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Candidates Talked Foreign Policy in Debate; Clinton Speech in Raleigh, N.C.; Debate Breaks Record in Viewership. Aired 1:30-2p ET
Aired September 27, 2016 - 13:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
[13:30:00] HILLARY CLINTON, (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: -- our air strikes against ISIS and eventually support our Arab and Kurdish partners to be able to take out ISIS in Raqqa and their claim of being a caliphate. We are making progress. Our military is assisting in Iraq. And we are hoping that within a year, we'll be able to push ISIS out of Iraq and then squeeze them in Syria.
DONALD TRUMP, (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Secretary Clinton is talking about taking out ISIS. We'll take out ISIS.
Well, President Obama and Secretary Clinton created a vacuum the way they got out of Iraq. Because they got out. They shouldn't have been in. But once they got in, the way they got out was a disaster. And ISIS was formed.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Here is a question for you, Fred. You're there on the ground. ISIS, the war still continues against ISIS. Hillary Clinton says she would oppose any introduction of U.S. combat ground troops to try to defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Can ISIS be defeated without a major deployment of U.S. ground forces?
FRED PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: You know, Wolf, I think it can. At least on the battlefield military, that ISIS can and will be defeated over the next couple of months, possibly over the next couple of years. You will see them most probably very soon losing one of their main strongholds in Mosul which is actually the largest city they hold in Iraq. Also, you have Kurdish forces and the Syrian army closing in on its other main stronghold, which is Raqqa in Syria. But one of the things that's key, and neither two of the candidates spoke about is what comes after ISIS loses those strongholds, what comes after there is no more caliphate and territory? That's the hard part, trying to shore-up, for instance, Iraq, but also trying to stabilize the situation here in Syria so you don't have ISIS, from the remnant, try to rise again, in what many people call of the potential of rise of ISIS 2.0 or ISIS 3.0. If you'll recall, the U.S. was in this situation before. Donald Trump is not wrong when he says that ISIS was on the rope back then. It was called al-Qaeda in Iraq. But then the U.S. left, on those terms, left al Maliki in power and Iraq and slowly and steadily this organization came back up, rebranded itself as ISIS, and then became more dangerous than it was ever before. So after ISIS defeated on the battlefield, it will be the time where
the U.S. will have to make some very big decisions and policy decisions to try to shore-up this neighborhood, especially Iraq, and also finding some way forward here in Syria as well -- Wolf?
BLITZER: Interesting.
Jim, the issue of hacking of the DNC, hacking of other political operatives in the United States, Hillary Clinton suggested, as many U.S. intelligent officials have, Russia is responsible.
Trump last night said it might be Russia or China, might be some 400 pound guy that's doing it by himself. What are you hearing on that issue?
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: It's not a partisan issue. This is not where Democrats think one thing and Republicans think something else. The intelligence community, the FBI, law enforcement agencies and, in fact, as well, private companies --
BLITZER: Jim, I am going to interrupt you a moment. Hold your thought.
Hillary Clinton is now speaking in Raleigh, speaking about the debate last night.
HILLARY CLINTON, (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I am so excited to be back here at Wake Tech. I was here eight years ago and --
(CHEERING)
CLINTON: -- I was so impressed then with the kinds of programs and opportunities that are offered here to people like Kristine that I wanted to come back, of course, to Raleigh, but I wanted to come back to Wake Tech. When Kristine was talking, I was backstage watching her on a screen I have up there. She kept on saying how she was about to cry. I was about to cry.
(LAUGHTER)
Her story says so much, not just about her but about our country. We are a country of second chances and third and fourth chances for people willing to work for them --
(CHEERING)
CLINTON: -- get up everyday and do their best. That's the basic bargain of America. And I was really proud of Kristine.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are proud of you.
CLINTON: Thank you, thank you.
(CHEERING) CLINTON: I think her patients at Duke Regional are in for a treat. Not only the skills that she have learned here at Wake Tech but that personality that gets up and go personality is going to mean a lot to the people she's taking care of.
So, Kristine, thank you, and god speed.
(CHEERING)
CLINTON: And now, I have to thank Dr. Stephen Scott, president of Wake Tech Community College.
(CHEERING)
[13:35:06] All the administrators and the faculties and the students of Wake Tech.
(CHEERING)
CLINTON: And now, Dr. Scott told me of the enrollment is about 73,000. And what a tribute to what this institution represents. I am a huge, huge supporter.
(CHEERING)
CLINTON: You know I can see America differently. I think there is nothing we cannot do if we make our minds up and roll up our sleeves and get working together and supporting institutions like Wake Tech and support people like Kristine. That's what I intend to do.
And I want to thank your mayor.
Mayor McFarland, thank you so much for being here.
(CHEERING)
CLINTON: State Seantor Dan Blue Jr (ph).
(CHEERING)
CLINTON: I want to recognize Linda Coleman, candidate for lieutenant governor of North Carolina.
(CHEERING)
CLINTON: Linda came so close last anytime. And this time, are you going to bring it over to the finish line?
(SHOUTING)!
(CHEERING)
CLINTON: I will tell you somebody else that I am excited about. The Democratic candidate for the Senate, Former state representative, Debra Ross (ph).
(CHEERING)
CLINTON: I have watched the campaign she's run and the intensity and incredible passion that she brings to it. We sure could use her in Washington representing North Carolina.
(CHEERING)
CLINTON: I want to thank all the elected officials who are here. And I want to do a special shout-out to long time of my husband's and somebody who we admired so much, who transformed this state during his governorship, and that's former Governor Jim Hunt.
(CHEERING)
CLINTON:
CLINTON: There is a lot that I want to talk about today but let me start with this. You may or may not know that today is National Voter's Registration Day.
(CHEERING)
CLINTON: You see some signs people are voting, "I will vote."
(CHEERING)
CLINTON: that's not only a great sign and it shows you are committed to vote. It is a website and you can go to iwillvote.com to make sure you are registered. And I hope you all will. And I hope you'll tell everybody that you know to do the same. We want to make sure people are registered and there are still time to get registered here in North Carolina. I hope you think. Because think about everything that's at stake in this election. Right here in North Carolina, the very mean-spirited, wrong-headed decision of your legislature and governor to pass and sign House bill two --
(BOOING)
CLINTON: -- has hurt this state. More than that, it is hurting people.
It has sent a message to so many people, well, you know, you are not really wanted. You are not really part of us. I think the American dream is big enough for everybody.
(CHEERING)
CLINTON: The other thing that your governor and legislature did was everything they could to make voting harder for people.
Now, they were pretty blatant about it. Make it harder for people of color. Make it harder for the elderly and make it harder the young.
Now, some of that had been rolled back thankfully because it is so wrong and, I would argue, unconstitutional.
(CHEERING)
[13:40:00] CLINTON: But, the best way to show, hey, in a democracy like ours, we could have the most vigorous and violent debate. That's what it's about. But we want everybody to exercise his or her right to vote. That's the way we are supposed to be making decisions. It distorts our democracy if some groups of people try to prevent from other people from being able to do that.
I have won elections and I have lost elections. I know what the difference is.
(LAUGHTER)
But, I will tell you this, I believe in what our founders established for us to govern ourselves, to continue to widen the circle of opportunity, and that includes the opportunity to be heard, to express yourself, your voice and your vote, and the best way to reaffirm our commitment to that fundamental bedrock American value is to show up and vote and demonstrate the importance of our vote.
(CHEERING)
CLINTON: I believe that we may have a record-setting turn-out in this election.
(CHEERING)
CLINTON: Some folks who are following this are saying that we could have the biggest turn-out that we ever had. That kind of makes sense because you could not have two more different visions about where we want our country to go in the future and who we are fighting for. But early information is encouraging and we are seeing spikes in early voting. We are seeing voting rates among African-Americans, Latinos and young people going up.
(CHEERING)
CLINTON: For the first time, the estimate is that young people could represent 25 percent of the vote.
(CHEERING)
CLINTON: Now, I would love to see that. Obviously, I hope people vote for me. But I would love to see that because every election is about the future and, honestly, it is more about the future of young people and children than it has ever been, because of the difference in the approaches and experiences of me and my opponent.
Last night, I got a chance --
(CHEERING)
CLINTON: I got a chance to say a few things --
(LAUGHTER)
-- about what I want to do if I am so fortunate enough to be elected as your president.
I do have this old-fashion idea that if I am asking for your vote, I should tell you what I want to do.
(CHEERING)
CLINTON: And I also got to convey my excitement about what we can do together.
You see the central question of this election is what kind of country we want do be and what kind of future we want to build for our children and grandchildren. I think about that a lot. In part because I started out working for the Children's Defense Fund. It is always been my passion about what we can do --
(CHEERING)
CLINTON: -- to help more kids live up to their god giving potentials?
During this campaign, people have asked me, well, how did you get interested in that? The simple answer is my mother had such a neglected childhood, she was basically abandoned by her parents and was living with her grandparents who didn't want her. By the age of 14, she was out on her own working in a home babysitting, keeping house. She was basically a maid. When I think of my mother's own life and how she told me when I was old enough to understand of how different her life was than the one she created for me and my brothers. She would say it is so often saved by the kindness of other people. You know, we over look the importance of just how we treat each other, the respect we show, the kindness --
(CHEERING)
CLINTON: -- the love that we show.
(CHEERING)
CLINTON: And I am well aware that's not something that you can put on a campaign website. But I have been talking about it because we've got to reassert our fundamental connections to each other.
You know when mother was in first grade, she never had any food. And her first grade teacher noticed that. In those days, they brought food, a little bag of food, and they would sit in the classroom and eat it. And my mother never had any food. The teacher notice and brought extra food. Without embarrassing her, she would say, I think, I brought too much food. Would you like this sandwich? Would you like this? It was not until she herself was much older that my mother realized that that teacher fed her for that school year. But her love for her students, her recognition of a child that was not well taken care of meant that she stepped in. When my mother worked as a maid, she really wanted to go to high school. Started working before she would have been in high school because she had to get out of her grandparent's home.
The woman she worked for realized that, how much my mother wanted to go to high school, so he said to her, if you get up earlier -- it likes like Kristine. If you get up earlier and you get your chores done, you can go to highs school. That's what my mother did for your years. She got up early and literally had to run to get to high school. It sounds harsh but not for my mom.
When I talk about us being Stronger Together, I am not just talking about what our government needs to do. I am talking about what each of us can do to contribute. We do need to make sure --
(CHEERING)
CLINTON: We need to make sure that our economy is working for everyone not just those at the top, and we need to make new jobs, infrastructure jobs and advance manufacturing jobs, and technology and innovation, and clean renewable and energy jobs. We got to do more to support more businesses because that's where most of the new jobs will come from.
As I said last night, my dad was a small business man. After World War II, he started this small business in Chicago, printing fabric. It was a dark room with no natural light. He had two long tables and then he would take a silk screen, if you have seen one, and he would start at one end and put it down and pour the paint in and it goes all the way down to the end of the table and then he's start on the other the table, and he would do that until he got the job done. I would help him out from time to time. I knew how hard he worked. He was so proud that he could give us a good middle class life.
He was able to do what we want to see in America, keep going and keep reaching, move as high as your hard work and ambition to take you.
I want us to have an economy that works for everyone and grow the economy and creating more jobs, but I want a fairer economy because --
(CHEERING)
BLITZER: All right, we'll continue to monitor Hillary Clinton. She's speaking in Raleigh, North Carolina, taking a bit of victory lap. Her aides were very pleased with her debate performance.
Let's assess what we are hearing now and what's happening on this day after the historic debate.
Gloria Borger is with us, our chief political analyst; Dana Bash, our CNN chief political correspondent; Eugene Scott, CNN politics reporter; and CNN political analyst, David Gregory, is joining us. Also joining us in Baltimore, the NAACP president and CEO, Cornell William Brooks.
Gloria, your analysis on the day that historic debate. She went in the back of the plane, spoke to reporters, clearly thinks she won the debate.
[13:50:15] GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: I think the campaign feels good about it. I think you can tell from the speech that Hillary Clinton and I think the campaign believes that they left nothing unanswered and that Donald Trump was unprepared and that Hillary Clinton took them to task on everything from taxes to Birther to Iraq war to even the issue of stamina.
BLITZER: But is that all -- assuming she did win, quote, "win, the debate," it's going to be translated, Dana, into votes, into the political polls, the real polls that will be coming out, the national polls, as well as the polls in key battleground states.
DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: We were talking to Clinton advisors who are trying to lower expectations big time saying we don't expect to see the polls change very much because it's not going to get baked in right away. Trying to phrase everybody for that but I was talking to somebody who knows Donald Trump go on and I thought this was genius that it's not necessarily Donald Trump was unprepared it's just that he couldn't help himself getting trapped in her bait and taking her bait. The way the source described it, it was he's the kind of guy who touches the stove, and you tell him don't touch the stove. He has to touch the stove, get burned and say, "That's hot, I won't do that again." The analogy being that was last night's debate and the hope by the source is that he will learn for the next two debates to not take the debate and stay more on offense.
BLITZER: Eugene, you were watching the debate with young people, Millennials. This is an area where Hillary Clinton has had trouble.
EUGENE SCOTT, CNN POLITICS REPORTER: Very much so, and we see her outreach being at a community college in North Carolina hoping to capitalize on the points she made last night that Donald Trump did not do us well on such as climate change but also pivoting to an area we didn't hear about last night in terms of college affordability so hopefully she will get the turnout her campaign is hoping that Obama got in '08 and '12 but that's not looking likely as now.
BLITZER: David Gregory, we just heard her say there could be record turnout in this election. You see evidence of that?
DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I think there's such a fear and loathing factor on both sides I expect a strong turnout. It may not be for what Clinton hope, it's a vote for her, it may be the fear factor about Donald Trump and she made illusions to that last night in the debate that she's standing between him and the abyss for voters. But, look, I think these debates are about looking at these candidates and imagining them as president of the United States. That's where she came ahead last night. She was within herself, she was a steel magnolia, she was unflappable. I think you put all of those things together, it's presidential.
I think Dana's right that Trump couldn't help himself. He appeared to be more prepared than he ended up being. I thought he had a good 30 to 45 minutes then he unraveled himself. Now so much of what we're talking about the day after is his comments on race and gender and not releasing his taxes. All of his deficits and not seizing opportunities that he had and it seems like his answer, I'll be tougher, I'll be more vulgar, I'll hit her harder. She knows that could come at any time, she won't go for it. He did go for it.
BLITZER: Cornell, as the president of the NAACP, what was your reaction to the debate last night?
CORNELL WILLIAM BROOKS, CEO & PRESIDENT, NAACP: Well, it was clear that the difference in the racial vocabulary between Mr. Trump and Secretary Clinton was stark so the words she used were words like "implicit bias, institutional racism, community policing." Institutional racism, which I think might be a first on a presidential debate. The words he used were "Stop-and-Frisk, law and order." She was forward leaning in terms of policy. He was backward leaning in terms of policy. He talked about a constitutionally discredited racially discriminatory policy, Stop-and-Frisk. She talked about bridging the gap between the community and officers. Making the point that what the most conscious-driven protesters want or what the -- is what the most conscious-driven police officers want. He was kind of glum and despairing in terms of policy prescriptions.
(CROSSTALK)
BLITZER: Cornell, hold on, we're getting breaking news. Just want to interrupt.
We're getting the audience numbers from last night's debate. I want to get Brian Stelter.
Brian, what are the numbers?
[13:55:09] BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT & CNN HOST, RELIABLE RESOURCES: Looking at the numbers, Wolf, this is the most- watched television debate in American history. The numbers just in from Nielsen showing over 80 million viewers tuning in. Hillary Clinton is talking about potentially record turnout in November but already record ratings for the first debate and this is before we count PBS, C-Span, or live-streaming. That means practically every American adult who was home last night was tuned into this debate. More than nine million viewers just for CNN. 80 million viewers overall. Tremendous interest in those two candidates.
And this is good news for Hillary Clinton given that she's been widely viewed as the winner. It means she is had a higher-than-average audience for this debate.
BLITZER: We'll continue to watch all of the reaction, all of the fallout from this debate.
That's it for me. I'll be back 5:00 p.m. eastern in The Situation Room.
The news continues here on CNN right after a quick break.
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