARTHA RADDATZ
Good evening, I’m Martha Raddatz from ABC News.
ANDERSON 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 a 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 have submitted questions online.
MARTHA RADDATZ
The people you see on this stage were chosen by the Gallup organization. They are all from the St. Louis area and told Gallup they haven't committed to a candidate. Each of them came here with questions they wanted to ask and we saw those 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 so we've asked the audience here 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.
(APPLAUSE)
MARTHA RADDATZ
ANDERSON COOPER
Thank you very much for being here. We’re going to 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 will go first. Our first question comes from Patrice Brock. Patrice?
AUDIENCE MEMBER
Thank you and good evening. The last presidential debate could've been rated as MA - mature audiences - per TV parental guidelines. Knowing that educators are tying the presidential debates to student’s homework, do you feel you are modeling appropriate and positive behavior for today's youth?
HILLARY CLINTON
Well thank you, are you a teacher? Yes, I think that that's a very good question because I've heard from lots of teachers and parents about some of their concerns, about some of the things that are being said and done in this campaign.
In an April 2016 survey by the Southern Poverty Law Center, more than two-thirds of teachers reported that students — especially immigrants, first-generation students and Muslims — have expressed fears about what might happen to them or their families after the election.
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 in to working on behalf of our country. I have a very positive and optimistic view about what we can do together. That's why the slogan of my campaign is stronger together.
Hillary Clinton talks about these ideas, about bringing Americans together and healing divisions, in virtually every speech she gives.
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 that we have the best education system 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's nothing, in my opinion, that America can't do.
Clinton has pledged to double federal funding for Head Start, Early Head Start and home visit programs; make pre-K for 4-year-olds universal, and make public colleges tuition-free for most families.
So that's why I hope that we will 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, where you come from, 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 for us to get the future that are children and our grandchildren deserve.
ANDERSON COOPER
Secretary Clinton, thank you. Mr. Trump, you have two minutes.
DONALD TRUMP
Well, I 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've gotten to know the people of the country over the last year and a half that I've been doing this as a politician. I cannot believe that 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 percent, 59 percent, 71 percent, 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 one hundred fifty billion dollars 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.
Health insurance premiums for families rose an average 3 percent last year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Premiums have risen 20 percent from 2011-2016, according to the Kaiser report. However, costs to families have increased even more because families are facing higher deductibles and copayments. In the past five years the average cost of health care to families before their insurance kicks in has risen 67 percent.
When I look at all of the things that I see and all the potential that our country has, we have such tremendous potential, whether it's in business and trade where we’re doing so badly.
The United States consistently has run trade deficits since 1976, primarily because of large imports of oil and low-cost consumer products.
Last year we had an almost 800 billion dollar trade deficit.
The 2015 foreign trade deficit was $531.5 billion.
In other words, trading with other countries we had 800 billion dollars deficit, that’s hard to believe. Inconceivable.
The Trump campaign has argued that a more muscular trade policy would boost federal revenue by $1.7 trillion over the next decade, partially offsetting the revenue loss from Trump’s proposed tax cuts. Outside economists are not convinced. The pro-trade Peterson Institute for International Economics warns that Trump’s threat of steep tariffs on imports from China and Mexico could unleash a trade war, costing 4 million jobs and driving the economy into recession.
Clinton is not calling for new import tariffs, but like Trump she opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Peterson says each year’s delay in TPP reduces GDP by tens of billions of dollars.
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 policemen were shot - two killed - and this is happening on a weekly basis. We have to bring back respect to law enforcement.
Two police officers in Palm Springs, Calif., were shot and killed this weekend. One was months from retirement; the other was a new mother. A recent poll by researchers at Pew concluded that faith in law enforcement breaks sharply along racial lines.
At the same time we have to take care of people on all sides. We need justice. But I want to do things that haven’t been done including fixing and making our interest that is better for the African-American citizens that are so great and for the Latinos, Hispanics, and I look forward to doing it - it’s called make America great again.
ANDERSON 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 the genitals. That is sexual assault. You brag that you have sexually assaulted women. Do you understand that?
This is the tape in question. "I'm automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything,” he said. He added, "Grab them by the p****. You can do anything."
DONALD TRUMP
No I didn't say that at all.
He did say that. The exact words were, “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait.”
I don't think you understood what was said. This was locker room talk. I'm not proud of it. I apologized to my family. I apologized to the American people. Certainly I'm 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 men frankly drowning people in steel cages, where you have wars and horrible, horrible sites all over where you have so many bad things happening, this is like medieval times, we haven't seen anything like 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 they see what's going on. Yes, I'm very embarrassed by it. I hate it. But it’s locker room talk and it's one of those things. I will knock the hell out of ISIS, we’re 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.
ANDERSON COOPER
So Mr. Trump.
DONALD TRUMP
And we can get onto much more important things and much bigger things.
ANDERSON COOPER
Just for the record though are you saying that what you said on that bus eleven years ago that you did not actually kiss women without consent or grope women without consent?
DONALD TRUMP
I have great respect for women. Nobody has more respect for women than I do.
Trump has had many occasions to make this claim over the course of the campaign, dating back to his tense interaction with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly during the first Republican primary debate in Cleveland in August 2015, when Kelly reminded him of his history of offensive comments about women. Here is a partial list compiled by PBS.
ANDERSON COOPER
So for the record you're saying you never did.
DONALD TRUMP
Frankly, you hear these things are said and I was embarrassed by it but I have tremendous respect for women.
ANDERSON COOPER
Have you ever done those things?
DONALD TRUMP
And women 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, we’re going to have borders in our country which we don't have now.
The New York Times reported in May that a Miss USA contestant named Temple Taggart said Trump introduced himself by kissing her “directly on the lips.” After the 1995 video came out on Friday CNN’s Erin Burnett reported that a friend of hers had also been kissed by Trump without consent.
People are pouring into our country and they are coming in from the Middle East and other places. We’re going to make America safe again. We’re going to make America great again but we’re going to make America safe again. And we’re going to 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. American people.
ANDERSON COOPER
So Mr. Trump -
DONALD TRUMP
And we can get onto much more important things a much bigger things.
ANDERSON COOPER
Just for the record though are you saying that what you said on that bus eleven years go by you did not actually kiss women without consent or grope women without consent?
DONALD TRUMP
I have great respect for women. Nobody has more respect for women that I do.
ANDERSON COOPER
So for the record you're saying you never did.
DONALD TRUMP
Frankly you hear these things are said and I was embarrassed by it but I have tremendous respect for women.
ANDERSON COOPER
Have you ever done those things?
DONALD TRUMP
And women have respect for me and I will tell you know I have not and I will tell you that I'm going to make our country safe we’re going to have borders in our country which we don't have now. People are pouring into our country and are coming in from the Middle East and other places. Were going to make America safe again. Were going to make America great again but we’re going to make America safe again. And we’re going to 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.
Since the tape came out on Friday, news articles have quoted one woman accusing Trump of kissing her unwantedly and another woman accusing him of touching her crotch unwantedly. However, these are only allegations.
ANDERSON COOPER
Thank You Mr. Trump.
DONALD TRUMP
Other nations are taking our jobs and are taking our wealth.
ANDERSON COOPER
Thank You Mr. Trump. Secretary Clinton, do you want to respond?
HILLARY CLINTON
Well, like everyone else I spent a lot of time thinking over the last forty eight hours about what we heard and saw. You know, with prior Republican nominees for president, I disagreed with them -- on politics, policies, and 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.
This has been a key idea in Clinton’s campaign since moving into the general election. As BuzzFeed reported, there was a conscious choice by Clinton and her campaign to separate Trump from the Republican Party as a whole, painting him as an outlier.
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've seen this throughout the campaign. We have seen him insult women. We've seen him rate women on their appearance, ranking them from one to ten. We've seen him embarrass woman 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.
MARTHA RADDATZ
And we want to get to some questions from online.
DONALD TRUMP
Well am I allowed to respond to that? I assume I am.
MARTHA RADDATZ
Yes, you can respond to that.
DONALD TRUMP
It’s just words, folks. It’s just words. And those words I've been hearing them for many years. I heard them when they were running for the Senate in New York where Hillary was going to bring back jobs upstate New York. And she failed. I’ve heard them when Hillary's 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 was a United States senator. She campaigned where the primary part of her campaign-
MARTHA RADDATZ
Mr. Trump. I want to get to audience questions and online questions.
DONALD TRUMP
So, she’s allowed to do that but I'm not allowed to respond. Sounds fair, sounds fair--
MARTHA RADDATZ
You going to get to respond right now. This tape is generating intense interest. In just forty eight hours, it’s 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 the 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 eight fifty nine, were you a different man or did that behavior continue until just recently? And you have two minutes for this.
DONALD TRUMP
That was locker room talk, as I told you. 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’m 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 was far worse -- what he’s done to women, there’s never been anyone in the history of politics in this nation who has been so abusive to women. So you could say anyway you want to say it, but Bill Clinton was abusive to women. Hillary Clinton attacked those same women and attacked them viciously.
Clinton called Gennifer Flowers, who had an affair with Bill Clinton, "some failed cabaret singer who doesn't even have much of a resume to fall back on" in a 1992 interview with ABC. Clinton also told Vanity Fair in 1992 that if she got a chance to cross-examine Flowers, she "would crucify her."
CNN reported that during a campaign stop in New Hampshire, in December 2015, a woman asked Clinton what she would say to Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey and Paula Jones. Clinton responded: "Well, I would say that everyone should be believed at first until they are disbelieved based on evidence."
While Trump has apologized publicly for his remarks, he has tried repeatedly to shift the focus to Bill Clinton’s history of sexual abuse allegations. It’s not clear how effective this strategy will be for him in maintaining support of the Republicans who so far are continuing to back his candidacy. Dozens of leading Republicans have called for Trump to step aside, and many more have denounced his remarks. Several, including his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, have indicated they expect Trump to show remorse.
Four of them here tonight. One of the women, who was a wonderful woman, 12 years old, was raped -- at twelve. Her client -- she represented, got him off. And she’s seen laughing on two separate occasions, laughing at the girl who was raped. Kathy Shelton, that young woman is here with us tonight.
Allegation: In 1975, then-27-year-old Hillary Rodham was the court-appointed lawyer for a 41-year-old man accused of raping a 12-year-old girl. Recordings taped for an interview years later on the trial but never published were unearthed by the Washington Free Beacon in 2014. They depict Clinton laughing several times while discussing the case in a casual and cynical way, implying at times that she thinks her client is guilty, according to the Washington Post.
A 2008 Newsday article said a 1975 affidavit signed by Clinton indicates that she questioned the 12-year-old’s honesty, saying she had made accusations in the past and had sought out older men. Shelton — whose name was not published at the time — said she had not realized that Clinton was the lawyer at the time, but in the Newsday article said she was sure “Hillary was just doing her job.” Shelton told The Daily Beast in 2014 that “Hillary Clinton took me through hell.”
Public Remarks by HRC: In response to the 2008 Newsday article, a Clinton spokesman said, “As an attorney and an officer of the court, she had an ethical and legal obligation to defend him to the fullest extent of the law. To act otherwise would have constituted a breach of her professional responsibilities.”
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.
Bill Clinton was impeached but the Senate acquitted him in 1999. Bill Clinton did settle the lawsuit with Paula Jones for $850,000.
Clinton was disbarred in Arkansas.
And I will tell you that when Hillary brings up a point like that and she talks about words that I said eleven years ago, I think it's disgraceful. And I think she should be ashamed of herself, if you want to know the truth.
(APPLAUSE)
MARTHA RADDATZ
Can we please hold the applause? Secretary Clinton, you have two minutes.
HILLARY 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 you want 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)
HILLARY CLINTON
And look, if this were just about one video, maybe what he's 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 quote “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. He owes our country an apology, and he needs to take responsibility for his actions and his words.
DONALD 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 he was saying exactly that.
We have fact-checked Trump’s birther claims previously (several times) online and on air. At the event in which Trump finally admitted that Obama was born in the U.S., he shifted the blame to Clinton’s campaign. We noted that Trump was trying to strike a “false equivalence” that does not compare to what he did: See here and here and here for more on Trump’s specific claims. As we noted, “There's a big difference between what fringe supporters of Clinton said at the time, who were disavowed by the candidate, and the campaign Trump himself undertook in the subsequent years.”
The you really owe him. Or the one who sent the picture to run your campaign -- the pictures around 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 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 friend, 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. I was so surprised to see him sign on with the devil. But when you talk about apology,I think the one that you should really be apologizing for -- and the thing that you should be apologizing for are the thirty three thousand e-mails that you deleted and that you acid washed and then the two boxes of e-mails and other things last week that were taken from an office and are now missing. And I'll tell you what, I didn’t think I'd say this, but I’m going to say it, 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 going to have a special prosecutor.
Trump has called for a special prosecutor for Clinton before, even though she was investigated by career prosecutors and FBI agents who closed the case with no charges. The FBI director, who used to be a registered Republican, has testified that Clinton did not lie to federal agents in the case. And those special prosecutors did not work so well in the 1990s, according to this recent NPR story.
When I speak, I go out and speak, the people of this country are furious. In my opinion, the people that have been long-term workers at the FBI are furious. There has never been anything like this where e-mails and you get a subpoena -- you get a subpoena and after getting the subpoena, you delete 33,000 e-mails. And then you acid wash them or bleach them, as you would say-- a very expensive process. So we're going to get a special prosecutor, and we’re going to look into it. Because you know what? People have been -- their lives have been destroyed for doing one fifth of what you’ve done. And it’s a disgrace. And honestly, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.
FBI Director James Comey found that Hillary Clinton and her aides were “extremely careless” in using her personal email server to send and receive classified material, including some that was classified at the time it was sent. But Comey recommended against criminal charges, saying “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”
The FBI uncovered work-related emails that were not included in the 30,000 Clinton provided to the State Department. Some of these were found by reviewing records of others with whom Clinton corresponded and some by laborious piecing together of email fragments. Comey added, “we found no evidence that any of the additional work-related emails were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them.”
The FBI reports two instances in which Justin Cooper, an aide to former President Bill Clinton, destroyed Hillary Clinton’s old mobile devices “by breaking them in half or hitting them with a hammer.” This was done after data from the old device had been backed up.
According to the FBI’s investigative report, operators of a commercial server that housed Clinton’s emails deleted a cache of emails in March 2015, after the House Select Committee on Benghazi issued a subpoena for those emails. Clinton had already turned over copies of many of these emails to the State Department in December 2014. Once the emails were turned over, a Clinton aide directed the commercial server company to delete any emails older than 60 days. Although that direction was given in December 2014, it was not carried out until March 2015, after the New York Times reported on Clinton’s use of a nongovernment server and the House Select Committee issued its subpoena. A worker at the commercial server told the FBI he realized he had failed to make the change three months earlier and deleted the emails following what he called an “oh s***” moment. “Clinton stated that she never deleted, nor did she instruct anyone to delete, her emails to avoid complying with [Freedom of Information Act], State, or FBI requests for information,” the FBI report said.
MARTHA RADDATZ
Secretary Clinton, I want to follow up on that. I’m going to let you talk about it --
HILLARY CLINTON
Everything he just said is absolutely false, but I’m not surprised. In the first debate -
MARTHA RADDATZ
The audience is to call down here.
HILLARY CLINTON
I told people that will be impossible to be fact checking Donald all the time. I'd never get talk about anything I want to do and how we’re 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, this debate, we had millions of people fact checking. So I expect we'll have millions more fact checking because, you know, it is -- it’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country.
DONALD TRUMP
Because you'd be in jail.
The FBI director said “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring a case against Hillary Clinton over her email messages. Law enforcement, traditionally, operates independently of the White House. When that barrier breaks, bad things can happen, like Watergate-era firings and resignations. See this NPR story.
This has been an ongoing and growing theme of Trump’s campaign, progressing from the idea that Hillary Clinton represents the status quo and the corrupt establishment to the idea that Clinton herself should be prosecuted. Last summer, as “Lock her up!” became a common chant aimed at Clinton from Trump’s supporters at his rallies, Trump would shake his head and tell crowds to elect him in November. Over time, he began to actively encourage the chant, even joining in on at least one occasion.
MARTHA RADDATZ
Secretary Clinton --
(APPLAUSE)
ANDERSON COOPER
We want to remind the audience to please not talk out loud. Please do not applaud. You’re just wasting time.
MARTHA RADDATZ
And Secretary Clinton, I do want to follow up on e-mails. You said your handling of your e-mails was a mistake. You disagreed with the director -- FBI Director James Comey -- calling your handling of classified information quote “extremely careless.” The FBI said that there are one hundred ten classified e-mails that were exchanged, eight of which were top-secret and that possible hostile actors did gain access to those e-mails. You don't call that extremely careless?
HILLARY CLINTON
Well Martha, first let me say. I’ve said it before but I’ll repeat it because I want everyone to hear it. That was a mistake, I take responsibility for using a personal email account. Obviously, if I were to do it over again, I would not. I'm 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 material ended up in the wrong hands.
FBI Director Comey said his agents were unable to conclude foreign powers had hacked into Clinton’s private email account. But he also said that given the sophistication of those state actors, the FBI wouldn’t necessarily detect their fingerprints.
I take classified materials very seriously and always have. When I was on the Senate armed service committee, I was privy to lots 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.
DONALD TRUMP
And yet she didn't know the letter “C” on a document. Right? She didn't even know what that word -- what that letter meant. You know, it's amazing. I'm watching Hillary go over facts. And she’s going after fact after fact. And she's lying again. Because she said she you know, what she did with the e-mails was fine. You think it was fine to delete 33,000 e-mails? I don't think so. She said that 33,000 e-mails had to do with her daughter's wedding, number one, and a yoga class. Well maybe we’ll give three or three or four or five or something. Thirty three thousand e-mails deleted, and now she is saying there wasn't anything wrong. And more importantly, that was after getting the subpoena. That wasn’t before that was after she got it from the United States Congress. And I’ll be honest. I am so disappointed in Congressmen, including Republicans, for allowing this to happen. Our Justice Department, where her husband goes to the back of an airplane for 30 minutes, talks to the Attorney General days before a ruling on her case…
Both Bill Clinton and the attorney general said they did not discuss the investigation, but the meeting created a huge firestorm, described here.
But for you to say, that there is nothing wrong with you deleting thirty nine thousand e-mails, again, you should be ashamed of yourself. What you did, and this is after getting a subpoena from the United States Congress.
ANDERSON COOPER
We have to move on. Secretary Clinton you can respond and then we have to move.
DONALD TRUMP
Let alone after getting the subpoena from the United States Congress.
ANDERSON COOPER
Secretary Clinton you can respond, but we have to move on to an audience question.
HILLARY CLINTON
Look, it's just not true. And so please go to -
ANDERSON COOPER
Allow her to respond please.
HILLARY CLINTON
Personal e-mails, not official. Well, we turned over thirty five thousand so -
DONALD TRUMP
What about the other fifteen thousand?
ANDERSON COOPER
Please allow her to respond. She didn’t talk when you talked.
HILLARY CLINTON
Yes, that's true I didn't.
DONALD TRUMP
That’s because you have nothing to say.
HILLARY CLINTON
I didn’t in the first debate. And I'm going to try not to in this debate because I would like to get to the questions that the people have brought here tonight to talk to us about.
DONALD TRUMP
And get off this question.
HILLARY CLINTON
Okay Donald, I know you are into big diversion tonight, anything to avoid talking about your campaign and the way it is exploding. And the way Republicans are leaving you. But let's at least focus on some of the issues that people care about tonight. Let's get to their questions.
ANDERSON COOPER
We have a question here from Ken. Karpowitz. He has a question about healthcare. Ken?
DONALD TRUMP
I'd like to know Anderson, why aren’t you bringing up the emails? I’d like to know. It hasn’t been finished at all.
ANDERSON COOPER
Ken Karpowitz has a question.
DONALD TRUMP
It's nice - it's one on three.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
Affordable Care Act, known as Obama care. It is not affordable. Premiums have gone up. Deductibles have gone up. Co-pays have gone up. Prescriptions have gone up. And the coverage has gone down. What will you do to bring the costs down and make coverage better?
ANDERSON COOPER
That first one goes to Secretary Clinton because you started up the last one to the audience.
HILLARY CLINTON
He wants to start, he can start. No go-ahead, Donald.
DONALD TRUMP
No, I’m a gentleman. Hillary, go ahead.
ANDERSON COOPER
Secretary Clinton?
HILLARY CLINTON
Well, I think Donald was about to say he's going to 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, co-pays, deductibles, prescription drug costs. And I have laid out a series of actions that we can take to try and get those costs down. But here’s what I don't want people to forget when we’re talking about reigning in the costs, which has to be the highest priority of the next president. When the Affordable Care Act passed, it wasn't just that twenty million people got insurance that did not have it before. But that in and of itself was a good thing. I meet these people all the time and they tell me what a difference having the insurance meant to them and their families. But everybody else, the one hundred and seventy 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 pre-existing condition. Number two, no lifetime limits, which is a big deal if you have serious health problems. Number three, women cannot 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.
The Affordable Care Act mandates that health insurance cover a minimal set of health care services, including the ones listed here. And it also bans insurance companies from refusing insurance to people who have pre-existing conditions
Something that didn’t happen before. So I want to very much to save what works and what is good about the Affordable Care act. But we have got to get costs down, we have 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 just mentioned are lost to everybody. Not just people who get their health insurance on the exchange, and then we would have to start all over again. Right now, we are at ninety percent health insurance coverage. That is the highest we have ever been in our country.
ANDERSON COOPER
Secretary Clinton, your time is up.
HILLARY CLINTON
So I want to ask to get to an hundred percent but get costs down and keep quality up.
ANDERSON COOPER
Mr. Trump you have two minutes.
DONALD 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 is going up at numbers that nobody has ever seen worldwide. Nobody has ever seen numbers like this for health care. It is only getting worse. In seventeen, it implodes by itself.
Obamacare has pushed the uninsured rate to an all-time low of just over 9 percent while extending coverage to some 20 million people (including Medicaid expansion, exchanges and young adults on family plans). The uninsured rate would be lower still had the 19 holdout states expanded Medicaid.
Competition on the exchanges is shrinking. Fewer insurance companies are playing, and 19 percent of exchange enrollees will have just one company to choose from in 2017. (That’s up from 2 percent in 2016.) Sixty-two percent of enrollees will still have at least three choices. The problem tends to be worse in rural areas and in the South. Premiums in the exchanges are also increasing. McKinsey Center looked at 18 states and found an average increase of 11 percent for the benchmark plan next year. Some of that increase will be absorbed by the federal government as most exchange subscribers receive a subsidy. A study by the Urban Institute finds that even without the subsidy, exchange plans cost an average of 10 percent less than employer-provided coverage.
Their method of fixing it is to go back and ask Congress for more money. More and more money. We have right now have almost twenty trillion dollars in debt. Obamacare will never work. It is 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.
The subsidies to individuals who buy health insurance under the Affordable Care Act are estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to be about $500 million over 10 years or about $50 million a year, out of a total federal budget of $4 trillion. However, Obamacare also expanded Medicaid coverage in many states, putting about 10 million more people into health plans that are fully paid for by the federal government. Including that spending, and subsidies for employers who provide insurance to their workers, total federal subsidies for health care are about $660 billion, according to the CBO.
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.
Buying insurance across state lines is a perennial Republican favorite. It has gone nowhere in the decade-plus years it has been proposed. Opponents say it would reduce standards for insurance coverage to the lowest levels out there. For example, people living in a state with strong insurance protections — like New York or California — would lose those protections if they were buying a policy in a low-regulation state like Texas. People might save money on premiums this way, but they ultimately might suffer. The conservative Heritage Foundation maintains that individuals should be able to purchase the health plan that "best meets their needs regardless of the location of the issuer."
We want competition. You will have the finest health care plan there is. She wants to go to a single-payer plan, which would be a disaster. Somewhat similar to Canada. And if you haven't noticed the Canadians, when they need a big operation, they come into the United States, in many cases. Because their system is so slow, it is catastrophic in certain ways. But she wants to go to single-payer.
Clinton does not support single-payer. She supports expanding Medicare to people 55 and over but has not come out in support of a complete overhaul of the health system so that it would be more like Canada or many European health systems.
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 no one has ever believed, but your deductibles are going up. So that unless you get hit by a truck, you are never going to be able to use it. It is a disastrous plan and it has to be repealed and replaced.
According to recent analyses from Rand and the Commonwealth Fund, Clinton’s plan could potentially cost much more than Trump’s — hers could cost up to $90 billion, compared with his $41 billion. However, the analyses found that Clinton’s “would increase the number of insured individuals by 400,000 to 9.6 million, and decrease consumers’ health spending relative to current law.” Trump’s plan “would increase the number of uninsured individuals by 16 million to 25 million relative to the ACA,” and those increases would “disproportionately affect low-income individuals and those in poor health.”
ANDERSON COOPER
Secretary Clinton let me follow up with you. Your husband called Obamacare “the craziest thing in the world”, saying that small business owners are getting killed as premiums double, coverage is cut in half. Was he mistaken or was his mistake simply telling the truth?
HILLARY CLINTON
No, I mean he clarified what he meant. And it's very clear. I mean 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 healthcare. And the Affordable Care Act was meant to try to fill the gap between people who were too poor, and couldn't put together any resources to afford health care, namely people on Medicaid, obviously Medicare, which is a single-payer system, which takes care of our elderly and does a great great job doing it, by the way. And then all the people who were employed and 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.
This is technically true. But about half of those 20 million are now covered because of the expansion of Medicaid, and the rest are covered through insurance policies purchased through the Obamacare exchanges.
So if we just rip it up and throw it away, what Donald is not telling you is, we just turn it back to the insurance companies the way it used to be. And that means the insurance companies get to do pretty much whatever they want, including saying, look, I’m sorry you got diabetes, you had cancer, your child has asthma, you may not be able to have insurance because you can’t afford it. So let's fix what is broken about it, but let's not throw it away. And give it all back to the insurance companies.
ANDERSON COOPER
But let me follow up with you on this, Mr. Trump.
DONALD TRUMP
Just one thing. First of all Hillary, everything is broken about it. Everything. Number two, Bernie Sanders said that Hillary Clinton has very bad judgment. This is a perfect example of it. Trying to save Obamacare which is -
ANDERSON COOPER
Mr. Trump you have said you want to end Obamacare. You have also said that you and make coverage accessible for people with pre-existing conditions. How do you force insurance companies to do that if you are no longer mandating that everybody has insurance? What does that mean?
DONALD TRUMP
Well, I'll tell you what it means. You’re going to have plans that are so good. Because we are going to have so much competition in the insurance industry, once we break out the lines and allow the competition to come.
ANDERSON COOPER
Are going to have a mandate that Americans have to have health insurance?
DONALD TRUMP
Anderson, excuse me. President Obama, by keeping those lines, the boundary lines around each state, and it was almost gone until just very toward the end of the passage of Obamacare, which by the way was a fraud. You know that. Because Jonathan Gruber, the architect of Obamacare has said, he said it was a great lie was a big lie. President Obama said you keep your doctor, you keep your plan. The whole thing was a fraud. And it doesn't work.
Jonathan Gruber wasn’t “the architect” of Obamacare, as CNN wrote in 2014. However, it is true that he helped craft the Obamacare system. The comments Trump is talking about are likely controversial comments Gruber made in 2013, which surfaced in 2014. He said, "This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes,” the Washington Post wrote in 2014. "Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the 'stupidity of the American voter' or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass.”
Gruber later apologized for the comments, saying that he was talking about the political environment in which the law passed, as the Post wrote, and that he wanted a system more like there is in Massachusetts. CNN’s explainer further elaborated that Gruber was trying to talk about the fact that politicians knew taxes wouldn’t be popular.
But when we get rid of those lines you will have competition.
It is not at all clear that the insurance companies would embrace this and create the competition that Trump and other Republicans have proposed. A study from October 2012, from Georgetown University, looked at states that have laws permitting out-of-state insurance sales and found that no insurers had taken the states up on this. A New York Times article from last year laid it out in detail.
And we will be able to keep pre-existing. We’ll also be able to help people who can't get, don't have money. Because we are going to have people protected. And Republicans feel this way, believe it or not, and strongly this way. We are going to block grant into the state. We are going to block grant into Medicaid.
ANDERSON COOPER
Thank you, Mr. Trump.
DONALD TRUMP
Into the states so that will be able to take care of people without the necessary funds to take care of themselves.
MARTHA RADDATZ
We now go to Gorba Hameed, with a question for both candidates.
AUDIENCE MEMBER
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 labeled as a threat to the country after the election is over?
MARTHA RADDATZ
Mr. Trump, you’re first.
DONALD TRUMP
Well, you're 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 we can be very 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 report it. As an example, in San Bernardino, many people saw the bombs all over the apartment of the two people that killed fourteen and wounded many many people. Horribly wounded; they’ll never be the same.
Muslims have to report the problems when they see them. And you know there's 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, you look at Paris look at the horrible - these are radical Islamic terrorists and she won't even mention the word and nor will President Obama. He will use the term radical Islamic terrorism. Now 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.
MARTHA RADDATZ
Secretary Clinton.
HILLARY CLINTON
Well thank you for asking your question and I have heard this question from a lot of Muslim Americans across our country. Because unfortunately there has been a lot of very divisive, 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.
This is true. James Hutson wrote in a post at the Library of Congress in 2002 that “there may have been hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Muslims in the United States in 1776 — imported as slaves from areas of Africa where Islam flourished. Although there is no evidence that the Founders were aware of the religious convictions of their bondsmen, it is clear that the Founding Fathers thought about the relationship of Islam to the new nation and were prepared to make a place for it in the republic.”
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're willing to work hard, you do your part, you contribute to the community -- that's what America is, that's what we want America to be for children and our grandchildren.
It’s also very shortsighted 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 lines. I've worked with a lot of different 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 and tend 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.
MARTHA RADDATZ
Thank you, Secretary Clinton. Mr. Trump in December you said: “Donald J Trump was calling for a total and complete shutdown 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 this week that the Muslim ban is no longer your position. Is that correct and if it is, was a mistake to have a religious test?
DONALD 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 hundreds of thousands --
MARTHA RADDATZ
And why did it morph into that? No answer the question. Do you still believe -
DONALD TRUMP
Why don’t you interrupt her?
MARTHA RADDATZ
Would you please explain whether or not the Muslim ban still stands?
DONALD TRUMP
It's called extreme vetting. We are going to areas like Syria, where they're coming in by the tens of thousands because of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton wants to allow a 550% increase over Obama. People are coming into our country, like we have no idea who they are, where they're 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.
The U.S. has taken in about 12,000 Syrian refugees over the past year. Most were women and children. Hillary Clinton has said the U.S. should take in as many as 65,000 Syrian refugees. That is, as Trump asserts, a 550 percent increase from the Obama administration’s objective of bringing in at least 10,000 Syrians this year.
The White House says it is not true that the government does not know who refugees are and where they come from.
We have enough problems in this country. I believe in building safe zones. I believe in having other people pay for them, as an example, the 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 that you see going on hundreds of thousands of people coming in from Syria when we know nothing about them, we know nothing about their values, and we know nothing about their love for our country.
America accepted just over 10,000 Syrian refugees in the most recent fiscal year.
MARTHA RADDATZ
And Secretary Clinton let me ask you about that. Because you have asked for an increase from ten to sixty five thousand Syrian refugees. We know you want tougher vetting. That's not a perfect system so why take the risk of having those refugees coming into the country?
HILLARY CLINTON
Well, 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 also that four-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 do that? We are 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 will say this is the tenth or twelfth time that he has 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.
DONALD TRUMP
It has not been debunked.
HILLARY CLINTON
So please. Go to HillaryClinton.com and you can see it.
DONALD TRUMP
I was against the war in Iraq
There is no evidence to support this claim. There is no evidence that Trump opposed the invasion of Iraq. In a 2002 interview, Howard Stern asked Trump if he would support the invasion. Trump replied: “Yeah, I guess so. I wish the first time it was done correctly.” Worth noting: Trump’s running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, voted in favor of the bill authorizing the Iraq War, when he represented Indiana in the House of Representatives.
It has not been debunked. And you voted for it and you shouldn't have. Well I just want to say.
MARTHA RADDATZ
There's been lots of fact checking on that. I’d like to move on to an online question.
DONALD TRUMP
Excuse me. She just went about twenty five seconds over her time.
MARTHA RADDATZ
She did not.
DONALD TRUMP
Can I just respond to this please?
MARTHA RADDATZ
Very quickly please.
DONALD TRUMP
Hillary Clinton, in terms of having people coming to 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’re 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 it into their country.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement says there 23 countries “considered recalcitrant, including: Afghanistan, Algeria, the People’s Republic of China, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, and Zimbabwe. As a result of their lack of cooperation, ICE has experienced a significant hindrance” in the agency’s ability to repatriate immigrants to these countries. An additional 62 countries have “strained cooperation” in accepting returning refugees.
Let me tell you I'm going to force them right back into the country. They’re murderers and some very bad people and I will tell you, I'm very strongly, when Bernie Sanders said she had bad judgment, she has really bad judgment because we are letting people into this country that are going to cause problems and crime like you've never seen. We’re also leading drugs pour through our southern border at a record clip. At a record clip and it shouldn't be allowed to happen.
According to the latest report from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, narcotics seizures in the four border states totaled 3.3 million pounds in fiscal 2015. In 2012, CBP seized 3.5 million pounds of narcotics; in 2011, 3.1 million pounds of illegal drugs were apprehended. At least by this measurement, drug seizures are not at a record level.
Apprehensions at the Southwest border — a proxy for attempted crossings — have dropped by 79 percent from the peak in 2000. The Pew Research Center reports more Mexicans left the U.S. than entered between 2009 and 2014.
ICE just endorsed me. They've never endorsed a presidential candidate.
The federal bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not make an endorsement. A union of immigration and customs officers voted to endorse Trump.
The border patrol agents, sixteen thousand five hundred 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.
As part of her immigration plans, Clinton says she would defend and expand President Obama’s executive action of November 2014. His actions, thwarted by federal courts, would have protected an estimated 5 million immigrants in the country illegally from deportation and offered them renewable work permits. Amnesty is different. The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act legalized and ultimately granted citizenship to immigrants in the U.S. illegally who met certain criteria.
It’s a horrible thing she's 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.
MARTHA RADDATZ
Thank you, Mr. Trump. I want to move on. This next question comes from the public through the bipartisan open debate coalitions online form where Americans submitted questions that generated millions of votes. This question involves Wikileaks release of reported excerpts as Secretary Clinton paid speeches which she has refused to release and one line in particular in which you, Secretary Clinton, reportedly say you need both a public and private position on certain issues. So Tiu from Virginia asks is it okay for politicians to be two-faced? Is it acceptable for a politician to have a private stance on issues? Secretary Clinton, your two minutes.
HILLARY CLINTON
Well, 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.
WikiLeaks released an internal campaign email from the Clinton campaign's research director, Tony Clark, to senior campaign aides. That email contained excerpts from transcripts of Clinton's closed-door paid speeches seen by the campaign as the most politically damaging. The speech referenced here was delivered in April 2013 to the National Multi-Housing Council, a trade association representing apartment owners, managers, developers and lenders. The full context isn't clear, but Clinton was talking about the Lincoln movie, while describing the sausage-making that is the legislative process. Here is the excerpt that WikiLeaks released:
“You just have to sort of figure out how to -- getting back to that word, ’balance’ -- how to balance the public and the private efforts that are necessary to be successful, politically, and that's not just a comment about today. That, I think, has probably been true for all of our history, and if you saw the Spielberg movie, Lincoln, and how he was maneuvering and working to get the 13th Amendment passed, and he called one of my favorite predecessors, Secretary Seward, who had been the governor and senator from New York, ran against Lincoln for president, and he told Seward, I need your help to get this done. And Seward called some of his lobbyist friends who knew how to make a deal, and they just kept going at it. I mean, politics is like sausage being made. It is unsavory, and it always has been that way, but we usually end up where we need to be. But if everybody's watching, you know, all of the back room discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous, to say the least. So, you need both a public and a private position. And finally, I think -- I believe in evidence-based decision making. I want to know what the facts are. I mean, it's like when you guys go into some kind of a deal, you know, are you going to do that development or not, are you going to do that renovation or not, you know, you look at the numbers. You try to figure out what's going to work and what's not going to work."
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 our other sites, where the Russians hack information, we don't even know 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 me, they’re not doing it to get me elected. They're doing it to try to influence the election for Donald Trump.
Russian media personalities with connections to the Kremlin, including the TV commentator Aleksandr Dugin, have endorsed Trump. They say that what they call the American “neoconservatives” who supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq are supporting Clinton. If she were elected, they argue, it would empower those forces and pose a danger to what Russia calls the stability of the international system.
Now maybe because he has 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 that we deserve answers. And we should demand that Trump release all of his tax returns so that people can see what are the entanglements and the financial relationships --
MARTHA RADDATZ
And we’re going to get to that later. Secretary Clinton, you're out of time. Mr. Trump.
DONALD TRUMP
Well, I think I should respond because, so ridiculous. Look, now she's 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 one that I haven’t - okay Honest Abe never lied. That’s the good thing that's a 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 she was saying I don't know Putin. I think 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 anytime anything wrong happens they like to say the Russians we don't know if it's Russian.
The U.S. intelligence community and Department of Homeland Security said Friday that Russia is behind this year’s campaign of hacks and the release of information related to the 2016 campaign.
She doesn’t know if it’s the Russians doing the hacking, maybe there is no hacking. But they always blame Russia and the reason they blame Russia because they think they are trying to tarnish me with Russia. I know nothing about Russia. I know, I know about Russia but I know nothing about the inner workings of Russia.
I don't deal there, I have no businesses there have no loans from Russia.
Trump may not have current business ties with Russia, but he has in fact tried to engage his business interests with Russia since the 1980s. He explored in the 1990s having the Trump organization take part in hotel development projects. In 2008, the Trump organization tried to build elite residences in Moscow. According to Bloomberg, Trump said to a real estate publication, “The Russian market is attracted to me. … I have a great relationship with many Russians, and almost all of the oligarchs were in the room.”
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, 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 very simple thing. As soon as -- first of all, I pay hundred of millions of dollars in taxes. Many of her friends took bigger deductions. Warren Buffett took a massive deduction. Soros, who is a friend of hers, took a massive deduction. Many of the people that are giving her all this money that she could do many more commercials than me gave her took massive deductions. I pay hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes but but as soon as my routine audit is finished, I'll release my returns I'll be very proud to. They’re actually quite good.
MARTHA RADDATZ
Thank you, Mr. Trump.
ANDERSON COOPER
We’re going to turn to the topic of taxes we have a question from Spencer Moss. Spencer?
AUDIENCE MEMBER
Good evening. My question is -- what specific tax provisions would you change to ensure the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share in taxes.
ANDERSON COOPER
Mr. Trump, you have two minutes.
DONALD TRUMP
Well, one thing I’d do is get rid of carried interest. One of the greatest provisions, for people like me, to be honest with you -- I give up a lot when I run because I knock out the tax code. And she could have done this years ago, by the way. She’s a United States -- she was a United States senator. She complains that Donald Trump took advantage of the tax cut. Well, why didn't she change it? Why didn’t you change it when you were Senator? The reason you didn’t that all your friends take the same advantage that I do. But I do.
You have provisions in the tax code that, frankly, we could change. But you wouldn't change it because all of these people give you the money so you can take negative ads on Donald Trump. But -- and I say that about a lot of things. You know, I've heard Hillary complain about so many different things over the years -- she’s been doing this stuff -- but she's been there for thirty years she’s been doing this stuff. And she never will change. She never will change. And she never will change.
We’re 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 -- little ones can’t form. We’re getting rid of regulations which goes hand in hand with the lowering of the taxes. But we're bringing the tax rate down from thirty five percent to fifteen percent. We’re cutting taxes for the middle class, and I will tell you, we are cutting them big league for the middle class. And I will tell you Hillary Clinton is raising your taxes, folks.
Trump wants to cut income tax rates while capping deductions for the wealthy. He would also reduce the business tax rate to 15 percent and eliminate the estate tax. The conservative Tax Foundation estimates that his plan would reduce federal revenue by $4.4 trillion to $5.9 trillion over the next decade, which is a lot, but down from $10 trillion in his original plan. Some of that could be offset by economic growth, but even using “dynamic scoring,” the foundation says the plan cuts tax revenue by $2.6 trillion to $3.9 trillion over 10 years. (The higher figure is if the 15 percent business tax rate is applied to “pass through” entities.) The biggest beneficiaries of Trump’s tax cuts are the wealthy. The top 1 percent of earners see their after-tax income rise by between 10.2 percent and 16 percent. Overall savings would be less than 1 percent.
Clinton would raise taxes on the wealthy — especially those making more than $5 million/year (2/10,000 people), limit value of certain deductions, and increase the estate tax rate, while extending that tax to more families (with thresholds set at $3.5 million/$7 million for couples). The Tax Policy Center estimated that an earlier version of her plan would raise an extra $1.1 trillion over a decade, with three-quarters of that coming from the top 1 percent of earners. Clinton recently modified her estate tax proposal, raising the top rate to 65 percent on estates of more than $500 million.
You 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 your taxes, and I'm lowering your 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.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, an international economic organization, evaluated the U.S. economy this summer and concluded: “Seven years after the financial crisis, the US economy has rebounded: output has surpassed its pre-crisis peak by 10%, robust private-sector employment gains have sharply reduced unemployment, fiscal sustainability has been largely restored and corporate profits are high.”
If China has a GDP of seven percent, it’s like a national catastrophe. We’re down at one percent, and that’s like no growth. And we're going lower, in my opinion. And a lot of it 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.
ANDERSON COOPER
Secretary Clinton, you have two minutes. The question was, what specific tax revisions would change to ensure the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share of taxes?
HILLARY CLINTON
Well, everything you've heard just now 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 talk about what he's going to do.
Clinton is referring to fragmentary information about Donald Trump’s tax returns that was leaked to the New York Times, suggesting he may have escaped tax liability for years by declaring a loss of nearly $916 million in 1995. Asked about that at the debate, he said he has paid some federal income taxes but also that the loss has allowed him to avoid paying some federal taxes.
But I’ll tell you what he's going to do. His plan will give the wealthy and corporations the biggest tax cuts they've ever had. More than the Bush tax cuts by at least a factor of two. Donald always takes cares 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 two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year -- and that is the vast majority of Americans, as you know, will have their taxes raised because I think we have got to go with 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.
Clinton has opposed the carried interest tax break since 2007. But when she was in the Senate, she didn’t sign on to a measure that would have shut the hedge fund loophole if it had passed. It’s not clear, however, which “loopholes” she meant.
I voted to close, I think, one of the loopholes he took advantage of what 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 has gone out and said somebody like him did not repent a lower tax rate than his secretary. I want to have a surcharge on incomes above five million. We have to make up for lost time because I want to invest in you. I want to invest in hard-working families, and I think it's 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 fare share to support our country.
ANDERSON COOPER
Mr. Trump, to give you a chance to respond. I just want to give our viewers what she's referring to. In the last month, the 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. They showed you claimed a $916 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 not answered, though, a simple question. Did you use that $916 dollar loss to avoid paying federal income taxes.
DONALD TRUMP
Of course I do. Of course I do. 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 of my write-off was depreciation and other things that Hillary, as a Senator, allowed. And she’ll always allow it 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.
This is an arguable point. Trump certainly has apparently used the tax code — legally — to his benefit. But how well does he, personally, understand the tax code? The New York Times talked to the man who did Trump’s and his father Fred’s taxes, and the paper wrote after that interview that Jack Mitnick “contrasted Fred Trump’s attention to detail with what he described as Mr. Trump’s brash and undisciplined style. He recalled, for example, that when Donald and Ivana Trump came in each year to sign their tax forms, it was almost always Ivana who asked more questions.” But Trump understood this: “He knew we could use the tax code to protect him,” Mitnick told the Times.
This also, by the way, ignores the Republican candidate who ran just four years ago — Mitt Romney, who may have known more about the complexities of the tax system.
Hillary Clinton -- and it’s 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.
“Carried interest” is jargon for the portion of profit paid to managers of private equity, real estate and other funds. Typically, these managers get 20 percent of a fund’s net gain. Critics of carried interest say these payments are just compensation, like wages, and should be taxed that way. But in fact, they are taxed at the much lower capital-gains rates. Hillary Clinton has also proposed eliminating the carried interest tax break.
And very interesting why she’s leaving carried interests, but I will tell you that number one I pay tremendous numbers of taxes. I absolutely use 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're rich, but they’re not famous. So we won't make them famous.
ANDERSON COOPER
Can you say how many years you have avoided paying personal federal income taxes?
DONALD 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’s given it to us.
Hey, if she had a problem -- for thirty years, she’s been doing this Anderson. I say it all the time. She talks about healthcare. Why didn’t she 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 had made bad judgments on Libya, on Syria, on Iraq. I mean, her and Obama, whether you like it or not, the way they got out of Iraq, the vacuum they've left -- that's why ISIS is formed in the first place.
The U.S. completed withdrawing troops from Iraq in 2011 under a deal signed by President Bush and at the request of the Iraqi government. When the Syrian civil war started, that provided a haven for militants from Iraq and Syria to gather and regroup as ISIS. Then ISIS militants took ground in Iraq. Analysts say the presence of U.S. troops might have kept ISIS from gaining so much ground in Iraq, but ISIS also took advantage of divisions within Iraqi politics and sectarian groups.
They started from that little area. And now they're in thirty two different nations, Hillary. Congratulations. Great job.
ANDERSON COOPER
Secretary Clinton. I want you to be able to respond, Secretary Clinton.
HILLARY CLINTON
Well, here we go again. I’ve 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.
DONALD TRUMP
Why didn’t you do it? Why didn’t you do it?
ANDERSON COOPER
Allow her to respond.
HILLARY CLINTON
Because I was senator with a Republican president. I'll will be the president who will get it done.
(APPLAUSE)
DONALD TRUMP
If you were an effective senator, you could have done it. If you were an effective senator, you could have done it. But you were not an effective senator.
ANDERSON COOPER
Please allow her to respond. She didn’t interrupt you.
HILLARY CLINTON
You know, under our Constitution, presidents have something called veto power. Look, he has now said repeatedly, thirty years this and thirty years that. So let me talk about my thirty 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 a Republican mayor, governor and president to rebuild New York and to get healthcare for our first responders who were suffering because they had a run toward 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.
Four hundred 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 very 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.
ANDERSON COOPER
Thank you, Secretary.
HILLARY CLINTON
And I have proven that I can. And for thirty years, I’ve produced results for people.
MARTHA RADDATZ
We’re going to move on to Syria. Both of you have mentioned that.
DONALD TRUMP
She said a lot of things that were false. I think we should be allowed to -
MARTHA RADDATZ
Mr. Trump, we’re going to go on. This is about the audience. Mr. Trump, we’re going to move on. The heartbreaking video of a five -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 the past few weeks alone four hundred people have been killed, at least one hundred of them children. Just days ago, the State Department called for a war crimes investigation of the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad and its allies Russia for the bombardment of Aleppo. So this next question comes from social media through Facebook. Diane from Pennsylvania asked, if you were president, what would you do about Syria and the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo? Isn't it a lot like the Holocaust when the U.S. waited too long before we helped? Secretary Clinton, we will begin with your two minutes.
HILLARY CLINTON
Well, the situation in Syria is catastrophic. And every day that goes by, we see the results of the regime by Assad in partnership with the Iranians on the ground, the Russians in the air, bombarding places, in particular Aleppo, where there are hundreds of thousands of people, probably about 250,000 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’re interested in keeping Assad in power. So I, when I was Secretary of State, advocated. And I advocate today a no-fly zone in safe zones.
Pentagon leaders have warned that imposing a no-fly zone in Syria today might require threatening — or attacking — Syrian and Russian aircraft. The danger, they warn, is that a confrontation between U.S. and Syrian or Russian warplanes could quickly escalate into a major war. Discussions about a no-fly zone in Syria date back years, before Russia’s intervention, when advocates said the U.S. and other coalition powers should stop the air force loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad from flying and attacking rebel forces there.
We need some leverage with the Russians because they're not going to come to the negotiating table for a diplomatic resolution unless there is some 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 the aggressiveness of Russia.
Russia has decided that it's all in in Syria. And they also decided who they want to see become president of the United States, too. And it's not me. I've stood up to Russia. I've taken on pollutant and others. And I would do that as president. I think wherever we can cooperate with Russia, that's fine. And I did at 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 Iranian nuclear program without firing a single shot. So I would go to the negotiating table with more leverage that we have now. But I do support the effort to investigate for crimes -- war crimes committed by the Syrians and the Russians and try to hold them accountable.
MARTHA RADDATZ
Thank you, Secretary Clinton. Mr Trump.
DONALD TRUMP
First of all, she was there as the secretary of state with the so called line in the sand.
President Obama said that the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime would constitute the crossing of a “red line” in how he approached his response to the conflict. Once Assad used chemical weapons, Obama ultimately elected not to launch an attack against his regime, opting instead to ask Congress to authorize such an operation. Critics have charged that Obama’s failure to enforce his red line was harmful to American credibility.
HILLARY CLINTON
No, I wasn’t. I was gone. I hate to interrupt you but at some point, we need to do some fact checking.
DONALD TRUMP
Excuse me. You were in total contact with the White House. And perhaps, sadly Obama probably still listened to you. I don't think he would be listening 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 should not have allowed that to happen. Russia is new in terms of nuclear. We are old. We are tired. We are 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. Every time we take rebels. Whether it's in Iraq or anywhere else. We are arming people. And you know what happens? They end up being worse than the people. Look what she did and Libya with Gaddafi. Gadhafi is out. It’s a mess. And by the way ISIS has a good chunk of their oil.
Donald Trump has said before that ISIS controls Libyan oil but experts say this just isn’t true. PolitiFact addressed this in some detail last April and CNBC checked back in on the claim as recently as September.
I’m sure you probably have heard that. It was a disaster. Because the fact is that everything that she has done an foreign-policy has been at the stake and it has a been a disaster. And if you look at Russia -- is take a look at Russia and look at what they did this week. Where I agree she was not there, but possibly she was consulted. We sign a peace treaty, everyone's all excited. Well what Russia did with Assad, and by the way with Iran who made very powerful with the dumbest deal I have ever seen in the history of dealmaking with the Iran deal. With the 1.7 in cash, which is enough cash to fill this room.
The $1.7 billion refers to a transfer the Obama administration paid to Tehran, to settle an arbitration claim that dates from the 1970s. The payment was made in January 2016, on the same day that Tehran agreed to release four U.S. prisoners. Clinton was not serving in government at that time.
But look at that deal. Iran now and Russia are now against us. So she wants to fight, she wants to fight for rebels. There’s only one problem. You don’t even know who the rebels are.
MARTHA RADDATZ
Mr. Trump your two minutes is up.
DONALD TRUMP
And one thing I have to say is I don't like Assad at all. But Assad is killing ISIS. Russia is killing ISIS. And Iran is killing ISIS
Syrian President Assad has claimed since the beginning of the Syrian civil war that he is fighting “terrorists,” and there are some extremist elements among the anti-government forces. But most of the attacks and airstrikes conducted both by his regime and his Russian patrons have not been against the Islamic State, based in the north of Syria. Moscow also said when it intervened in Syria that it was doing so to fight terror, but most of its work has been to help Damascus against anti-government forces. Secretary of State John Kerry tried to negotiate a deal with Moscow in which it focused its energies against ISIS and the most extreme elements fighting in Syria, but he could not conclude an agreement.
And those three have now lined up because of our weak foreign policy.
MARTHA 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 Russian need to be met with American strength and that if Russia continues to be involved with 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.
DONALD TRUMP
Okay. He and I haven’t spoken and I disagree.
MARTHA RADDATZ
You disagree with your running mate?
DONALD TRUMP
We have to knock out ISIS. Right now Syria is fighting ISIS. We have people that want to fight both at the same. But Syria's no longer Syria. Syria’s Russia and it’s Iran which she made strong, and Kerry, and Obama made into a very powerful nation. And a very rich nation. 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.
MARTHA RADDATZ
What do you think will happen if Aleppo falls?
DONALD TRUMP
I think Aleppo is a disaster humanitarian-wise.
MARTHA RADDATZ
What do you think it will happen if it falls?
DONALD TRUMP
I think that it basically has fallen. OK? It basically has fallen.
Aleppo has not fallen to the Syrian government. It has been a divided city for years and rebels control the eastern side. The Syrian government and its Russian allies have increased airstrikes on the eastern side lately. The U.N. warned last week that more than 200,000 civilians live there and thousands could die if the Syrian regime tries to take it over.
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 a lot of announcements coming out of Washington and coming out of Iraq, we will be attacking Mosul in three weeks or four weeks. All of these bad leaders from ISIS are leaving Mosul. Why can't they do it quietly why can't they do the attack, make it a sneak attack. After the attack is made, inform the American public that we have knocked out the leaders, we’ve had tremendous success. People leave. Why do they have to say we're going to be attacking Mosul within the next four to six weeks? Which is what they are saying. How stupid is our country?
MARTHA RADDATZ
There are sometimes reasons the military does that. Psychological warfare.
DONALD TRUMP
I can't think of any.
MARTHA RADDATZ
It might be to help get civilians out.
DONALD TRUMP
Look, I have two hundred generals and admirals who endorsed me. I have twenty one Congressional medal of honor recipients who endorsed me. We talk about it all the time. They understand why can't they do something secretively? Where they go in and they knock out the leadership. How -- why would these people stay there? I’ve been reading now for weeks...
MARTHA RADDATZ
Tell me what your strategy is.
DONALD TRUMP
I have a reading for weeks about Mosul that is the harbor between Raqqa and Mosul. This is where they think the ISIS leaders are.
The capital of the self-proclaimed Islamic State is Raqqa.
Why would they be - they’re not staying there anymore. They are gone. Because everybody is talking about how Iraq, which is us with our leadership, goes in to fight Mosul. With these two hundred admirals and generals, they can't believe it. All they say is this. General George Patton, General Douglas MacArthur are spinning in their grave at the stupidity of what we're doing in the Middle East.
MARTHA RADDATZ
I'm going to go to Secretary Clinton. Secretary Clinton, you want Assad to go. You advocated arming rebels, but it looks like that may be too late for Aleppo.
Clinton, along with then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and then-CIA Director David Petraeus, supported arming the so-called moderate rebels that rose up against the Syrian regime in Damascus. President Obama initially did not undertake such a policy, though later he did, supplying anti-Assad forces with weapons. The success of some of those fighters against the regime of Assad was one reason that Russia intervened to help Assad with weapons of its own as well as support from the air.
You talk about diplomatic efforts, those have failed. Ceasefires have failed. Would you introduce the threat of U.S. military force beyond the no-fly zone against the Assad regime, to back up diplomacy?
HILLARY 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 some positive effects, are very much in our interest. And so I do support what is happening. But let me --
MARTHA RADDATZ
So what would you do differently than the President Obama is doing?
HILLARY CLINTON
Well, Martha, I hope that by the time I -- hope 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 says 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 area, as well as Kurdish 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, I was involved in a lot of those operations, highly classified ones, made a difference. So I think that could help.
I would also consider arming the Kurds. The Kurds have been our best partners in Syria, as well as Iraq. And I know there is a lot of concern about that in some circles, but I think that they should have the equipment they need so that the needs of Kurdish and Arab fighters on the ground are the principal way that we take Rocco after pushing ISIS out of Iraq.
MARTHA RADDATZ
Thank you very much, we're going to move on.
DONALD TRUMP
She went over a minute over, and you don't stop her. When I go one second over it's like -
MARTHA RADDATZ
You had many answers.
DONALD TRUMP
It’s really very interesting.
ANDERSON COOPER
We have a question over here from James Carter. Mr. Carter?
AUDIENCE MEMBER
My question, do you believe you can be a devoted president to all the people in the United States?
ANDERSON COOPER
The question begins for Mr. Trump.
DONALD TRUMP
Absolutely. I mean, uh, she calls our people deplorable, a large group. And irredeemable. I will be a president for all of our people. And I will be a president 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.
Most studies show NAFTA had a relatively minor economic impact. "NAFTA did not cause the huge job losses feared by the critics or the large economic gains predicted by supporters. The net overall effect of NAFTA on the U.S. economy appears to have been relatively modest," according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.
Not in this country. It stripped us of manufacturing jobs. We lost our jobs, we lost our money. We lost our plans. It is a disaster. And now she wants to sign TPP even though she says now she is for it. She called it the gold standard by the way at the last debate she lied because it turned out that she did say that it was the gold standard and she said that she didn't say it. They actually said that she lied. Okay. And she lied, but she's lied about a lot of things. I would be a president for all of the people.
Clinton said in a 2012 speech that Trans-Pacific Partnership “sets the gold standard in trade agreements to open free, transparent, fair trade.”
African-Americans. The inner cities. Devastating what's happening to our inner cities. She's been talking about it for years. As usual, she talks about it, nothing happens. She doesn't get it done.
The same with the Latino Americans. The Hispanic Americans. The same exact thing, they talk, they don't get it done. You go into the inner cities and you see there's forty five percent poverty, African-Americans have forty five percent poverty in the inner cities. The education is a disaster. Jobs are essentially nonexistent. I mean, it’s -- you know and I have been saying it in big speeches where I have twenty and thirty thousand people what do you have to lose? It can't get any worse. And she has been talking about the inner cities for twenty five years. Nothing is going to ever happen.
Let me tell you, if she is president of the United States nothing is going to happen. It is going to be all talk, all of her friends, taxes we were talking, and I would just get it by osmosis, it’s not doing me any favors, but by doing all the others favor she would be doing me favors. But I will tell you, she is all talk, it doesn't get done. All you have to do is look at the Senate run, take a look at upstate New York.
ANDERSON COOPER
You two minutes is up. Secretary Clinton?
DONALD TRUMP
It turned out to be a disaster.
ANDERSON COOPER
You have two minutes Secretary Clinton.
HILLARY 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. And Donald talks a lot about, you know, the thirty years I've been in public service. I am proud of that. You know, I started off as a young lawyer working against discrimination against African-American children in schools and in the criminal justice system. I worked to make sure that kids with disabilities could get a public education. Something that I care very much about. I have worked with Latinos, one of my first 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 word. 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 -- one woman wrote me about her son Felix, he adopted him from Ethiopia when he was a toddler. He is ten 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. And there is a lot of fear; in fact, teachers and parents are calling it the Trump effect. Bullying is up, a lot of people are feeling, you know, uneasy, a lot of kids are expressing their concerns.
"The Trump Effect" is the title of an April report by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a progressive advocacy group. Clinton has used the phrase before on the campaign trail. It's worth noting that the SPLC's survey was not a representative sample that could scientifically support the notion that “bullying is up.” The most recent federal data show bullying in schools of all kinds on the downswing.
So first and foremost, I will do everything I can to reach out to everybody. Democrats, Republicans, Independents, 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 every American.
ANDERSON COOPER
Secretary Clinton, your two minutes are up. I want to follow up on something that Donald Trump actually said to you, a comment you made last month. You said that half of Donald Trump’s supporters are “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?
HILLARY CLINTON
Well, within hours I said that I was sorry about the way I talked about that because my argument is not with his supporters, it’s with him. And the hateful and the divisive campaign that 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 has said about African Americans and Latinos, about Muslims, about POWs, about immigrants, about people with disabilities, he’s never apologized for. And so I do think that a lot of the tone and tenor that he’s said - I’m proud of the campaign that Bernie Sanders and I ran. We ran a campaign on issues, not insults. And he is supporting me 100 percent, because we talked about what we wanted to do. We might’ve had some differences and we had a lot of debates, but we believed that we can come to better. I was proud of that.
ANDERSON COOPER
I’m going to give you a minute to respond.
DONALD 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 that's taking place in the inner cities, Chicago. You take a look at Washington, D.C. We have a increase in murder within our cities, the biggest in forty five years
The FBI reported that murders were up last year by nearly 11 percent, but the bulk of the increase represents trouble in a small number of cities, such as Chicago.
We have a divided nation because people like her -- and believe me, she has tremendous hate in her heart. And when she said deplorables, she meant it. And when she said irredeemable -- they’re irredeemable, you didn’t mention that. But when she said their irredeemable, to me, that might have been even worse.
ANDERSON COOPER
She said some of them are irredeemable --
DONALD TRUMP
She's got tremendous hatred. And this country cannot take another four years of Barack Obama. And that's what you're getting with her.
ANDERSON 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 the leader doesn't have it, he or she won't be one for very long. In the days after the first debate, he sent out a series of tweets from 3 a.m. to 5 a.m., including one that told people to check out a sex tape. Is that the discipline of a good leader?
DONALD TRUMP
No, there wasn’t check out a sex tape.
The verbatim tweet from Trump, time-stamped Sept. 30, 2016, at 5:30 a.m.:
“Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting (check out sex tape and past) Alicia M become a U.S. citizen so she could use her in the debate?”
It was just take a look at the person that she built up to be this wonderful Girl Scout, who was no Girl Scout.
ANDERSON COOPER
You mentioned a sex tape.
DONALD TRUMP
By the way -- just so you understand -- when she said three o’clock in the morning take a look at Benghazi.
Four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, were killed when militants attacked a diplomatic outpost and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya, in September 2012. A two-year, $7 million congressional investigation faulted “woefully inadequate” security for State Department personnel but said Clinton herself “never personally denied any requests for additional security.” Investigators concluded that the Defense Department did not have equipment and personnel in place to respond to such an attack in a timely manner. They also found the Obama administration erred in initially ascribing the attack to a spontaneous protest, sparked by an anti-Islamic video, and that Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff at the State Department exercised too much influence over a review board that studied the attack and recommended improvements. The State Department has since beefed up security at diplomatic outposts around the world. It was during the course of the congressional probe that investigators discovered Clinton’s reliance on a private email server for official correspondence.
She said who’s going to answer the call at 3am in the morning? Guess what? She didn’t answer because when Ambassador Stevens --
ANDERSON COOPER
The question is that the discipline of a good leader?
DONALD TRUMP
She said she was awake at 3 o’clock in the morning and she also sent a tweet out at three o’clock in the morning, but I won’t even mention that. Guess what happened? Ambassador Stevens - Ambassador Stevens sent six hundred 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, you know, she shouldn’t be talking about that. Now, tweeting happens to be a modern-day form of communication. I mean you can like it or not like it. I have, between Facebook and Twitter I have almost 25 million people. It’s a very effective way of communication. So you can put it down but it is a very effective form of communication. I’m not unproud of it, to be honest with you.
ANDERSON COOPER
Secretary Clinton, does Mr. Trump have the discipline to be a good leader?
HILLARY CLINTON
No.
DONALD TRUMP
I’m shocked to hear that.
HILLARY CLINTON
Well, it’s not only my opinion, 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 dollar 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 percent.
And it’s not just because I worked with George W. Bush after 9/11. And I was very proud that when I told him what the city needed, what we need to recover, he said you’ve 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.
ANDERSON COOPER
We have to move on -
HILLARY CLINTON
9 million people lost their jobs. 5 million homes were lost and 13 trillion dollars in family wealth was wiped out. We are back on the right track. He would send us back into recession with his tax plans.
MARTHA RADDATZ
Secretary Clinton, we are moving to an audience question, we are almost out of time. We have another --
DONALD TRUMP
We have the slowest growth since 1929. Our country has the slowest growth and jobs are a disaster.
MARTHA RADDATZ
Mr. Trump, Secretary Clinton, we want to get to the audience. Thank you very much, both of you.
(LAUGHTER)
MARTHA RADDATZ
We have another audience question. Beth Miller has a question for both candidates.
BETH MILLER
Good evening. Perhaps the most important aspect of this election is the Supreme Court justice. What would you prioritize as the most important aspect of selecting a Supreme Court Justice?
MARTHA RADDATZ
We begin with your two minutes, Secretary Clinton.
HILLARY CLINTON
Thank you. Well, you’re 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 then gotten on the bench, but you know, maybe they tried some more cases, they actually understand what people are up against.
Clinton is referring here to a movement to appoint judges with diverse experiences such as lawyers who have served in Congress, as public defenders and the like. See this report from the left-leaning Alliance for Justice.
Because I think the current court has gone in the wrong direction. And so 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 still a big problem in many parts of our country. That we don’t 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 has put forth the names of some people that 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 be a terrible mistake and would 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’re wealthy and can give more money to something, doesn’t mean you have any more rights or should have more rights than anyone else. So I have very clear views about what I want to see to kind of change the balance on the Supreme Court.
And I regret deeply that the Senate hasn’t done its job. And they have not permitted a vote on the person that President Obama- a highly qualified person - they’ve not given him a vote to be able to have the full complement of nine Supreme Court justices.
Merrick Garland, chief judge of the federal appeals court in Washington, has waited more than 200 days for action by the Senate on his nomination to the Supreme Court.
I think that was a dereliction of duty. I hope that they will see their way to doing it, but if I am so fortunate enough as to be president I will immediately move to make sure that we fill that -
MARTHA RADDATZ
Thank you, Secretary Clinton, you’re out of time. Mr. Trump.
DONALD 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’m looking for judges, and I’ve actually picked 20 of them, so that people would see, 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. So important to me. Now Hillary mentioned something about contributions. Just so you understand, so 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 different corporations like she’s doing. What I ask is this. I’m putting in more - by the time it is 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 under small donations, $61 average or so.
I ask Hillary - why doesn’t she make $250 million by being in office? She used the power of her office to make a lot of money.
Hillary Clinton released her 2015 tax returns in August. She and her husband, Bill, made $10.6 million last year. They paid more than a third of that in federal taxes and gave about 10 percent to charity. Most of the Clintons’ income comes from paid speeches and book sales.
Over the past decade or so, the Clintons have made $150 million. They've paid about a third of that in taxes, and they've given just over 10 percent to charity.
Why isn’t she funding -- not for $100 million, but why don’t you put $10 or $20 or $25 or $30 million into your own campaign? It’s $30 million less for special interests that will tell you exactly what to do, and it would really, I think, be a nice sign to the American public. Why aren’t you putting some money in? You have a lot of it, you’ve made a lot of it because of the fact that you’ve been in office. You’ve made a lot while you were secretary of state, actually. So why aren’t you putting money into your own campaign, just curious.
MARTHA RADDATZ
Thank you very much. We’re going to get on to one more question.
HILLARY CLINTON
But the question was about the Supreme Court and I just want to quickly say -
MARTHA RADDATZ
Very quickly.
HILLARY CLINTON
I respect the Second Amendment, but I believe there should be comprehensive background checks. And we should close the gun show loophole, and close the online loophole. And we have to try to save as many lives as we possibly can.
MARTHA RADDATZ
We have one more question.
ANDERSON COOPER
We have one more question from Ken Bone about energy policy. Ken?
KEN
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?
DONALD TRUMP
Absolutely. I think it’s such a great question, because energy is under siege by the Obama administration. Under absolute siege. The EPA - the 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 can take care of their oil. We are killing, absolutely killing our energy business in this country.
Domestic oil and gas production have increased steadily during President Obama’s time in office. The U.S. has been the world’s leading producer of natural gas since 2011 and the top producer of oil since 2013.
The Energy Information Administration says gasoline prices averaged $2.25 a gallon last week — about seven cents a gallon cheaper than a year ago, and about 20 cents a gallon less than Obama’s first year in office.
Now I’m all for alternative forms of energy, including wind, including solar, etc. But we need much more than wind and solar. And you look at our miners.
Hillary Clinton wants to put all the miners out of business. There is a thing called clean coal.
Clinton did tell a town hall audience in Columbus, Ohio, in March of this year that “we're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.” But that was part of a longer answer about the need to help blue-collar workers adjust. "We're going to make it clear that we don't want to forget those people," Clinton said. "Those people labored in those mines for generations, losing their health, often losing their lives to turn on our lights and power our factories. Now we've got to move away from coal and all the other fossil fuels, but I don't want to move away from the people who did the best they could to produce the energy that we relied on."
The coal industry is facing pressure both from regulations designed to combat greenhouse gases and from price competition from cheap natural gas. Although the U.S. Supreme Court has put the president’s Clean Power Plan rules on hold temporarily, many utilities continue to shift away from coal for both economic and environmental reasons. As a result, coal-fired power plants generate less than a third of U.S. electricity today, down from more than half 15 years ago. And coal mining employment dropped below 75,000 in 2014, with Appalachian mines seeing the steepest declines.
Coal will last for a thousand years in this country. Now we have natural gas and so many other things because of technology. We have unbelievable - we have found over the last seven years, we have found tremendous wealth right under our feet, so good. Especially when you have 20 trillion in debt. I will bring our energy companies back. They’ll be able to compete. They’ll make money. They’ll pay off our national debt. They’ll pay off our tremendous 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 of steel over the United States, which essentially is killing our steel workers and our steel companies.
The Commerce Department last month made a preliminary finding that imports of stainless steel sheet and strip from China are being dumped in the U.S. market at less than fair value.
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.
It is true that some energy companies — especially those dependent on coal — will find it difficult to continue operating under the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan. But right now the primary reason coal companies are going out of business is that they can’t compete financially with cheap natural gas. And, as we learned near the end of this story last April, coal companies borrowed a lot of money assuming business in other countries would grow fast. It didn’t and coal prices dropped, leaving them in the red.
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’re doing to the people, miners and others in the energy business, it’s a disgrace. It’s an absolute disgrace.
ANDERSON COOPER
You’re time is up. Thank you. Secretary Clinton - two minutes.
HILLARY 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 steel workers and American steel plants out of business. That’s something that I fought against as a senator and 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’re in the business or you’re aware of people in the business. You know that we are now, for the first time ever, energy independent. We are not dependent upon the Middle East. But the Middle East still controls a lot of the prices. So the price of oil has been way down and that has had a damaging effect on a lot of the oil companies, right?
This is not an accurate statement if “energy independent” means the U.S. doesn’t need fuels from other countries. The U.S. has become more energy independent in recent years but the country is still a net importer of crude oil, for example. Energy Information Administration numbers show that the U.S. imports about 9.4 million barrels of petroleum a day. The country responsible for most of those imports is not in the Middle East, though — it’s Canada.
We are, however, producing a lot of natural gas which 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 worries over there without having to worrying 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 to more clean and 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 also want to be sure 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 their grandfathers, they dug that coal out, a lot of them lost their lives, they were injured, but they turned 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.
You might think such a plan would be greeted with cheers in coal country, but as a recent New York Times piece showed, skepticism is more common. The coal business is more than a job in many of these communities — it’s a way of life that has existed for generations. Trump’s simpler message of putting coal miners back to work appears to be more popular in coal country.
But the price of coal is down worldwide. So we have to look at this comprehensively and that’s exactly what I have proposed. I hope you will go to HillaryClinton.com.
Coal prices have plunged in recent years. At the end of September, the price of Appalachia coal was roughly $40 a ton. In mid-2008, before the Great Recession hit with full force, the price was at $137.
ANDERSON COOPER
Your time is up.
MARTHA RADDATZ
We’ve sneaked in one question, and it comes from Carl Becker.
CARL
Good evening. 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?
(LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE)
MARTHA RADDATZ
Mr. Trump would you like to go first?
HILLARY CLINTON
Well, I certainly will because I think that is a very fair and important question. Look, 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 I 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’s 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 not just for four or eight years, but because of some of the important decisions we have to make here at home and in 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’ve tried to put forth specific policies and plans, trying to get it off the personal and get it on to what I want to do as president. And that’s why I hope people will check on that for themselves, so they can see that yes, I’ve spent thirty years, actually maybe a little more, working to help kids and families, and I want to take that experience to the White House and do that every single day.
MARTHA RADDATZ
Mr. Trump?
DONALD 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. I am very proud of my children, and they’ve done a wonderful job, and they’ve been wonderful, wonderful kids. So I consider that a compliment. I will say this about Hillary. She doesn't quit. She doesn't give up. I respect that. I tell it like it is. She's a fighter. I disagree with much of what she's fighting for. I do disagree with her judgment in many cases. But she does fight hard, and she doesn’t quit. And she doesn't give up, and I consider that to be a very good trait.
MARTHA RADDATZ
Thanks to both of you.
(APPLAUSE)
ANDERSON COOPER
I want to thank both the candidates. I want to thank the university here. This concludes the town hall meeting. Our thanks to the candidates, the commission, Washington University, and to everyone who watched.
MARTHA RADDATZ
Please tune in October 19th for the final presidential debate that will take place at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Good night everyone.
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