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judy woodruff: good evening. i'm judy woodruff. gwen ifill: and i'm gwen ifill. welcome to this "pbs newshour" special coverageof the first debate between the two major-party presidential candidates, hillary clinton anddonald trump. the stage is set at hofstra university onlong island, new york. with the election 43 days away the race tightening,a lot is on the line tonight, judy. judy woodruff: it certainly is, gwen, andgiven that this is the first time these two have faced each other one on one.

lester holt of nbc news will be moderating. joining us at the table are our regular contributors,syndicated columnist mark shields, new york times columnist david brooks, and from thecook political report, amy walter. we welcome all you have here for the nexttwo hours. amy, let's start with you. what are you looking for? amy walter, the cook political report: eachof these candidates has an enthusiasm gap problem within their own party. so, they have got to get their partisans firedup.

for hillary clinton, it's young people. for donald trump, he's got to get those whitecollege-educated voters back into the republican fold, where they have been. and then they have got to get those voters,both of them, who are torn, don't like either choice they have in front of them, to pickthem. gwen ifill: mark shields, what would you -- surpriseyou the most of what these candidates might or might not do tonight? mark shields: does donald trump dare to beboring? does he come out sedated/presidential?

and can hillary clinton, who is a marvelousand superior deliverer of information, make an emotional connection with american voters? judy woodruff: david, what are you on theedge of your seat looking for? david brooks: we have been around each othertoo long. i wrote down emotional connection. (laughter) mark shields: did you? david brooks: this is not a cognitive night. this is not philosophy.

this is not grand strategy. it's moment of intimacy, that unscripted momentwhen the unconscious is revealed that will be replayed on youtube over and over and overagain. and so it's just, is he commanding or is hecruel? is she relatable and does she seem calmlysmart? and it's whether people get that vibe, thefirst they vibe, that will determine the night. gwen ifill: is this about what they know orwho they are? amy walter: well, i think it's mostly aboutwho they are. for voters at this stage of the game, theyare looking up on that dais to see who they

can spend the next four years with, who theywant to invite into their homes moment after moment. many voters say, i don't want either one ofthem in there. gwen ifill: a lot of them. amy walter: a lot of voters are saying that. but this is the one maybe that they're notgoing to like, but they will feel comfortable enough. judy woodruff: but, mark, people are goingto be fact-checking this debate. they're going to be raising questions aboutwhether what either one of them said was correct

or not. mark shields: no, you're right, judy. and if it's what they know, it will be a shortevening... mark shields: ... for the republican nominee,whose knowledge bank has been overdrawn. and i think it's about, more than anythingelse, each case, what does he know, his command of it, is he comfortable with it, and whoshe is. and i think that is really the question. david brooks: and there is the gender politics. gwen ifill: ok.

well, we're turning now to lester holt ofnbc news. transcript start holt: good evening from hofstra universityin hempstead, new york. i'm lester holt, anchor of "nbc nightly news." i want to welcome you to the first presidentialdebate. the participants tonight are donald trumpand hillary clinton. this debate is sponsored by the commissionon presidential debates, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization. the commission drafted tonight's format, andthe 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: achievingprosperity; america's direction; and securing america. at the start of each segment, i will ask thesame lead-off question to both candidates, and they will each have up to two minutesto respond. from that point until the end of the segment,we'll have an open discussion. the questions are mine and have not been sharedwith the commission or the campaigns. the audience here in the room has agreed toremain silent so that we can focus on what the candidates are saying.

i will invite you to applaud, however, atthis moment, as we welcome the candidates: democratic nominee for president of the unitedstates, hillary clinton, and republican nominee for president of the united states, donaldj. trump. (applause) clinton: how are you, donald? holt: good luck to you. well, i don't expect us to cover all the issuesof this campaign tonight, but i remind everyone, there are two more presidential debates scheduled. we are going to focus on many of the issuesthat voters tell us are most important, and

we're going to press for specifics. i am honored to have this role, but this eveningbelongs to the candidates and, just as important, to the american people. candidates, we look forward to hearing youarticulate your policies and your positions, as well as your visions and your values. so, let's begin. we're calling this opening segment "achievingprosperity." and central to that is jobs. there are two economic realities in americatoday.

there's been a record six straight years ofjob growth, and new census numbers show incomes have increased at a record rate after yearsof stagnation. however, income inequality remains significant,and nearly half of americans are living paycheck to paycheck. beginning with you, secretary clinton, whyare you a better choice than your opponent to create the kinds of jobs that will putmore money into the pockets of american works? clinton: well, thank you, lester, and thanksto hofstra for hosting us. the central question in this election is reallywhat 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 worksfor everyone, not just those at the top. that means we need new jobs, good jobs, withrising incomes. i want us to invest in you. i want us to invest in your future. that means jobs in infrastructure, in advancedmanufacturing, 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 minimumwage and also guarantee, finally, equal pay for women's work. clinton: i also want to see more companiesdo profit-sharing. if you help create the profits, you shouldbe able to share in them, not just the executives at the top. and i want us to do more to support peoplewho are struggling to balance family and work. i've heard from so many of you about the difficultchoices you face and the stresses that you're under. so let's have paid family leave, earned sickdays.

let's be sure we have affordable child careand debt-free college. how are we going to do it? we're going to do it by having the wealthypay 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 aretalking about the important issues facing our country. you have to judge us, who can shoulder theimmense, awesome responsibilities of the presidency,

who can put into action the plans that willmake your life better. i hope that i will be able to earn your voteon november 8th. holt: secretary clinton, thank you. mr. trump, the same question to you. it's about putting money -- more money intothe pockets of american workers. you have up to two minutes. trump: 21:08:32 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 is doing to our countryin terms of making our product. they're devaluing their currency, and there'snobody 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 piggybank to rebuild china, and many other countries are doing the same thing. so we're losing our good jobs, so many ofthem. 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 plantsanywhere in the world, some of the most sophisticated, some of the best plants. with the united states, as he said, not somuch. so ford is leaving. you see that, their small car division leaving. thousands of jobs leaving michigan, leavingohio. they're all leaving. and we can't allow it to happen anymore.

as far as child care is concerned and so manyother things, i think hillary and i agree on that. we probably disagree a little bit as to numbersand 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 stolenfrom us. we have to stop our companies from leavingthe united states and, with it, firing all of their people. all you have to do is take a look at carrierair conditioning in indianapolis. they left -- fired 1,400 people.

so many hundreds and hundreds of companiesare doing this. trump: we cannot let it happen. under my plan, i'll be reducing taxes tremendously,from 35 percent to 15 percent for companies, small and big businesses. that's going to be a job creator like we haven'tseen 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 doingit. we have to renegotiate our trade deals, andwe have to stop these countries from stealing our companies and our jobs. holt: secretary clinton, would you like torespond? clinton: well, i think that trade is an importantissue. of course, we are 5 percent of the world'spopulation; 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 systemthat rewards work and not just financial transactions. and the kind of plan that donald has put forthwould 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 everhad. i call it trumped-up trickle-down, becausethat's exactly what it would be. that is not how we grow the economy. we just have a different view about what'sbest for growing the economy, how we make investments that will actually produce jobsand rising incomes. i think we come at it from somewhat differentperspectives.

i understand that. you know, donald was very fortunate in hislife, 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, thebetter 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 tables,where he pulled out those fabrics and he went down with a silkscreen and dumped the paintin and took the squeegee and kept going. and so what i believe is the more we can dofor the middle class, the more we can invest in you, your education, your skills, yourfuture, the better we will be off and the better we'll grow. that's the kind of economy i want us to seeagain. 21:12:21 holt: let me follow up with mr. trump, ifyou can. you've talked about creating 25 million jobs,and you've promised to bring back millions

of jobs for americans. how are you going to bring back the industriesthat have left this country for cheaper labor overseas? how, specifically, are you going to tell americanmanufacturers that you have to come back? trump: well, for one thing -- and before westart on that -- my father gave me a very small loan in 1975, and i built it into acompany that's worth many, many billions of dollars, with some of the greatest assetsin the world, and i say that only because that's the kind of thinking that our countryneeds. our country's in deep trouble.

we don't know what we're doing when it comesto devaluations and all of these countries all over the world, especially china. they're the best, the best ever at it. what they're doing to us is a very, very sadthing. so we have to do that. we have to renegotiate our trade deals. and, lester, they're taking our jobs, they'regiving incentives, they're doing things that, frankly, we don't do. let me give you the example of mexico.

they have a vat tax. we're on a different system. when we sell into mexico, there's a tax. when they sell in -- automatic, 16 percent,approximately. when they sell into us, there's no tax. it's a defective agreement. it's been defective for a long time, manyyears, but the politicians haven't done anything about it. now, in all fairness to secretary clinton-- yes, is that ok?

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. and 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 fact...

holt: let me interrupt just a moment, but... trump: secretary clinton and others, politicians,should have been doing this for years, not right now, because of the fact that we'vecreated a movement. they should have been doing this for years. what's happened to our jobs and our countryand our economy generally is -- look, we owe $20 trillion. we cannot do it any longer, lester. holt: 21:14:28 back to the question, though. how do you bring back -- specifically bringback jobs, american manufacturers?

how do you make them bring the jobs back? trump: well, the first thing you do is don'tlet the jobs leave. the companies are leaving. i could name, i mean, there are thousandsof them. they're leaving, and they're leaving in biggernumbers than ever. and what you do is you say, fine, you wantto 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 yourair conditioners or your cars or your cookies

or whatever you make and bring them into ourcountry without a tax, you're wrong. and once you say you're going to have to taxthem coming in, and our politicians never do this, because they have special interestsand the special interests want those companies to leave, because in many cases, they ownthe companies. so what i'm saying is, we can stop them fromleaving. we have to stop them from leaving. and that's a big, big factor. holt: let me let secretary clinton get inhere. clinton: 21:15:19 well, let's stop for a secondand remember where we were eight years ago.

we had the worst financial crisis, the greatrecession, the worst since the 1930s. that was in large part because of tax policiesthat slashed taxes on the wealthy, failed to invest in the middle class, took theireyes off of wall street, and created a perfect storm. in fact, donald was one of the people whorooted for the housing crisis. he said, back in 2006, "gee, i hope it doescollapse, because then i can go in and buy some and make some money." well, it did collapse. trump: 21:16:02 that's called business, bythe way.

clinton: nine million people -- nine millionpeople lost their jobs. five million people lost their homes. and $13 trillion in family wealth was wipedout. now, we have come back from that abyss. and it has not been easy. so we're now on the precipice of having apotentially much better economy, but the last thing we need to do is to go back to the policiesthat failed us in the first place. independent experts have looked at what i'veproposed and looked at what donald's proposed, and basically they've said this, that if histax plan, which would blow up the debt by

over $5 trillion and would in some instancesdisadvantage middle-class families compared to the wealthy, were to go into effect, wewould lose 3.5 million jobs and maybe have another recession. they've looked at my plans and they've said,ok, if we can do this, and i intend to get it done, we will have 10 million more newjobs, because we will be making investments where we can grow the economy. take clean energy. some country is going to be the clean- energysuperpower of the 21st century. donald thinks that climate change is a hoaxperpetrated by the chinese.

i think it's real. trump: i did not. i did not. i do not say that. clinton: i think science is real. trump: i do not say that. clinton: and i think it's important that wegrip this and deal with it, both at home and abroad. and here's what we can do.

we can deploy a half a billion more solarpanels. we can have enough clean energy to power everyhome. we can build a new modern electric grid. that's a lot of jobs; that's a lot of neweconomic activity. so i've tried to be very specific about whatwe can and should do, and i am determined that we're going to get the economy reallymoving again, building on the progress we've made over the last eight years, but nevergoing back to what got us in trouble in the first place. holt: mr. trump?

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. now, look, i'm a great believer in all formsof 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 ofenergy, in terms of paying off our debt. you can't do what you're looking to do with$20 trillion in debt.

the obama administration, from the time they'vecome in, is over 230 years' worth of debt, and he's topped it. he's doubled it in a course of almost eightyears, seven-and-a-half years, to be semi- exact. so i will tell you this. we have to do a much better job at keepingour jobs. and we have to do a much better job at givingcompanies incentives to build new companies or to expand, because they're not doing it. 21:18:59 and all you have to do is look atmichigan and look at ohio and look at all

of these places where so many of their jobsand their companies are just leaving, they're gone. and, hillary, i'd just ask you this. you've been doing this for 30 years. why are you just thinking about these solutionsright now? for 30 years, you've been doing it, and nowyou're just starting to think of solutions. clinton: well, actually... trump: i will bring -- excuse me. i will bring back jobs.

you can't bring back jobs. clinton: well, actually, i have thought aboutthis quite a bit. trump: yeah, for 30 years. clinton: and i have -- well, not quite thatlong. i think my husband did a pretty good job inthe 1990s. i think a lot about what worked and how wecan make it work again... trump: well, he approved nafta... (crosstalk) clinton: ... million new jobs, a balancedbudget...

trump: he approved nafta, which is the singleworst trade deal ever approved in this country. clinton: 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 oftrade 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 knownas cafta, i voted against. and because i hold the same standards as ilook at all of these trade deals. but let's not assume that trade is the onlychallenge we have in the economy. i think it is a part of it, and i've saidwhat i'm going to do. i'm going to have a special prosecutor. we're going to enforce the trade deals wehave, and we're going to hold people accountable. when i was secretary of state, we actuallyincreased american exports globally 30 percent. we increased them to china 50 percent. so i know how to really work to get new jobsand to get exports that helped to create more

new jobs. holt: very quickly... trump: but you haven't done it in 30 yearsor 26 years or any number you want to... clinton: well, i've been a senator, donald... trump: you haven't done it. you haven't done it. clinton: and i have been a secretary of state... trump: excuse me. clinton: and i have done a lot...

trump: your husband signed nafta, which wasone of the worst things that ever happened to the manufacturing industry. clinton: well, that's your opinion. that is your opinion. trump: you go to new england, you go to ohio,pennsylvania, you go anywhere you want, secretary clinton, and you will see devastation wheremanufacture is down 30, 40, sometimes 50 percent. nafta is the worst trade deal maybe ever signedanywhere, but certainly ever signed in this country. and now you want to approve trans-pacificpartnership.

you were totally in favor of it. then you heard what i was saying, how badit is, and you said, i can't win that debate. but you know that if you did win, you wouldapprove that, and that will be almost as bad as nafta. nothing will ever top nafta. clinton: well, that is just not accurate. i was against it once it was finally negotiatedand the terms were laid out. i wrote about that in... trump: you called it the gold standard.

trump: you called it the gold standard oftrade deals. you said it's the finest deal you've everseen. clinton: no. trump: and then you heard what i said aboutit, and all of a sudden you were against it. clinton: well, donald, i know you live inyour own reality, but that is not the facts. the facts are -- i did say i hoped it wouldbe a good deal, but when it was negotiated... trump: not. clinton: ... which i was not responsible for,i concluded it wasn't. i wrote about that in my book...

trump: so is it president obama's fault? clinton: ... before you even announced. trump: is it president obama's fault? clinton: look, there are differences... trump: secretary, is it president obama'sfault? clinton: there are... trump: because he's pushing it. clinton: there are different views about what'sgood for our country, our economy, and our leadership in the world.

and i think it's important to look at whatwe need to do to get the economy going again. that's why i said new jobs with rising incomes,investments, not in more tax cuts that would add $5 trillion to the debt. trump: but you have no plan. clinton: but in -- oh, but i do. trump: secretary, you have no plan. clinton: in fact, i have written a book aboutit. it's called "stronger together." you can pick it up tomorrow at a bookstore...

trump: that's about all you've... holt: folks, we're going to... clinton: ... or at an airport near you. holt: we're going to move to... clinton: but it's because i see this -- weneed to have strong growth, fair growth, sustained growth. we also have to look at how we help familiesbalance the responsibilities at home and the 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 3.5 million jobs,and explode the debt which would have a recession. trump: you are going to approve one of thebiggest tax cuts in history. 21:23:20 you are going to approve one of thebiggest tax increases in history. you are going to drive business out. your regulations are a disaster, and you'regoing to increase regulations all over the place. and by the way, my tax cut is the biggestsince ronald reagan. i'm very proud of it.

it will create tremendous numbers of new jobs. but regulations, you are going to regulatethese businesses out of existence. when i go around -- 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'mcutting 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 andmake them even worse. i'm going to cut regulations.

i'm going to cut taxes big league, and you'regoing to raise taxes big league, end of story. holt: let me get you to pause right there,because we're going to move into -- we're going to move into the next segment. we're going to talk taxes... clinton: that can't -- that can't be leftto stand. holt: please just take 30 seconds and thenwe're going to go on. clinton: i kind of assumed that there wouldbe a lot of these charges and claims, and so... trump: facts.

clinton: so we have taken the home page ofmy website, hillaryclinton.com, and we've turned it into a fact-checker. so if you want to see in real-time what thefacts are, please go and take a look. because what i have proposed... trump: and take a look at mine, also, andyou'll see. clinton: ... would not add a penny to thedebt, and your plans would add $5 trillion to the debt. what i have proposed would cut regulationsand streamline them for small businesses. what i have proposed would be paid for byraising taxes on the wealthy, because they

have made all the gains in the economy. and i think it's time that the wealthy andcorporations paid their fair share to support this country. holt: well, you just opened the next segment. trump: well, could i just finish -- i thinki... holt: i'm going to give you a chance righthere... trump: i think i should -- you go to her website,and you take a look at her website. holt: ... with a new 15-minute segment... trump: she's going to raise taxes $1.3 trillion.

holt: mr. trump, i'm going to... trump: and look at her website. you know what? it's no difference than this. she's telling us how to fight isis. just go to her website. she tells you how to fight isis on her website. i don't think general douglas macarthur wouldlike that too much. holt: the next segment, we're continuing...

clinton: well, at least i have a plan to fightisis. holt: ... achieving prosperity... trump: no, no, you're telling the enemy everythingyou want to do. clinton: no, we're not. no, we're not. trump: see, you're telling the enemy everythingyou want to do. no wonder you've been fighting -- no wonderyou've been fighting isis your entire adult life. clinton: that's a -- that's -- go to the -- please,fact checkers, get to work.

holt: ok, you are unpacking a lot here. and we're still on the issue of achievingprosperity. and i want to talk about taxes. the fundamental difference between the twoof you concerns the wealthy. secretary clinton, you're calling for a taxincrease on the wealthiest americans. i'd like you to further defend that. and, mr. trump, you're calling for tax cutsfor the wealthy. i'd like you to defend that. and this next two-minute answer goes to you,mr. trump.

trump: well, i'm really calling for majorjobs, because the wealthy are going 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 -- it'sreally not a great thing for the wealthy. it's a great thing for the middle class. it's a great thing for companies to expand. and when these people are going to put billionsand billions of dollars into companies, and

when they're going to bring $2.5 trillionback from overseas, where they can't bring the money back, because politicians like secretaryclinton won't allow them to bring the money back, because the taxes are so onerous, andthe bureaucratic red tape, so what -- is so bad. so what they're doing is they're leaving ourcountry, and they're, believe it or not, leaving because taxes are too high and because someof them have lots of money outside of our and instead of bringing it back and puttingthe money to work, because they can't work out a deal to -- and everybody agrees it shouldbe brought back. instead of that, they're leaving our countryto get their money, because they can't bring

their money back into our country, becauseof bureaucratic red tape, because they can't get together. because we have -- we have a president thatcan't sit them around a table and get them to approve something. and here's the thing. republicans and democrats agree that thisshould be done, $2.5 trillion. i happen to think it's double that. it's probably $5 trillion that we can't bringinto our country, lester. and with a little leadership, you'd get itin here very quickly, and it could be put

to use on the inner cities and lots of otherthings, and it would be beautiful. but we have no leadership. and honestly, that starts with secretary clinton. 21:28:01 holt: all right. you have two minutes of the same questionto defend tax increases on the wealthiest americans, secretary clinton. clinton: i have a feeling that by, the endof this evening, i'm going to be blamed for everything that's ever happened.

trump: why not? clinton: why not? yeah, why not? you know, just join the debate by saying morecrazy things. now, let me say this, it is absolutely thecase... trump: there's nothing crazy about not lettingour companies bring their money back into their country. holt: this is -- this is secretary clinton'stwo minutes, please. trump: yes.

clinton: yeah, well, let's start the clockagain, lester. we've looked at your tax proposals. i don't see changes in the corporate tax ratesor the kinds of proposals you're referring to that would cause the repatriation, bringingback of money that's stranded overseas. i happen to support that. trump: then you didn't read it. clinton: i happen to -- i happen to supportthat 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 21:29:01 trump

loophole, because it would so advantage youand the business you do. you've proposed an approach that has a... trump: who gave it that name? the first i've -- who gave it that name? holt: mr. trump, this is secretary clinton'stwo minutes. clinton: ... $4 billion tax benefit for yourfamily. and when you look at what you are proposing... trump: how much? how much for my family?

clinton: ... it is... trump: lester, how much? clinton: ... as i said, trumped-up trickle-down. trickle-down did not work. it got us into the mess we were in, in 2008and 2009. slashing taxes on the wealthy hasn't worked. and a lot of really smart, wealthy peopleknow that. and they are saying, hey, we need to do moreto make the contributions we should be making to rebuild the middle class.

clinton: i don't think top-down works in america. i think building the middle class, investingin the middle class, making college debt-free so more young people can get their education,helping people refinance their -- their debt from college at a lower rate. those are the kinds of things that will reallyboost the economy. broad-based, inclusive growth is what we needin america, not more advantages for people at the very top. holt: mr. trump, we're... trump: typical politician.

all talk, no action. sounds good, doesn't work. never going to happen. our country is suffering because people likesecretary clinton have made such bad decisions in terms of our jobs and in terms of what'sgoing on. now, look, we have the worst revival of aneconomy since the great depression. and believe me: we're in a bubble right now. and the only thing that looks good is thestock market, but if you raise interest rates even a little bit, that's going to come crashingdown.

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 theinterest rates at this level. and believe me: the day obama goes off, andhe leaves, and goes out to the golf course for the rest of his life to play golf 21:31:00,when they raise interest rates, you're going to see some very bad things happen, becausethe fed is not doing their job. the fed is being more political than secretaryclinton.

holt: mr. trump, we're talking about the burdenthat americans have to pay, yet you have not released your tax returns. and the reason nominees have released theirreturns for decades is so that voters will know if their potential president owes moneyto -- who he owes it to and any business conflicts. don't americans have a right to know if thereare any conflicts of interest? trump: i don't mind releasing -- i'm undera routine audit. and it'll be released. and -- as soon as the audit's finished, itwill be released. but you will learn more about donald trumpby going down to the federal elections, where

i filed a 104-page essentially financial statementof sorts, the forms that they have. it shows income -- in fact, the income -- ijust 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 makethat 15 or 20 years ago, i would have been very surprised. but that's the kind of thinking that our countryneeds. 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 thatour country needs, because everybody -- lester, we have a trade deficit with all of the countriesthat we do business with, of almost $800 billion

a year. you know what that is? that means, who's negotiating these tradedeals? we have people that are political hacks negotiatingour trade deals. holt: the irs says an audit... holt: ... of your taxes -- you're perfectlyfree to release your taxes during an audit. and so the question, does the public's rightto know outweigh your personal... trump: well, i told you, i will release themas soon as the audit. look, i've been under audit almost for 15years.

21:33:00 i know a lot of wealthy people thathave 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 hasto be taken care of. i will release my tax returns -- against mylawyer'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 readingthe papers.

almost every lawyer says, you don't releaseyour returns until the audit's complete. when the audit's complete, i'll do it. but i would go against them if she releasesher e-mails. holt: so it's negotiable? trump: it's not negotiable, no. let her release the e-mails. why did she delete 33,000... holt: well, i'll let her answer that. but let me just admonish the audience onemore time.

there was an agreement. we did ask you to be silent, so it would behelpful for us. secretary clinton? clinton: well, i think you've seen anotherexample of bait-and- switch here. for 40 years, everyone running for presidenthas released their tax returns. you can go and see nearly, i think, 39, 40years of our tax returns, but everyone has done it. we know the irs has made clear there is noprohibition on releasing it when you're under audit.

so you've got to ask yourself, why won't herelease his tax returns? and i think there may be a couple of reasons. first, maybe he's not as rich as he says heis. second, maybe he's not as charitable as heclaims to be. clinton: third, we don't know all of his businessdealings, but we have been told through investigative reporting that he owes about $650 millionto 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, becausethe only years that anybody's ever seen were a couple of years when he had to turn themover to state authorities when he was trying

to get a casino license, and they showed hedidn't pay any federal income tax. 21:35:27 trump: that makes me smart. clinton: so if he's paid zero, that meanszero for troops, zero for vets, zero for schools or health. and i think probably he's not all that enthusiasticabout having the rest of our country see what the real reasons are, because it must be somethingreally important, even terrible, that he's trying to hide. and the financial disclosure statements, theydon't give you the tax rate. they don't give you all the details that taxreturns would.

and it just seems to me that this is somethingthat the american people deserve to see. and i have no reason to believe that he'sever 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 thathe's hiding. but i think the question is, were he everto get near the white house, what would be those conflicts? who does he owe money to? well, he owes you the answers to that, andhe should provide them.

holt: he also -- he also raised the issueof your e-mails. do you want to respond to that? clinton: i do. you know, i made a mistake using a privatee- mail. trump: that's for sure. clinton: 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 responsibilityfor that. trump: that was more than a mistake.

that was done purposely. ok? that was not a mistake. when you have your staff taking the fifthamendment, taking the fifth so they're not prosecuted, when you have the man that setup the illegal server taking the fifth, i think it's disgraceful. and believe me, this country thinks it's -- reallythinks it's disgraceful, also. as far as my tax returns, you don't learnthat 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 atthat. the other thing, i'm extremely underleveraged. the report that said $650 -- which, by theway, a lot of friends of mine that know my business say, boy, that's really not a lotof money. it's not a lot of money relative to what ihad. the buildings that were in question, theysaid in the same report, which was -- actually, it wasn't even a bad story, to be honest withyou, 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 finebanks. 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 braggadociosway. it's because it's about time that this countryhad somebody running it that has an idea about money. when we have $20 trillion in debt, and ourcountry's a mess, you know, it's one thing to have $20 trillion in debt and our roadsare good and our bridges are good and everything's in great shape, our airports. 21:38:25 our airports are like from a thirdworld country. you land at laguardia, you land at kennedy,you land at lax, you land at newark, and you come in from dubai and qatar and you see theseincredible -- 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 middleeast, according to a report that i just saw. whether it's 6 or 5, but it looks like it's6, $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 clintonthat 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'sbeen squandered on so many of your ideas. holt: we'll let you respond and we'll moveon to the next segment. clinton: and maybe because you haven't paidany federal income tax for a lot of years. and the other thing i think is important...

trump: it would be squandered, too, believeme. clinton: ... is if your -- if your main claimto be president of the united states is your business, then i think we should talk aboutthat. you know, your campaign manager said thatyou built a lot of businesses on the backs of little guys. and, indeed, i have met a lot of the peoplewho 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 refusedto pay when they finished the work that you

asked them to do. we have an architect in the audience who designedone 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 tobe paid, what he was charging you to do... trump: maybe he didn't do a good job and iwas unsatisfied with his work... clinton: well, to... trump: which our country should do, too.

clinton: do the thousands of people that youhave stiffed over the course of your business not deserve some kind of apology from someonewho has taken their labor, taken the goods that they produced, and then refused to paythem? 21:40 i can only say that i'm certainly relievedthat 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'vetaken business bankruptcy six times. there are a lot of great businesspeople thathave never taken bankruptcy once.

you call yourself the king of debt. you talk about leverage. you even at one time suggested that you wouldtry to negotiate down the national debt of the united states. trump: wrong. wrong. clinton: well, sometimes there's not a directtransfer of skills from business to government, but sometimes what happened in business wouldbe really bad for government. holt: let's let mr. trump...

clinton: and we need to be very clear aboutthat. trump: so, yeah, i think -- i do think it'stime. look, it's all words, it's all sound bites. i built an unbelievable company. some of the greatest assets anywhere in theworld, real estate assets anywhere in the world, beyond the united states, in europe,lots of different places. it's an unbelievable company. but on occasion, four times, we used certainlaws that are there. and when secretary clinton talks about peoplethat didn't get paid, first of all, they did

get paid a lot, but taken advantage of thelaws of the nation. now, if you want to change the laws, you'vebeen there a long time, change the laws. but i take advantage of the laws of the nationbecause i'm running a company. my obligation right now is to do well formyself, my family, my employees, for my companies. and that's what i do. but what she doesn't say is that tens of thousandsof people that are unbelievably happy and that love me. i'll give you an example. we're just opening up on pennsylvania avenueright next to the white house, so if i don't

get there one way, i'm going to get to pennsylvaniaavenue another. but we're opening the old post office. under budget, ahead of schedule, saved tremendousmoney. i'm a year ahead of schedule. and that's what this country should be doing. we build roads and they cost two and threeand four times what they're supposed to cost. we buy products for our military and theycome in at costs that are so far above what they were supposed to be, because we don'thave people that know what they're doing. when we look at the budget, the budget isbad to a large extent because we have people

that have no idea as to what to do and howto buy. the trump international is way under budgetand way ahead of schedule. and we should be able to do that for our country. holt: well, we're well behind schedule, soi want to move to our next segment. we move into our next segment talking aboutamerica's direction. and let's start by talking about race. the share of americans who say race relationsare bad in this country is the highest it's been in decades, much of it amplified by shootingsof 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 onthis. clinton: well, you're right. race remains a significant challenge in ourcountry. unfortunately, race still determines too much,often determines where people live, determines what kind of education in their public schoolsthey can get, and, yes, it determines how they're treated in the criminal justice system.

we've just seen those two tragic examplesin both tulsa and charlotte. and we've got to do several things at thesame time. we have to restore trust between communitiesand the police. we have to work to make sure that our policeare using the best training, the best techniques, that they're well prepared to use force onlywhen necessary. everyone should be respected by the law, andeveryone should respect the law. clinton: right now, that's not the case ina lot of our neighborhoods. so i have, ever since the first day of mycampaign, called for criminal justice reform. i've laid out a platform that i think wouldbegin to remedy some of the problems we have

in the criminal justice system. but we also have to recognize, in additionto the challenges that we face with policing, 21:45:35 there are so many good, brave policeofficers who equally want reform. so we have to bring communities together inorder to begin working on that as a mutual goal. and we've got to get guns out of the handsof people who should not have them. the gun epidemic is the leading cause of deathof 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 communitiesand 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. holt: all right, mr. trump, you have two minutes. how do you heal the divide? trump: well, first of all, secretary clintondoesn'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 havea 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 throughoutvarious parts of our country, whether it's -- i mean, i can just keep naming them allday long -- we need law and order in our country. i just got today the, as you know, the endorsementof the fraternal order of police, we just -- just came in. we have endorsements from, i think, almostevery police group, very -- i mean, a large percentage of them in the united states.

we have a situation where we have our innercities, african- americans, hispanics are living in he'll because it's so dangerous. you walk down the street, you get shot. 21:47:17 in chicago, they've had thousandsof 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 ofpeople have been killed, thousands over the last number of years, in fact, almost 4,000have been killed since barack obama became president, over -- almost 4,000 people inchicago have been killed. now, whether or not in a place like chicagoyou do stop and frisk, which worked very well, mayor giuliani is here, worked very well innew york. it brought the crime rate way down. but you take the gun away from criminals thatshouldn't be having it. we have gangs roaming the street.

and in many cases, 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'redoing. right now, our police, in many cases, areafraid to do anything. we have to protect our inner cities, becauseafrican-american communities are being decimated by crime, decimated.

holt: your two -- your two minutes expired,but i do want to follow up. 21:48:38 stop-and-frisk was ruled unconstitutionalin new york, because it largely singled out black and hispanic young men. trump: no, you're wrong. it went before a judge, who was a very against-policejudge. it was taken away from her. and our mayor, our new mayor, refused to goforward with the case. they would have won an appeal. if you look at it, throughout the country,there are many places where it's allowed.

holt: the argument is that it's a form ofracial profiling. trump: no, the argument is that we have totake the guns away from these people that have them and they are bad people that shouldn'thave them. these are felons. these are people that are bad people thatshouldn't be -- 21:49:18 when you have 3,000 shootings in chicago from january 1st, whenyou have 4,000 people killed in chicago by guns, from the beginning of the presidencyof 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 inchicago. it's terrible. i have property there. it's terrible what's going on in chicago. but when you look -- and chicago's not theonly -- you go to ferguson, you go to so many different places. you need better relationships. i agree with secretary clinton on this.

trump: you need better relationships betweenthe communities and the police, because in some cases, it's not good. but you look at dallas, where the relationshipswere really studied, the relationships were really a beautiful thing, and then five policeofficers were killed one night very violently. so there's some bad things going on. some really bad things. holt: secretary clinton... trump: but we need -- lester, we need lawand 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 andhispanic people. and it's very unfair to them what our politiciansare allowing to happen. holt: secretary clinton? clinton: 21:50:36 well, i've heard -- i'veheard donald say this at his rallies, and it's really unfortunate that he paints sucha dire negative picture of black communities in our country. trump: ugh. clinton: you know, the vibrancy of the blackchurch, the black businesses that employ so many people, the opportunities that so manyfamilies are working to provide for their

kids. there's a lot that we should be proud of andwe should be supporting and lifting up. but we do always have to make sure we keeppeople safe. there are the right ways of doing it, andthen there are ways that are ineffective. stop-and-frisk was found to be unconstitutionaland, 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 ofwhat 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 unintendedconsequences. too many young african-american and latinomen ended up in jail for nonviolent offenses. and it's just a fact that if you're a youngafrican-american man and you do the same thing as a young white man, you are more likelyto be arrested, charged, convicted, and incarcerated. so we've got to address the systemic racismin our criminal justice system. 21:52:20 we cannot just say law and order. we have to say -- we have to come forwardwith a plan that is going to divert people

from the criminal justice system, deal withmandatory minimum sentences, which have put too many people away for too long for doingtoo little. we need to have more second chance programs. i'm glad that we're ending private prisonsin the federal system; i want to see them ended in the state system. you shouldn't have a profit motivation tofill prison cells with young americans. so there are some positive ways we can workon this. and i believe strongly that commonsense gunsafety measures would assist us. right now -- and this is something donaldhas supported, along with the gun lobby -- right

now, we've got too many military- style weaponson the streets. in a lot of places, our police are outgunned. we need comprehensive background checks, andwe need to keep guns out of the hands of those who will do harm. and we finally need to pass a prohibitionon anyone who's on the terrorist watch list from being able to buy a gun in our country. 21:53:39 if you're too dangerous to fly, youare too dangerous to buy a gun. so there are things we can do, and we oughtto do it in a bipartisan way. holt: secretary clinton, last week, you saidwe've got to do everything possible to improve

policing, to go right at implicit bias. 21:53:50 do you believe that police are implicitlybiased against black people? clinton: lester, i think implicit bias isa problem for everyone, not just police. i think, unfortunately, too many of us inour great country jump to conclusions about each other. and therefore, i think we need all of us tobe asking hard questions about, you know, why am i feeling this way? but when it comes to policing, since it canhave literally fatal consequences, i have said, in my first budget, we would put moneyinto 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. 21:54:38 mental health is one of the biggestconcerns, because now police are having to handle a lot of really difficult mental healthproblems on the street. they want support, they want more training,they want more assistance. and i think the federal government could bein a position where we would offer and provide that.

holt: mr. trump... trump: i'd like to respond to that. holt: please. trump: first of all, i agree, and a lot ofpeople even within my own party want to give certain rights to people on watch lists andno- fly lists. i agree with you. when a person is on a watch list or a no-flylist, and i have the endorsement of the nra, which i'm very proud of. these are very, very good people, and they'reprotecting the second amendment.

but i think we have to look very stronglyat no-fly lists and watch lists. and when people are on there, even if theyshouldn'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 werethe one that brought up the words 21:55:33 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 fromgangs and people that use them. and i don't think -- i really don't thinkyou disagree with me on this, if you want to know the truth. i think maybe there's a political reason whyyou can't say it, but i really don't believe -- in new york city, stop-and-frisk, we had2,200 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 supposedto 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 impacton the safety of new york city. tremendous beyond belief. so when you say it has no impact, it reallydid. it had a very, very big impact. clinton: well, it's also fair to say, if we'regoing to talk about mayors, that under the current mayor, crime has continued to drop,including murders.

so there is... you're wrong. clinton: no, i'm not. trump: murders are up. all right. you check it. clinton: new york -- new york has done anexcellent job. and i give credit -- i give credit acrossthe board going back two mayors, two police chiefs, because it has worked.

and other communities need to come togetherto do what will work, as well. look, one murder is too many. but it is important that we learn about whathas been effective. and not go to things that sound good thatreally did not have the kind of impact that we would want. who disagrees with keeping neighborhoods safe? but let's also add, 21:57:30 no one shoulddisagree 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 policeto try to deal with this problem. holt: this conversation is about race. and so, mr. trump, i have to ask you for five... trump: i'd like to just respond, if i might. holt: please -- 20 seconds. trump: i'd just like to respond. holt: please respond, then i've got a quickfollow-up for you. trump: i will. look, the african-american community has beenlet down by our politicians.

they talk good around election time, likeright 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 getvotes by democrat politicians, because that's what it is. they've controlled these communities for upto 100 years. holt: mr. trump, let me... clinton: well, i -- i do think...

trump: and i will tell you, donald trump: nobody knows the system betterthan me. i alone can fix it. hillary rodham clinton: i'm going to closemy campaign focused on opportunities for kids and fairness for families. donald trump: hillary failed on the economy.everything she touched didn't work out, nothing. hillary rodham clinton: even if you're totallyopposed to donald trump, you may still have some questions about me. judy woodruff: good evening. i'm judy woodruff. the stage is set at hofstra university onlong island, new york. with the election 43

days away the race tightening, a lot is onthe line tonight, judy. problem within their own party. so, they havegot to get their partisans fired up. for hillary clinton, it's young people. fordonald trump, he's got to get those white college-educated voters back into the republicanfold, where they have been. and then they have got to get those voters, both of them,who are torn, don't like either choice they have in front of them, to pick them. mark shields: does donald trump dare to beboring? does he come out sedated/presidential? david brooks: we have been around each othertoo long. i wrote down emotional connection. this is not philosophy. this is not grandstrategy. it's moment of intimacy, that unscripted

moment when the unconscious is revealed thatwill be replayed on youtube over and over and over again. and so it's just, is he commanding or is hecruel? is she relatable and does she seem calmly smart? and it's whether people getthat vibe, the first they vibe, that will determine the night. judy woodruff: but, mark, people are goingto be fact-checking this debate. they're going to be raising questions about whether whateither one of them said was correct or not. of it, is he comfortable with it, and whoshe is. and i think that is really the question. holt: good evening from hofstra universityin hempstead, new york. i'm lester holt, anchor

of "nbc nightly news." i want to welcome youto the first presidential debate. the participants tonight are donald trumpand hillary clinton. this debate is sponsored by the commission on presidential debates,a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization. the commission drafted tonight's format, and therules 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. and they will each have up to two minutesto respond. from that point until the end of the segment, we'll have an open discussion. the questions are mine and have not been sharedwith the commission or the campaigns. the

audience here in the room has agreed to remainsilent so that we can focus on what the candidates are saying. there are two more presidential debates scheduled.we are going to focus on many of the issues that voters tell us are most important, andwe're going to press for specifics. i am honored to have this role, but this evening belongsto the candidates and, just as important, as well as your visions and your values. so,let's begin. we're calling this opening segment "achievingprosperity." and central to that is jobs. there are two economic realities in americatoday. there's been a record six straight years of job growth, and new census numbersshow incomes have increased at a record rate

after years of stagnation. however, incomeinequality remains significant, and nearly half of americans are living paycheck to paycheck. kind of future we'll build together. todayis my granddaughter's second birthday, so i think about this a lot. first, we have tobuild an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top. that means we neednew jobs, good jobs, with rising incomes. i want us to invest in you. i want us to investin your future. that means jobs in infrastructure, in advanced manufacturing, innovation andtechnology, clean, renewable energy, and small business, because most of the new jobs willcome from small business. we also have to make the economy fairer. that starts withraising the national minimum wage and also

guarantee, finally, equal pay for women'swork. clinton: i also want to see more companiesdo profit-sharing. if you help create the profits, you should be able to share in them,not just the executives at the top. under. so let's have paid family leave, earnedsick days. let's be sure we have affordable child care and debt-free college. how are we going to do it? we're going todo it by having the wealthy pay their fair share and close the corporate loopholes. with you. we're going to have a debate wherewe 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 actionthe plans that will make your life better. mr. trump, the same question to you. it'sabout putting money -- more money into the pockets of american workers. you have up totwo minutes. trump: 21:08:32 thank you, lester. our jobsare fleeing the country. they're going to mexico. they're going to many other countries.you look at what china is doing to our country in terms of making our product. they're devaluingtheir currency, and there's nobody in our government to fight them. and we have a verygood fight. and we have a winning fight. because they're using our country as a piggy bankto rebuild china, and many other countries so we're losing our good jobs, so many ofthem. when you look at what's happening in

mexico, a friend of mine who builds plantssaid it's the eighth wonder of the world. some of the best plants. with the united states,as he said, not so much. so ford is leaving. you see that, their smallcar 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 care is concerned and so manyother things, i think hillary and i agree on that. we probably disagree a little bitas to numbers and amounts and what we're going to do, but perhaps we'll be talking aboutthat later. but we have to stop our jobs from being stolenfrom us. we have to stop our companies from leaving the united states and, with it, firingall of their people. all you have to do is

take a look at carrier air conditioning inindianapolis. they left -- fired 1,400 people. they're going to mexico. so many hundredsand hundreds of companies are doing this. trump: we cannot let it happen. under my plan,i'll be reducing taxes tremendously, from 35 percent to 15 percent for companies, smalland big businesses. that's going to be a job creator like we haven't seen since ronaldreagan. it's going to be a beautiful thing to watch. companies will come. they will build. theywill 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 stealingour companies and our jobs.

clinton: well, i think that trade is an importantissue. of course, we are 5 percent of the world's population; we have to trade withthe other 95 percent. and we need to have smart, fair trade deals. i call it trumped-up trickle-down, becausethat's exactly what it would be. that is not how we grow the economy. i think we come at it from somewhat differentperspectives. i understand that. you know, donald was very fortunate in his life, andthat's all to his benefit. he started his business with $14 million, borrowed from hisfather, and he really believes that the more you help wealthy people, the better off we'llbe 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 onlong tables, where he pulled out those fabrics and he went down with a silkscreen and dumpedthe paint in and took the squeegee and kept going. better we'll grow. that's the kind of economyi want us to see again. 21:12:21 holt: let me follow up with mr. trump, ifyou can. you've talked about creating 25 million jobs, and you've promised to bring back millionsof jobs for americans. how are you going to bring back the industries that have left thiscountry for cheaper labor overseas? how, specifically,

are you going to tell american manufacturersthat you have to come back? our country's in deep trouble. we don't knowwhat we're doing when it comes to devaluations and all of these countries all over the world,especially china. they're the best, the best ever at it. what they're doing to us is avery, very sad thing. so we have to do that. we have to renegotiateour trade deals. and, lester, they're taking our jobs, they're giving incentives, they'redoing things that, frankly, we don't do. let me give you the example of mexico. theyhave a vat tax. we're on a different system. when we sell into mexico, there's a tax. whenthey sell in -- automatic, 16 percent, approximately. when they sell into us, there's no tax. it'sa defective agreement. it's been defective

for a long time, many years, but the politicianshaven't done anything about it. now, in all fairness to secretary clinton-- yes, is that ok? good. i want you to be very happy. it's very important to me. really very recently. she's been doing thisfor 30 years. and why hasn't she made the agreements better? the nafta agreement isdefective. just because of the tax and many other reasons, but just because of the fact... right now, because of the fact that we'vecreated a movement. they should have been doing this for years. what's happened to ourjobs and our country and our economy generally is -- look, we owe $20 trillion. we cannotdo it any longer, lester.

holt: 21:14:28 back to the question, though.how do you bring back -- specifically bring back jobs, american manufacturers? how doyou make them bring the jobs back? trump: well, the first thing you do is don'tlet the jobs leave. the companies are leaving. i could name, i mean, there are thousandsof them. they're leaving, and they're leaving in bigger numbers than ever. luck. we wish you a lot of luck. but if youthink you're going to make your air conditioners or your cars or your cookies or whatever youmake and bring them into our country without a tax, you're wrong. to leave, because in many cases, they ownthe companies. so what i'm saying is, we can

stop them from leaving. we have to stop themfrom leaving. and that's a big, big factor. we had the worst financial crisis, the greatrecession, the worst since the 1930s. that was in large part because of tax policiesthat slashed taxes on the wealthy, failed in fact, donald was one of the people whorooted for the housing crisis. he said, back in 2006, "gee, i hope it does collapse, becausethen i can go in and buy some and make some money." well, it did collapse. clinton: nine million people -- nine millionpeople lost their jobs. five million people lost their homes. and $13 trillion in familywealth was wiped out. now, we have come back from that abyss. andit has not been easy. so we're now on the

precipice of having a potentially much bettereconomy, but the last thing we need to do is to go back to the policies that failedus in the first place. where we can grow the economy. take cleanenergy. some country is going to be the clean- energy superpower of the 21st century. donaldthinks that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the chinese. i think it's real. trump: i did not. i did not. i do not saythat. abroad. and here's what we can do. we candeploy a half a billion more solar panels. we can have enough clean energy to power everyhome. we can build a new modern electric grid. trump: she talks about solar panels. we investedin a solar company, our country. that was

a disaster. they lost plenty of money on thatone. 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. youcan't do what you're looking to do with $20 trillion in debt. and he's topped it. he's doubled it in a courseof almost eight years, seven-and-a-half years, to be semi- exact. so i will tell you this. we have to do a muchbetter job at keeping our jobs. and we have to do a much better job at giving companiesincentives to build new companies or to expand, because they're not doing it.

and, hillary, i'd just ask you this. you'vebeen doing this for 30 years. why are you just thinking about these solutions rightnow? for 30 years, you've been doing it, and now you're just starting to think of solutions. trump: i will bring -- excuse me. i will bringback jobs. you can't bring back jobs. clinton: and i have -- well, not quite thatlong. i think my husband did a pretty good job in the 1990s. i think a lot about whatworked and how we can make it work again... clinton: incomes went up for everybody. manufacturingjobs went up also in the 1990s, if we're actually going to look at the facts. them all to the same test. will they createjobs in america? will they raise incomes in

america? and are they good for our nationalsecurity? some of them i voted for. the biggest one, a multinational one known as cafta, ivoted against. and because i hold the same standards as i look at all of these tradedeals. but let's not assume that trade is the onlychallenge we have in the economy. i think it is a part of it, and i've said what i'mgoing to do. i'm going to have a special prosecutor. we increased them to china 50 percent. soi know how to really work to get new jobs and to get exports that helped to create morenew jobs. trump: you haven't done it. you haven't doneit. clinton: well, that's your opinion. that isyour opinion.

and now you want to approve trans-pacificpartnership. you were totally in favor of it. then you heard what i was saying, howbad it is, and you said, i can't 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. clinton: well, that is just not accurate.i was against it once it was finally negotiated and the terms were laid out. i wrote aboutthat in... trump: you called it the gold standard oftrade deals. you said it's the finest deal you've ever seen. clinton: ... which i was not responsible for,i concluded it wasn't. i wrote about that

in my book... leadership in the world. and i think it'simportant to look at what we need to do to get the economy going again. that's why isaid new jobs with rising incomes, investments, not in more tax cuts that would add $5 trillionto the debt. clinton: in fact, i have written a book aboutit. it's called "stronger together." you can pick it up tomorrow at a bookstore... growth. we also have to look at how we helpfamilies balance the responsibilities at home and the responsibilities at business. so we have a very robust set of plans. andpeople have looked at both of our plans, have

concluded that mine would create 10 millionjobs and yours would lose us 3.5 million jobs, and explode the debt which would have a recession. trump: you are going to approve one of thebiggest tax cuts in history. 21:23:20 you are going to approve one of the biggest taxincreases in history. you are going to drive business out. your regulations are a disaster,and you're going to increase regulations all over the place. and by the way, my tax cut is the biggestsince 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.

when i go around -- lester, i tell you this,i've been all over. and when i go around, despite the tax cut, the thing -- the thingsthat business as in people like the most is the fact that i'm cutting regulation. youhave regulations on top of regulations, and new companies cannot form and old companiesare going out of business. and you want to increase the regulations and make them evenworse. i'm going to cut regulations. i'm going tocut taxes big league, and you're going to raise taxes big league, end of story. going to move into the next segment. we'regoing to talk taxes... turned it into a fact-checker. so if you wantto see in real-time what the facts are, please

go and take a look. because what i have proposed... to the debt. what i have proposed would cutregulations and streamline them for small businesses. what i have proposed would bepaid for by raising taxes on the wealthy, because they have made all the gains in theeconomy. and i think it's time that the wealthy and corporations paid their fair share tosupport this country. trump: and look at her website. you know what?it's no difference than this. she's telling us how to fight isis. just go to her website.she tells you how to fight isis on her website. clinton: no, we're not. no, we're not. trump: see, you're telling the enemy everythingyou want to do. no wonder you've been fighting

-- no wonder you've been fighting isis yourentire adult life. holt: ok, you are unpacking a lot here. andwe're still on the issue of achieving prosperity. and i want to talk about taxes. the fundamentaldifference between the two of you concerns the wealthy. secretary clinton, you're calling for a taxincrease on the wealthiest americans. i'd like you to further defend that. and, mr.trump, you're calling for tax cuts for the wealthy. i'd like you to defend that. andthis next two-minute answer goes to you, mr. trump. tremendous jobs. they're going to expand theircompanies. 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 -- it's really not a great thing for the wealthy.it's a great thing for the middle class. it's a great thing for companies to expand. country. and instead of bringing it back andputting the money to work, because they can't work out a deal to -- and everybody agreesit should be brought back. get together. because we have -- we have apresident that can't sit them around a table and get them to approve something. and here's the thing. republicans and democratsagree that this should be done, $2.5 trillion.

i happen to think it's double that. it's probably$5 trillion that we can't bring into our country, lester. and with a little leadership, you'dget it in here very quickly, and it could be put to use on the inner cities and lotsof other things, and it would be beautiful. but we have no leadership. and honestly, thatstarts with secretary clinton. 21:28:01 holt: all right. you have two minutes of thesame question to defend tax increases on the wealthiest americans, secretary clinton. clinton: why not? yeah, why not? you know, just join the debate by saying morecrazy things. now, let me say this, it is absolutely the case...

clinton: yeah, well, let's start the clockagain, lester. we've looked at your tax proposals. to that would cause the repatriation, bringingback of money that's stranded overseas. i happen to support that. benefit. but when i look at what you haveproposed, you have what is called now the 21:29:01 trump loophole, because it wouldso advantage you and the business you do. trump: who gave it that name? the first i've-- who gave it that name? clinton: ... $4 billion tax benefit for yourfamily. and when you look at what you are proposing... trump: how much? how much for my family?

clinton: ... 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. slashingtaxes on the wealthy hasn't worked. and a lot of really smart, wealthy peopleknow that. and they are saying, hey, we need to do more to make the contributions we shouldbe making to rebuild the middle class. clinton: i don't think top-down works in america.i think building the middle class, investing in the middle class, making college debt-freeso more young people can get their education, helping people refinance their -- their debtfrom college at a lower rate. those are the kinds of things that will really boost theeconomy. broad-based, inclusive growth is what we need in america, not more advantagesfor people at the very top.

trump: typical politician. all talk, no action.sounds good, doesn't work. never going to happen. our country is suffering because peoplelike secretary clinton have made such bad decisions in terms of our jobs and in termsof what's going on. now, look, we have the worst revival of aneconomy since the great depression. and believe me: we're in a bubble right now. and the onlything that looks good is the stock market, but if you raise interest rates even a littlebit, that's going to come crashing down. we are in a big, fat, ugly bubble. and webetter be awfully careful. and we have a fed that's doing political things. this janetyellen 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 goes out to the golf coursefor the rest of his life to play golf 21:31:00, when they raise interest rates, you're goingto see some very bad things happen, because the fed is not doing their job. the fed isbeing more political than secretary clinton. released your tax returns. and the reasonnominees have released their returns for decades is so that voters will know if their potentialpresident owes money to -- who he owes it to and any business conflicts. don't americanshave a right to know if there are any conflicts of interest? trump: i don't mind releasing -- i'm undera routine audit. and it'll be released. and -- as soon as the audit's finished, it willbe released.

i filed a 104-page essentially financial statementof sorts, the forms that they have. it shows income -- in fact, the income -- i just lookedtoday -- the income is filed at $694 million for this past year, $694 million. if you wouldhave 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 countryneeds. when we have a country that's doing so badly, that's being ripped off by everysingle country in the world, it's the kind of thinking that our country needs, becauseeverybody -- lester, we have a trade deficit with all of the countries that we do businesswith, of almost $800 billion a year. you know what that is? that means, who's negotiatingthese trade deals?

trump: well, i told you, i will release themas soon as the audit. look, i've been under audit almost for 15 years. 21:33:00 i knowa lot of wealthy people that have never been audited. i said, do you get audited? i getaudited almost every year. and in a way, i should be complaining. i'mnot even complaining. i don't mind it. it's almost become a way of life. i get auditedby the irs. but other people don't. i will say this. we have a situation in thiscountry that has to be taken care of. i will release my tax returns -- against my lawyer'swishes -- when she releases her 33,000 e-mails that have been deleted. as soon as she releasesthem, i will release. i will release my tax returns. and that'sagainst -- 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 releaseyour returns until the audit's complete. when the audit's complete, i'll do it. but i wouldgo against them if she releases her e-mails. trump: it's not negotiable, no. let her releasethe e-mails. why did she delete 33,000... holt: well, i'll let her answer that. butlet me just admonish the audience one more time. there was an agreement. we did ask youto be silent, so it would be helpful for us. clinton: well, i think you've seen anotherexample of bait-and- switch here. for 40 years, everyone running for president has releasedtheir 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 onreleasing it when you're under audit. so you've got to ask yourself, why won't herelease his tax returns? and i think there may be a couple of reasons. first, maybe he'snot as rich as he says he is. second, maybe he's not as charitable as he claims to be. reporting that he owes about $650 millionto wall street and foreign banks. or maybe he doesn't want the american people, all ofyou watching tonight, to know that he's paid nothing in federal taxes, because the onlyyears that anybody's ever seen were a couple of years when he had to turn them over tostate authorities when he was trying to get a casino license, and they showed he didn'tpay any federal income tax.

or health. and i think probably he's not allthat 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, theydon'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. andi have no reason to believe that he's ever going to release his tax returns, becausethere's something he's hiding. and we'll guess. we'll keep guessing at whatit might be that he's hiding. but i think the question is, were he ever to get nearthe white house, what would be those conflicts?

who does he owe money to? well, he owes youthe answers to that, and he should provide them. holt: he also -- he also raised the issueof your e-mails. do you want to respond to that? clinton: i do. you know, i made a mistakeusing a private e- mail. trump: that's for sure. clinton: 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 wasa mistake, and i take responsibility for that. trump: that was more than a mistake. thatwas done purposely. ok? that was not a mistake.

that was done purposely. when you have yourstaff taking the fifth amendment, taking the fifth so they're not prosecuted, when youhave the man that set up the illegal server 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 learnthat 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 the other thing, i'm extremely underleveraged.the report that said $650 -- which, by the way, a lot of friends of mine that know mybusiness say, boy, that's really not a lot of money. it's not a lot of money relativeto what i had.

and the $650 isn't even on that. but it'snot $650. it's much less than that. 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'sbecause it's about time that this country had somebody running it that has an idea aboutmoney. in great shape, our airports. 21:38:25 ourairports are like from a third world country. so the worst of all things has happened. weowe $20 trillion, and we're a mess. we haven't even started. and we've spent $6 trillionin the middle east, according to a report that i just saw. whether it's 6 or 5, butit 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 politicianslike 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 newroads, new tunnels, new bridges, new airports, new schools, new hospitals. and we don't havethe money, because it's been squandered on so many of your ideas. business, then i think we should talk aboutthat. you know, your campaign manager said that you built a lot of businesses on thebacks of little guys. donald. i've met dishwashers, painters, architects,glass installers, marble installers, drapery

courses. it's a beautiful facility. it immediatelywas put to use. and you wouldn't pay what the man needed to be paid, what he was chargingyou to do... you. he provided a good middle-class lifefor us, but the people he worked for, he expected and when we talk about your business, you'vetaken business bankruptcy six times. there are a lot of great businesspeople that havenever 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 ofthe united states. trump: wrong. wrong. trump: so, yeah, i think -- i do think it'stime. look, it's all words, it's all sound

bites. i built an unbelievable company. someof the greatest assets anywhere in the world, real estate assets anywhere in the world,beyond the united states, in europe, lots of different places. it's an unbelievablecompany. but on occasion, four times, we used certainlaws that are there. and when secretary clinton talks about people that didn't get paid, firstof 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'vebeen there a long time, change the laws. but i take advantage of the laws of the nationbecause 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. that love me. i'll give you an example. we'rejust opening up on pennsylvania avenue right next to the white house, so if i don't getthere one way, i'm going to get to pennsylvania avenue another. but we're opening the old post office. underbudget, ahead of schedule, saved tremendous money. i'm a year ahead of schedule. and that'swhat this country should be doing. that have no idea as to what to do and howto buy. the trump international is way under budget and way ahead of schedule. and we shouldbe able to do that for our country. holt: well, we're well behind schedule, soi want to move to our next segment. we move

into our next segment talking about america'sdirection. and let's start by talking about race. recently in charlotte and tulsa. race hasbeen a big issue in this campaign, and one of you is going to have to bridge a very wideand bitter gap. so how do you heal the divide? secretary clinton,you get two minutes on this. clinton: well, you're right. race remainsa significant challenge in our country. unfortunately, race still determines too much, often determineswhere people live, determines what kind of education in their public schools they canget, and, yes, it determines how they're treated in the criminal justice system. we've justseen those two tragic examples in both tulsa

and charlotte. and we've got to do several things at thesame time. we have to restore trust between communities and the police. we have to workto make sure that our police are using the best training, the best techniques, that they'rewell prepared to use force only when necessary. clinton: right now, that's not the case ina lot of our neighborhoods. so i have, ever since the first day of my campaign, calledfor criminal justice reform. i've laid out a platform that i think would begin to remedysome of the problems we have in the criminal justice system. 21:45:35 there are so many good, brave policeofficers who equally want reform. so we have

to bring communities together in order tobegin working on that as a mutual goal. and we've got to get guns out of the hands ofpeople who should not have them. the next nine causes put together. so we haveto do two things, as i said. we have to restore trust. we have to work with the police. wehave to make sure they respect the communities and the communities respect them. and we haveto tackle the plague of gun violence, which is a big contributor to a lot of the problemsthat we're seeing today. holt: all right, mr. trump, you have two minutes.how do you heal the divide? that's law and order. and we need law andorder. if we don't have it, we're not going to have a country.

-- just came in. we have endorsements from,i think, almost every police group, very -- i mean, a large percentage of them in the unitedstates. living in he'll because it's so dangerous.you walk down the street, you get shot. thousands of shootings. and i'm saying, whereis 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 peoplehave been killed, thousands over the last number of years, in fact, almost 4,000 havebeen killed since barack obama became president, over -- almost 4,000 people in chicago havebeen killed. we have to bring back law and order.

mayor giuliani is here, worked very well innew york. it brought the crime rate way down. we have gangs roaming the street. and in manycases, 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'redoing. right now, our police, in many cases, are afraid to do anything. we have to protectour inner cities, because african-american communities are being decimated by crime,decimated. holt: your two -- your two minutes expired,but i do want to follow up. 21:48:38 stop-and-frisk was ruled unconstitutional in new york, becauseit largely singled out black and hispanic

young men. trump: no, you're wrong. it went before ajudge, 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 case. they would have won an appeal. ifyou look at it, throughout the country, there are many places where it's allowed. these are felons. these are people that arebad people that shouldn't be -- 21:49:18 when you have 3,000 shootings in chicago from january1st, when you have 4,000 people killed in chicago by guns, from the beginning of thepresidency 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 haveproperty there. it's terrible what's going on in chicago. different places. you need better relationships.i agree with secretary clinton on this. so there's some bad things going on. somereally bad things. trump: but we need -- lester, we need lawand order. and we need law and order in the inner cities, because the people that aremost affected by what's happening are african-american and hispanic people. and it's very unfairto them what our politicians are allowing to happen.

kids. there's a lot that we should be proudof and we should be supporting and lifting up. but we do always have to make sure we keeppeople 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 40percent. 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 unintendedconsequences. too many young african-american

and latino men ended up in jail for nonviolentoffenses. and it's just a fact that if you're a young african-american man and you do thesame 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 justicesystem. 21:52:20 we cannot just say law and order. we have to say -- we have to come forwardwith a plan that is going to divert people 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 themended in the state system. you shouldn't have a profit motivation to fill prison cells withyoung americans. so there are some positive ways we can work on this.

and i believe strongly that commonsense gunsafety 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 thestreets. in a lot of places, our police are outgunned. we need comprehensive backgroundchecks, and we need to keep guns out of the hands of those who will do harm. from being able to buy a gun in our country.21:53:39 if you're too dangerous to fly, you are too dangerous to buy a gun. so there arethings we can do, and we ought to do it in a bipartisan way. policing, to go right at implicit bias. 21:53:50do you believe that police are implicitly

biased against black people? clinton: lester, i think implicit bias isa problem for everyone, not just police. i think, unfortunately, too many of us in ourgreat country jump to conclusions about each other. and therefore, i think we need allof us to be asking hard questions about, you know, why am i feeling this way? they admit it's an issue. they've got a lotof concerns. 21:54:38 mental health is one of the biggest concerns, because now policeare 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 positionwhere we would offer and provide that. certain rights to people on watch lists andno- fly lists. i agree with you. when a person is on a watch list or a no-fly list, and ihave 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 stronglyat no-fly lists and watch lists. and when people are on there, even if they shouldn'tbe on there, we'll help them, we'll help them legally, we'll help them get off. but i tendto agree with that quite strongly. super-predator about young black youth. andthat's a term that i think was a -- it's -- it's been horribly met, as you know. i think you'veapologized 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 gangsand people that use them. and i don't think -- i really don't think you disagree withme on this, if you want to know the truth. it down to 500 murders. five hundred murdersis 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 wascontinued 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. current mayor, crime has continued to drop,including murders. so there is... trump: no, you're wrong. you're wrong. trump: murders are up. all right. you checkit. clinton: new york -- new york has done anexcellent job. and i give credit -- i give credit across the board going back two mayors,two police chiefs, because it has worked. look, one murder is too many. but it is importantthat we learn about what has been effective. we would want. who disagrees with keepingneighborhoods safe? men who live in those neighborhoods. and sowe need to do a better job of working, again,

with the communities, faith communities, businesscommunities, as well as the police to try to deal with this problem. holt: this conversation is about race. andso, mr. trump, i have to ask you for five... trump: i will. look, the african-americancommunity has been let down by our politicians. has been so badly treated. they've been abusedand used in order to get votes by democrat politicians, because that's what it is. they'vecontrolled these communities for up to 100 years. trump: and i will tell you, you look at theinner cities -- and i just left detroit, and i just left philadelphia, and i just -- youknow, you've seen me, i've been all over the

place. you decided to stay home, and that'sok. but i will tell you, i've been all over. and i've met some of the greatest people i'llever meet within these communities. and they are very, very upset with what their politicianshave told them and what their politicians have done. holt: mr. trump, i... clinton: 21:58:53 i think -- i think -- ithink donald just criticized me for preparing for this debate. and, yes, i did. and youknow what else i prepared for? i prepared to be president. 21:59:06 and i think that'sa good thing. holt: mr. trump, for five years, you perpetuateda 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 mostamericans have accepted for years: the president was born in the united states. can you tellus what took you so long? trump: i'll tell you very -- well, just verysimple to say. sidney blumenthal works for the campaign and close -- very close friendof 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, andyou can check it out. trump: 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 pressingit very hard. she failed to get the birth certificate. when i got involved, i didn't fail. i gothim to give the birth certificate. so i'm satisfied with it. and i'll tell you why i'msatisfied with it. holt: that was... trump: because i want to get on to defeatingisis, because i want to get on to creating jobs, because i want to get on to having astrong border, because i want to get on to things that are very important to me and thatare very important to the country. holt: 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'vecontinued to tell the story and question the president's legitimacy in 2012, '13, '14,'15... trump: yeah. holt: .... as recently as january. so thequestion is, what changed your mind? trump: well, nobody was pressing it, nobodywas caring much about it. i figured you'd ask the question tonight, of course. but nobodywas 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'strue. sidney blumenthal sent a reporter -- you

just have to take a look at cnn, the lastweek, the interview with your former campaign manager. and she was involved. but just likeshe can't bring back jobs, she can't produce. holt: i'm sorry. i'm just going to followup -- and i will let you respond to that, because there's a lot there. but we're talkingabout racial healing in this segment. what do you say to americans, people of color who... trump: well, it was very -- i say nothing.i say nothing, because i was able to get him to produce it. he should have produced ita long time before. i say nothing. but let me just tell you. when you talk abouthealing, i think that i've developed very, very good relationships over the last littlewhile with the african-american community.

i think you can see that. and i feel that they really wanted me to cometo 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. clinton: well, just listen to what you heard. and clearly, as donald just admitted, he knewhe was going to stand on this debate stage, and lester holt was going to be asking usquestions, so he tried to put the whole racist birther lie to bed. but it can't be dismissed that easily. hehas really started his political activity

based on this racist lie that our first blackpresident was not an american citizen. there was absolutely no evidence for it, but hepersisted, he persisted year after year, because some of his supporters, people that he wastrying to bring into his fold, apparently believed it or wanted to believe it. but, remember, donald started his career backin 1973 being sued by the justice department for racial discrimination because 22:03:18he would not rent apartments in one of his developments to african-americans, and hemade sure that the people who worked for him understood that was the policy. he actuallywas sued twice by the justice department. so he has a long record of engaging in racistbehavior. and the birther lie was a very hurtful

one. you know, barack obama is a man of greatdignity. and i could tell how much it bothered him and annoyed him that this was being toutedand used against him. but i like to remember what michelle obamasaid in her amazing speech at our democratic national convention: when they go low, wego high. and barack obama went high, despite donald trump's best efforts to bring him down. holt: mr. trump, you can respond and we'regoing to move on to the next segment. trump: i would love to respond. first of all,i got to watch in preparing for this some of your debates against barack obama. youtreated him with terrible disrespect. and i watched the way you talk now about how lovelyeverything 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 ina certain garb, very famous pictures. i don't think you can deny that. but just last week, your campaign managersaid it was true. so when you tried to act 22:04:42 holier than thou, it really doesn'twork. it really doesn't. now, as far as the lawsuit, yes, when i wasvery young, i went into my father's company, had a real estate company in brooklyn andqueens, and we, along with many, many other companies throughout the country -- it wasa federal lawsuit -- were sued. we settled the suit with zero -- with no admission ofguilt. it was very easy to do.

trump: i notice you bring that up a lot. and,you know, i also notice 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 -- i look at that, andi say, isn't that amazing? because i settled that lawsuit with no admission of guilt, butthat 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 wealthiestcommunity 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'sa tremendously successful club. and i'm so glad i did it. and i have been given greatcredit for what i did. and i'm very, very proud of it. and that's the way i feel. thatis the true way i feel. holt: our next segment is called "securingamerica." we want to start with a 21st century war happening every day in this country. ourinstitutions are under cyber 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. clinton: well, i think cyber security, cyberwarfare will be one of the biggest challenges facing the next president, because clearlywe're facing at this point two different kinds

of adversaries. there are the independenthacking groups that do it mostly for commercial reasons to try to steal information that theycan use to make money. 22:06:49 but increasingly, we are seeing cyberattacks coming from states, organs of states. the most recent and troubling of these hasbeen russia. there's no doubt now that russia has used cyber attacks against all kinds oforganizations in our country, and i am deeply concerned about this. i know donald's verypraiseworthy of vladimir putin, but putin is playing a really... clinton: ... tough, long game here. and oneof the things he's done is to let loose cyber attackers to hack into government files, tohack into personal files, hack into the democratic

national committee. and we recently have learnedthat, you know, that this is one of their preferred methods of trying to wreak havocand 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 notgoing to sit idly by and permit state actors to go after our information, our private-sectorinformation or our public-sector information. and we're going to have to make it clear thatwe don't want to use the kinds of tools that we have. we don't want to engage in a differentkind 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 wouldwe do. and that's why i was so -- i was so shocked when donald publicly 22:08:41 invitedputin to hack into americans. that is just unacceptable. it's one of the reasons why50 national security officials who served in republican information -- in administrations... holt: your two minutes have expired. clinton: ... have said that donald is unfitto be the commander- in-chief. it's comments like that that really worry people who understandthe threats that we face. holt: mr. trump, you have two minutes andthe same question. who's behind it? and how do we fight it?

trump: i do want to say that i was just endorsed-- and more are coming next week -- it will be over 200 admirals, many of them here -- admiralsand 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'venever endorsed anybody before on immigration. i was just endorsed by ice. i was just recentlyendorsed -- 16,500 border patrol agents. 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 hacksthat i see that have led our country so brilliantly over the last 10 years with their knowledge.ok? because look at the mess that we're in. look at the mess that we're in.

as far as the cyber, i agree to parts of whatsecretary clinton said. 22:09:52 we should be better than anybody else, and perhaps we'renot. i don't think anybody knows it was russia that broke into the dnc. she's saying russia,russia, russia, but i don't -- maybe it was. i mean, it could be russia, but it could alsobe china. it could also be lots of other people. it also could be somebody sitting on theirbed that weighs 400 pounds, ok? trump: you don't know who broke in to dnc. but what did we learn with dnc? we learnedthat 22:10:29 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 thatwas china, whether it was another country, we don't know, because the truth is, underpresident obama we've lost control of things that we used to have control over. we came in with the internet, we came up withthe internet, and i think secretary clinton and myself would agree very much, when youlook at what isis is doing with the internet, they're beating us at our own game. isis. so we have to get very, very tough on cyberand cyber warfare. it is -- 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, verytough. and maybe it's hardly doable.

but i will say, we are not doing the job weshould be doing. but that's true throughout our whole governmental society. we have somany things that we have to do better, lester, and certainly cyber is one of them. clinton: well, i think there are a numberof issues that we should be addressing. i have put forth a plan to defeat isis. it doesinvolve going after them online. i think we need to do much more with our tech companiesto prevent isis and their operatives from being able to use the internet to radicalize,even direct people in our country and europe and elsewhere. but we also have to intensify our air strikesagainst isis and eventually support our arab

and kurdish partners to be able to actuallytake out isis in raqqa, end their claim of being a caliphate. we're making progress. our military is assistingin iraq. and we're hoping that within the year we'll be able to push isis out of iraqand then, you know, really squeeze them in syria. but we have to be cognizant of the fact thatthey've had foreign fighters coming to volunteer for them, foreign money, foreign weapons,22:12:35 so we have to make this the top priority. and i would also do everything possible totake out their leadership. i was involved in a number of efforts to take out al qaidaleadership 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 organizing principles.because we've got to defeat isis, and we've got to do everything we can to disrupt theirpropaganda efforts online. holt: you mention isis, and we think of isiscertainly as over there, but there are american citizens who have been inspired to commitacts of terror on american soil, the latest incident, of course, the bombings we justsaw in new york and new jersey, the knife attack at a mall in minnesota, in the lastyear, deadly attacks in san bernardino and orlando. i'll ask this to both of you. tellus specifically how you would prevent homegrown attacks by american citizens, mr. trump?

trump: well, first i have to say one thing,very important. 22:13:32 secretary clinton is talking about taking out isis. "we willtake out isis." well, president obama and secretary clinton created a vacuum the waythey got out of iraq, because they got out -- what, they shouldn't have been in, butonce they got in, the way they got out was a disaster. and isis was formed. so she talks about taking them out. she'sbeen doing it a long time. she's been trying to take them out for a long time. but theywouldn't have even been formed if they left some troops behind, like 10,000 or maybe somethingmore than that. and then you wouldn't have had them.

or, as i've been saying for a long time, andi think you'll agree, because i said it to you once, had we taken the oil -- and we shouldhave taken the oil -- isis would not have been able to form either, because the oilwas their primary source of income. and now they have the oil all over the place, includingthe oil -- a lot of the oil in libya, which was another one of her disasters. clinton: 22:14:31 well, i hope the fact-checkersare turning up the volume and really working hard. donald supported the invasion of iraq. clinton: that is absolutely proved over andover again. clinton: he actually advocated for the actionswe took in libya and urged that gadhafi be

taken out, after actually doing some businesswith him one time. clinton: but the larger point -- and he saysthis constantly -- is george w. bush made the agreement about when american troops wouldleave iraq, not barack obama. and the only way that american troops couldhave stayed in iraq is to get an agreement from the then-iraqi government that wouldhave 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 themost important part of this. how do we prevent attacks? how do we protect our people?

and i think we've got to have an intelligencesurge, where we are looking for every scrap of information. i was so proud of law enforcementin new york, in minnesota, in new jersey. you know, they responded so quickly, so professionallyto the attacks that occurred by rahami. and they brought him down. and we may find outmore information because he is still alive, which may prove to be an intelligence benefit. so we've got to do everything we can to vacuumup intelligence from europe, from the middle east. that means we've got to work more closelywith our allies, and that's something that donald has been very dismissive of. we're working with nato, the longest militaryalliance in the history of the world, to really

turn our attention to terrorism. we're workingwith our friends in the middle east, many of which, as you know, are muslim majoritynations. donald has consistently insulted muslims abroad, muslims at home, when we needto be cooperating with muslim nations and with the american muslim community. they're on the front lines. they can provideinformation to us that we might not get anywhere else. they need to have close working cooperationwith law enforcement in these communities, not be alienated and pushed away as some ofdonald's rhetoric, unfortunately, has led to. trump: well, i have to respond.

holt: please respond. trump: the secretarysaid very strongly about working with -- we've been working with them for many years, andwe have the greatest mess anyone's ever seen. you look at the middle east, it's a totalmess. under your direction, to a large extent. but you look at the middle east, you startedthe 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'regoing to be actually probably a major power at some point pretty soon, the way they'regoing. but when you look at nato, i was asked ona major show, what do you think of nato? and you have to understand, i'm a businessperson.i did really well. but i have common sense.

and i said, well, i'll tell you. i haven'tgiven lots of thought to nato. but two things. number one, the 28 countries of nato, manyof them aren't paying their fair share. number two -- and that bothers me, because we shouldbe asking -- we're defending them, and they should at least be paying us what they'resupposed to be paying by treaty and contract. and, number two, i said, and very strongly,nato could be obsolete, because -- and i was very strong on this, and it was actually coveredvery 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 numeroustimes. and about four months ago, i read on the frontpage of the wall street journal that nato

is opening up a major terror division. andi think that's great. and i think we should get -- because we pay approximately 73 percentof 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 largelybecause of what i was saying and my criticism of nato. i think we have to get nato to go into themiddle east with us, in addition to surrounding nations, and we have to 22:19:03 knock thehell out of isis, and we have to do it fast, when isis formed in this vacuum created bybarack 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,i can't believe it. they said... clinton: lester, we've covered... trump: no, wait a minute. clinton: we've covered this ground. trump: when they formed, when they formed,this is something that never should have happened. it should have never happened. now, you'retalking about taking out isis. but you were there, and you were secretary of state whenit was a little infant. now it's in over 30 countries. and you're going to stop them?i don't think so.

holt: mr. trump, a lot of these are judgmentquestions. you had supported the war in iraq before the invasion. what makes your... trump: i did not support the war in iraq. holt: in 2002... trump: that is a mainstream media nonsenseput out by her, because she -- frankly, i think the best person in her campaign is mainstreammedia. holt: my question is, since you supportedit... trump: just -- would you like to hear... holt: ... why is your -- why is your judgment...

trump: wait a minute. i was against the warin iraq. just so you put it out. holt: the record shows otherwise, but why-- why was... trump: the record does not show that. holt: why was -- is your judgment any... trump: the record shows that i'm right. wheni 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 interviewwith 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 hannityat fox. and sean hannity said -- and he called

me the other day -- and i spoke to him aboutit -- he said you were totally against the war, because he was for the war. holt: why is your judgment better than... trump: and when he -- excuse me. and thatwas before the war started. sean hannity said very strongly to me and other people -- he'swilling to say it, but nobody wants to call him. i was against the war. he said, you usedto have fights with me, because sean was in favor of the war. and i understand that side, also, not verymuch, because we should have never been there. but nobody called sean hannity. and then theydid an article in a major magazine, shortly

after the war started. i think in '04. butthey 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 definitely -- because if you read thisarticle, there's no doubt. but if somebody -- and i'll ask the press -- if somebody wouldcall up sean hannity, this was before the war started. he and i used to have argumentsabout the war. i said, it's a terrible and a stupid thing. it's going to destabilizethe middle east. and that's exactly what it's done. it's been a disaster. holt: my reference was to what you had saidin 2002, and my question was...

trump: no, no. you didn't hear what i said. holt: why is your judgment -- why is yourjudgment any different than mrs. clinton's judgment? trump: 22:21:48 well, i have much better judgmentthan she does. there's no question about that. i also have a much better temperament thanshe has, you know? i have a much better -- she spent -- let metell 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 have a...

trump: wait. the afl-cio the other day, behindthe blue screen, i don't know who you were talking to, secretary clinton, but you weretotally out of control. i said, there's a person with a temperament that's got a problem. clinton: whew, ok. let's talk about two important issues thatwere briefly mentioned by donald, first, nato. you know, nato as a military alliance hassomething called article 5, and basically it says this: an attack on one is an attackon all. and you know the only time it's ever been invoked? after 9/11, when the 28 nationsof nato said that they would go to afghanistan with us to fight terrorism, something thatthey still are doing by our side.

with respect to iran, when i became secretaryof state, iran was weeks away from having enough nuclear material to form a bomb. theyhad mastered the nuclear fuel cycle under the bush administration. they had built covertfacilities. they had stocked them with centrifuges that were whirling away. and we had sanctioned them. i voted for everysanction against iran when i was in the senate, but it wasn't enough. so i spent a year-and-a-halfputting together a coalition that included russia and china to impose the toughest sanctionson 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'snuclear program 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 therewere some iranian sailors on a ship in the waters off of iran, and they were tauntingamerican sailors who were on a nearby ship. he said, you know, if they taunted our sailors,22:24:28 i'd blow them out of the water and start another war. that's not good judgment. trump: that would not start a war. clinton: that is not the right temperamentto be commander-in- chief, to be taunted. and the worst part... trump: no, they were taunting us.

clinton: ... of what we heard donald say hasbeen about nuclear weapons. he has said repeatedly that he didn't care if other nations got nuclearweapons, 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 nuclearweapons. he even said, well, you know, if there were nuclear war in east asia, well,you know, that's fine... clinton: ... have a good time, folks. trump: it's lies. clinton: and, in fact, his 22:25:17 cavalierattitude about nuclear weapons is so deeply troubling. that is the number-one threat weface in the world. and it becomes particularly

threatening if terrorists ever get their handson any nuclear material. so a man who can be provoked by a tweet should not have hisfingers anywhere near the nuclear codes, as far as i think anyone with any sense aboutthis should be concerned. trump: that line's getting a little bit old,i must say. i would like to... clinton: it's a good one, though. it welldescribes the problem. trump: it's not an accurate one at all. it'snot an accurate one. so i just want to give a lot of things -- and just to respond. iagree with her on one thing. the single greatest problem the world has is nuclear armament,nuclear weapons, 22:26:04 not global warming, like you think and your -- your presidentthinks.

nuclear is the single greatest threat. justto go down the list, we defend japan, we defend germany, we defend south korea, we defendsaudi arabia, we defend countries. they do not pay us. but they should be paying us,because we are providing tremendous service and we're losing a fortune. that's why we'relosing -- we're losing -- we lose on everything. i say, who makes these -- we lose on everything.all i said, that it's very possible that if they don't pay a fair share, because thisisn'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... holt: we need to move on. trump: well, wait, but it's very important.all i said was, they may have to defend themselves

or they have to help us out. we're a countrythat owes $20 trillion. they have to help us out. holt: our last... trump: as far as the nuclear is concerned,i agree. it is the single greatest threat that this country has. holt: which leads to my next question, aswe enter our last segment here (inaudible) the subject of securing america. on nuclearweapons, president obama reportedly considered changing the nation's longstanding policyon first use. do you support the current policy? mr. trump, you have two minutes on that.

trump: well, i have to say that, you know,for what secretary clinton was saying about nuclear with russia, she's very cavalier inthe way she talks about various countries. but russia has been expanding their -- theyhave a much newer capability than we do. we have not been updating from the new standpoint. i looked the other night. i was seeing b-52s,they're old enough that your father, your grandfather could be flying them. we are not-- we are not keeping up with other countries. i would like everybody to end it, just getrid of it. but i would certainly not do first strike. i think that once the nuclear alternativehappens, it's over. at the same time, we have

to be prepared. i can't take anything offthe table. because you look at some of these countries, you look at north korea, we'redoing nothing there. china should solve that problem for us. 22:28:09 china should go intonorth korea. china is totally powerful as it relates to north korea. and by the way, another one powerful is theworst deal i think i've ever seen negotiated that you started is the iran deal. iran isone of their biggest trading partners. iran has power over north korea. and when they made that horrible deal withiran, 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'tyou do that? why didn't you add other things into the deal? one of the great giveawaysof all time, of all time, including $400 million in cash. nobody's ever seen that before. thatturned out to be wrong. it was actually $1.7 billion in cash, obviously, i guess for thehostages. it certainly looks that way. so you say to yourself, why didn't they makethe right deal? this is one of the worst deals ever made by any country in history. the dealwith iran will lead to nuclear problems. all they have to do is sit back 10 years, andthey don't have to do much. holt: your two minutes is expired.

trump: and they're going to end up gettingnuclear. i met with bibi netanyahu the other day. believe me, he's not a happy camper. holt: all right. mrs. clinton, secretary clinton,you have two minutes. clinton: 22:29:30 well, let me -- let me startby saying, words matter. words matter when you run for president. and they really matterwhen you are president. and i want to reassure our allies in japan and south korea and elsewherethat we have mutual defense treaties and we will honor them. it is essential that america's word be good.and so i know that this campaign has caused some questioning and worries on the part ofmany leaders across the globe. i've talked

with a number of them. but i want to -- onbehalf 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 entireglobal 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 thanstill 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 criticize adeal that has been very successful in giving us access to iranian facilities that we neverhad before, then he should tell us what his alternative would be. but it's like his planto defeat isis. he says it's a secret plan,

but the only secret is that he has no plan. 22:31:04 so we need to be more precise inhow we talk about these issues. people around the word follow our presidential campaignsso closely, trying to get hints about what we will do. can they rely on us? are we goingto 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 andaround the world, to make decisions that will further peace and prosperity, but also standup to bullies, whether they're abroad or at home. we cannot let those who would try to destabilizethe world to interfere with american interests

and security... holt: your two minutes is... clinton: ... to be given any opportunitiesat all. holt: ... is expired. trump: lester, one thing i'd like to say. holt: very quickly. twenty seconds. trump: i will go very quickly. but i willtell you that hillary will tell you to go to her website and read all about how to defeatisis, which she could have defeated by never having it, you know, get going in the firstplace. right now, it's getting tougher and

tougher to defeat them, because they're inmore and more places, more and more states, more and more nations. trump: and it's a big problem. and as faras japan is concerned, i want to help all of our allies, but we are losing billionsand billions of dollars. we cannot be the policemen of the world. we cannot protectcountries all over the world... holt: we have just... trump: ... where they're not paying us whatwe need. holt: we have just a few final questions... trump: and she doesn't say that, because she'sgot no business ability. we need heart. we

need a lot of things. but you have to havesome basic ability. and sadly, she doesn't have that. all of the things that she's talkingabout could have been taken care of during the last 10 years, let's say, while she hadgreat power. but they weren't taken care of. and if she ever wins this race, they won'tbe taken care of. holt: mr. trump, this year secretary clintonbecame the 22:32:57 first woman nominated for president by a major party. earlier thismonth, you said she doesn't have, quote, "a presidential look." she's standing here rightnow. what did you mean by that? trump: she doesn't have the look. she doesn'thave the stamina. i said she doesn't have the stamina. and i don't believe she doeshave the stamina. to be president of this

country, you need tremendous stamina. holt: the quote was, "i just don't think shehas the presidential look." trump: you have -- wait a minute. wait a minute,lester. you asked me a question. did you ask me a question? you have to be able to negotiate our tradedeals. 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'redefending them, and they're not paying? all you have to do is speak to them. wait. youhave so many different things you have to be able to do, and i don't believe that hillaryhas the stamina.

holt: let's let her respond. clinton: 22:33:52 well, as soon as he travelsto 112 countries and negotiates a peace deal, a cease-fire, a release of dissidents, anopening of new opportunities in nations around the world, or even spends 11 hours testifyingin front of a congressional committee, he can talk to me about stamina. trump: the world -- let me tell you. let metell you. hillary has experience, but it's bad experience. we have made so many bad dealsduring the last -- so she's got experience, that i agree. but it's bad, bad experience. whether it'sthe iran deal that you're so in love with,

where we gave them $150 billion back, whetherit's the iran deal, whether it's anything you can -- name -- you almost can't name agood deal. i agree. she's got experience, but it's bad experience. and this countrycan't afford to have another four years of that kind of experience. holt: we are at -- we are at the final question. clinton: well, one thing. one thing, lester. holt: very quickly, because we're at the finalquestion now. clinton: you know, he tried to switch fromlooks to stamina. but this is a man who has called women pigs, slobs and dogs, and someonewho has said pregnancy is an inconvenience

to employers, who has said... trump: i never said that. clinton: .... women don't deserve equal payunless they do as good a job as men. trump: i didn't say that. clinton: and one of the worst things he saidwas about a woman in a beauty contest. he loves beauty contests, supporting them andhanging around them. and he called this woman 22:35:35 "miss piggy." then he called her"miss housekeeping," because she was latina. donald, she has a name. trump: where did you find this? where didyou find this?

clinton: her name is alicia machado. trump: where did you find this? clinton: and she has become a u.s. citizen,and you can bet... trump: oh, really? clinton: ... she's goingto vote this november. trump: ok, good. let me just tell you... holt: mr. trump, could we just take 10 secondsand then we ask the final question... trump: you know, hillary is hitting me withtremendous commercials. some of it's said in entertainment. some of it's said -- somebodywho's been very vicious to me, rosie o'donnell, i said very tough things to her, and i thinkeverybody would agree that she deserves it

and nobody feels sorry for her. but you want to know the truth? i was goingto say something... holt: please very quickly. trump: ... extremely rough to hillary, toher 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 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 notnice. and i don't deserve that. 22:36:42 but it's certainly not a nice thingthat she's done. it's hundreds of millions

of ads. and the only gratifying thing is,i saw the polls come in today, and with all of that money... holt: we have to move on to the final question. trump: ... $200 million is spent, and i'meither winning or tied, and i've spent practically nothing. holt: one of you will not win this election.so my final question to you tonight, are you willing to accept the outcome as the willof the voters? secretary clinton? clinton: well, i support our democracy. andsometimes you win, sometimes you lose. but i certainly will support the outcome of thiselection.

and i know donald's trying very hard to plantdoubts about it, but i hope the people out there understand: this election's really upto you. it's not about us so much as it is about you and your families and the kind ofcountry and future you want. so i sure hope you will get out and vote as though your futuredepended on it, because i think it does. holt: mr. trump, very quickly, same question.will you accept the outcome as the will of the voters? trump: i want to make americagreat again. we are a nation that is seriously troubled. we're losing our jobs. people arepouring into our country. the other day, we were deporting 800 people.and perhaps they passed the wrong button, they pressed the wrong button, or perhapsworse than that, it was corruption, but these

people that we were going to deport for goodreason ended up becoming citizens. ended up becoming citizens. and it was 800. and nowit turns out it might be 1,800, and they don't even know. holt: will you accept the outcome of the election? trump: look, here's the story. i want to makeamerica great again. i'm going to be able to do it. i don't believe hillary will. theanswer is, if she wins, i will absolutely support her. holt: all right. well, that is going to doit for us. that concludes our debate for this evening, a spirit one. we covered a lot ofground, 22:38:33 not everything as i suspected

we would. the next presidential debates are scheduledfor october 9th at washington university in st. louis and october 19th at the universityof nevada las vegas. the conversation will continue. a reminder. the vice presidential debate isscheduled for october 4th at longwood university in farmville, virginia. my thanks to hillaryclinton and to donald trump and to hofstra university for hosting us tonight. good night,everyone. 22:38:58 gwen ifill: and that concludes the first debatebetween hillary clinton and donald trump. we watched them there on the stage.

joining gwen ifill and me here in our studiofor some analysis, syndicated columnist mark shields, new york times columnist david brooks,and amy walter of the cook political report. mark shields, they did cover a lot of ground,from jobs to taxes, from race to isis, and just now women. what did you make of it all? mark shields: i think that, first of all,donald trump made it about him, rather than about the american people. i think that was missing in his message. andi really think that he is remarkable political figure, in that, if you think about americanpresidents, whether it's ronald reagan or john kennedy or barack obama or franklin roosevelt,there was always an optimism to them.

that is a very dark and rather dreary message,that we're surrounded by people who are not simply incompetent, but who are cutting deals,who have conflicts of interest. if -- hillary clinton, i thought was hillaryclinton. she was factual. she was well-organized in her thinking, not particularly likable,did not come across as -- did not reveal much about herself, other that anecdote about herdad again and the nod to the grandchild at the opening. i really thought trump did -- failed his testof presidential... gwen ifill: and as we watch the families comeon stage, as is typical after these debates, the clintons, former president bill clintonand hillary clinton, of course. and chelsea

clinton is there as well. and on the other half of the stage, melaniaand donald trump, his sons, his daughters, others. now, amy, we -- i counted -- we counted itup. hillary clinton referred to donald trump by his first name, donald -- most people callhim mr. trump -- 22 times. she clearly had it in her mind that she wanted to get underhis skin, to bug him. did it work? amy walter: well, he was on the defensivemuch more than he was on the offense in this debate, whether it was on question of thebirtherism, on his taxes, his support for the iraq war, the debate about women, andhis things he said about women, about stamina.

this was a debate in which she was able -- andi think that mark is completely right. trump made it about himself, but she helped himto make it about himself. look, she didn't provide the vision. i thinkthat there are a lot of folks, even on the democratic side, looking for that sense of,what is the bigger message of hillary clinton? she's very smart. she has all of the factsoutlined. she has all the policy papers up on her web site. but the bigger, sort of cohesive vision forwhere we take america, i just -- i don't know that we still saw that in this debate. judy woodruff: david, how do you see this?did either one of them do what they needed

to do tonight? david brooks: well, it wasn't -- if what theyneeded to do was make me feel better about the country, they failed. it was the oppositeof elevating on both sides. i thought, for the first half-hour, that donaldtrump was winning. and i thought that was because, he may be obnoxious, but he is achange agent. and the first half-hour was on his turf. and her answers, hillary clinton's answers,went it was on -- gets to policy, it can't just be three things. it has to be 16 things.and you get in laundry list mode. then she started attacking him. and she hadtwo devastatingly good answers, on the birther

issue and the tax return issue, which werereally good assaults on him. so, even though she's not good at describing a policy, she'sreally good at going after him. and then the debate got on, and donald trumpbecame donald trump. and with every answer, it was digging it a little deeper. his birtheranswer was abysmal, and bunch of bad answers all in a row. the race issue was terrible,the looks issue, bad. and so he just -- at his lack of preparation,and, frankly, a lot of his policies and his character just got worse and worse and worse.so, i think you would have to say this was a clinton night. gwen ifill: john yang is in -- at hofstrauniversity for us tonight. he's at the site

of tonight's debate. and i'm wondering what the scene is like there,john, how it's going over. john yang: well, i tell you, the spinnersare just coming out. i'm just in front of the donald trump holding room. you can see them coming by here. before, senatorclaire mccaskill came by. she's obviously a supporter of secretary clinton. she wastelling me that she felt -- and this is sort of the line coming out of their -- the clintonroom tonight -- that donald trump, once again, they say, showed that he wasn't prepared tobe president. they say that this was -- they say that itcame right from the top, when the secretary

was able to give what they say -- what they'resaying was a coherent policy about providing jobs in america. but he wasn't. i tried to -- governor christie went by, wouldn'tstop. i'm trying to see if i can get someone from the trump campaign to get their reaction. but, so far, that's what we have gotten sofar. gwen ifill: ok, john, we're going to let youkeep searching for people in the room to talk to. and we will get back to you. judy woodruff: and, mark, i want to come toyou, because was there any -- david was saying that donald trump did better in the firsthalf-hour, when they talked about jobs, and

he talked about jobs leaving the country.did hillary clinton ever have an answer to mark shields: well, i thought -- i mean, shewas defensive. there's no question about it. she was defensive on the tpp. but her answer that there were more manufacturingjobs -- she did the defense of her husband's economic record, not a very -- a rather tepiddefense. there was a hell of a defense to be made for bill clinton's eight years of22 million jobs and the lowest unemployment rates for african-americans in the historyof the country, balancing the budget. she did -- she just said more manufacturingjobs in the '90s. but i want to say, in defense of trump, andnot to be totally -- i have never heard a

presidential candidate -- and i have heard40 of them -- say, i'm extremely underleveraged. mark shields: i mean, that was a rather remarkablestatement, if you think about it. and when he talked about not paying taxes,he said, it would be squandered, too. that's why he didn't pay any taxes. and i thoughtthose were -- the explanation, the one that will be most memorable, was that, who hackedthe dnc? it wasn't russia. could have been russia. could have been china. could havebeen some other country, or it could have been someone sitting on the bed that weighs400 pounds. i don't know if the bed weighs 400 poundsor the person weighs 400 pounds. gwen ifill: and that is your definition of"in defense of donald trump"?

mark shields: that was it. that was it. gwen ifill: just checking. david brooks: he touched me. i'm underleveragedmyself. gwen ifill: can we talk a little bit aboutthe line of questioning on race? because when -- i never heard presidentialcandidate in the debate call the person that he or she is running against, use the wordracist, three times. and also, when he was asked about race, donald trump talked aboutlaw and order. what were the dog whistles in the room? ormaybe they weren't even dog whistles. everybody could hear them.

amy walter: yes. donald trump's answer, whenever there's anissue on -- whether it's on race, whether it's on policing, whether it's on terrorism,he always comes back to, it's all about law and order. we're going to get the police.we're going to get stuff done, because that's how things work. and we also know that that is an answer thatis not a comfortable answer for many people in the african-american community and in -- amongnonwhite voters, about who gets profiled when we have stop and frisk programs, when we havelaw and order, what that actually means. these were questions that were not the kindsof questions that donald trump answers particularly

well. but that's not who he's playing to.we talked about this a lot during the convention. throughout this -- throughout the convention,throughout this debate, donald trump talked to the same people he's been talking to thisentire campaign. there are a group of voters out there who are white, who are working classwho he's done very, very well with. and those are voters he expects to take him all theway throughout this election. and he's not interested in reaching out andgetting beyond that base. judy woodruff: you know, david, picking upwhat amy is saying, it seems to me that much of this debate was on territory where donaldtrump is uncomfortable, i mean, the whole birther question. lester holt raised that.he pushed donald trump on that. he pushed

him on his tax returns, which we have beentalking about. these were areas where donald trump was backagainst the ropes. david brooks: yes. i do think holt was tougher on trump thanon clinton. maybe there's more to work with there. and he certainly exposed some vulnerabilities.the defense that "i have a country club in palm beach which allows in minorities," that'snot -- that is not your good defense. but... gwen ifill: trump is apparently already tweetingthat there weren't good questions about e-mails, about benghazi...

david brooks: right. judy woodruff: and the clinton foundation. david brooks: and somewhat fair, actually. but here is way think it's going to happen.i think he really looked bad on some of the -- especially some of the racial stuff, onthe gender stuff, a lot of stuff. and so i think we can expect his polls todrop as after the convention season. but, as amy said, that's not his audience. and,two, he is thematically so consistent. we are under assault, we're under assault, we'reunder assault. and it wouldn't surprise me if he then -- hisnumbers then began to go up, as they have

in the last couple weeks, with all this stuff.he's already said all this before. gwen ifill: i might also add that, if youwant to know, we have been keeping track of the things that were true, the things thatwere false that were said tonight on our web site, pbs.org/newshour. just go there andfind what all of our experts, including our own -- well, margaret warner, our own paulsolman are telling -- answering these questions. judy woodruff: pulling it together. gwen ifill: but facts -- facts seemed to bean important issue here than -- or lack thereof, tonight, mark. and that was also hillary clinton'sturf. mark shields: yes. no, that's where she is.

but she can't give a short answer. that isa real problem. there is a little bit of, let me tell you how much i know. and i -- idon't even know the capital of sweden, but i can tell you what the principal productsof sweden are and how long, you know, stockholm -- and i think that is -- but i have -- again,there are moments in the debate which i think we can't ignore. and that is, "you don't learn a lot from thetax returns, that, i can tell you," explaining why he hasn't released his own taxes, andsaid paying no federal taxes makes me smart. now, i'm sorry. i mean, the cops and e-4sin the marine corps and schoolteachers and registered nurses who pay taxes every year,i don't know if not paying taxes for the two

years that he has on the record is a recommendation. david brooks: i would agree with you, if therepublican debates hadn't happened. and maybe it's just the republican audiencesare different. but the rules are a little different this year. and a lot of things wherehe says, i'm smart, i got away with this, i do think that has some resonance in a countryof high-end social distrust. and i do think some of the rules are a little different applyingto him. mark shields: do you think those respectablepeople who have come to him in the last few weeks, i mean, the thoughtful, have been kindof overlooking it? do you think they were made comfortable tonight?

david brooks: total squirming. total squirming. amy walter: yes. and that's really the question:did he pass the judgment test? but to the point of -- which i don't knowthat he was able to pass the judgment, temperament test. i don't think that that was -- he getshigh marks on that. but on the question about where the countryfeels that we're going, we're pretty evenly divided between whether -- and this is thewall street journal poll -- is our country losing ground or is our country making progress?forty-eight percent say losing ground. forty-five percent say making progress. not surprisingly, among white americans, plus-11losing ground, among nonwhite americans, plus-28

making progress. and so when you see these candidates literallytalking past each other, as you pointed out, on race issues, on so many other issues aboutwhere we're going... gwen ifill: taxes. amy walter: ... on taxes, it's literally wehave a country that is seeing the direction that we're going in completely differently. judy woodruff: i think all three of you weresaying before the debate that hillary clinton tonight needed to be more likable. she neededto -- mark, what was your term? she needed to...

mark shields: at the end of it, say, not abad egg. judy woodruff: not a bad egg. mark shields: like to have in the carpool. judy woodruff: but she did she do that tonight? mark shields: in the pta meeting. judy woodruff: did that happen or not? mark shields: no. i don't think -- i don'tthink -- she wasn't unlikable, but she certainly -- there wasn't any... amy walter: what?

mark shields: there wasn't any point in whichyou got a peek into her -- who she is, what makes her tick. gwen ifill: i never hear anybody ask whetherdonald trump is likable. mark shields: oh, sure we do. gwen ifill: yes? mark shields: yes. mark shields: and he's thoroughly unlikable. david brooks: it's not really an open question. gwen ifill: oh, i see. oh, i see.

mark shields: well, the wall street journal/nbcpoll, to come back to what amy was just talking about, he started 28/59 favorable/unfavorable,and now he's at 29. judy woodruff: we're going quickly back tohofstra university in new york. our john yang is there. john, you have maybe found a trump person? gwen ifill: hi, john. john yang: i have got -- we have been talkingto some of the trump supporters here now. they think -- and the one point that theyhave been repeating over and over again is the point, actually, that he repeated overand over again in the debate, was hitting

at clinton as a career politician, that reinforcingthis idea that he's the -- that career politicians like hillary clinton are the reason for theproblems we're seeing now. that's been a signature line of his campaignand, in many ways, one reason for a lot of the support of the campaign. and that's whatwe're hearing over and over again from the trump supporters here tonight. gwen ifill: in fact, john, that was one ofthe big lines tonight, which is that she has experience, but it's bad experience, right?and so they are picking up on that. john yang: right. judy woodruff: so -- and, john, thank you.

judy woodruff: go ahead. john yang: no, go ahead. judy woodruff: i was just going to bring itback here and say to david, is that effective? is that something that sticks that he keepsrepeating? david brooks: i think it does, actually. if you looked at her, just take him out ofthe debate, she does look like a career politician. she does repeat a lot of things. she doesn'tquite make human convention -- connection. and in year that's very unusual, she's notthat unusual. but i thought she did fine, and with somedevastatingly good assaults. but, again, as

mark said, he was the subject. and he didnegative. amy walter: well, and that's been the themethroughout this campaign, right? wherever the spotlight goes, if it's placedon you, the candidate, you are likely to drop in the polls. when the spotlight gets to theother candidate -- because this race has just simply been a referendum on who the worstcandidate is, right? and so when it -- if it goes to the spotlightnow on donald trump and how much he was on defense, it's not going to be how well clintondid as much as how poorly he did. and if it goes over to hillary clinton, then she becomesthe focus. her numbers suffer. and at the end of the day, the candidate whowins is the candidate who doesn't get in that

spotlight for the last couple of weeks. gwen ifill: let me ask a question about justone big policy issue that he seemed to land a few blows on. and that was on trade, whenhe kind of basically made the point that she had changed her mind. and he drove that pointhome. mark shields: he did. mark shields: the question i had, as he wasdoing that, was -- are his interruptions a sign of strength or obnoxiousness? but he -- there's no question, he dominatedthe dialogue. she was very much playing defense in the first part there.

judy woodruff: but, as david said, in thefirst half-hour, it seemed to be that he was getting the better of a couple of points. but then, as we moved into the debate, itseemed to me hillary clinton felt more comfortable coming after him and sticking with some... mark shields: yes, she baited him. there'sno question. amy walter: oh, yes. the donald was baited. and he not, in thatsense, go after her the way i thought he would. i thought his own defense of his positionswas really faulty. gwen ifill: well, time for all three of youto ask -- really quick answers.

amy walter: uh-oh. gwen ifill: expectations in advance, did theymeet your expectations afterward? amy walter: yes, they did. mark? mark shields: no. mark shields: my expectations have never beenmet. no. judy woodruff: we may ask you this questionagain tomorrow. david? david brooks: not a kamikaze night for him.so, it's not a career-ender, not a campaign-ender,

but not a good night. gwen ifill: all right. i think i gave you,like, one word. but i can say -- yes, agree that it was abetter night for hillary clinton, but it does not feel like it was the defining end-all,be-all of this campaign. judy woodruff: and, hey, we have only gotsix weeks to go. gwen ifill: you know what that means. we aregoing to have to come back and do it again right here at this table, maybe october 4for the vice presidential debate. that concludes our coverage of the first presidentialdebate, but there's whole lot more, as we were saying, online. you can watch highlights.plus, see how "newshour" staff, from margaret

warner to paul solman, as you were saying,and more put what the candidates said in context. that's all at pbs.org/newshour. i'm gwen ifill. judy woodruff: and i'm judy woodruff. and join us right here for the "newshour"tomorrow night. for all of us at the "pbs newshour," thankyou, and good night.