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CNN NEWSROOM

Trump Won't Say He'll Accept Elections Results; Some GOP Lawmakers Rip Trump on "Rigged" Claims; Trump, Clinton Clash in Final Debate; Michelle Obama Tries to Put Arizona Into Play; Trump, Pence and Ivanka Campaign Today: Twitter Erupts After "Nasty Woman" Comment. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired October 20, 2016 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


[10:00:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: -- sometimes shocking, here are some of the key moments.

HILLARY CLINTON, (D) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Assuming he can't figure out how to get out of it, but what we want to do is to replenish - the Social Security Trust Fund

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Such a nasty woman.

CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS ANCHOR AND FINAL DEBATE MODERATOR: Do you condemn any interference by Russia in the American election?

TRUMP: I don't know Putin. He said nice things about me. If we got along well, that would be good.

CLINTON: Well, that's because he would rather have a puppet as President of the United States. --

TRUMP: No puppet. No puppet.

CLINTON: It's pretty clear -

TRUMP: You're the puppet.

TRUMP: But we have some bad hombres here and we are going to get them out.

Excuse me, my turn.

WALLACE: Why would so many different women from so many different circumstances over so many different years, why would they all make up these stories?

TRUMP: Those stories have been largely debunked. I have a feeling how they came. I believe it was her campaign that did it.

CLINTON: What was his response? Well, he held a number of big rallies where he said that he could not possibly have done those things to those women because they were not attractive enough.

TRUMP: She should not be allowed to run and just in that respect, I say it's rigged.

WALLACE: But sir, there is a tradition in this country. In fact, one of the prides of this country is the peaceful transition of power. Are you saying you're not prepared now to commit to that principle? --

TRUMP: What I'm saying is that I will tell you at the time. I will keep you in suspense.

CLINTON: You're not up to doing the job. He's talking down our democracy and I for one, am appalled.

TRUMP: Lots of luck, Hillary. Thanks a lot for doing a great job.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COSTELLO: All right. But the standout moment, Trump's refusal to say that he will accept the results of the election. In fact, there was an audible gasp among many inside the venue and both campaigns are now dealing with the fallout. CNN's Manu Raju is still in Vegas, outside that debate hall. Good morning.

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: Good morning, Carol. Yes, a lot of Republicans criticizing Donald Trump on those remarks, particularly some anti-Trump Republicans, including Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Arizona Senator Jeff Flake, both putting out statements yesterday criticizing Trump as well as some Republicans in tough races, like the Carlos Curbelo in a very - he's a congressman from south Florida in a very difficult race, as he was campaigning with House Speaker Paul Ryan yesterday, also criticizing Donald Trump. Ryan himself silent so far on this issue but the Donald Trump campaign realizing that this could be damaging, Kellyanne Conway on the air this morning on "New Day" trying to clean up her boss' remarks.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KELLYANNE CONWAY, TRUMP CAMPAIGN MANAGER: I'm his campaign manager -- his running mate, his daughter, we've all said the same thing, absent widespread fraud or indices of irregularities. But please don't say he said, quote, "Unless I win --

CUOMO: He said I won't tell you until then. He didn't say what you said either. He didn't say, look, if there's a huge irregularity or something like that like Florida then we have to look at it. He didn't say that. He said I don't know. I'll look at it when it happens. I want to keep you in suspense. He didn't say what you said.

CONWAY: He was supposed to give 10 or 12 different hypotheticals --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: Clinton herself realizing there's an opening here, talking to reporters on her campaign plane yesterday and also didn't hold back on her remarks.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLINTON: One of our hallmarks has always been that we accept the outcomes of our election. We do the best we can to have free and fair elections which we do, and somebody wins and somebody loses. So what he said tonight is part of his whole effort to blame somebody else for his campaign.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: Now, I have been e-mailing with the Republicans this morning who are simply unnerved about what's going to happen come Election Day, not necessarily by this comment but by the sum total of events here in October. Donald Trump's campaign sliding, struggling in the polls particularly in battleground states, will those down ticket Republicans be able to run ahead of Donald Trump if he continues to slide? A big, big concern, Carol, that the bottom could be falling out if things don't quickly turn around. Carol?

COSTELLO: All right, Manu Raju reporting live from Las Vegas. Thanks so much. So let's talk about all of this. Lynn Sweet is the Washington bureau chief for the "Chicago Sun-Times," Jay Newton-Small is a contributor to "Time" magazine and Larry Sabato is the director of the University of Virginia, Center for Politics. Welcome to all of you.

LYNN SWEET, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF "CHICAGO SUN-TIMES": Hi.

JAY NEWTON-SMALL, CONTRIBUTOR "TIME" MAGAZINE: Hi, Carol.

COSTELLO: So Larry, these comments by Mr. Trump that he's going to keep us in suspense on Election Day, maybe he will accept the election results, maybe he won't. Tell us why those remarks are damaging.

LARRY SABATO, DIRECTOR UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA CENTER FOR POLITICS: Well, they are highly irresponsible. You know, I studied contested elections. We have had some in American history, 1824 when Andrew Jackson was very unhappy that John Quincy Adams won in a vote on House of Representatives. 1876 when we had really a dead tie and a corrupt election and a Democrat won the popular vote pretty handily, but went ahead and conceded the election even though it probably was stolen from him. And some of your prior guests, Carol, have mentioned 1960, the Kennedy-Nixon race though I have to correct what's been said. I have studied that thoroughly. And I have gone to all the reports and investigations for 1960 John F. Kennedy won that

[10:05:16] election. There were fraudulent votes in Chicago. There were fraudulent Republican votes in southern Illinois and there were fraudulent votes in Texas, but when you added them all up, Kennedy still won the election. We have always resolved these issues because we have had candidates willing to concede. And Richard Nixon deserves a lot of credit for that. He stood up and conceded. Apparently, Donald Trump is going to be the first in advance of the election to indicate that he doesn't want to concede, though I suspect the margin is going to be so large it won't make any difference. COSTELLO: Oh my goodness. So Lynn, you hear Trump surrogates citing, you know, what happened in Florida during the 2000 election and they're equating that equally with what Mr. Trump said last night, but that's not quite -- it's just not the same, is it?

SWEET: Not at all, Carol. Donald Trump seemed to forget that he was running in an election and he wasn't pitching his reality show to try and keep us to stay tuned for the next episode. And that's why -- that's what you would do if you just want to get viewership up, you know, keep people in suspense.

The Florida recount which I covered in the year 2000 was based on problems that happened in a real election and they were addressed in a massive historic way. No one is saying that there won't be problems. They will be addressed. What Donald Trump is saying is not based in any fact, history, or any ongoing reported problem. So that's among the many reasons why what he said in talking about a rigged election and that he may or may not concede, we'll see, why it shows that it's so historically irresponsible.

COSTELLO: So Jay, I just talked with a Trump surrogate in the last hour of "Newsroom" and I presented to her with all of the facts of why there is no widespread fraud in this country when it comes to voting, and she still didn't believe me. It's disturbing.

NEWTON-SMALL: It is really disturbing and it's frankly very dangerous, particularly for the Republican party, because if you have millions of Trump supporters across the country who refuse to accept the outcome of the election, that's just going to further rend the Republican party in half and they are going to blame their leaders. It's not like -- I mean, they will blame obviously Hillary Clinton but they will have more power and more ability to blame their own leaders like Paul Ryan. And you see the Trump campaign already teeing that up, already saying that Ryan isn't doing enough to help him protect this election, to help him win this election.

And so, this could really be a problem for Speaker Ryan, it could be a problem for the Republican party, because if you have millions of your own base questioning whether or not you're working with the party, you are with the party, the whole system is rigged, if the party's in cahoots with Hillary Clinton in order to hand the camp election to her, that's very dangerous. And it will take a long time, many, many months if not years to reunite that party and overcome that sort of rift.

COSTELLO: Larry, I can hear many Trump supporters out there saying look, you know, there's the media bashing Trump again when actually, he had many good points you know on that debate stage last night. In fact, a lot of analysts even say during the first half hour or so or hour or so, Donald Trump was doing well. Do you agree?

SABATO: Basically, I was grading it myself and I thought that he handled himself well in the first part of the debate. He made basic partisan arguments that made him look like a normal Republican nominee. That probably was helping him. I don't think it would have made a great difference in the election, nor do I think Hillary Clinton was hurting herself by taking traditional Democratic partisan stance.

But we always look for those moments that define a debate and there's just no question that while there were several such moments, the chief moment that will be remembered from this debate was Donald Trump in advance of the election refusing to commit to the election results, assuming that the vote was clear. He made no exceptions and people are going to recall that and it truly is irresponsible.

Carol one other note. What have people said throughout this entire campaign about Donald Trump? I don't want to vote for him because I don't think he has the temperament to be president. I don't think he's judicious in his thinking. He just proved them right.

SWEET: If I may, when Donald Trump talks about a rigged election, I think Hillary Clinton turned it around and made the point last night that got overwhelmed because of his refusal to say he would accept the election results, that there is somebody who is trying to fix the election results and that's Russian President Vladimir Putin.

[10:10:16] COSTELLO: Right. He did refuse to accept the fact that, you know, the FBI and the national security -- like national security people say that they believe that Russia may be behind the hacking into the DNC e-mails and stuff, but Donald Trump, Jay, wouldn't -- he wouldn't budge. He insists that's not true.

NEWTON-SMALL: You know what is an interesting exercise in sort of the denial of reality and that's always been kind of Donald Trump's modus operandi where he sort of has his own reality bent, the same thing with the accusations of all these women who have come forward. He just said flat out they're false even though they have been disproven, that they have been -- and that's really not true, they haven't been disproven.

And in that sort of -- this has been his Achilles heel the entire election. Every time he gets on message, every time he begins to do fairly well as he did in the beginning of this debate, he was on message, he was calm, he had gravitas, he stuck to his talking points about immigration, about electing a career politician, about trade, and then all of a sudden, he just goes off message because he cannot resist these little stingers and he just ruins it. Like nobody will be paying attention whatsoever to anything he said in the beginning of the debate, any of his policy points.

The only thing that's come out of last night is the fact that he won't accept the results of the election. And that doesn't help him at all. He needed this to be a knockout debate. He was coming into it down in the polls. He needed to really change the momentum and he hasn't done that.

COSTELLO: He's tweeting this morning, Larry, though that he won the debate and I'm sure we will continue to hear that throughout the day.

SABATO: Well, Carol, his tweets have said he won all three debates. If you go back and look at the tweets from debate one and debate two, and now debate three, they have all been landslides in his favor which again, suggests that there are parallel universes and he's living in a separate one where he wins the debates, he's winning the election, and probably will take the oath of office after November 8th, on January 20th, even though he has not been elected president. It doesn't change a thing in this universe. He is very unlikely to win. In my shop, the crystal ball at the University of Virginia, we now have Hillary Clinton at her peak for the year at 352 electoral votes. I know CNN is more cautious. --

COSTELLO: What? What? Wait. 352?

SABATO: Yes. We have her at 352. You have her at 307. We'll find out on election night who's closer.

COSTELLO: OK. You have just stunned me into silence. So it's a good time to end it. Lynn Sweet, Jay Newton-Small, Larry Sabato, thanks to all of you.

Still to come in the "Newsroom," Hillary Clinton is trying to build momentum off of last night's debate sending out her top surrogates today, including Michelle Obama, trying to flip Arizona from red to blue.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:17:16] COSTELLO: The Clinton campaign hit the ground running this morning. Her top surrogates fanning out across battleground states trying to keep the momentum going after what's widely been viewed as a debate win. Clinton heads to Ohio tomorrow, where this morning's headlines seem in credulous that Trump may not accept defeat if he loses on November 8th.

So let's talk about this more. I'm joined by CNN political director David Chalian and CNN politics executive editor Mark Preston. Welcome to both of you.

So, David, I just have to ask you, Larry Sabato has a crystal ball. I'm sure that you -- it's very well respected. He said his crystal ball has Hillary Clinton winning by 352 electoral votes. That's incredible.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Well, yes, he said that's her number. That wasn't the margin between the two of them. But yes, he pushes some states more too each side than in our map where we have some real remaining toss-up battleground states that are still, we see as up for grabs.

But the trend overall just like you do with polls, Carol, you got to do with these Electoral College, sort of outlooks. They are snapshots right now where the race is. And you look at the totality of them across the board. I think they are all telling the same story right now which is that Donald Trump has a lot of work ahead of him in the next 19 days.

COSTELLO: So Mark, did he do anything to even better his chances in states like Arizona?

MARK PRESTON, CNN POLITICS EXECUTIVE EDITOR: No. No, he didn't. In fact, yesterday when the three of us were in Las Vegas we said, you know, what would be a victory for Hillary Clinton? What would be a victory for Donald Trump? I said, listen, a tie for Hillary Clinton would be a victory. Well, not only did she get a tie, she got a win. And then Donald Trump went out there and made multiple mistakes last night. We talk about the fact that he doesn't believe in accepting the election results.

And of course, that's going to be the headline and will continue to carry through for several days. But he embraced Vladimir Putin again at the same time that his running mate doesn't embrace him, the Republican Party doesn't embrace him, the United States doesn't embrace Vladimir Putin. And that was fairly early on in the debate. He also said with regard to the sexual allegations that most of that had been debunked. Well, that's not true because most of it hasn't been debunked. I mean, it's still being looked at and investigated. So, I think Donald Trump really had a terrible debate last night.

COSTELLO: So, Michelle Obama is going to Arizona, David. Is it possible -- that Arizona could go Clinton?

CHALIAN: It is possible, Carol. Arizona is fully in play. This is the one sort of real opportunity to try to expand the map from where it has been recently in American presidential election history, and the Clinton campaign is putting $2 million in there. As you said, they are sending the woman that has been her most potent surrogate on the trail this entire cycle, Michelle Obama, in there.

I have no doubt in my mind that the Clinton campaign is going to have Hillary Clinton in Arizona sometime between now and November 8th. We have it as a real toss-up battleground state

[10:20:16] right now. It's only gone Democratic once since World War II, that was in 1996 for Bill Clinton's re-election race. And this is a state that Donald Trump is going to have to continue to fight for.

COSTELLO: So Mark, -- if you take a look at the graphic we just had up. Hillary Clinton has all of these powerful surrogates campaigning on her behalf in key states. Donald Trump has Mike Pence.

PRESTON: Yes, not so much. You know, even Kellyanne Conway, who is the campaign manager for Donald Trump, acknowledged that in an interview, I think on CNN a couple nights ago where she said listen, you have a very popular president, you have the first lady of the United States. We have seen Chelsea Clinton in Arizona. We've seen Bernie Sanders in Arizona this week as well. Not only is Hillary Clinton now locking down the states that she has to win just to get to the number 270. She is now on the offense. She's going into a state like Arizona where she shouldn't be doing so but there's a chance there.

In Utah, Donald Trump is back on his heels. In Texas, which will very likely go Republican anyway, he should be winning by a wider margin. He is now playing defense in states that he should not have to worry about. That is his biggest problem.

COSTELLO: OK. So, let's talk about the state of Ohio, David, because both candidates are going to go there. I think Hillary Clinton is going there tomorrow. Donald Trump is going there today. So, that's a state that's very much still for Trump. So what happens now in light of the debate last night?

CHALIAN: Well, listen, I think that -- Ohio is one of the states where they will battle it out all the way through this next 19 days. They are going to fight for every vote there. I have no doubt. We have seen one of Trump's strongholds among the battlegrounds. It has not gone the way of other battleground states right now which is a good sign for Donald Trump. It's why I think we see him there for the first appearance after the debate.

And you said how will the debate play out? If you are a die-hard Donald Trump supporter you are going to be very encouraged by his comments about waiting to see what happens on November 8th before saying you are going to accept these results. These are people who have been called to action and a cause, and as he says all the time, this is a movement and his supporters really feel that. He's going to be surrounded by those folks in Ohio today. His problem is, there aren't enough right now that we can see, that is going to get him to 270 electoral votes.

So what did he do in the debate last night that is going to add to those already committed voters? For some of the debate I think he was doing that, bringing on some Republicans that may have shifted away, talking about the issues in a way that is very attractive to these Republicans and perhaps some independents as well. But then when he got to this point of whether or not he would accept the election results, this goes to the heart of the temperament question which is his threshold issue that he is not solved yet for his candidacy.

COSTELLO: You know, another headline that I keep saying today, Mark, is does Mr. Trump really want to win or does he have something else in mind? And I ask you that because before the debate, his campaign held a Facebook live event, right? It had its own debate coverage. 160,000 people watched that, according to "BuzzFeed."

PRESTON: Including me. I mean, I turned it on and I watched it last night as well. There have been a lot of questions whether Donald Trump does want to win or he doesn't want to win. Look, I think he wants to win. This guy doesn't like to lose. So, I do think he wants to win the presidency. That's not a question.

But to your point there's been a lot of speculation, will he try to launch his own network to try to harness the 35 percent, 30 percent that we are seeing of support for him that will be upset if he doesn't win in November which right now we expect he won't. If he does that, would he launch an alternative news network more to the right, more to the Trumpisms that we have heard over the past year? The problem with that is, there is a problem, is that Sarah Palin tried to do the same thing and it failed. Glenn Beck tried to do the same thing and it's not doing nearly as well as they had thought it would be.

Having said that, Donald Trump could invest enough money into it, do a niche market and - perhaps now, do some kind of programming around it, whether that is buying an existing station that is on cable that has carriage and there are a couple out there right now that he could potentially go into or could he just put it on the Internet.

Listen, Donald Trump is not going to go away after the election. This might be one way that he stays certainly in the perch of power after the November election.

COSTELLO: All right. I have to leave it there. Mark Preston, David Chalian, many thanks as always.

Coming up in the "Newsroom," he meant it as an insult but now it's become a rallying cry. Up next, how the Internet is lighting up over Trump's "nasty woman" comment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:29:14] COSTELLO: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thanks for joining me. America has lost now. Those are the words from the Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte who just announced he's separating from the United States, cutting military and economic ties with this country and re-aligning with China. Duterte move comes less than two months after his controversial profanity directed at President Obama issuing an apology the next day. CNN's Matt Rivers live in Beijing with more. Good morning.

MATT RIVERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Carol. These comments came at a business forum here in Beijing. President Duterte here in Beijing for his first official state visit, with China, these comments, a huge surprise given kind of off the cuff to a group of Filipino business leaders as well as Chinese leaders. Let's show you what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT RODRIGO DUTERTE, PHILIPPINES: You honors in this venue, I announce my separation from the United States --