The First U.S. Presidential Debate: Hillary Clinton VS Donald Trump

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Good evening from Hofstra University
in Hempstead, New York,
I'm Lester Holt,
anchor of NBC Nightly News.
I wanna welcome you to the first presidential debate.
The participants tonight are Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
This debate is sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debate.
It's a non-partisan, non-profit organisation.
The Commission drafted tonight's format
and the rules have been agreed to by the campaigns.
The 90-minute debate is divided into six segments,
each 15 minutes long.
We'll explore three topic areas tonight.
Achieving prosperity, America's direction
and securing America.
At the start of each segment, I will ask the same lead-off question
to both candidates
and they will each have up to two minutes to respond.
From that point until the end of the segment, we'll have an open discussion.
The questions are mine
and have not been shared with the Commission or the campaigns.
The audience here in the room has agreed to remain silent,
so that we can focus on what the candidates are saying.
I will invite you to applaud, however, at this moment,
as we welcome the candidates.
Democratic nominee for President of the United States, Hillary Clinton,
and Republican nominee for President of the United States, Donald]. Trump.
- Hey. How are you, Donald? - I'm good, Hillary.
I'm on.
- Good luck to you. - And to you, thank you.
- Trump, good luck to you. - Thank you.
Well, I don't expect us
to cover all the issues of this campaign tonight,
but I remind everyone, there are two more presidential debates scheduled.
We are gonna focus on many of the issues that voters tell us are most important
then we're gonna press for specifics.
I am honoured to have this role,
but this evening belongs to the candidates,
and just as important to the American people.
Candidates, we look forward to hear you
articulate your policies and your positions,
as well as your visions and your values.
So let's begin.
We're calling this opening segment Achieving Prosperity
and central to that is jobs.
There are two economic realities in America today.
There's been a record six straight years of job growth,
and new census numbers show
incomes have increased at a record rate
after years of stagnation.
However, income inequality remains significant
and nearly half of Americans are living paycheque to paycheque.
Beginning with you, Secretary Clinton,
why are you a better choice than your opponent
to create the kinds of jobs
that will put more money into the pockets of Americans workers?
Well, thank you, Lester,
and thanks to Hofstra for hosting us.
The central question in this election
is really what kind of country we want to be
and what kind of future we'll build together.
Today is my granddaughter's second birthday,
so I think about this a lot.
First, we have to build an economy that works for everyone,
not just those at the top.
That means we need new jobs, good jobs,
with rising incomes.
I want us to invest in you.
I want us to invest in your future.
That means jobs in infrastructure,
in advanced manufacturing,
innovation and technology,
clean renewable energy
and small business,
because most of the new jobs will come from small business.
We also have to make the economy fairer.
That starts with raising the national minimum wage
and also guarantee finally equal pay for women's work.
I also want to see more companies do profit sharing.
If you help create the profit, you should be able to share in them,
not just the executives at the top.
And I want us to do more to us to support people
who are struggling to balance family and work.
I've heard from so many of you
about the difficult choices you face
and the stresses that you're under.
So let's have paid family leave,
earned sick days.
Let's be sure we have affordable child care
and debt-free college.
How are we going to do it?
We're gonna do it by having the wealthy pay their fair share
and close the corporate loopholes.
Finally, we, tonight, are on the stage together, Donald Trump and I.
Donald, it's good to be with you.
We're going to have a debate
where we are talking about the important issues facing our country.
You have to judge us.
Who can shoulder the immense awesome responsibilities of the presidency?
Who can put into action the plans
that will make your life better?
I hope that I will be able to earn your vote
on November 8.
Secretary Clinton, thank you.
Mr. Trump, the same question to you,
it's about putting more money in the pockets of American workers.
You have up to two minutes.
Thank you, Lester.
Our jobs are fleeing the country.
They're going to Mexico,
they're going to many other countries,
you look at what China's doing to our country
in terms of making our product.
They're devaluing their currency
and there's nobody in our government to fight them.
And we have a very good fight and we have a winning fight
because they're using our country as a piggy bank
to rebuild China.
And many other countries are doing the same thing.
So we're losing our good jobs, so many of them.
When you look at what's happening in Mexico,
a friend of mine who builds plants
said it's the Eighth Wonder of the World
they're building some of the biggest plant anywhere in the world,
some of the most sophisticated, some of the best plants,
with the United States, as you said, "Not so much."
So Ford is leaving.
You see that there's more oar division leaving,
thousands of jobs, leaving Michigan, leaving Ohio,
they're all leaving.
And we can't allow it to happen anymore.
As far as child cares concerned and so many other things,
I think Hillary and I agree on that.
We probably disagree a little bit as to numbers and amounts
and what we're going to do but perhaps we'll be talking about that later.
But we have to stop our jobs from being stolen from us,
we have to stop our companies from leaving the United States.
And with it firing all of their people.
All you have to do is take a look at Carrier air conditioning
in Indianapolis.
They left fired 14 hundred people,
they're going to Mexico.
So many hundreds, and hundreds of companies are doing this.
We cannot let it happen.
Under my plan,
I'll be reducing taxes tremendously, from 35 percent to 15 percent for a companies,
small and big businesses.
That's going to be a job creator
like we haven't seen since Ronald Reagan.
It's going to be a beautiful thing to watch.
Companies will come, they will build, they will expand,
new companies will start.
And I look very, very much forward to doing it.
We have to renegotiate our trade deals
and we have to stop these countries from stealing our companies
and our jobs.
Secretary Clinton, would you like to respond?
Well, I think trade is an important issue.
Of course, we are five percent of the world's population,
we have to trade with the other 95 percent.
And we need to have smart, fair trade deals.
We also though, need to have a tax system
that rewards work,
not just financial transactions.
And the kind of plan that Donald has put forth
would be trickle-down economics all over again.
In fact, it would be the most extreme version,
the biggest tax cuts for the top percent of the people
in this country than we've ever had.
I call it trumped-up trickle down,
because that's exactly what it would be.
That is not how we grow the economy.
We just have a different view
about what's best for growing the economy,
how we make investments that will actually produce jobs and rising incomes.
I think we come at it from somewhat different perspectives. I understand that.
You know, Donald was very fortunate in his life and that's all to his benefit.
He started his business with $14 million, borrowed from his father,
and he really believes that the more you help wealthy people, the better off we'll be
and that everything will work out from there.
I don't buy that. I have a different experience.
My father was a small businessman. He worked really hard.
He printed drapery fabrics on long table where he pulled out those fabrics
and went down with a silk screen and dumped the paint in
and took the squeegee and kept going.
And so what I believe is the more we can do for the middle class,
the more we can invest in you,
your education, your skills, your future,
the better we will be off and the better we'll grow.
That's the kind of economy I want us to see again.
Let me follow up with Mr. Trump, if I can.
You've talked about creating 25 million jobs
and you've promised to bring back millions of jobs for Americans.
How are we going to bring back the industries that have left this country
for cheaper labor overseas?
How specifically are you going to tell American manufacturers
that you have to come back?
Well, for one thing, and before we start on that,
my father gave me a very small loan in 1975
and I built it into a company that's worth many, many billions of dollars
with some of the greatest assets in the world
and I say that only because that's the kind of thinking our country needs.
Our country is in deep trouble.
We don't know what we're doing when it comes to devaluations
and all of these countries all over the world, especially China,
they are the best, the best ever at it.
What they are doing to us is a very, very sad thing.
So we have to do that. We have to renegotiate our trade deals.
And Lester, they are taking our jobs,
they are giving incentives,
doing things that frankly we don't do.
Let me give you an example of Mexico.
They have a VAT tax. We're in a different system.
When we sell into Mexico, there's a tax.
When they sell in, automatic, 16% approximately.
When they sell into us, there's no tax.
It's a defective agreement. It's been defective for a long time, many years.
But the politicians haven't done anything about it.
Now, in all fairness to Secretary Clinton,
yes, is that okay?
Good. I want you to be very happy. It's very important to me.
But in all fairness to Secretary Clinton,
when she started talking about this, it was really very recently.
She's been doing this for 30 years.
Why hasn't she made the agreements better?
The NAFTA agreement is defective,
just because of the tax and many other reasons. But just because of the tax...
Let me interrupt a moment.
Secretary Clinton and others politicians should have been doing this for years,
not right now because of the fact that we've created a movement.
They should have been doing this for years.
What's happened to our jobs and our country
and our economy generally is...
Look, we owe $20 trillion.
We can't do it any longer, Lester.
Back to the question though.
How do you bring, specifically bring back jobs?
American manufacturers, how do you make them bring the jobs back?
Well, the first you do is don't let the jobs leave.
The companies are leaving. I could name...
I mean, there are thousands of them.
They are leaving and they are leaving in bigger numbers than ever.
And what you do is you say,
"Fine, you want to go to Mexico or some other country, good luck.
We wish you a lot of luck."
But if you think you're going to make your air conditioners or your oars or cookies
or whatever you make and bring them into our country without a tax,
you're wrong.
And once you say you're going to have to tax them coming in
and our politicians never do this
because they have special interests
and the special interests want those companies to leave
because in many cases they own the companies.
So what I'm saying is, we can stop them from leaving.
We have to stop them from leaving.
And that's a big, big factor.
Let me let Secretary Clinton get in here.
Well, let's stop for a second here and remember where we were eight years ago.
We had the worst financial crisis, the Great Recession,
the worst since the 1930s.
That was in large part because of tax policies that slash taxes on the wealthy,
failed to invest in the middle class,
took their eyes off of Wall Street
and created a perfect storm.
In fact, Donald was one of the people who rooted for the housing crisis.
He said back in 2006, "Gee, I hope it does collapse,
because then I can go in and buy some and make some money."
- Well, it did collapse. - That's called business, by the way.
9 million people, 9 million people lost their jobs,
5 million people lost their homes
and $13 trillion in family wealth was wiped out.
Now, we have come back from that abyss and it has not been easy
so we're now on the precipice of having a potentially much better economy,
but the last thing we need to do
is to go back to the policies that failed us in the first place.
Independent experts have looked at what I have proposed
and looked at what Donald has proposed
and basically they said this:
that if his tax plan,
which would blow up the debt by over $5 trillion
and would, in some instances,
disadvantage middle class families compared to the wealthy,
were to go into effect,
we would lose three and a half million jobs
and maybe have another recession.
They looked at my plans and said,
"Okay, if we can do this... "
And I intend to get it done.
"We will have 10 million more jobs
because we'll make investments where we can grow the economy."
Take clean energy.
Some country is going to be
the clean energy superpower of the 21st century.
Donald thinks that climate change is a hoax
perpetrated by the Chinese.
I think it's real.
- I did not. I do not say that. - Scientists say it's real...
I do not say that.
And I think it's important that we grip this and deal with it,
both at home and abroad.
And here's what we can do.
We can deploy half a billion more solar panels.
We can have enough clean energy to power every home.
We can build a new modern electric grid.
That's a lot of jobs.
That's a lot of new economic activity.
So I've tried to be very specific about what we can and should do
and I am determined that that we're going to get the economy really moving again,
building on the progress we've made over the last eight years
but never going back to what got us in trouble in the first place.
But never going back to what got us in trouble in the first place.
Mr. Trump?
She talks about solar panels.
We invested in a solar company, our country.
That was a disaster. They lost plenty of money on that one.
Look, I'm a great believer in all forms of energy
but we're putting a lot of people out of work.
Our energy policies are a disaster.
Our country is losing so much in terms of energy, in terms of paying off our debt.
You can't do what you are looking to do
with 20 trillion in debt.
The Obama administration, from the time they have come in,
is over 230 years worth of debt and he's topped it.
He's doubled it in a course of almost eight years,
seven and a half years, to be semi-exact.
So I will tell you this, we have to do a much better job at keeping our jobs.
And we have to do a much better job at giving companies incentives
to build new companies or to expand
because they are not doing it.
And all you have to do is look at Michigan and look at Ohio
and look at all of these places where so many of their jobs and their companies
are just leaving. They are gone.
And Hillary, I'd just ask you this.
You've been doing this for 30 years.
Why are you just thinking about these solutions right now?
For 30 years you've been doing it and now you are just starting to think of solutions.
- Actually, that's... - I will bring, excuse me.
I will bring back jobs.
You can't bring back jobs.
Well, actually, I have thought about this quite a bit.
- Yeah, for 30 years. - And I have...
Well, not quite that long.
I think my husband did a pretty good job in the 1990s.
I think a lot about what worked
and how we can make it work again.
We have created millions new jobs,
He approved NAFTA...
a balanced budget.
Which is the single worst trade deal ever approved in this country.
And incomes went up for everybody.
Manufacturing jobs went up also in the 1990s
if we're actually going to look at the facts.
When I was in the Senate, I had a number of trade deals that came before me
and I held them all to the same test.
Will they create jobs in America?
Will they raise incomes in America?
And are they good for our national security?
Some of them I voted for.
The biggest one, a multinational one known as CAFTA,
I voted against.
And because I hold the same standards as I look at all of these trade deals.
But let's not assume that trade is the only challenge we have in the economy.
I think it is a part of it and I've said what I'm going to do.
I'm going to have a special prosecutor.
We're going to enforce the trade deals we have
and we're going to hold people accountable.
When I was Secretary of State,
we actually increased American exports globally 30%.
We increased them to China 50%
So I know how to really work to get new jobs
and to get exports that helped to create more new jobs.
You haven't done it in 30 years or 26 years or any number you want to...
I've been a senator, Donald,
- You haven't done it... - and I have been a Secretary of State...
- Excuse me. - And I have done a lot.
Your husband signed NAFTA
which was one of the worst things that ever happened to the manufacturing industry.
That's your opinion. That is your opinion.
You go to New England, you go to Ohio, Pennsylvania.
You go anywhere you want, Secretary Clinton.
And you will see devastation where manufacturing is down 30-40
sometimes 50 percent.
NAFTA is the worst trade deal
maybe ever signed anywhere
but certainly ever signed in this country.
And now you want to approve Trans-Pacific Partnership.
You were totally in favour of it
then you heard what I was saying how bad it is
and you said I cant win that debate
but you know that if you did win you would approve that
and that will be almost as bad as NAFTA.
Nothing will ever top NAFTA.
Well, that-- that is just not accurate.
I was against it.
Once it was finally negotiated and the terms were laid out.
- I wrote about that in-- I wrote about- - You called a gold standard. -
You called it the gold standard of trade deals.
You said it's the finest deal you've ever seen.
No. And then you heard what I said about it
and all of a sudden you were against it.
Well, Donald, I know you live in your own reality
but that is not the facts,
the facts are I did say, I hoped it would be a good deal -
- but when it was negotiated - Not.
Which I was not responsible for.
I concluded it wasn't.
- I wrote about that in my book - So it was President Obama’s fault?
- Before you even announced. - Is it President Obama's fault?
Secretary, is it President Obama’s fault?
Because he's pushing it.
There are different views
about what's good for our country,
our economy and our leadership in the world.
And I think it's important to look at what we need to do
to get the economy going again.
That's why I said new jobs with rising incomes, investment.
Not in more tax cuts that would add five trillion dollars to the debt.
- But you have no plan. - Oh, I do.
Secretary, you have no plan.
In fact I have written a book about it
it's called "Stronger Together,"
you can pick it up tomorrow - at the bookstore or at an airport near you.
We're gonna move to-
But it's because I see this
we need to have strong growth,
fair growth, sustained growth.
We also have to look at how we help families balance,
their responsibilities at home and their responsibilities at business.
So we have a very robust set of plans.
And people have looked at both of our plans have concluded
that mine would create 10 million jobs
and yours would lose us three and a half million jobs and-
You are going to approve one of the biggest tax increases in history.
You are going to approve one of the biggest tax increases in history.
You are gonna drive business out. Your regulations are a disaster
and you're gonna increase regulations all over the place.
And by the way, my tax cut is the biggest since Ronald Reagan.
I'm very proud of it.
It will create tremendous numbers of new jobs.
But regulations,
you are going to regulate these businesses out of existence.
Lester, I tell you this, I've been all over.
And when I go around, despite the tax cut, the thing-
the things that business as in people like the most is the fact
that I'm cutting regulation.
You have regulations on top of regulations,
and new companies cannot form
and old companies are going out of business.
And you want to increase the regulations and make them even worse.
I'm gonna cut regulations.
I'm going to cut taxes big league,
and you're gonna raise taxes big league, end of story.
Let me get you to pause right there, because we're gonna move into-
were gonna move into the next segment.
We're going to talk taxes...
That can't -- that cant be left to stand.
Please just take 30 seconds and then we're going to go on.
I kind of assumed that there would be a lot of these charges and claims, -
- and so we have taken... - Facts.
The homepage of my website, hillaryclinton.com,
and we turned it into a fact checker.
So if you want to see in real time what the facts are,
please go and take a look because...
And take a look at mine also and you'll see.
It will not and a penny to the debt
and your plans would add five trillion dollars to the debt.
What I had proposed would cut regulations
and streamline them for small businesses.
What I have proposed would be paid for by raising taxes on the wealthy
because they have made all the gains in the economy
and I think it's time that the wealthy incorporations
paid their fair share to support this country.
Well, you just opened the next segment.
Well, look, could I just finish that? I think I should-
You go to our website and you take a look at our website,
she's going to raise taxes 1.3 trillion dollars,
and look at her website.
You know what, it's no different than this.
She's telling us how to fight ISIS.
Just go to her website.
She tells you how to fight ISIS on a website.
I don't think General Douglas MacArthur would like that too much.
She tells you how to fight ISIS on a website.
I don't think General Douglas MacArthur would like that too much.
The next segment, we'll continue with the subject.
Well, at least I have a plan to fight ISIS.
No, no, you're telling the enemy everything you want to do.
No, we're not.
See, you're telling the enemy everything you want to do.
No wonder you've been fighting,
no wonder you've been fighting ISIS your entire adult life.
That's a-- Let's go to the, please, the fact checkers. Get to work.
You are unpacking a lot here
and we're still on the issue of achieving prosperity.
And I want to talk about taxes,
the fundamental difference between the two of you concerns the wealthy.
Secretary Clinton,
you're calling for tax increase on the wealthiest Americans.
I'd like you to further defend that.
And Mr. Trump, you're calling for tax cum for the wealthy.
I'd like you to defend that
and this next two-minute answer goes to you, Mr. Trump.
Well, I'm really calling for major jobs
because the wealthy are going to create tremendous jobs.
They're going to expand their companies. They're going to do a tremendous job.
I'm getting rid of the carried interest provision.
And if you really look, it's not a tax-
truly not a great thing for the wealthy.
It's a great thing for middle class.
It's a great thing for companies to expand.
And when these people are going to put
billions and billions of dollars into companies
and when they're going to bring two-and-a-half trillion dollars
back from overseas,
well, they can't bring the money back
because politicians like Secretary Clinton
won't allow them to bring the money back
because the taxes are so onerous
and the bureaucratic red tape so what is so bad.
So what they're doing is they're leaving our country,
and they're, believe it or not, leaving because taxes are too high
and because some of them have lots of money outside of our country,
and instead of bringing it back and putting the money to work
because they can't work out a deal to,
and everybody agrees it should be brought back.
Instead of that, they're leaving our country to get their money
because they can't bring their money back into our country
because of bureaucratic red tape,
because they can't get together.
Because we have a president that
can't sit them around a table and get them to approve something.
And here's the thing, Republicans and Democrats agree
that this should be done.
Two-and-a-half trillion.
I happened to think it's double. That's probably five trillion dollars
that we can't bring into our country, Lester.
And with a little leadership,
you'd get it in here very quickly
and it could be put to use on the inner cities and lots of other things
and it would be beautiful.
But we have no leadership.
And honestly, that starts with Secretary Clinton.
All right, you have two minutes of the same question
to defend tax increases on the wealthiest Americans,
Secretary Clinton.
I have a feeling by the end of this evening,
I'm going to be blamed for everything that's ever happened.
- Why not? - Why not? Yeah. Why not?
You know, just join the, join the debate by saying more crazy things.
Now let me say-- It is nothing crazy about
not letting our companies bring their money back into their country.
This is Secretary Clinton's two minutes, please.
Yeah, well, let's start the clock again, Lester.
We've looked at your tax proposals.
I don't see changes in the corporate tax rates
or the kinds of proposals you're referring to
that would cause a repatriation bringing back of money that stranded overseas.
- I happen to support that- - Then you didn't read it-
I happen to-- I happen to support that in a way
that we'll actually work to our benefit.
But when I look at what you have proposed,
you have what is called now the Trump loophole,
because it would so advantage you and the business you do.
- You've proposed a- - Who gave it that name?
An approach that has a four billion dollar tax benefit for your family.
And when you look at what you are proposing,
it is, as I said, Trumped up trickle down.
Trickle down did not work,
it got us into the mess we were in in 2008 and 2009.
Slashing taxes on the wealthy hasn't work,
and a lot of really smart wealthy people know that.
And they are saying, "Hey, we need to do more
to make the contributions we should be making
to rebuild the middle class.
I don't think top-down works in America,
I think building the middle class,
investing in the middle class,
making college debt-free
so more young people can get their education,
helping people refinance their tax- their debt from college at a lower rate,
those are the kinds of things that will really boost the economy,
broad-based inclusive growth is what we need in America,
not more advantages for people at the very top.
Typical politician,
all talk, no action,
sounds good, doesn't work, never gonna happen.
Our country is suffering because people like Secretary Clinton
have made such bad decisions
in terms of our jobs and in terms of what's going on.
Now, look, we have the worst revival of an economy
since The Great Depression,
and believe me, we're in a bubble right now.
And the only thing that looks good is the stock market
but if you raise interest rates even a little bit,
that's gonna come crashing down.
We are in a big, fat, ugly bubble,
and we better be awfully careful.
And we have a Fed that's doing political things.
This Janet Yellen of the Fed,
the Fed is doing political by keeping the interest rates at this level
and believe me, the day Obama goes off and he leaves,
and he goes out to the golf course for the rest of his life to play golf,
when they raise interest rates,
you're gonna see some very bad things happen
because the Fed is not doing their job,
the Fed is being more political than Secretary Clinton.
Mr. Trump, we're talking about
the burden that Americans have to pay,
yet you have not release your tax returns.
And the reason nominees have released their returns for decades,
is that voters will know if their potential president
owes money to, who, you know, he owes it to, and any business conflicts.
Don't Americans have a right to know
if there are any conflicts of interest?
I don't mind releasing,
I'm under a routine audit
and it will be released and as soon as the audit is finished,
it will be released...
But you will learn more about Donald Trump
by going down to the federal elections,
where I filed a 104-page essentially financial statement of sorts,
the forms that they have.
It shows income -- in fact, the income -
I just looked today -
the income is filed at $694 million for this past year,
$694 million.
If you would have told me
I was going to make that 15 or 20 years ago,
I would have been very surprised.
But that's the kind of thinking that our country needs.
When we have a country that's doing so badly,
that's being ripped off by every single country in the world,
it's the kind of thinking that our country needs,
because everybody -- Lester,
we have a trade deficit with all of the countries
that we do business with,
of almost $800 billion a year.
You know what that is?
That means, who's negotiating these trade deals?
We have people that are political hacks
negotiating our trade deals.
- The IRS says an audit... - Excuse me.
Of your taxes -
you're perfectly free to release your taxes during an audit.
And so the question, does the public's right to know
outweigh your personal...
Well, I told you, I will release them as soon as the audit.
Look, I've been under audit almost for 15 years.
I know a lot of wealthy people that have never been audited.
I said, do you get audited?
I get audited almost every year.
And in a way, I should be complaining.
I'm not even complaining. I don't mind it.
It's almost become a way of life.
I get audited by the IRS.
But other people don't. I will say this.
We have a situation in this country that has to be taken care of.
I will release my tax returns -
against my lawyer's wishes -
when she releases her 33,000 e-mails that have been deleted.
As soon as she releases them, I will release.
I will release my tax returns.
And that's against -- my lawyers, they say, "Don't do it."
I will tell you this.
No -- in fact, watching shows, they're reading the papers.
Almost every lawyer says,
you don't release your returns until the audits complete.
When the audit's complete, I'll do it.
But I would go against them
if she releases her e-mails.
So it's negotiable?
It's not negotiable, no. Let her release the e-mails.
Why did she delete 33,000...
Well, I'll let her answer that.
But let me just admonish the audience one more time.
There was an agreement.
We did ask you to be silent,
so it would be helpful for us. Secretary Clinton?
Well, I think you've seen another example of bait-and- switch here.
For 40 years,
everyone running for president has released their tax returns.
You can go and see nearly, I think, 39, 40 years of our tax returns,
but everyone has done it.
We know the IRS has made clear
there is no prohibition on releasing it when you're under audit.
So you've got to ask yourself,
why won't he release his tax returns?
And I think there may be a couple of reasons.
First, maybe he's not as rich as he says he is.
Second, maybe he's not as charitable as he claims to be.
Third, we don't know all of his business dealings,
but we have been told through investigative reporting that
he owes about $650 million to Wall Street and foreign banks.
Or maybe he doesn't want the American people,
all of you watching tonight,
to know that he's paid nothing in federal taxes,
because the only years that anybody's ever seen
were a couple of years
when he had to turn them over to state authorities
when he was trying to get a casino license,
and they showed he didn't pay
any federal income tax.
That makes me smart.
So if he's paid zero, that means zero for troops,
zero for vets,
zero for schools or health.
And I think probably he's not all that enthusiastic about
having the rest of our country see
what the real reasons are,
because it must be something really important,
even terrible, that he's trying to hide.
And the financial disclosure statements,
they don't give you the tax rate.
They don't give you all the details that tax returns would.
And it just seems to me that this is something
that the American people deserve to see.
And I have no reason to believe that
he's ever going to release his tax returns,
because there's something he's hiding.
And we'll guess. We'll keep guessing
at what it might be that he's hiding.
But I think the question is,
were he ever to get near the White House,
what would be those conflicts?
Who does he owe money to?
Well, he owes you the answers to that,
and he should provide them.
Well, he owes you the answers to that,
and he should provide them.
He also -- he also raised the issue of your e-mails.
Do you want to respond to that?
I do.
You know, I made a mistake using a private e- mail.
That's for sure.
And if I had to do it over again,
I would, obviously, do it differently.
But I'm not going to make any excuses.
It was a mistake, and I take responsibility for that.
- Mr. Trump? - That was more than a mistake.
That was done purposely. OK?
That was not a mistake.
That was done purposely.
When you have your staff taking the Fifth Amendment,
taking the Fifth so they're not prosecuted,
when you have the man that set up the illegal sewer
taking the Fifth,
I think it's disgraceful.
And believe me, this country thinks it's -
really thinks it's disgraceful, also.
As far as my tax returns,
you don't learn that much from tax returns.
That I can tell you.
You learn a lot from financial disclosure.
And you should go down and take a look at that.
The other thing, I'm extremely underleveraged.
The report that said $650 -
which, by the way, a lot of friends of mine that know my business say,
boy, that's really not a lot of money.
It's not a lot of money relative to what I had.
The buildings that were in question,
they said in the same report, which was -
actually, it wasn't even a bad story, to be honest with you,
but the buildings are worth $3.9 billion.
And the $650 isn't even on that.
But it's not $650. It's much less than that.
But I could give you a list of banks, I would -
if that would help you, I would give you a list of banks.
These are very fine institutions,
very fine banks.
I could do that very quickly.
I am very underleveraged.
I have a great company.
I have a tremendous income.
And the reason I say that is not in a braggadocios way.
It's because it's about time
that this country had somebody running it
that has an idea about money.
When we have $20 trillion in debt,
and our country's a mess, you know,
it's one thing to have $20 trillion in debt
and our roads are good and our bridges are good
and everything's in great shape, our airports.
Our airports are like from a third world country.
You land in LaGuardia,
you land at Kennedy,
you land at LAX,
you land at Newark,
and you come in from Dubai and Qatar
and you see these incredible - you come in from China,
you see these incredible airports,
and you land -- we've become a third world country.
So the worst of all things has happened.
We owe $20 trillion, and we're a mess.
We haven't even started.
And we've spent $6 trillion in the Middle East,
according to a report that I just saw.
Whether it's 6 or 5,
but it looks like it's 6,
$6 trillion in the Middle East,
we could have rebuilt our country twice.
And it's really a shame.
And it's politicians like Secretary Clinton
that have caused this problem.
Our country has tremendous problems.
We're a debtor nation.
We're a serious debtor nation.
And we have a country that needs new roads, new tunnels,
new bridges, new airports, new schools, new hospitals.
And we don't have the money,
because it's been squandered on so many of your ideas.
We'll let you respond and we'll move on to the next segment.
And maybe because you haven't paid
any federal income tax for a lot of years.
And the other thing I think is important...
It would be squandered, too, believe me.
Is if your -- if your main claim
to be president of the United States is your business,
then I think we should talk about that.
You know, your campaign manager said that
you built a lot of businesses
on the backs of little guys.
And, indeed, I have met a lot of the people
who were stiffed by you and your businesses, Donald.
I've met dishwashers, painters, architects,
glass installers, marble installers,
drapery installers, like my dad was,
who you refused to pay when they finished the work
that you asked them to do.
We have an architect in the audience
who designed one of your clubhouses at one of your golf courses.
It's a beautiful facility.
It immediately was put to use.
And you wouldn't pay what the man needed to be paid,
what he was charging you to do...
Maybe he didn't do a good job
and I was unsatisfied with his work...
Which our country should do, too.
Do the thousands of people that you have stiffed
over the course of your business
not deserve some kind of apology
from someone who has taken their labor,
taken the goods that they produced,
and then refused to pay them?
I can only say that I'm certainly relieved that
my late father never did business with you.
He provided a good middle-class life for us,
but the people he worked for,
he expected the bargain to be kept on both sides.
And when we talk about your business,
you've taken business bankruptcy six times.
There are a lot of great businesspeople
that have never taken bankruptcy once.
You call yourself the King of Debt.
You talk about leverage.
You even at one time suggested that
you would try to negotiate down
- the national debt of the United States. - Wrong. Wrong.
Well, sometimes there's not a direct transfer
of skills from business to government,
but sometimes what happened in business
would be really bad for government.
Let's let Mr. Trump...
And we need to be very clear about that.
Look, it's all words, it's all sound bites.
I built an unbelievable company.
Some of the greatest asset anywhere in the world,
real estate assets anywhere in the world,
beyond the United States,
in Europe, lot of different places.
It's an unbelievable company.
But on occasion, four times,
we used certain laws that are there.
And when Secretary Clinton talks about people that didn't get paid,
first of all, they did get paid a lot,
but taken advantage of the laws of the nation.
Now, if you want to change the laws,
you've been there a long time, change the laws.
But I take advantage of the laws of the nation
because I'm running a company.
My obligation right now is to do well
for myself, my family,
my employees, for my companies.
And that's what I do.
But what she doesn't say is that tens of thousands of people
that are...unbelievably happy and that love me.
I'll give you an example.
We're just opening up on Pennsylvania Avenue
right next to the White House,
so if I don't get there one way,
I'm going to get to Pennsylvania Avenue another.
But we're opening the Old Post Office.
Under budget, ahead of schedule, saved tremendous money.
I'm a year ahead of schedule.
And that's what this country should be doing.
We build roads
and they cost two and three and four times what they're supposed to cost.
We buy products for our military
and they come in at costs that are so far above what they were supposed to be,
because we don't have people that know what they're doing.
When we look at the budget, the budget is bad to a large extent
because we have people that have no idea
as to what to do and how to buy.
The Trump International
is way under budget and way ahead of schedule.
And we should be able to do that for our country.
Well, we're well behind schedule,
so I want to move to our next segment.
We move into our next segment talking about America's direction.
And let's start by talking about race.
The share of Americans who say race relations are bad in this country
is the highest it's been in decades,
much of it amplified by shootings of African-Americans by police,
as we've seen recently in Charlotte and Tulsa.
Race has been a big issue in this campaign,
and one of you is going to
have to bridge a very wide and bitter gap.
So how do you heal the divide?
Secretary Clinton, you get two minutes on this.
Well, you're right.
Race remains a significant challenge in our country.
Unfortunately, race still determines too much,
often determines where people live,
determines what kind of education in their public schools they can get,
and, yes, it determines how they're treated in the criminal justice system.
We've just seen those two tragic examples in both Tulsa and Charlotte.
And we've got to do several things at the same time.
We have to restore trust between communities and the police.
We have to work to make sure...
that our police are using the best training, the best techniques,
that they're well prepared... to use force only when necessary.
Everyone should be respected by the law,
and everyone should respect the law.
Right now, that's not the case in a lot of our neighborhoods.
So I have, ever since the first day of my campaign,
called for criminal justice reform.
I've laid out a platform that I think would begin to remedy...
some of the problems we have in the criminal justice system.
But we also have to recognize,
in addition to the challenges that we face with policing,
there are so many good, brave police officers
who equally want reform.
So we have to bring communities together
in order to begin working on that as a mutual goal.
And we've got to get guns
out of the hands of people who should not have them.
The gun epidemic
is the leading cause of death of young African-American men,
more than the next nine causes put together.
So we have to do two things, as I said.
We have to restore trust. We have to work with the police.
We have to make sure they respect the communities
and the communities respect them.
And we have to tackle the plague of gun violence,
which is a big contributor to a lot of the problems that we're seeing today.
All right, Mr. Trump, you have two minutes.
How do you heal the divide?
Well, first of all, Secretary Clinton doesn't want to use a couple of words,
and that's law and order.
And we need law and order.
If we don't have it, we're not going to have a country.
And when I look at what's going on in Charlotte,
a city I love, a city where I have investments,
when I look at what's going on throughout various parts of our country,
whether it's...I mean, I can just keep naming them all day long,
we need law and order in our country.
I just got today the,
as you know, the endorsement of the Fraternal Order of Police,
we just...just came in.
We have endorsements from, I think, almost every police group, very...
I mean, a large percentage of them in the United States.
We have a situation where we have our inner cities,
African-Americans, Hispanics
are living in hell because it's so dangerous.
You walk down the street, you get shot.
In Chicago, they've had thousands of shootings,
thousands since January 1st.
Thousands of shootings.
And I'm saying, where is this?
Is this a war-torn country? What are we doing?
And we have to stop the violence.
We have to bring back law and order.
In a place like Chicago,
where thousands of people have been killed,
thousands over the last number of years,
in fact, almost 4,000 have been killed
since Barack Obama became president,
over...almost 4,000 people in Chicago have been killed.
We have to bring back law and order.
Now, whether or not in a place like Chicago
you do stop-and-frisk, which worked very well,
Mayor Giuliani is here,
worked very well in New York.
It brought the crime rate way down.
But you take the gun away from criminals that shouldn't be having it.
We have gangs roaming the street.
And in many oases, they're illegally here, illegal immigrants.
And they have guns. And they shoot people.
And we have to be very strong. And we have to be very vigilant.
We have to be...we have to know what we're doing.
Right now, our police, in many cases, are afraid to do anything.
We have to protect our inner cities,
because African-American communities are being decimated by crime, decimated.
Your two...your two minutes expired, but I do want to follow up.
Because African-American communities are being decimated by crime, decimated.
Your two...your two minutes expired, but I do want to follow up.
Stop-and-frisk was ruled unconstitutional in New York,
because it largely singled out black and Hispanic young men.
No, you're wrong.
It went before a judge, who was a very against-police judge.
It was taken away from her.
And our mayor,
our new mayor, refused to go forward with the ease.
They would have won an appeal.
If you look at it, throughout the country, there are many places where it's allowed.
The argument is that it's a form of racial profiling.
No, the argument is that...
we have to take the guns away from these people that have them
and they are bad people that shouldn't have them. These are felons.
These are people that are bad people that shouldn't be...
when you have 3,000 shootings in Chicago from January 1st,
when you have 4,000 people killed in Chicago by guns,
from the beginning of the presidency of Barack Obama, his hometown,
you have to have stop-and-frisk. You need more police.
You need a better community, you know, relation.
You don't have good community relations in Chicago.
It's terrible. I have property there.
It's terrible what's going on in Chicago.
But when you look... and Chicago's not the only,
you go to Ferguson, you go to so many different places.
You need better relationships.
I agree with Secretary Clinton on this.
You need better relationships between the communities and the police,
because in some cases, it's not good.
But you look at Dallas,
where the relationships were really studied,
the relationships were really a beautiful thing,
and then five police officers were killed one night very violently.
So there's some bad things going on. Some really bad things.
- Secretary Clinton... - But we need...Lester,
we need law and order.
And we need law and order in the inner cities,
because the people that are most affected by what's happening
are African-American and Hispanic people.
And it's very unfair to them
what our politicians are allowing to happen.
Secretary Clinton?
Well, I've heard...I've heard Donald say this at his rallies,
and it's really unfortunate that
he paints such a dire negative picture
of black communities in our country.
You know, the vibrancy of the black church,
the black businesses that employ so many people,
the opportunities that so many families are working to provide for their kids.
There's a lot that we should be proud of
and we should be supporting and lifting up.
But we do always have to make sure we keep people safe.
There are the right ways of doing it,
and then there are ways that are ineffective.
Stop-and-frisk was found to be unconstitutional and,
in part, because it was ineffective.
It did not do what it needed to do.
Now, I believe in community policing.
And, in fact,
violent crime is one-half of what it was in 1991.
Property crime is down 40 percent.
We just don't want to see it creep back up.
We've had 25 years of very good cooperation.
But there were some problems, some unintended consequences.
Too many young African-American and Latino men
ended up in jail for non-violent of fences.
And it's just a fact that if you're a young African-American man
and you do the same thing as a young white man,
you are more likely to be arrested, charged,
convicted, and incarcerated.
So we've got to address the systemic racism
in our criminal justice system.
We cannot just say law and order.
We have to say -- we have to come forward with a plan
that is going to divert people from the criminal justice system,
deal with mandatory minimum sentences,
which have put too many people away for too long for doing too little.
We need to have more second chance programs.
I'm glad that we're ending private prisons in the federal system;
I want to see them ended in the state system.
You shouldn't have a profit motivation
to fill prison cells with young Americans.
So there are some positive ways we can work on this.
And I believe strongly that commonsense gun safety measures would assist us.
Right now -- and this is something Donald has supported, along with the gun lobby
right now, we've got too many military-style weapons on the streets.
In a lot of places, our police are outgunned.
We need comprehensive background checks,
and we need to keep guns out of the hands of those who will do harm.
And we finally need to pass a prohibition
on anyone who's on the terrorist watch list
from being able to buy a gun in our country.
If you're too dangerous to fly,
you are too dangerous to buy a gun.
So there are things we can do,
and we ought to do it in a bipartisan way.
Secretary Clinton, last week,
you said we've got to do everything possible to improve policing,
to go right at implicit bias.
Do you believe that police are implicitly biased against black people?
Lester, I think implicit bias
is a problem for everyone, not just police.
I think, unfortunately, too many of us in our great country
jump to conclusions about each other.
And therefore, I think we need all of us to be asking hard questions
about, you know, why am I feeling this way?
But when it comes to policing,
since it can have literally fatal consequences,
I have said, in my first budget, we would put money into that budget
to help us deal with implicit bias
by retraining a lot of our police officers.
I've met with a group of very distinguished, experienced police chiefs
a few weeks ago.
They admit it's an issue.
They've got a lot of concerns.
Mental health is one of the biggest concerns,
because now police are having to handle
a lot of really difficult mental health problems on the street.
They want support, they want more training, they want more assistance.
And I think the federal government
could be in a position where we would offer and provide that.
- Mr. Trump... Please. - I'd like to respond to that.
First of all, I agree,
and a lot of people even within my own party want to give certain rights
to people on watch lists and no-fly lists.
I agree with you.
When a person is on a watch list or a no-fly list,
and I have the endorsement of the NRA, which I'm very proud of.
These are very, very good people, and they're protecting the Second Amendment.
But I think we have to look very strongly at no-fly lists and watch lists.
And when people are on there, even if they shouldn't be on there,
we'll help them, we'll help them legally,
we'll help them get off.
But I tend to agree with that quite strongly.
I do want to bring up the fact that you were the one that brought up the words
super-predator about young black youth.
And that's a term that I think was a -- it's -- it's been horribly met, as you know.
I think you've apologized for it.
But I think it was a terrible thing to say.
And when it comes to stop-and-frisk, you know,
you're talking about takes guns away.
Well, I'm talking about taking guns away from gangs and people that use them.
And I don't think...I really don't think you disagree with me on this,
if you want to know the truth.
I think maybe there's a political reason why you can't say it,
but I really don't believe -- in New York City, stop-and-frisk,
we had 2,200 murders,
and stop-and-frisk brought it down to 500 murders.
Five hundred murders is a lot of murders.
It's hard to believe, 500 is like supposed to be good?
But we went from 2,200 to 500.
And it was continued on by Mayor Bloomberg.
And it was terminated by current mayor.
But stop-and-frisk had a tremendous impact on the safety of New York City.
Tremendous beyond belief.
So when you say it has no impact, it really did.
It had a very, very big impact.
Well, it's also fair to say, if we're going to talk about mayors,
that under the current mayor, crime has continued to drop,
- including murders. So there is... - No, you're wrong. You're wrong.
No, I'm not.
Murders are up. All right. You check it.
- New York - - You check it.
New York has done an excellent job.
And I give credit -- I give credit across the board
going back two mayors, two police chiefs,
because it has worked.
And other communities need to come together to do what will work, as well.
Look, one murder is too many.
- But it is important... - True.
That we learn about what has been effective.
And not go to things that sound good
that really did not have the kind of impact that we would want.
Who disagrees with keeping neighborhoods safe?
But let's also add, no one should disagree
about respecting the rights of young men who live in those neighborhoods.
And so we need to do a better job of working again, with the communities,
faith communities, business communities, as well as the police
to try to deal with this problem.
This conversation is about race.
- And so, Mr. Trump, I have to ask you... - I'd like to just respond, if I might.
- For five...Please...20 seconds. - I'd just like to respond.
Please respond, then I've got a quick follow-up for you.
I will.
Look, the African-American community has been letdown by our politicians.
They talk good around election time, like right now,
and after the election, they said, see ya later, I'll see you in four years.
The African-American community...because...
look, the community within the inner cities has been so badly treated.
They've been abused and used in order to get votes by Democrat politicians,
because that's what it is.
They've controlled these communities for up to 100 years.
- Mr. Trump, let me... - Well, I...I do think...
I'm broken.
And I will tell you, you look at the inner cities...
and I just left Detroit, and I just left Philadelphia, and I just...
you know, you've seen me, I've been all over the place.
You decided to stay home, and that's OK.
But I will tell you, I've been all over.
And I've met some of the greatest people I'll ever meet within these communities.
And they are very, very upset with what their politicians have told them
and what their politicians have done.
- Mr. Trump, I... - I think...I think...
I think Donald just criticized me for preparing for this debate.
And, yes, I did.
And you know what else I prepared for?
I prepared to be president.
And I think that's a good thing.
Mr. Trump, for five years,
you perpetuated a false claim
that the nation's first black president
was not a natural-born citizen.
You questioned his legitimacy.
In the last couple of weeks, you acknowledged what most Americans
have accepted for years:
The president was born in the United States.
Can you tell us what took you so long?
I'll tell you very... well, just very simple to say.
Sidney Blumenthal works for the campaign
and close...very close friend of Secretary Clinton.
And her campaign manager, Patti Doyle, went to...
during the campaign, her campaign against President Obama,
fought very hard. And you can go look it up and you can check it out.
And if you look at CNN this past week,
Patti Solis Doyle was on Wolf Blitzer
saying that this happened.
Blumenthal sent McClatchy,
highly respected reporter at McClatchy,
to Kenya to find out about it.
They were pressing it very hard.
She failed to get the birth certificate.
When I got involved, I didn't fail.
I got him to give the birth certificate.
So I'm satisfied with it. And I'll tell you why I'm satisfied with it.
That was...
Because I want to get on to defeating ISIS,
because I want to get on to creating jobs,
because I want to get on to having a strong border,
because I want to get on to things that are very important to me
and that are very important to the country.
I will let you respond. It's important.
But I just want to get the answer here.
The birth certificate was produced in 2011.
You've continued to tell the story and question the presidents legitimacy
- in 2012, '13, '14, '15... - Yeah.
As recently as January.
So the question is, what changed your mind?
Well, nobody was pressing it, nobody was caring much about it.
I figured you'd ask the question tonight, of course.
But nobody was caring much about it.
But I was the one that got him to produce the birth certificate.
And I think I did a good job.
Secretary Clinton also fought it.
I mean, you know -- now, everybody in mainstream
is going to say, oh, that's not true.
Look, it's true.
Sidney Blumenthal sent a reporter...
you just have to take a look at CNN, the last week,
the interview with your former campaign manager.
And she was involved.
But just like she can't bring back jobs,
she can't produce.
I'm sorry. I'm just going to follow up... and I will let you respond to that,
because there's a lot there.
But we're talking about racial healing in this segment.
What do you say to Americans, people of color who...
Well, it was very...l say nothing. I say nothing,
because I was able to get him to produce it.
He should have produced it a long time before. I say nothing.
But let me just tell you. When you talk about healing,
I think that I've developed very, very good relationships over the last little while
with the African-American community.
I think you can see that.
And I feel that they really wanted me to come to that conclusion.
And I think I did a great job and a great service
not only for the country, but even for the president,
in getting him to produce his birth certificate.
Secretary Clinton?
Well, just listen to what you heard.
And clearly, as Donald just admitted,
he knew he was going to stand on this debate stage,
and Lester Holt was going to be asking us questions,
so he tried to put the whole racist birther lie to bed.
But it can't be dismissed that easily.
He has really started his political
activity based on this racist lie
that our first black president
was not an American citizen.
There was absolutely no evidence for it,
but he persisted, he persisted year after year,
because some of his supporters,
people that he was trying to bring into his fold,
apparently believed it or wanted to believe it.
But, remember,
Donald started his career back in 1973
being sued by the Justice Department for racial discrimination
because he would not rent apartments in one of his developments to
African-Americans,
and he made sure that the people who worked for him
understood that was the policy.
He actually was sued twice by the Justice Department.
So he has a long record of engaging in racist behavior.
And the birther lie was a very hurtful one.
You know, Barack Obama is a man of great dignity.
And I could tell how much it bothered him and annoyed him
that this was being touted and used against him.
But I like to remember what Michelle
Obama said in her amazing speech at our Democratic National Convention:
When they go low, we go high.
And Barack Obama went high,
despite Donald Trump's best efforts to bring him down.
Mr. Trump, you can respond and
we're going to move on to the next segment.
I would love to respond.
First of all, I got to watch in preparing for this some of
your debates against Barack Obama.
You treated him with terrible disrespect.
And I watched the way you talk now
about how lovely everything is
and how wonderful you are.
It doesn't work that way.
You were after him, you were trying to
you even sent out or your campaign sent
out pictures of him in a certain garb, very famous pictures.
I don't think you can deny that.
But just last week,
your campaign manager said it was true.
So when you tried to act holier than thou,
it really doesn't work. It really doesn't.
Now, as far as the lawsuit,
yes, when I was very young,
I went into my father's company,
had a real estate company
in Brooklyn and Queens,
and we, along with many, many other companies throughout the country --
it was a federal lawsuit -- were sued.
We settled the suit with zero -- with no admission of guilt.
It was very easy to do but they sued many people.
I notice you bring that up a lot and
I you know I also know
the very nasty commercials that you do on me in so many different ways,
which I don't do on you,
maybe I'm trying to save the money,
but frankly, I look at that, and I say, isn't that amazing,
because I settled that lawsuit, with no admission of guilt.
But that was a lawsuit brought against many real estate firms,
and it's just one of those things,
I'll go one step further.
In Palm Beach, Florida, tough community,
a brilliant community, a wealthy community
probably the wealthiest commmuity there is in the world.
I opened a club, and really got great credit for it.
No discrimination against African-Americans,
against Muslims, against anybody.
And it's a tremendously successful club,
and I'm so glad I did it,
and I have been given great credit for what I did.
And I'm very, very proud of it.
And that's the way I feel.
That is the true way I feel.
Our next segment is called securing America.
We want to start with a 21st century war
happening every day in this country,
our institutions are under wber attack, and our secrets are being stolen.
So my question is who's behind it and
how do we fight it?
Secretary Clinton, this answer goes to you.
Well, I think cyber security, cyber warfare will be
one of the biggest challenges
facing the next president, because clearly,
we're facing at this point, two different kinds of adversaries.
There are the independent hacking groups
that do it mostly for commercial reasons
to try to steal information that they then can use to make money.
But increasingly, we are seeing
cyberattacks coming from states.
Organs of states.
The most recent and troubling of these has been Russia.
There's no doubt now that Russia has used cyberattacks against all
kinds of organisations in our country,
and I am deeply concerned about this.
I know Donald very praise, praiseworthy of Vladimir Putin.
Wrong.
But Putin is playing a really tough, long game here.
And one of the things he's done is
to let loose cyber attackers to hack into government files,
to hack into personal files,
hack into the democratic national committee.
And we recently have learned that you know that
this is one of their preferred methods
of trying to wreak havoc and collect information.
We need to make it very clear,
whether it's Russia, China, Iran, or anybody else
the United States has much greater capacity.
And we are not going to sit idly by
and permit state actors to go after our information,
our private sector information
or our public sector information.
And we're going to have to make it clear that
we don't want to use the kinds of tools that we have,
we don't want to engage in a different kind of warfare,
but we will defend the citizens of this country and
the Russians need to understand that.
I think they've been treating it as almost a probing.
How far would we go?
How much would we do?
And that's why I was so, I was so shocked
when Donald publicly invited
Putin to hack into Americans.
That is just unacceptable, it's one of the reasons why
50 national security officials who
served in Republican information and administration
Your two minutes has expired.
Have said that Donald is unfit to be the Commander-in-Chief,
it's comments like that that
really worry people who understand the threats that we face.
Mr. Trump,
you have two minutes in the same question.
Who's behind it? How do we fight it?
Yeah, I do want to say that I was just endorsed and
more are coming next week.
It'll be over 200 admirals, many of them here, admirals and generals
endorsed me to lead this country.
That just happened and many more are coming
and I'm very proud of it.
In addition, I was just
endorsed by ICE,
they've never endorsed anybody
before on immigration,
I was just endorsed by ICE.
I was just recently endorsed
16,500 boarder patrol agent,
so when Secretary Clinton talks about this, I mean,
I'll take the admirals and I'll take the generals any day
over the political hacks that I see,
that have led our country so brilliantly over the last 10 years
with their knowledge, okay?
Because look at the mess that we're in. Look at the mess that we're in.
I mean, as far as to cyber,
I agree to parts of what Secretary Clinton said,
we should be better than anybody else and perhaps we're not.
I don't think anybody knows it was
Russia that broke
into the DNC.
Shes saying "Russia, Russia, Russia", but I don't--
Maybe it was, I mean, it could be Russia
but it could also be China, it could also be lots of people,
or it could also be somebody sitting on
that bed that weighs 400 pounds, okay?
You don't know
who broke in to DNC,
but what did we learn
from DNC?
We learned that Bernie Sanders was
taken advantage of by your people,
by Debbie Wasserman Schultz, look what happened to her.
But Bernie Sanders was taken advantage of,
that's what we learned.
Now, whether that was Russia, whether that was China,
whether it was another country, we don't know
because the truth is under President Obama,
we've lost control of things that we used to have control of.
We came in with the internet, we came up with the internet and
I think Secretary Clinton and myself would agree very much
when you look at what ISIS is doing with the internet,
they're beating us in our own game.
ISIS.
So we have to get very, very tough
on cyber and cyber warfare,
it is a huge problem.
I have a son, he's 10 years old, he has computers.
He is so good with these computers it's unbelievable.
The security aspect of cyber is very, very tough and
maybe it's hardly doable, but I will say,
we are not doing the job we should be doing,
but that's true throughout our whole governmental society.
We have so many things that we have to do better Lester and
certainly cyber is one of them.
We have so many things that we have to do better Lester and
certainly cyber is one of them.
Secretary Clinton?
Well, I think there are number of issues that we should be addressing.
I have put forth a plan to defeat ISIS.
It does involve going after them online
and I think we need to do much more with our tech companies to
prevent ISIS and their operatives from
being able to use the internet, to radioalise,
even direct people in our country
and Europe and elsewhere.
But we also have to intensify our airstrikes against ISIS
and eventually support our Arab and Kurdish partners
to be able to actually take out ISIS in Raqqah
and their claim of being a caliphate.
We're making progress.
Our military is assisting in Iraq.
And we're hoping that within the year
we'll be able to push ISIS out of Iraq
and then, you know, really squeeze them in Syria.
But we have to be cognisant of the fact
that they've had foreign fighters coming to volunteer for them,
foreign money, foreign weapons,
so we have to make this the top priority.
And I would also do everything possible
to take out their leadership.
I was involved in a number of efforts
to take out Al Qaeda leadership when I was secretary of state,
including of course, taking out Bin Laden,
and I think we need to go after Baghdadi as well.
Make that one of our organising principles.
Because we've got to defeat ISIS
and we've got to do everything we can
to disrupt their propaganda efforts online.
You mentioned ISIS, and we think of ISIS certainly as over there,
but there are American citizens who have been inspired
to commit acts of terror on American soil.
The latest incident of course
of bombings we just saw in New York and New Jersey,
the knife attack at a mall in Minnesota
and the last year, deadly attacks
in San Bernardino and Orlando.
I'll ask this to both of you.
Tell us specifically how you would prevent homegrown attacks
by American citizens,
Mr. Trump?
First, I have to say one thing, very important.
Secretary Clinton is talking about taking out ISIS. We will take out ISIS.
Well, President Obama and Secretary Clinton
created a vacuum the way they got out of Iraq.
Because they got out, well, they shouldn't have been in,
but once they got in, the way they got out was a disaster. And ISIS was formed.
So she talks about taking them out.
She's been doing it a long time. She's been trying to take them out for a long time.
But they wouldn't even have been formed if they left some troops behind.
Like, 10,000 or maybe something more than that.
And then you wouldn't have had them.
Or, as I've been saying for a long time,
and I think you'll agree, because I said it to you once.
Had we taken the oil, and we should have taken the oil,
ISIS would not have been able to form either,
because the oil was their primary source of income.
And now they have the oil all over the place,
including the oil, a lot of the oil in Libya.
Which was another one of her disasters.
Secretary Clinton.
Well, I hope the fact checkers are turning up the volume and really working hard.
- Donald supported the invasion of Iraq. - Wrong.
That is absolutely proved over and over again.
Wrong.
He actually advocated for the actions we took in Libya.
And urge that Gadhafi be taken out
after actually doing some business with him one time.
But the larger point, he says this constantly, is
George W. Bush made the agreement about when American troops would leave Iraq.
Not Barack Obama.
And the only way that American troops could have stayed in Iraq
is to get an agreement from the then Iraqi government
that would have protected our troops.
And the Iraqi government would not give that.
But let's talk about the question you asked, Lester.
The question you asked is "What do we do here in the United States?"
That's the most important part of this.
How do we prevent attacks? How do we protect our people?
And I think we've got to have an intelligence surge
where we are looking for every scrap of information.
I was so proud of law enforcement
in New York, in Minnesota, in New Jersey.
You know, they responded so quickly, so professionally
to the attacks that occurred by Rahami,
and they brought him down.
And we may find out more information because he is still alive,
which may prove to be an intelligence benefit.
So we've got to do everything we can
to vacuum up intelligence from Europe, from the Middle East.
That means we've got to work more closely with our allies,
and that's something that Donald has been very dismissive of.
We're working with NATO,
the longest military alliance in the history of the world,
to really turn our attention to terrorism.
We're working with our friends in the Middle East.
Many of which, as you know, are Muslim majority nations.
Donald has consistently insulted
Muslims abroad, Muslims at home,
when we need to be cooperating with Muslim nations
and with the American-Muslim community.
They are on the frontlines.
They can provide information to us
that we might not get anywhere else.
They need to have close working cooperation with law enforcement in this communities,
not be alienated and pushed away
as some of Donald's rhetoric unfortunately has led to.
- Well, I have to respond. - Please respond.
The secretary said very strongly about working with--
We've been working with them for many years.
And we have the greatest mess anyone has ever seen.
You look at the Middle East, it's a total mess.
Under your direction to a large extent.
But you look at the Middle East, you started the Iran deal.
That's another beauty where you have a country that was ready to fall.
I mean, they were doing so badly, they were choking on the sanctions
and now they could have been actually probably a major power
at some point pretty soon the way they're going.
But when you look at NATO,
I was asked on a major show,
"What do you think of NATO?"
They have to understand I'm a business person.
I did really well, but I have common sense.
And I said, "Well, I tell you, I haven't given a lot of thoughts to NATO."
But two things.
Number 1, the 28 countries of NATO,
many of them aren't paying their fair share.
Number two, and that bothers me
because we should be asked would defending them
that they should have least be paying us what they supposed to be paying
by treaty and contract.
And number two, I said it very strongly,
NATO could be obsolete
because and I was very strong at this
and was actually covered very accurately in the New York Times,
which is unusual for the New York Times, to be honest,
but I said they do not focus on terror.
And I was very strong. And I said it numerous times.
And about four months ago,
I read on the front page of the Wall Street Journal
that NATO is opening up a major terror division,
and I think that's great.
And I think we should get,
because we pay approximately 73 percent of the cost of NATO.
It's a lot of money to protect other people.
But I'm all for NATO.
But I said they have to focus on terror also.
And they're going to do that.
And that was, believe me, I'm sure I'm not going to get credit for it,
but that was largely because of what I was saying and my criticism of NATO.
I think we have to get NATO to go into the Middle East with us,
in addition to surrounding nations,
and we have to knock the hell out of ISIS. And we have to do it fast.
When ISIS formed in this vacuum created
by Barack Obama and Secretary Clinton,
and believe me, you were the ones that took out the troops.
Not only that, you named the day.
They couldn't believe it.
- They sat back probably and said... - Well, Lester, we've covered...
- we've covered this ground. - No, wait a minute.
When they formed, when they formed, this is something that never should have happened.
It should never happened.
Now, you're talking about taking out ISIS.
But you were there,
and you were Secretary of State when it was a little infant.
Now, it's in over 30 countries,
and you're going to stop them? I don't think so.
Mr. Trump, a lot of these are judgment questions.
You have supported the war in Iraq before the invasion.
- What makes your judgment... - I did not support the war in Iraq.
That is a mainstream media nonsense put out by her,
because she frankly, I think, the best person in her campaign is mainstream media.
My question is since you supported...
Would you like to hear?
- Why is your... - I was against the war.
Wait a minute. I was against the war in Iraq. Just so you put it out.
The record shows otherwise, but...
The record does not show that...
Why was you...is your judgment any...
The record shows that I'm right.
When I did an interview with Howard Stern,
very lightly, first time anyone's asked me that,
I said very lightly, "I don't know, maybe, who knows."
Essentially.
I then did an interview with Neil Cavuto.
We talked about the economy is more important.
I then spoke to Sean Hannity,
which everybody refuses to call Sean Hannity.
I had numerous conversations with Sean Hannity at Fox.
And Sean Hannity said...
And he called me the other day and I spoke to him about it.
He said you were totally against war, because he was for the war.
- Why is your judgment better than... - Will you excuse me?
And that is before the war started.
Sean Hannity said very strongly, to me and other people...
He's willing to say, but nobody wants to call him,
I was against the war.
He said, "You used to have fights with me,"
because Sean was in favour of the war.
And I understand that side also.
Not very much, because we should have never been there,
but nobody called Sean Hannity.
And then they did an article in a major magazine,
shortly after the war started. I think in '04.
But they did an article, which had me totally against the war in Iraq.
And one of your compatriots said,
"You know, whether it was before or right after, Trump was definite."
because if you read this article, there's no doubt.
But if somebody...and I'll ask the press,
if somebody would call up Sean Hannity,
this was before the war started.
He and I used to have arguments about the war.
I said it's a terrible and a stupid thing.
It's going to destabilise the Middle East.
And that exactly what it's done.
My reference was to what you had said in 2002. My question was...
You didn't hear what I said. -
Why is your judgment, Why is your judgment any different than Mrs. Clinton's?
Well, I have much better judgment than she does.
There's no question about that.
I also have a much better temperament than she has, you know?
I have a much better-
She spent, let me tell you,
she spent hundreds of millions of dollars on an advertising, you know,
they get Madison Avenue into a room, they put names.
Oh, temperament, let's go after-
I think my strongest asset, maybe by far, is my temperament.
I have a winning temperament. I know how to win.
She does not know how to win. Wait.
The AFL-CIO, the other day,
behind the blue screen,
I don't know who you were talking to, Secretary Clinton,
but you were totally out of control.
I said there's a person with a temperament that's got a problem.
Secretary Clinton?
Okay-
Let's talk about two important issues that were briefly mentioned by Donald.
First, NATO.
You know, NATO, as a military alliance has something called Article V.
And basically it says this,
"An attack on one is an attack on all."
And do you know the only time it's ever been invoked - after 9/11.
When the 28 nations of NATO
said that they would go to Afghanistan
with us to fight terrorism.
Something that they still are doing by our side.
With respect to Iran,
when I became Secretary of State,
Iran was weeks away from having enough nuclear material to form a bomb.
They had mastered the nuclear fuel cycle
under the Bush administration.
They had built covert facilities,
they had stocked them with centrifuges that were whirling away,
and we had sanctioned them.
I voted for every sanction against Iran when I was in the senate,
but it wasn't enough.
So I spent a year and a half putting together
a coalition that included Russia and China,
to impose the toughest sanctions on Iran,
and we did drive them to the negotiating table.
And my successor, John Kerry and President Obama
got a deal that put a lid on Iran's nuclear programme.
Without firing a single shot.
That's diplomacy. That's coalition building.
That's working with other nations.
The other day I saw Donald saying that
there were some Iranian sailors on a ship in the waters off of Iran,
and they were taunting American sailors who were on a nearby ship.
He said, you know, if they taunted our sailors,
I'd blow them out of the water and start another war.
That's not good judgment.
That is not the right temperament to be commander in chief,
to be taunted
and the worst part
No, they were taunting us.
Of what we've heard Donald say has been about nuclear weapons.
He has said repeatedly that he didn't care if other nations got nuclear weapons,
Japan, South Korea, even Saudi Arabia.
It has been the policy of the United States, Democrats and Republicans
to do everything we could
to reduce the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
He even said if there were nuclear war in East Asia,
well, you know, that's fine.
- You know, have a good time, folks. -Wrong.
That's lies.
And in fact, his cavalier attitude about nuclear weapons
is so deeply troubling.
That is the number one threat we face in the world,
and it becomes particularly threatening
if terrorists ever get their hands on any nuclear material.
So a man who can be provoked by a tweet
should not have his fingers anywhere near the nuclear codes.
As far as I think anyone with any sense about this should be concerned.
It's getting a little bit old, I must say.
Listen, I would like to-- -
It's a good one, though,
well describes the problem.
It's not an accurate one.
So, I just want to-- Just give a lot of things and just to respond.
I agree with her on one thing.
The single greatest problem the world has is nuclear armament, nuclear weapons.
Not global warming,
like you think and your president thinks.
Nuclear is the single greatest threat.
Just to go down the list, we defend Japan.
We defend Germany. We defend South Korea.
We defend Saudi Arabia. We defend countries.
They do not pay us what they should be paying us,
because we are providing tremendous service and we're losing a fortune.
That's why we're losing-
We're losing on everything.
I say who makes these? We lose on everything.
What I said, that it's very possible that if they don't pay a fair share,
because this is isn't 40 years ago
where we could do what we're doing.
We can't defend Japan,
a behemoth selling us cars by the million--.
We need to move on.
Wait, but it's very important.
All I said is they may have to defend themselves
or they have to help us out.
We're a country that owes 20 trillion dollars.
They have to help us out.
Our last-- -
For the nuclear's concerned, I agree,
it is the single greatest threat that this country has.
It is the single greatest threat that this country has.
Which leads to my next question.
We get to our last segment here on The Stone,
on the subject on securing America on nuclear weapon.
President Obama reportedly considered
changing the nation's long standing policy on first use.
Do you support the current policy? Mr. Trump,
you have two minutes on that.
Well, I have to say that, you know, for what Secretary Clinton was saying
about, nuclear with Russia,
she's very cavalier on the way she talks about various countries,
but Russia's been expanding their-
They have a much newer capability than we do.
We have not been updating from the new standpoint.
Now, look at the other night I was seeing B-52s
they're old enough that your father, your grandfather could be flying them.
We are not keeping up with other countries.
I would like everybody to end it,
just get rid of it.
But I would certainly not do first strike.
I think that once the nuclear alternative happens, it's over.
At the same time, we have to be prepared.
I can't take anything off the table.
Because you look at some of these countries.
You look at North Korea,
we're doing nothing there.
China should solve that problem for us.
China should go into North Korea.
China is totally powerful as it relates to North Korea.
And by the way, another one powerful
is the worst deal I think I've ever seen negotiated
that you started as the Iran deal.
Iran is one of their biggest trading partners.
Iran has power over North Korea.
And when they made that horrible deal with Iran,
they should have included the fact that they do something
with respect to North Korea.
And they should have done something with respect to Yemen
and all these other places
and when asked to Secretary Kerry,
why didn't you do that?
Why didn't you do add other things into the deal?
One of the giveaways of all time, of all time,
including 400 million dollars in cash.
Nobody's ever seen that before that turned out to be wrong.
It was actually 1.7 billion dollars in cash.
Obviously, I guess for the hostages,
it certainly looks that way.
So you say yourself, why didn't they make the right deal?
This is one of the worse deals ever made by any country in history.
The deal with Iran will lead to nuclear problems.
All they have to do is sit back 10 years,
and they don't have to do much.
And they're gonna end up getting nuclear.
I met with Bibi Netanyahu the other day.
Believe me, he's not a happy camper.
All right, I'm sorry-- Secretary Clinton,
you have two minutes.
Let me, let me, let me start by saying words matter.
Words matter when you run for president,
and they really matter when you are president.
And I want to reassure our allies in Japan,
in South Korea and elsewhere
that we have mutual defence treaties
and we will honour them.
It is essential that America's word be good.
And so I know that this campaign has caused some questioning
and some worries on the part of many leaders across the globe.
I've talked with a number of them.
But I want to, on behalf of myself
and I think on behalf of a majority of the American people say that,
you know, our word is good.
It's also important that we look at the entire globe situation.
There's no doubt that we have other problems with Iran,
but personally, I'd rather deal with the other problems
having put that lid on their nuclear program
than still to be facing that.
And Donald never tells you what he would do.
Would he have started a war?
Would he have bombed Iran?
If he's going to criticise a deal that has been very successful
in giving us access to Iranian facilities
that we never had before,
then he should tell us what his alternative would be.
But it's like his plan to defeat ISIS.
He says it's a secret plan,
but the only secret is that he has no plan.
So we need to be more precise in how we talk about these issues.
People around the world follow our presidential campaigns so closely,
trying to get hints about what we will do.
Can they rely on us?
Are we gonna lead the world with strength
and in accordance with our values.
That's what I intend to do.
I intend to be a leader of our country that people can count on
both here at home and around the world
to make decisions that will further peace and prosperity
but also stand up to bullies,
whether they're abroad or at home.
We cannot let those who would try to destabilize the world,
to interfere with American interests and security-- -
to be given any opportunities at all. -
Two minutes is expired.
There's one thing I'd like to say.
Very quickly.
I will go very quickly.
But I will tell you that Hillary will tell you to go to her website
and read all about how to defeat ISIS,
which she could have defeated by never having it, you know,
get going in the first place.
Right now it's getting tougher and tougher to defeat them,
because they're in more and more places,
more and more states, more and more nations,
and it's a big problem--
And as far as Japan is concerned,
I want to help all of our allies.
But we are losing billions and billions of dollars.
We cannot be the policemen of the world.
We cannot protect countries all over the world...
We have just a...
where they're not paying us what we need.
We just have a few final questions, sir.
And she doesn't say that because she's got no business ability.
We need he-art, we need a lot of things,
but you have to have some basic ability.
And sadly, she doesn't have that.
All of the things that she's talking about
could have been taken care of during the last 10 years, let's say,
while she had great power,
but they weren't taken care of.
And if she ever wins this race, they won't be taken care of.
Mr. Trump, this year, Secretary Clinton became the first woman
nominated for president by a major party.
Earlier this month, you said she doesn't have "a presidential look".
She's standing here right now. What did you mean by that?
She doesn't have the look. She doesn't have the stamina.
I said she doesn't have the stamina,
and I don't believe she does have the stamina.
To be president of this country, you need tremendous stamina.
The quote was "I just don't think she has a presidential look."
Wait a minute, Lester, you asked me a question.
Did you ask me a question?
You have to be able to negotiate our trade deals.
You have to be able to negotiate, that's right,
with Japan, with Saudi Arabia.
I mean, can you imagine, we're defending Saudi Arabia,
and with all of the money they have, we're defending them,
and they're not paying,
all you have to do is speak to them.
"Wait, you have so many different things you have to be able to do."
and I don't believe that Hillary has the stamina.
Let's let her respond.
Well, as soon as he travels to 112 countries
and negotiates a peace deal, a ceasefire,
a release of dissidents,
an opening of new opportunities in nations around the world
or even spends 11 hours testifying in front of a congressional committee,
he can talk to me about stamina.
The world...
Let me tell you. Let me tell you.
Hillary has experience,
but it's bad experience.
We have made so many bad deals during the last...
So she has experience I agree,
but it's bad, bad experience.
Whether it's the Iran deal that you're so in love with
where we gave them $150 billion back.
Whether it's the Iran deal, whether it's anything you could...
Name it. You almost can't name a good deal.
I agree. She's got experience, but it's bad experience.
And this country can't afford to have another four years
of that kind of bad experience.
We are at the, we are at the final question.
- One thing, Lester. - Very quickly.
He tried to switch from looks to stamina.
But this is a man who has called women pigs, slobs, and dogs.
And someone who has said pregnancy is an inconvenience to employers,
I never said that.
Who has said women don't deserve equal pay
unless they do as good a job as men.
I didn't say it.
And one of the worst things he said
was about a woman in a beauty contest.
He loves beauty contests,
supporting them and hanging around them.
And he called this woman Ms. Piggy.
Then he called her Ms. Housekeeping,
because she was Latina.
- Donald, she has a name. - Where did you find this?
- Her name is Alicia Machado. - Where did you find this?
Where did you find this?
She has become a U.S. citizen and you can bet,
she's going to vote this November.
Okay, good. Let me just tell you.
Mr. Trump, just take 10 seconds to make a final question.
You know, Hillary is hitting me with tremendous commercials,
some of it said in entertainment,
some of it said,
somebody who's been very vicious to me, Rosie O'Donell,
I said very tough things to her
and I think everybody would agree that she deserves it
and nobody feel sorry for it.
But you want to know the truth?
I was going to say something extremely rough to Hillary,
to her family
and I said to myself, "I can't do it. I just can't do it."
It's inappropriate, it's not nice,
but she's spent hundreds of millions of dollars on negative ads on me,
many of which are absolutely untrue, they're untrue
and they're misrepresentations.
And I will tell you this, Lester, it's not nice
and I don't deserve that,
but it's certainly not a nice thing that she's done.
It's hundreds of millions of ads
and the only gratifying thing is I saw the polls coming today
and with all of that money, over 200 million dollars is spent
and I'm either winning or tied
and I've spent practically nothing.
One of you will not win this election,
so my final question to you tonight,
are you willing to accept the outcome
as the will of the voters? Secretary Clinton?
Well, I support our democracy
and sometimes you win, sometimes you lose,
but I certainly will support the outcome of this election
and I know Donald's trying very hard to plant doubts about it
but I hope the people out there understand,
this election's really up to you.
It's not about us
so much as it is about you and your families
and the kind of country and future you want.
So I sure hope you will get out and vote
as though your future depended on it because I think it does.
Mr. Trump, very quickly if same question
will you accept the outcome as the will of the voters?
I wanna make America great again.
We are a nation that is seriously troubled,
we're losing our jobs, people are pouring in to our country,
the other day we were deporting 800 people
and perhaps they pass the wrong button, they press the wrong button
or perhaps worse than that it was corruption.
But these people that we were going to deport for good reason
ended up becoming citizens
ended up becoming citizens
and it was 800 and now it turns out it might be 1,800
and they don't even know.
Will you accept the outcome of the election?
I wanna make America great again.
I'm gonna be able to do it.
I don't believe Hillary will.
The answer is if she wins I will absolutely support her.
All right. Well, That is gonna do it for us that concludes our debate for this evening.
A spirited one, we covered a lot of ground
not everything as I suspected we wouldn't.
Would be the next presidential debates
are scheduled for October 9th
at Washington University in St. Louis
and October 19th
at the University of Nevada Las Vegas.
The conversation will continue.
A reminder, the Vice Presidential debate is scheduled for October 4th
at Long Wood University in Farmville Virginia.
My thanks to Hilary Clinton and to Donald Trump.
And to Hofstra University for hosting us tonight.
Good night everyone.