First Debate US Presidential Debates

Welcome to the first presidential debate.

You

The participants are Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

It is sponsored by the Commhssion on Presidential Debates,

a non-partisan non-profit organisation.

The Commission drafted tonight's format.

The rules have been agreed to by the candidates.

The 90-minute debate is divhded into six segments,

each 15 minutes long.

We will explore three topic areas tonight, achieving prosperity,

America's direction, and security.

At the start of each segment, I will ask the same 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 will have an open discussion

The questions are mine and have not been shared

with the Commission or the campaigns.

The audience has agreed to remain silent so we can focus

on what the candidates are saying.

I will invite you to applaud at this moment as we welcome the candidates,

Democratic nominee for Preshdent of the United States

Hillary Clinton, and Republhcan nominee for President

of the United States,

Donald J Trump.

APPLAUSE, CHEERING

How are you, Donald?

Good luck to you.

I don't expect us to cover all of the issues of this c`mpaign

tonight, but I remind everyone, there are two mord

presidential debates scheduled.

We will focus on many issues voters tell us are most important.

We will press for specifics.

I am honoured to have this role but this evening belongs

to the candidates, and just as importantly,

to the American people.

Candidates, we look forward to hearing you articulate

your policy positions, visions and values.

Let's begin.

We are calling this opening segment achieving prosperity.

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 insignificant and nearly half

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 creatd

the kind of jobs that will put more money in the pockets

of American workers?

Thank you, Lester, and thank you to Hofstra University for hosthng us.

The central question in this election is really what kind

of country we want to be in and what kind of future

we will 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 incomds.

I want us to invest in you.

I want us to invest in your future.

That means jobs and infrastructure and advanced manufacturing.

Innovation and technology.

Clean renewable energy and small business.

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 want to see more companies do profit-sharing.

If you help create the profhts you should be able to share in them,

not just the executives at the top.

And I want us to do more to support people who are struggling

to balance family and work.

I have heard from so many of you about the difficult choices

you face, and the stresses that you are under.

Let's have paid family leavd.

Earned sick days.

Let's have affordable childcare and debt free college.

We will do it by having the wealthy pay their fair share and close

the corporate loopholes.

Finally, tonight, we are on the stage tonight,

Donald Trump and I.

Donald, it is good to be with you.

We are 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 immensd awesome responsibilities of the presidency?

Who can put into action the plans that will make your life better

I hope I will be able to earn your vote on Novembdr 8th.

Thank you.

The same question to you, about putting more money

in the pockets of American workers.

You have up to two minutes.

Thank you.

Our jobs are fleeing the cotntry, going to Mexico and other countries.

Look at what China is doing to our country.

They are devaluing their currency.

There is nobody in our government to fight them.

We have a very good fight and a winning fight.

They are using our country as a piggybank to rebuild

China, and many countries are doing the same thing.

We are losing so many good jobs

When you look at what is happening in Mexico, a friend of mine said

it is the eighth wonder of the world, building some

of the biggest plants, some of the most sophisticated.

With the United States, not so much.

Ford is leaving.

You see, their small car division leaving.

Thousands of jobs leaving Mhchigan, Ohio, they are all living,

Thousands of jobs leaving Mhchigan, Ohio, they are all leaving,

and we cannot allow it to h`ppen.

As far as childcare and so lany other things, I think

Hillary and I agree, we probably disagree

as to numbers and amounts and what we are going to do,

but perhaps we will talk about that later.

But we have to stop our jobs from being stolen from us.

We have to stop our companids from leaving the United States,

and with that, firing all of their people.

All you have to do is look at the air conditioning

in Indianapolis.

They are going to Mexico.

So many hundreds and hundreds of companies are doing this.

We cannot let it happen.

Under my plan, I will be reducing taxes, tremendously,

from 35% down to 15% for small and big businesses.

That will be a job creator like we have not seen

since Ronald Reagan.

It will be a beautiful thing to watch.

Companies will come and build and expand.

New companies will start.

I look 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?

I think trade is an important issue.

We are 5% of the world's population and have to trade

with the other 95%.

We need to have smart and fair trade deals.

We also need to have a tax system that rewards work and not

just financial transactions.

The kind of plan that Donald has put forward would be trickle-down

economics all over again.

It would be the most extreme version, tax cuts

for the top percent.

I call it Trumped-up trickld-down, because that is what it would be.

That is not how we grow the economy.

We just have a different view about what is best

for growing the economy, how we make investments

that will produce jobs and rising incomes.

I think we come at it fromdifferent perspectives.

I think we come at it from different perspectives.

I understand that.

Donald was very fortunate in his life, and that is all

to his benefit.

He started his business with $1 million borrowed from his f`ther.

He really believes that the more you help wealthy people,

the better off we'll be, and that everything will work out.

I don't buy that.

I have a different experience.

My father was a small busindssman.

He worked hard printing fabrics on long tables,

where he would pull out those fabrics and go down

with a silkscreen and put the paint in and get going.

The more we can do for the and investing you,

your education, law skills, the future, the better we whll be

your education, skills, the future, the better we will be

in the better we will grow.

That is the kind of economy I want us to see again.

You have talked about creathng 5 main jobs and promised to bring back

millions of jobs for Americans -- 25 million.

How will you bring back indtstries that have left this country

for cheaper labour overseas?

Specifically how will you tdll manufacturers they

have to come back?

Before we start on that, my father gave me a small alount

and I built it into accompanied with many billions of dollars

with some of the greatest assets and the world.

I say that because that is the kind of thinking our country needs.

Our country is in deep trouble.

We do not know what we are doing when it comes to devaluations.

These countries, especially China, they are the best ever at it.

What they are doing to us is a sad thing.

We have to do that.

We have to renegotiate our traders.

They are taking our jobs, doing things we do not do.

Let me give you an example of Mexico.

They have a VAT tax.

When we sell into Mexico, there is a tax.

When they sell into us, there is no tax.

It is a defective agreement.

But the politicians have not done anything about it.

In all fairness to Secretary Clinton,

yes, is that OK?

Good.

I want you to be very happy.

It is very important to me.

In all fairness, when she started talking about this, it was recently.

She has been doing this for 30 years.

Why hasn't she made the agreements better?

The Nafta agreement is defective.

Because of tax and many other reasons.

Secretary Clinton and others, politicians, should have bedn doing

this for years, not right now, just because we have

created a movement.

They should have been doing this for years.

What happened to our jobs and our country and our economy

generally, we owe $20 trillhon.

We cannot do it any longer.

Back to the question, how do you specifically bring back jobs,

American manufacturers?

The first thing to do is not let the jobs leave.

The companies are leaving.

There are thousands leaving and they are leaving

in bigger numbers than ever.

What you do is say fine, you want to go to Mexico

or some other country, we wish you a lot of luck.

But if you think you will m`ke your cars, air-conditioners or cookies

and bring them into our country without a tax, you are wrong.

Once you say you will have to tax them coming in,

and politicians never do thhs, because they have special interests,

and they want those companids to leave, because in many c`ses

they own the companies.

I am saying we can stop them from leaving.

We have to stop them from ldaving.

That is a big factor.

Secretary Clinton?

Let us stop and remember where we were eight years ago.

We were in the worst financhal crisis since the 1930s.

That was in large part because of tax policies that slashed

taxes on the wealthy, failed to invest in the middle class,

took their eyes off Wall Street and created a perfect storm.

In fact, Donald was one of the people who rooted

for the housing crisis.

Back in 2006, he said that he hoped it would coll`pse

because he could go in, buy some and make money.

Well, it did collapse.

That is called business, by the way.

9 million people lost their jobs, 5 million lost their homes

and $13 trillion of dollars were wiped out in family we`lth

and $13 trillion dollars were wiped out in family wealth.

We have come back from that abyss and it has not been easy.

We are on the precipice of having a much better economy,

but the last thing we need to do is go back to the policies that

failed us in the first placd.

Independent experts have looked at what I have proposed

and what Donald has proposed and basically, they have sahd

that if his tax plan, which would blow up the debt by over

$5 trillion and would in sole instances, disadvantage middle-class

families, we would lose 3.5 million jobs and maybe

have another recession.

They looked at my plans and they said OK, if we can do this,

and I intend to get it done, we will have 10 million mord

new jobs because we will be making investments where we can

grow the economy.

Clean energy, for example, some country will be the cldan

energy superpower of the century.

Donald thinks that climate change is a hoax

perpetrated by the Chinese.

I do not say that. I do not say that.

I say we grip this and deal with it at home and abroad.

We can deploy more solar panels

We can have enough clean endrgy to supply every home.

We can build a new grid.

That is a lot of jobs and a lot of economic activity.

I try to be very specific about what we can and should do

and I am determined that we need to get the economy moving again

building on the progress we have made over the last eight ye`rs

but never returning to what got us in trouble in the first place.

She speaks about solar panels.

We invested in a solar comp`ny.

It was a disaster.

There was plenty of money lost on that one.

I am a great believer in all forms of energy.

But we are putting a lot of people out of work.

Our energy policies are a dhsaster.

Our country is losing so much in terms of energy,

in terms of paying off our debts.

You can not do what you are looking at doing with $20 trillion hn debt.

You cannot do what you are looking at doing with $20 trillion hn debt.

The Obama administration, since they have come in,

is over 230 years' worth of debt and he has doubled it in seven

and a half years.

I will tell you this.

We must do a much better job at keeping our jobs.

And we must do a better job at giving companies incentive

to build new companies and to expand because we are not doing th`t.

All you need to do is look at Michigan and Ohio

and all of these places where so many of their jobs

and companies are just leavhng.

They are gone.

And, Hillary, I ask you this - you have been doing this

for 30 years.

Why are you thinking about these solutions only now?

Only now you are thinking of solutions.

Excuse me.

I will bring back jobs.

You can't.

Actually, I have thought about this a lot.

Yes, for 30 years.

Not quite that long.

I think my husband did a good job in the 1990s.

He approved NAFTA, which is the single worst trade deal

ever in this country.

Manufacturing jobs went up in the 1990s, if we look at 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 Amdrica?

Will they raise income?

Are they good for our national security?

The biggest one, a multinathonal one known as CAFTA, I voted agahnst

I hold the same standards as I look at all these deals.

Let us not assume that tradd is the only challenge we have

in the economy.

I think it is a part of it, and I have said what I am

going to do, I will have a special prosecutor to enforce

the trade deals that we havd and to hold people accountable.

When I was Secretary of State we increased American

exports globally by 30%.

We increased 50% into China.

I know how to really work to get new jobs and exports that

help to create more new jobs.

But you haven't done it in 30 years or 26 years.

I am a senator.

I have been Secretary of State, and I have.

Your husband signed NAFTA, which is one of the worst

things that ever happened.

You go to New England, Ohio, Pennsylvania, anywhere you like

Secretary Clinton, and you will see devastation, with

manufacturers down up to 50$.

NAFTA is maybe the worst tr`de deal signed anywhere,

certainly in this country.

And now you want to approve the Trans-Pacific Partnershhp.

You were in favour of it and then you heard how I said it was bad

You could not approve it thdn.

That is almost as bad as NAFTA.

That is just inaccurate.

I was against it once.

Once it was finally negotiated and the terms were laid out,

I wrote about that.

You called it the gold standard

You called it the gold standard of trade deals, the finest deal

you had ever seen and then xou heard what I said and then

you were against it.

I know, Donald, that you live in your own reality,

but that is not the facts.

After it was negotiated, which I was not responsible for

I concluded it was not a good deal.

So is it the fault of President Obama?

Secretary, is it the fault of President Obama

because he is pushing it?

There are differing views about what is good for our country,

our economy and our leadership in the world.

I think it is important to look at what we need to do to get

the economy going again.

That is why I said that new jobs with rising incomes, investlents.

Not more tax cuts that would add $5 trillion to the debt.

But you have no plan.

I wrote a book about it.

It is called Stronger Together.

You can purchase it in a book stall near you.

We need strong and sustained growth.

We also need to look at how we help families balance responsibilities

at home and business.

We have a robust set of plans and people have looked at otr plans

and have concluded that mind would create 10 million jobs

and yours would lose us 3.5 million jobs.

You are going to approve ond of the biggest tax cuts in history.

You are going to approve ond of the biggest tax

increases in history.

You will drive business out.

Your regulations are a disaster and you will increase regul`tions

all over the place and, by the way, my tax cut

is the biggest since Ronald Reagan.

I am very proud of it.

It will create tremendous numbers of new jobs.

But you will regulate these businesses out of business.

When I go around, Lester, I tell you, I have been all over,

when I go around, the things that businesses and people

like the most is the fact that I'm cutting regulation.

You have regulations on top of regulations and new comp`nies

cannot form and old companids are going out of business

and you want to increase the regulations and make

them even worse.

I will cut them.

But I will cut taxes big-le`gue and you will raise them big league.

End of story.

Let's move to the next step.

I assumed that there would be a lot of these charges

and claims.

Facts.

We have taken the homepage of my website and we have ttrned it

into a fact checker.

If you would like to see in real time what the facts are,

please go and take a look.

Please, also take a look at mine.

Your plans would add $5 trillion to the debt.

What I have proposed will ctt regulations and streamline them

for small businesses.

What I have proposed will bd paid for by raising taxes on the wealthy

because they have made all of the gains in the economy

and I think it is time that the wealthy and corpor`tions

paid their fair share to support this country.

You have just opened the next segment.

You go to her website and you take a look at our website.

She is going to raise taxes by trillions of dollars.

It is no different to this.

She is telling us how to fight ISIS.

Go to her website, she tells you how to fight Isis.

I don't think General Dougl`s MacArthur would like that too much.

At least I have a plan to fight them.

You are telling the enemy everything you want to do.

No wonder you have been fighting Isis your entire adult life.

Folks, let me...

Please, go to the fact checker.

You are packing a lot here `nd this next two-minute answer

goes to you, Mr Trump.

I am calling for major jobs because the wealthy will

create tremendous jobs, expand their companies and do

a tremendous job.

If you look, it is really not a tax, it is a great thing for the wealthy,

it is wonderful for the middle-class and for companies to expand.

When these people put billions and billions of dollars

into companies and when thex bring $2.5 trillion back from overseas

where they can't bring their money back because politicians

Secretary Clinton will not `llow them to bring the money back

because the taxes are so ondrous and the bureaucratic

red tape is so bad.

So what they are doing is they are leaving our country

and they are, believe it or not believe it or not, leaving

because taxes are too high and many of them have lots of money

outside of our country and instead of bringing it back

and putting our country to work everybody agrees it should be

brought back, instead of that they are leaving our country

to get their money because they cannot bring their money

back into our country because of bureaucratic red tape

because they can't get together

We have a president that can't sit around the table and get thdm

to approve something.

Here is the thing.

Republicans and Democrats agree that this should be done.

$2.5 trillion.

I think it is double that, probably $5 trillion we can't

bring into our country, Lester, and, with a little

leadership you would get it in here very quickly and it could be

put to use on the inner cithes and lots of other things

and it would be beautiful.

But we have no leadership.

And, honestly, that starts with Secretary Clinton.

You have two minutes on the same question to defend tax incrdases.

I feel that by the end of this evening, I will be

blamed for everything that has ever happened.

Why not?

Just join the debate by saying more crazy things.

There is nothing crazy about not letting our companies

bring their money back into...

This is Secretary Clinton's two minutes.

Let's start the clock again, Lester.

We have looked at your tax proposals.

I don't see changes in the corporate tax rates or the kinds of proposals

you are referring to that would cause the repatriation

of money that is stranded overseas.

Then you did not read it.

I happen to support that in a way that will actually

work to our benefit.

But when I look at what you have proposed, you have what is called,

now, the Trump loophole, because it would so advantage

you and the business you do.

You have proposed...

Who gave it that name?

Mr Trump, this is Secretary Clinton's two minutes.

How much for my family?

As I said, Trumped-up trickle-down.

That got us into the mess, trickle-down does not work.

Slashing taxes of the wealthy does not work, and a lot of smart wealthy

people know that.

They are saying, hey, we need to do more to make

the contributions we should be making to rebuild the middld class.

I do not think top-down works in America.

I think building the middle class, investing in the middle class,

making college debt free so that more people can get their education,

helping people refinance thdir debt from college at a lower ratd,

those are the kind of things that will really boost the econoly.

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.

Never going to happen.

Our country is suffering because people like Secretary Clinton have

made such bad decisions in terms of our jobs and in terms

of what is going on.

We have the worst revival of an economy since

the great depression.

And believe me, we are in a bubble right now.

The only thing that looks good is the stock market.

But if you raise interest r`tes that will come crashing down.

We are in a big, fat, ugly bubble, and we

have to be careful.

This Janet Yellen of the Federal Reserve,

they been political keeping interest rates at this level.

The day Barack Obama leaves and goes out to the golf course for the rest

of his life to play golf, when they raise interest rates,

you will see very bad things happen.

The Fed is not doing their job.

The Fed is being more polithcal than Secretary Clinton.

We are talking about the burden Americans have to pay, yet xou have

not released your tax returns.

The reason nominees have released their returns for decades

is so voters will know if their potential president owes

money to who they owe it to and any business conflicts.

Don't Americans have a right to know if there are any

conflicts of interest?

I am under a routine audit `nd it will be released as soon

as it is finished.

But you will learn more about Donald Trump by going down

to the federal elections, where I filed a 104 page financial

statement, the forms they have, that show income.

I just looked today.

The income is filed at $694 million for this past year.

If you would have told me I was going to make that

15 or 20 years ago, I would have been surprised.

But that is the kind of thinking our country needs.

When we have a country doing so badly, being ripped off by every

country in the world, it is the kind of thinking

that our country needs.

Everybody, we have a trade deficit with all of the countries

we do business with, of almost $800 billion a ye`r.

You know what that is?

Who is negotiating these tr`de deals?

We have people who are political hacks negotiating our trade deals.

The IRS said you are perfectly free to release your taxes

during an audit.

The question is, does the ptblic right to know outweigh

your personal...?

I will release them as soon as the audit is finished.

I have been under audit for 15 years.

I know a lot of wealthy people never audited.

I get audited almost every xear

It has almost come a way of life, being audited by the IRS.

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,

and as soon as she releases them, I will release my tax returns.

CHEERING

My lawyers say don't do it.

Watching the shows and readhng the papers, almost every lawyer says

you do not release your rettrns until the audit is complete.

When it is complete, I will do it.

But I will go against them if she does it.

So it is negotiable?

Why did she delete 33,000 elails?

I would just admonish the atdience, we did ask you for silence.

This is another example of bait and switch.

Everybody running for president has released their tax returns.

You can see 39 or 40 years of tax returns.

Everyone has done it.

We know the IRS has made cldar there is no prohibition on releasing

it under order.

You have to ask yourself, why won't he release his tax returns?

There may be a couple of re`sons.

First, maybe he is not as rich as he says he is.

Maybe he is not as charitable as he says.

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.

But maybe he doesn't want the American people,

all of you watching tonight, to know he is paying

nothing in federal taxes.

The only years anybody has seen were a couple of years when he had

to turn them over to state authorities when trying

to get a casino licence, and they showed he did not pay

federal income tax.

If he has paid zero, that means zero for troops,

zero for vets, zero for schoolsor health, and he is not interdsted

zero for vets, zero for schools or health, and he is not interested

about having the rest of thd country see what the real reasons are,

because it must be something important or terrible

he is trying to hide.

The financial disclosure st`tements do not give you all of the details

that tax returns would.

It just seems to me that thhs is something the American

people deserve to see, and I have no reason

to believe that he is ever going to release his tax returns.

There is something he is hiding

We will keep guessing at wh`t it might be he is 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?

He owes you the answers to that and should provide them.

He also raised the issue of your e-mails.

Do you want to respond?

I do.

I made a mistake using a private e-mail.

That is for sure.

If I had to do it again, I would do it differently.

But I will not make excuses.

It was a mistake and I take responsibility for that.

Mr Trump.

That was more than a mistakd.

That was done on purpose.

When you have your staff taking the Fifth Amendment,

taking the Fifth, so they are not prosecuted.

When you have the men who sdt up the illegal server taking

the Fifth Amendment, I think it is disgraceful.

This country thinks it is disgraceful.

Really thinks it is disgracdful

As far as my tax returns, you don't learn much from tax returns.

You learn a lot from financhal disclosure, and you should go down

and take a look at that.

I am extremely under leveraged.

The report that said $650 mhllion, which by the way a lot of friends

of mine said that is not a lot of money, relative to what H had,

the buildings in question, in the same report, which w`s not

a bad story, to be honest, the buildings

are worth $3.9 billion.

The $650 is not even that.

But it is less.

I could give you a list of banks, very fine institutions,

very fine banks.

I can do that quickly.

I am under leveraged.

I have a great company and a tremendous income.

The reason I say that is not in a braggadocious way

but because it is about timd this country had somebody running it that

has an idea about money.

When we have $20 trillion in debt, and our country is a mess,

it is one thing to have $20 trillion in debt but our roads

and bridges are good and everything is in great shape.

Our airports are like from a third World country.

You land at Newark or LAX, you come in from Dubai or China

you see these incredible airports and you land -

we have become a third world country.

We owe $20 trillion and we are a mess!

We haven't even started.

We have spent $6 trillion in the Middle East,

according to a report I just saw.

We could have rebuilt our country twice for that.

It is a shame.

It is politicians like Secretary Clinton

that have caused this probldm.

Our country has tremendous problems.

We are in debt, in serious debt and we have a country that needs

new roads, tunnels, bridges, airports, schools, hospitals,

and we don't have the money because it has been squandered

on so many of your ideas.

Maybe because you have not paid any federal income taxes

for a lot of years.

The other thing I think is important...

It would be squandered as wdll.

If your main claim to be Prdsident of the United States

is your business, I think we should talk about that.

Your campaign manager said xou built a lot of businesses on the backs

of little guys, and I have let a lot of the people who were stiffed

by you and your businesses, Donald.

I have 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 cltbhouses

at one of your golf courses.

It is a beautiful facility.

It immediately was put to use.

And you would not pay what the man needed to be p`id,

what he was charging you.

Maybe he did not do a good job and I was unsatisfied with his work.

There are thousands of people you have stiffed over

because of your business.

Do they not deserve some kind of apology from someone

who has taken their labour, taking the goods they produced,

and then refused to pay thel?

I can only say I am certainly relieved my 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.

When we talk about your bushness, you have taken

business bankruptcy six timds.

There are a lot of great business people that have never

taken bankruptcy once.

You call yourself the king of debt.

You talk about leverage.

At one time, you even suggested you had tried to negotiate

down the national debt of the United States.

Wrong.

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.

I think it is time.

I do think it is time.

It is all words and sound bhtes

I built an unbelievable company some of the greatest assets

anywhere in the world, beyond the United States, in Europe,

lots of different places.

It is an unbelievable company.

But on occasion, four times, we used certain laws that are there,

and when Secretary Clinton talks about people that did not

get paid, first of all, they do get paid a lot.

get paid, first of all, they did get paid a lot.

But taking advantage of the laws of the nation.

If you want to change the l`ws, you have been there a long

time, change the laws.

But I have taken advantage of the laws of the nation.

I am running a company.

My obligation is to do well for myself, my family,

my employees and my companids, and that is what I do.

But she does not say that the tens of thousands of people

who are unbelievably happy and love me,

I will give you an example.

We are just opening up on Pennsylvania Avenue,

right next to the White House, so if I don't get there one way

I will get to Pennsylvania Avenue another.

But we are opening the old Post Office,

under budget, ahead of schedule saving tremendous money.

We are a year ahead of schedule

That is what this country should be doing.

We build roads and they cost three or four times

what they are supposed to cost.

We buy products for the milhtary and they come in at costs so far

above what they are supposed to be because we don't have peopld

who know what they are doing.

When we look at the budget, it is bad because we have

people who have no idea as to what to do and how to buy

Trump International is way tnder budget and way ahead of schddule.

We should be able to do that for our country.

We are well behind schedule, so we will move to the next segment,

talking about America's dirdction.

Let's start by talking about race.

The share of Americans who say race relations are bad in this country

is the highest in decades.

Much of it amplified by shootings of African Americans by polhce

as we have seen recently in Charlotte and Tulsa.

Race has been a big issue and one of you will have to bridge

a very wide and bitter gap.

How do you heal the divide?

You are right.

Race remains a significant challenge in our country.

Unfortunately, race still ddtermines too much, it often determinds

where people live, what kind of education in their public

schools they can get, and yes, it determines

how they are treated in the criminal justice system.

We have just seen those two tragic examples in Tulsa and Charlotte

We have to do several things at the same time.

We have to restore trust between communities and the police.

We have to work to make surd our police are using the best training,

the best techniques, that they are well prepared

to use force only when necessary.

Everyone should be respected by the law,

and everyone should respect the law.

Right now, that is not the case in a lot of our neighbourhoods.

So I have, ever since the fhrst day of my campaign, called

for criminal justice reform.

I have laid out a platform that I think would begin to remedy

some of the problems we havd in the criminal justice system.

But we also have to recognise in addition to the challengds

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 have 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.

We have to do two things, we have to restore trust,

work with the police, we have to make sure

they respect the communitiess and communities respect thel,

and we have to tackle the plague of gun violence which is a big

contributor to a lot of the problems we are seeing today.

Mr Trump, you have two minutes.

How do you heal the divide?

Secretary Clinton does not want to use a couple

of words - law and order.

We need law and order.

If we do not have it, we will not have a country.

And when I look at what is going on in Charlotte, a city I love,

a city where I have investmdnts when I look at what is going

on throughout various parts of our country,

I could keep naming them all day long.

We need law and order in our country.

I just got today, as you know, the endorsement of the Fratdrnal

Order of Police which just came in.

We have endorsements from, H think, almost every police group, H mean,

a large percentage of them in the United States.

We have a situation where we have our inner cities,

African-Americans and Hispanics are living in hell

because it is so dangerous.

You walk down the street, you get shot.

In Chicago, they've had thotsands of shootings, thousands.

since January 1st.

Thousands of shootings.

Where is this?

Is this a war-torn country?

What are we doing?

We have to stop the violencd, we have to bring back law and order

in a place like Chicago where thousands of people

have been killed over the last number of years.

Almost 4,000 have been killdd since Barack Obama became President.

Almost 4,000 people in Chic`go 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 in Ndw York, it brought the crime rate w`y down.

You take the gun away from criminals who should not be having it.

We have gangs roaming the street and in many cases,

they are illegally here, illegal immigrants, and thex have

guns and they shoot people.

We have to be very strong and we have to be very vigilant

We have to know what we are doing.

Right now our police, in many cases, are afraid to do anything.

We have to protect our inner cities because African-American colmunities

are being decimated by crimd.

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.

You are wrong.

It went before a judge who was a very against-police judge.

It was taken away from her `nd our new mayor refused to go

forward with the case.

They would have won it on appeal.

The argument is that it is ` form of racial profiling.

No, the argument is that we have to take guns away from thesd

people, these bad people who should not have them.

These are felons, these are bad people...

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 home town,

you have to have Stop and Frisk

You need more police.

You need better community rdlations.

You do not have good community relations in Chic`go.

It is terrible.

I have property there.

It is terrible what is going on there.

It's not the only one, you go to Ferguson, you go

to so many different places...

You need a better relationship.

I agree with Secretary Clinton on this.

You need better relationships between the communities

and police because in some cases, it is not good.

But look at Dallas, where the relationships were studhed.

The relationships were a be`utiful thing and then five police

officers were killed very violently one night.

So there are bad things going on.

Some really bad things.

Secretary Clinton...

Lester, we need law and orddr.

And we need law and order in the inner cities

because the people that are most affected by what is happening

are African-American and Hispanic people, and it is very unfahr

to them, what our politicians are allowing to happen.

HOLT: Secretary Clinton.

Well, I've heard Donald say this at his rallies,

and it is really unfortunatd that he paints such a dire,

negative picture of black communities in our country.

The vibrancy of the black church, the black businesses that

employ so many people, the opportunities that so m`ny

families are working to provide for their kids.

There is 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.

I believe in community policing and in fact, violent crime hs one

half of what it was in 1991.

Property crime is down 40%.

We just don't want to see it creep back up.

We have had 25 years of very good cooperation

but there were some problems.

Some unintended consequences.

Too many young African-Amerhcan and Latino men ended up in jail

for non-violent offences, and it is just a fact that

if you are a young African-@merican 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 have 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 sxstem, 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 programmes.

I am glad that we are ending private prisons in the federal systdm.

I want to see them ended in the state system.

You should not have a profit motivation to fill prison cdlls

with young African-Americans.

There are positive ways we can work on this.

And I believe strongly that common sense gun safety

measures would assist us.

Right now, and this is something that Donald has supported

along with the gun lobby, right now we have 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 is on the terrorist watch list from being able to buy

a gun in our country.

If you are too dangerous to fly you are too dangerous to bux a gun.

There are things we ought to do and do them in a bipartisan way

Last week, you said that we need to do everything possible to improve

the implicit bias in the police

Do you believe the police are implicitly biased

against black people?

Lester, I think implicit bi`s is a problem for everybody,

not just the police.

I think too many of us in our great country jump

to conclusions about each other

Therefore, I think we need, all of us, to be asking

hard questions about...

Why am I feeling this way?

When it comes to policing, ht can have literally fatal conseqtences.

I have said in my first budget that we would put money into that

budget to help us deal with implicit bias by retraining a lot

of our police officers.

I met with a group of very distinguished experienced police

chiefs a few weeks ago.

They admit it is an issue.

They have a lot of concerns.

Mental health is a big concern because now,

police are having to handle a lot of difficult mental health

problems on the street.

They want support.

They want more training.

They want more assistance.

And I think the Federal govdrnment could be in a position

where we would offer and provide that.

Would you like to respond?

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 and the no-fly list,

I have the endorsement of the NRA and these are very good people

and I am very proud of that.

They are supporting the Second Amendment.

When people are on the watchlist, even if they should not be on there,

we will help them legally to get off it, but I tend to agree with that.

Quite strongly.

I do want to bring up the f`ct that you were the one who brought up

the word super-predator about young black youth.

That is a term that I think has been horribly met, as you know.

You have apologised for it.

But I think it was a terrible thing to say.

And when it comes to Stop and Frisk, you are talking about taking guns

away, well, I am talking about taking guns away from gangs.

I don't think you disagree with me, if you want to know the truth,

I think there is a political reason, you can't say, but I really do not

believe - in New York City, stop and frisk, we had 2000 murders

and stop and frisk brought that down to 500 murders.

That is a lot of murders.

500.

Is that supposed to be good?

But we went from 2,200 down to 00 and it was continued

by Mayor Bloomberg and termhnated by the current mayor.

But Stop and Frisk had a trdmendous 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 big impact.

Well, it is also fair to sax that if we are going to talk

about mayors, that under thd current mayor, crime has continued

to drop including murders.

You're wrong.

Murder is up.

New York has done an excelldnt job.

I give credit across the bo`rd 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.

One murder is too many.

But it is important that we learn about what has been effective

and not go to things that sound good that really did not have thd kind

of impact that we would want.

Who disagrees with keeping neighbourhoods safe?

Let's also add, no-one should disagree about respecting the rights

of young men who live in those neighbourhoods.

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

Mr Trump, I must ask...

I would like to respond.

The African-American communhty has been let down by our politicians.

They talk good around electhon time, like right now, and then

after the election they say to you later, "I will see

you in four years".

The African-American communhty. .

The community, the communitx in the inner cities has been

so badly treated, they have been abused and used in order to get

votes by Democrat politicians, because that is what it is.

They have controlled these communities for up to 100 ydars

Mr Trump...

I will tell you.

Look at the inner cities.

I just left Detroit and Philadelphia.

I have been all over the pl`ce.

You decided to stay home, and that's OK.

I will tell you, I have been all over and I have met somd

of the greatest people I will ever meet within these communitids.

And they are very, very upsdt with what the politicians h`ve told

them and what the politicians have done.

I think Donald just criticised me for preparing for this debate.

And, yes, I did.

And you know what else I prepared for?

I prepared to be president.

I think that is a good thing.

Mr Trump, you have perpetuated a false claim for a number of years

and questioned the legitimacy of the presidency of the nation s

first African-American preshdent.

Recently you have changed this.

What has changed your mind?

It's simple to say.

Sidney Blumenthal works for the campaign, a very close

friend of Secretary Clinton.

Her campaign manager, Paddy Doyle, went to,

during the campaign, her calpaign against President Obama,

fought very hard, and you c`n 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 h`ppened.

Blumenthal sent a respected reporter to Kenya to find out about ht.

They were pressing it very hard

She failed to get the birth certificate.

When I got involved, I did not fail.

I got him to give the birth certificate.

So I am satisfied with it.

And I will tell you why I am satisfied with it,

because I want to get on to defeating Isis.

I want to get on to creating jobs.

I want to get on to having a strong border.

Because I want to get on to things that are very important to le and

are very important to the country.

I will let you respond, but I want to get an answer.

The birth certificate was produced in 2011.

You questioned the president's legitimacy over several years.

What changed your mind?

Well, nobody was caring abott it.

I figured you would ask the question tonight,

but nobody was caring much `bout it.

I was the one who got him to produce the birth certificate,

and I think I did a good job.

Secretary Clinton also fought it.

Now everybody is going to s`y that is not true.

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 m`nager,

and she was involved.

But just like she can't bring back jobs, she can't produce.

I will let you respond to that.

There is a lot there.

But we are talking about racial healing.

What do you say to Americans, people?

I say nothing because he should have produced it earlier.

When you talk about healing, I have developed good relathonships

over the last little while with the African-American committee.

I think you can see that.

I feel they really wanted md to come to that conclusion,

and I think I did a great job and a great service not onlx

for the country but also for the president in getting him

to produce his birth certifhcate.

Secretary Clinton.

Well, just listen to what you heard.

LAUGHTER

Clearly, as Donald just admitted, he knew he would stand

on this debate stage and Lester Holt would ask us questions,

so he tried to put the whold racist birther lie to bed.

But it can't be dismissed that easily.

He has really started his political activity, based on this rachst lie

that our first black presiddnt was not an American citizen.

There was absolutely no evidence for it, but he persisted,

year after year, because sole of his supporters, people

that he was trying to bring into his fold, apparently bdlieved

it or wanted to believe it.

But remember, Donald started his career back in 0973

being sued at the Justice Ddpartment for racial discrimination.

because he would not rent apartments in one of his developments

to African-Americans, and he made sure the people

who worked for him understood that was the policy.

He was sued twice by the Justice Department.

So he has a long record of dngaging in racist behaviour.

And the birther lie was a very hurtful one.

Barack Obama is a man of grdat 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 Conventhon When they go low, we go high.

And Barack Obama went high, despite Donald Trump's best efforts

to bring him down.

You can respond.

I would like to respond.

First of all, I got to watch some of your debates

against President Obama.

You treated him with terrible disrespect.

I watched the way you talk now about lovely everything is,

but it doesn't work that wax.

You were after him, you even sent out pictures,

or your campaign sent out phctures of him in a certain garb,

I don't think you can deny that

But just last week, your calpaign manager said it was true.

When you try to act holier than thou, it doesn't work.

As far as the lawsuit, when I was very young,

I went into my father's real estate company in Brooklyn, Queens,

and along with many companids, a federal lawsuit, we were sued

We settled the suit with no admission of guilt.

It was very easy to do.

But they sued many people.

I notice you bring that up ` lot.

And I notice the nasty commdrcials you do on me, which

I don't do on you.

Maybe I am trying to save money

But frankly, I look at that and I say, isn't that amazing?

Because I settled that lawstit with no admission of guilt.

But that was was a lawsuit brought against many real estate firms,

and it is just one of those things.

I'll go one step further.

In Palm Beach, Florida, in a wealthy community,

a brilliant and wealthy comlunity, probably the wealthiest

in the world, I opened a club, and really got

great credit for it.

No discrimination against African-Americans,

against Muslims, against anxbody.

It is a tremendously successful club, and I am so glad I did it

I have been given great credit for what I did,

and I am very proud of it.

That is 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 cyber-attack and our

secrets are being stolen.

Who is behind it and how do we fight it?

I think cyber-security and cyber-warfare will be one

of the biggest challenges facing the next president.

Because clearly, we are fachng, at this point, two different

kinds of adversaries.

There are independent hacking groups who do it mostly

for commercial reasons, to steal information

they can use to make money.

But increasingly we are seehng cyber attacks coming from states,

organs of states.

The most recent and troubling of these has been Russia.

There is no doubt now that Russia has used cyber-attacks

against all kinds of organisations in our country, and I am

deeply concerned about this.

I know Donald is very praiseworthy of Vladimir Putin,

but Putin is playing a tough, long game here.

One of the things he has done is let loose cyber attackers to hack

into government files, to hack in to personal

files, to hack in to the Democratic National Comlittee,

and we have recently learned that this is one of their preferred

methods of trying to wreak havoc and collect information.

We need to make it very cle`r whether it is China,

Russia, Iran or anybody elsd, the United States has

much greater capacity.

We will not sit idly by and allow state actors to go

after our information, our private sector informathon

or our public sector inform`tion.

And we are 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 warf`re.

But we will defend the citizens of this country, and the Russians

need to understand that.

I think they have been treating it almost as a probing.

How far can we go?

How much will we do?

That is why I was so shocked when Donald publicly

invited Vladimir Putin to hack into Americans.

That is just unacceptable.

It's one of the reasons why 50 national security officials

who served in Republican administrations have said Donald

is unfit to be commander in chief.

It is comments like that re`lly worry people who understand

the threats we face.

Two minutes on the same question.

Who is behind it and how do we fight it?

I was just endorsed by over 200 admirals and generals

to lead this country.

That just happened.

Many more are coming.

I am very proud of it.

In addition, I was just endorsed by ICE.

They have never endorsed anxone before, on immigration.

I was just recently endorsed by 16,500 border patrol agents.

When Secretary Clinton talks about this, I will take the admirals

and the generals any day ovdr the political hacks I see that have

led our country so brilliantly over the last ten years

with their knowledge.

Because look at the mess we are in.

Look at the mess we are in.

As far as cyber, I agree to parts of what Secretary Clinton s`id.

We should be better than anxbody else and perhaps we are not.

I don't think anybody knows it was Russia who broke

into the DNC, she is saying Russia, Russia, maybe it was.

But it could also be China and lots of other people.

It could be somebody sitting on their bed that

weighs 400 lbs, OK?

You don't know who broke into the DNC.

But what did we learn with DNC?

We learned that Bernie Sanddrs was taken advantage

of by your people.

By Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

But Bernie Sanders was taken advantage of.

Whether that was Russia or China or another country, we don't know.

The truth is, under President Obama, we have lost control of things

we used to have control of.

We came up with the internet, and I think Secretary Clinton

and myself would agree if you look at what Isis is doing

with the internet, they are beating us at our own game.

We have to get very tough on cyber warfare.

My son is ten years old and he is so good

with computers, it's unbelidvable.

The security aspect of cyber is very tough.

And maybe it is hardly doable, but I will say, we are not doing

the job we should be doing.

That is true throughout our whole governmental society.

We have so many things we have to do better,

and cyber is one of them.

I think there are a number of issues we should be addressing.

I have put forward a plan to defeat Isis.

It does involve going after them online.

I think we need to do much lore with our tech companies to prevent

Isis and their operatives from being able to use the hnternet

to radicalise, even direct people in our country

and Europe and elsewhere.

But we also have to intensify our air strikes against Isis

and eventually, support our Arab and Kurdish partners to be `ble

to actually take out Isis in Raqqa and their claim

of being a caliphate.

We are making progress.

Our military is assisting in Iraq.

We are hoping that within the year, we will be able to push Isis out

of Iraq, and then really squeeze them in Syria.

But we have to be cognisant of the fact that they have 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-Q`eda

leadership and I was Secret`ry of State, including taking

out Osama Bin Laden.

We need to go after Al Baghdadi as well.

Make that one of our organising principles.

We have to do everything we can to disrupt their

propaganda efforts online.

We think of Isis over there, but American citizens have been

inspired to commit acts of terror on American soil, the latest

incident in bombings in New York and New Jersey,

a knife attack in a mall in Minnesota, and deadly attacks

in Orlando and San Bernardino.

I will ask you both.

Tell us specifically how you will prevent homegrown `ttacks

American citizens?

by American citizens?

I have to say one thing first.

Secretary Clinton is talking about taking out Isis.

We will take out Isis.

President Obama and Secretary Clinton created a vacuum

with the way they got out of Iraq.

They got out when they should not have been in, but once they got in,

the way they got out was a disaster.

And Isis was formed.

She has been trying to take them out for a long time.

But they would not have even been formed if they left 10,000

or maybe more troops behind.

Then you would not have had that.

As I have been saying for a long time, and I said it you oncd,

had we taken the oil, and we should have taken thd oil,

Isis would not have been able to form either because the oil

was their primary source of income.

Now they have oil all over the place, including

a lot of oil in Libya, which is another one

of her disasters.

I hope the fact checkers ard turning up the volume and working h`rd.

Donald supported the invasion of Iraq.

Wrong.

That has been proved over and over again.

He advocated for the actions taken in Libya and urged that Gaddafi be

taken out after doing busindss with him one time.

He says this constantly, that George W Bush made

the agreement about when Amdrican troops would leave Iraq.

Not Barack Obama.

The only way American troops could have stayed in Iraq is to get

an agreement from the then Hraqi government that would have

protected our troops, and the Iraqi government

would not give that.

The question you asked, Lester, is what we do

here in the United States.

That is the most important part

How do we protect our peopld?

How do we prevent attacks?

We need an intelligence surge where we look for every

scrap of information.

I was so proud of law enforcement in New York,

in Minnesota, in New Jersey.

They responded so quickly and professionally to

the attacks that occurred.

They brought the culprit down.

We may find out more inform`tion, because he is still alive,

which may be prove to be a benefit to intelligence.

We need to do everything we can to vacuum up intelligence

from Europe and the Middle Dast

We need to work more closelx with our allies.

That is 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 are working with our fridnds in the Middle East,

many of which, as you know, are Muslim majority nations.

Donald has consistently instlted Muslims abroad, Muslims at home

When we need to be cooperathng with Muslim nations and with

the American Muslim community.

They are on the front lines.

They can provide information to us that we may not get anywherd else.

They need to have close working cooperation with law enforcdment