stumps in north carolina, where early voting begins today. he joins "morning joe" in just a bit. and president obama is back on the trail, speaking in background florida tonight. >> that al smith dinner. that's going to be good. that does it for us on this thursday. "morning joe" starts right now. ♪ look, putin -- from everything i see has no respect for this person. >> well, that's because he'd rather have a puppet as president. >> no puppet. you are the puppet. >> there was even a time when he didn't get an emmy for his tv program three years in a row and he started tweeting that the emmy's were rigged. >> and i didn't even apologize to my wife who is sitting right here because i didn't do anything. i didn't know any of these women, i didn't see these women.

>> my social security payroll contribution will go up as will donald's assuming he can't figure out how to get out of it, but what we want to did -- >> such a nasty woman. >> whoa. whoa. good morning, it's thursday, october 20th. welcome to "morning joe." >> if -- the donald complained about the emmy's, those being rigged, willie and i understand. >> you didn't get the nobel peace prize so whatever. >> in five categories yet. >> what a night. veteran columnist mike barnicle. >> professor of the university of michigan school of public policy howard ford jr. in las vegas co-host of with all due respect that airs at 6:00 p.m. on msnbc john heilemann. where do we begin? perhaps the biggest head line out of the night was when donald trump would not commit to saying whether he would recognize the

outcome of the election. >> do you make the same commitment that you will absolutely -- sir -- that you will absolutely accept the result of this election? >> i will look at it at the time. i'm not looking at anything now. i will look at it at the time. what i've seen -- what i've seen is so bad. first of all, the media is so dishonest and so corrupt and the pile on is so amazing, "the new york times" actually wrote an article about it that they don't even care, it's so dishonest and they've poisoned the minds of the voters, but unfortunately for them i think the voters are seeing through it. if you look at your voter rolls you will see millions of people that are registered to vote, millions, this isn't coming from me, this is coming from pugh report and other places, millions of people that are registered to vote that shouldn't be registered to vote. so let me just give you one other thing, so i talk about the corrupt media, i talk about the millions of people, i will tell

you one other thing, she shouldn't be allowed to run. it's -- she's guilty of a very, very serious crime. >> sir, there is a tradition in this country, in fact, one of the prides of this country is the peaceful transition of power and that no matter how hard fought a campaign is that they end of the campaign that the loser concedes to the winner, not saying that you are necessarily going to be the loser or the winner, but that the loser concedes to the winner and that the country comes together in part for the good of the country. are you saying you are not prepared now to commit to that principle. >> what i'm saying is i will tell you at the time. i will keep you in suspense. >> some republican lawmakers in battle ground states condemned donald trump's answer on accepting the election's results last night. senator jeff flake tweeted donald trump saying that he might not accept election results is beyond the pail. congressman carbelo said peaceful transfer of power and

acceptance of election results is fundamental to our democracy and constitution. >> and senator lindsey graham said during this debate mr. trump is doing the party and country a great disservice. if he loses it will not be because the system is rigged but because he failed as a candid e candidate. >> all three of those republicans have never supported donald trump, correct? >> no none of them. >> but trump's top campaign surrogates are like thing his answer on waiting to see what happens to another disrupted race in recent history, the election in 2000. remember that? when a razor thin margin in florida led to a recount and democrat al gore waited 36 days before conceding to republican george w. bush. >> do you remember al gore in 2000? nobody says ahead of time that they are going to contest the election but al gore did. in fact, he retracted his concession, i remember it was pouring rain in austin, he conceded the election to george w. bush and then retracted his concession and wept all the way

to the supreme court. >> he said he would not give in so whatever the result were if he didn't think it were fairly done. that's what al gore did. did he accept the results? he challenged the election, it was a rizer thin election and he challenged it. >> the election is too close of course he wouldn't accept it. al gore didn't accept it, didn't? he went to court. >> he said about being rigged not being too close. >> if it's a very big margin even if it's rigged it wouldn't matter. it would only matter if it's a very small margin and al gore did exactly that. >> everybody is shocked. watching coverage last night and this morning everybody is shocked and horrified that donald trump would suggest that he was going to wait and that he's even used the words rigged. i heard people last night saying that he's the first person to ever do this. that this actually cuts at the very heart of america's credibility. >> well, there were so many

incredible moments last night, both of them came loaded to attack each other and we want to get to them all, but to this point, because there was a lot of reaction to this, this is the case that charges of a rigged or stolen election do not exclusively belong to republicans. democrats and liberals have accused the vote of being rigged for george w. bush both in 2000 and 2004 and have done so for years. jonathan chat wrote bush v. gore sole the election. salon asked is the gop stealing ohio. in 2014 vox wrote 68% of americans think elections are rigged. >> and he said they're right in that article. >> jesse jackson demanded an inquiry of the results in florida saying 22,000 people are begging for their vote to count and for its intent to be realized. this last vote caused a crisis in the credibility of this election. this is a crisis of integrity. we the american people deserve better. we should settle for nothing

less. in 2006 "rolling stone" published a lengthy article asking was the 2004 election stolen? they also published the interview with howard dean which said this, howard said this, i'm not confident that the election in ohio was fairly decided. we know that there was substantial voter suppression and the machines were not reliable. it should not be a surprise that the republicans are willing to do things that are unethical to manipulate elections. that's what we suspect has happened and we'd like to safeguard our elections so that democracy can still be counted on to work. later in that year in october josh marshall wrote about ohio secretary of state ken blackwell stealing the election and a portion of michael moore's documentary 2004 fahrenheit 9/11 tried to delegitimize the results in florida. >> you know, also, as you said, at willie -- in 2004, there are

tons you can get to but in 2004 there were certain people around these parts that were going on tv every night saying that ohio was stolen, that it was rigged. i guess bobby kennedy jr. didn't he write -- >> he wrote the "rolling stone" piece that he erchs e. refereyo the voting machines in ohio. it's coming from the top of the ticket before anyone gets to vote and he is on a downward slide. kellyanne conway, mike pence, rudy guiliani all the people you saw in that clip said not 30 minutes before the debate last night of course we will respect the results of the election and then he subverted them during the debate and they had to come in after and clean that up. this is a little different. >> harold. >> a couple things, she won the debate last night. >> why do you say that? how do you just say that and then just roll right through it. >> because i believe that. we can litigate it.

>> i thought it was a great fight. >> it's like saying alabama is going to win the national championship you should want to think why i think that. >> he needed to do more than he did last night and he didn't do that. i thought that she handed him a number of opportunities to talk about issues, talk about his vision for the future, he didn't. he fell for the trap. all we're talking about this morning is whether or not he will accept the results. the difference in all of those quotes that you laid out, as willie said that was all after. the issue in florida, what triggered the issue in florida were two i think so this, one the closeness of the race, joe, you were a congressman from there and two there were a number of people who thought they were voting for al gore but were voting for someone else. there were a number of reasons and that was the reason we had a recount. i respect what kellyanne conway said, i don't understand what mayor guiliani is referring to. this all happened after the race. in an addition al gore accepted the outcome of the supreme court decision. my understanding is from what mr. trump is saying he may not be willing to accept the outcome. that is the difference.

>> what was the exact quote? >> he said i will leave you in suspense. >> he said i will look at it at the time and keep you in suspense. >> so that means he is not willing to say i will accept the outcome. >> no, what that means is he will look at it at the time. i love everybody saying i woke up to these screaming headlines donald trump will not respect election results. he said i will look at it at the time. >> was there ever been a presidential candidate to say that. >> if there are voting irregularities -- >> what would you have said? what would your response be to that question? >> i'd say i will certainly accept the outcome of the election i would want to make sure that's fair, it's on the up and up. >> he didn't say that. >> do you know what, this is an example the media got something they can absolutely freak out about and claim that he is an agent of vladimir putin and destroying democracy in america and it's just another example of the media having to find a little phrase and freak out when as a republican i have listened to democrats talk about the only

two times we won the white house in like 800 years that we stole both elections. i had to sit through fahrenheit 911 and a lady was sobbing violently behind me on the upper west side about the election being stolen from george bush and i patted her halfway through, i go, it's all right, it's all right, ma'am. it's all right. it's all a lie anyway. democrats have been whining for 16 years, they are still writing articles about how bush stole the elections in 2000 and 2004. so this holier than though attitude about this is the first time anyone has suggested that the election is not a sack row saingt process, it's a joke. you guys bathe in that hypocrisy if you want to, i'd just like to hear how the debate went. go ahead, bathe. >> the difference is what michael just said, it's the candidate himself. you will have spectators, voters, political officials, elected officials contemplating, writers saying that this didn't

happen this way, they stole t bush did this but you never had the presidential candidate -- >> let me be very specific. my target this morning for my mockery are the very people that are writing articles today on their blogs that are saying this is a threat to the democracy, the electoral process in america is sacrosanct and if we ever doubt this are we no better than putin. those are the people i'm mocking. i'm not comparing him to al gore. >> can you acknowledge there has never been a presidential candidate to do this. >> i'm not on the witness stand. i'm saying it is rich the very thing that the democrats -- i had a lady come up to me yesterday who i know very well, she is a dear, dear friend of the family and she said, oh, joe, oh, joe, how horrible will it be if kate has to grow up in a country with a president that doesn't respect women any more

than donald trump. i said, it will be about the same as having middle school boys grow up in a world where bill clinton was president of the united states. it's pretty bad. and, you know, said -- >> i don't know how that relates to what we're talking about. >> it relates to the hypocrisy that democrats forget everything that they've been saying on their blogs, in their newspapers, in their magazines over the past 16 years. i'm not even mad about it. it's very funny and here is the great thing, it's all on google. i ask you to do what hillary clinton asked last night. just google all of this and you will see that democrats who are shocked and stunned and deeply saddened this morning were the very ones -- hell, even bernie sanders supporters just six months ago were saying that hillary clinton was rigging the election. >> well, they -- >> i mean, seriously did you all bump your head or do you just think this with err that stupid? i think you think we are that stupid. maybe i am, but the rest of americans aren't. i'm going to have a sip now.

>> if the charge is hypocrisy among pundits in the media there is no question about it. sex life of donald trump and bill clinton forget all that. >> it's unbelievable. >> but coming from the guy who could be president, coming from his mouth, al gore didn't say this two months before the election in 2000. >> and he accepted the outcome. >> john kerry didn't say it before. >> but he contested it. >> it matters because it's been the theme of his campaign that the country is rigged, everything is rigged and here it is finally as their last act rigging the vote against us. >> yeah. >> that's new and that's different. >> hillary clinton was asked to comment for her comments revealed by wikileaks that she made in a paid speech to a brazilian bank in which she said her dream is a hemispheric common market with open trade and open borders. >> is that your dream, open borders? >> well, if you went on to read the rest of the sentence i was talking about energy, you know, we trade more energy with our

neighbors than we trade with the rest of the world combined and i do want us to have an electric grid, an energy system that crosses borders. i think that would be a great benefit to us. >> under her plan you have open borders, you would have a disaster on trade and you will have a disaster with your open borders. >> we will -- >> president obama has deported millions and millions of people just the way it is. >> secretary clinton -- >> we will not have open borders. >> well, secretary -- >> that is a rank mischaracterization. we will have secure borders but we will also have reform. this used to be a bipartisan issue. >> she wants open borders, people are going to pour into our country, people are going to come in from syria, she wants 550% more people than barack obama and he has thousands and thousands of people. they have no idea where they come from and you see, we are going to stop radical islamic terrorism in this country.

she won't even mention the words and neither will president obama. >> let's go to john heilemann. john, it was a heck of a debate out there, you woke up really early there. i have to tell you i'm really, really impressed that the sun is out in las vegas. >> i know. >> but it's not out here. you have such a glow about you that you bring -- >> yes. >> you are the sunshine of my life. what time -- it's like 3:15 there. >> 3:15 a.m. >> thank you for being on. >> it's like we're having some kind of -- it's a bright sunny day here in las vegas. i made the sunrise in the west. >> i love it. i mean, you can talk about the wikileaks discussion, the open borders discussion, but i'd love more what's your general impression of this third -- this third debate? did trump gain anything? did hillary gain? or was it a wash? what was your take away? >> my general impression is that

donald trump has been losing this election for a while, he's losing it more and more each day and so this was the last big moment of the campaign where he had to fundamentally change the dynamic of the race and that although he was -- literally i think the first 30 minutes were his best 30 minutes of any of the three debates i think hillary clinton was excellent throughout. i think they both, in fact, in many respects gave their best debate performances last night. >> totally. >> the reality is that trump did nothing to do what he had to actually do less than three weeks away from election day when he is behind everywhere. >> right. >> falling behind by the day further in the national polling and in the battle ground state polling. he did not revolutionize the race last night and the one thing and we can argue about this, i know, joe, you have a view about the hypocrisy of people, the truth is the one answer he gave was an answer that no one around him wanted him to give. ivanka trump earlier in the day, kellyanne conway, mike pence just a few minutes before the start of the debate to a

bloomberg politics reporter all cleanly answered that question of course we will honor the outcome, the results of the could you tell come. of course we will honor the results of the election. that's what they wanted him to stay on stage and it's not what he said. what he said is something that has created a firestorm, again, whether you want to call it a hypocritical firestorm or not, i think it's justifiable, but regardless of my views about that it is clearly blotted out all of the other strong elements of his performance last night and he's going to spend the next couple days trying to clean it up. last night on in network michael steele who is not a tip critical democrat or pound dit, former chairman of the republican party said what donald trump said last night was disqualifying for the presidency. i think there are a lot of people, a lot of republicans of good will and faithfulness to the party who feel pretty strongly about the fact that trump violated a democratic norm by saying that. >> it's not the first time that's happened? >> it will certainly blot it out for the media who will obsess

over this over the next 48 hours, we will see what the rank and file voters think about it. so, john, what you're saying is they both may have turned in their best debate performance but there wasn't anything that would change the fundamental dynamics of this race. >> these debates are about moments, that's what they always are about, they are about the couple moments that get remembered. the two things most people will remember from this debate one of them is the thing we have been discussing that i think is going to get a huge amount of coverage for the rest of today and probably early into the next week and will bring us back to the question does trump continue to talk about the election being stolen and rigged election, he has been doing that for a week, does he keep doing that now, does that continue to crowd out any other message that he has, that's one and the other moment at the end when he made that snide comment where he said that hillary clinton was a nasty woman. for a guy who needs to change perceptions of him primarily with college educated women voters many of whom he has lost

over the course of the last ten days and who hillary clinton was focused in a laser like way, that's the only group she was addressing last night. if she keeps her strength up with that group the election is over and i don't think trump did anything to change it last night, made it worse for himself with that one snide nasty comment with her. >> trump gains women voters over the next 19 days or he loses the election. there is no way he can come close unless he picks up some of the women voters that he has lost since the fat shaming week. >> he's going to lose. i mean, he's going to lose. i agree with everything that john heilemann said with one additional caveat, not that anybody cares what i think, but i think -- >> we all care. >> -- i think that moment when he said what he said about accepting the results of the election exposed himself as a coward. a guy who had done this for a year and a half, he has built up his own constituency, he's got a huge percentage of people in this country relying on him, believing in him and he knows

he's going to lose now and he's a coward. he couldn't grasp the responsibility for what he has set in motion himself. he diminished himself, he diminished his family, he diminished his brand, his business and his political party. >> all right. still ahead on "morning joe," a live interview with donald trump's campaign manager kellyanne conway, we will talk about that with her. plus vice presidential candidate tim kaine joins us to give us his take on the debate and where things stand in north carolina. he's complaining there as voting gets under way in the key swing state. and later mark hall bern, bill chris stall and bob woodward and we will talk about a big night for foreign policy. >> assad who turned out to be a lot tougher than she thought and now she's going to say, oh, he loves assad. he is just much tougher and much smarter than her and obama. >> she doesn't like putin because putin has outsmarted her

at every step of the way. >> our country is so outplayed by putin and assad and, by the way, by iran, nobody can believe how stupid our leadership is. announcer: they'll test you.

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i asked a simple question, she's been doing this for 30 years, why the hell didn't you do it over the last 15, 20 years? you were very much involved -- >> i voted -- >> excuse me, my turn. you were very much involved in every aspect of this country very much and you do have experience, i say the one thing you have over me is experience, but it's bad experience because what you've done has turned out badly. >> he raised the 30 years of experience, let me just talk briefly about that. you know, back in the 1970s i worked for the children's defense fund and i was taking on discrimination against african-american kids in schools, he was getting sued by the justice department for racial discrimination in his apartment buildings. in the 1980s i was working to reform the schools in arkansas, he was borrowing $14 million from his father to start his businesses. in the 1990s i went to beijing

and i said women's rights are human rights, he insulted a former miss universe, alysha machado, called her an eating machine. >> give me a break. >> and on the day when i was in the situation room monitoring the raid that brought osama bin laden to justice he was hosting the celebrity apprentice. >> much more ahead from last night's debate, plus the must read opinion pages. we are back in a moment. liberty mutual stood with me when i was too busy with the kids to get a repair estimate. liberty did what? yeah, with liberty mutual all i needed to do to get an estimate was snap a photo of the damage and voila! voila! (sigh) i wish my insurance company had that... wait! hold it... hold it boys... there's supposed to be three of you... where's your brother? where's your brother? hey, where's charlie? charlie?! you can leave worry behind when liberty stands with you. liberty stands with you™ liberty mutual insurance

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all right. the last several months of the race have at times been overshadowed by hacks on groups ranging from the democratic party to state level governments to john podesta's e-mails. u.s. officials are putting much of it at the feet of russian intelligence and hillary clinton called on donald trump to answer to the spy craft last night. >> i actually think the most important question of this evening, chris, is finally will donald trump admit and condemn that the russians are doing this and make it clear that he will not have the help of putin in this election, that he rejects russian espionage against americans which he actually encouraged in the past. >> that was a great pivot off the fact that she wants open borders.

okay? how did we get off to putin? i don't know putin. he said nice things about me. if we got along well that would be good. he has no respect for her, he has no respect for our president and i will tell you what, we are in very serious trouble because we have a country with tremendous numbers of nuclear war heads, 1,800, by the way, where they expanded and we didn't. from everything i see has no respect for this person. >> well, that's because he would rather have a puppet for president. >> no puppet. you are the puppet. >> it's pretty clear you won't admit -- >> you are the puppet. she has no idea whether it's russia, china or anybody else. she has no idea. >> i am quoting 17 -- >> you have no idea -- >> do you doubt 17 military and civilian agencies. >> our country has no idea. >> he would rather believe vladimir putin than the military and civilian intelligence professionals who are sworn to protect us.

i find that just absolutely -- >> she doesn't like putin because putin has outsmarted her at every step of the way. >> under pressure from chris wallace trump did condemn any state-backed cyber attacks. last month he said i condemn last month the director of national intelligence issued a release saying in part, quote, the u.s. intelligence community is confident that the russian government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from u.s. persons and institutions. now, that's an important issue and frightening, actually, i think that's the next front really for the war, for wars that we will be confronting, but she did pivot away from it very quickly so she didn't have to actually answer what was in the e-mails. it was interesting. he had a good point. >> that was her strategy. it was like a trigger, when she heard the word wikileaks get off the content of e-mail quickly and turn it to hacked and how

that hacker could be linked to donald trump. >> he dropped the ball on that. >> perhaps that would be the front pages of the pages and the conversation here and other places might be dominated for that but he for whatever reason did not. >> that clip reminded me, chris wallace was fantastic. >> he was. >> as a moderator last night. >> he was. >> john heilemann, take off your sunglasses and get in on the conversation. we have seen over the past 24 to 48 hours more republicans starting to come out saying they are not going to talk about what's contained in the wikileaks information, they are not going to say anything about it. last night steve schmidt gave an impactioned plea for republicans to not talk about it, don't report on it. last night donald trump still claiming that he didn't know it was russia that was actually hacking these documents. >> yeah, i mean, i find it extraordinary that he is continuing to maintain that posture given the unanimity

among u.s. intelligence officials about this. you mentioned on the show yesterday marco rubio's statement, he talked about it on camera yesterday, too, you know, making the dual point, number one that this is an unprecedented thing to have a major power, a major foreign power trying to intervene this way in a u.s. election. whether they are trying to intervene on trump's behalf or just trying to create chaos and there is some difference of opinion about that, some people think that putin really wants trump to win, some people think that the reason they are doing this with the hacking has been -- is mainly just to sew mayhem in the u.s. electoral system, it doesn't matter who wins the election but they want to have the sense among americans that the system is flawed and chaotic. so i can't say what i think putin's motive is, but it is strange that trump won't go fully there. and then there is the question that rubio raised yesterday which is i think republicans -- it makes sense to me to make the argument that republicans would want in normal circumstances to stay away from this because

while in this instance the hacking is directed against democrats, the next time it could very easily be directed against republicans and think about it this way, in any previous election cycle that we have covered i would have imagined whether this was barack obama, mitt romney, barack obama, john mccain, go back, imagine what would have happened during the election if the two nominees would have come out and issued a joint statement and said we are not going to allow vladimir putin to get in the middle of the american election. that's obviously not what's happening in this instance. >> it is extraordinary, mike, we have a foreign power, hostile foreign power who mitt romney was right in 2012 is one of the greatest threats to this country that is hacking into our documents and trying to fix or trying to influence an inn election. i mean, it has never happened before in the history of this republic. >> in talking to people in the intelligence community over the past three or four days it seems there is a small consensus that

it's aimed more at creating chaos among the american electorate rather than picking a side. >> right. >> rather than picking trump or picking hillary clinton. but to sew chaos which would buttress the rigged election arguments that we have been hearing from one side of the aisle here today. >> different motivation. >> still ahead on "morning joe" -- >> you know who the big winner in mosul is going to be after you eventually get it and the only reason they did it is because she's running for the office of president and they want to look tough, they want to look good, he violated the red line in the sand and he made so many mistakes, made all mistakes, that's why we have the great migration but she wanted to look good for the election and so they're going in. >> so donald trump points to politics behind the u.s. backed offensive in mosul. we're going to talk about that with the "washington post" bob woodward and rich art haass from the council on foreign relations. we will be right back. mple as possible for you.

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the stories have been largely debunked, those people, i don't know those people, i have a feeling how they came, i believe it was her campaign that did it. i would say the only way, because those stories are all totally false, i have to say that, and i didn't even apologize to my wife who is sitting right here because i didn't do anything. i didn't know any of these women, i didn't see these women, these women -- the woman on the plane, the woman -- i think they want either fame or her campaign did it and i think it's her campaign. i believe, chris, that she got these people to step forward. if it wasn't, they get their ten minutes of fame, but they were all totally -- it was all fiction, it was lies and it was fiction. >> wow. >> that was donald trump responding to questions about the women who have come forward in recent weeks accusing him of unwanted advances and sexual misconduct. also in attendance last night a

former tv news reporter who claims she was sexual assaulted by bill clinton in 1980. earlier in the day the website breitba breitbart.com posted the interview with leslie millwee who said clinton groped her on three different occasions while he was the governor of arkansas. millwee told friends about the alleged incident in the late 1990s. nearly bill clinton nor hillary clinton's campaign commented on the allegations. so here we go. this could just go back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. i don't know. >> so you guys were talking off camera about something that i totally agree with which is i don't care what's going on on the campaign. shake hands. >> right. >> shake hands before, shake hands after. >> certainly after. >> it doesn't matter what -- i know -- i know that might offend

a lot of people. it sends a message. >> a good point. >> to americans, it sends a message to our children, it sends a message to everybody. >> like in a boxing match after two guys pound each other for 12 rounds the last round they shake hands or give a pound before it's all said and done. >> it's jest very small. >> john heilemann was there any sense in the hall among people about the failure of the two candidates to shake hands after the event was over? >> mike, i didn't hear much commentary about it. i think when we saw in the previous debate the two candidates not shaking hands before the event there was a lot -- there are audible gasps in the hall and in the media filing center, too, back in st. louis. i didn't notice it as much at this debate. i have to say just in general this third debate was a just atmospheric clee a much more subdued debate than the first two, the first one is always like the first presidential debate, lots of tension and

excitement, the second one in this cycle in st. louis because of the "access hollywood" tape that was also a very charged event and the press conference beforehand with bill clinton's accusers. this event felt to me like the third debate in a normal presidential election more or less, it was sort of like -- there is a sense of kind of exhaustion that has overcome a lot of the people around the campaign and as you guys noted the first half hour, 45 minutes was a pretty substantive discussion, you guys praised chris wallace earlier, i thought he did a very good job. that first 45 minutes seemed like a normal a presidential debate, they were going back and forth on issues and then things started to get more into the kind of territory we've come to expect in this campaign which is personal and harsh. >> people have said about me from time to time at my better moments almost normal. it was almost normal for a minute. willie, there was sort of an exhaustion that set in around the event, but also an

exhaustion among people that are following this campaign. our friends have said, come on, i know who i'm voting for. no mas. >> i was with a group of people last night, some for trump, some for hillary clinton they both said to a man i've made up my mind, i've been watching this campaign for 18 months now, i've known both of these people for 25 years in public life, i know what i'm doing, let's fast forward to the end of this movie and just get to voting. people are completely exhausted. >> the british are like a month campaign. >> yeah, five, six weeks. >> they are like middle of parliament and, you know, they call an election. let's have an election and six weeks later -- >> and then the moving truck backs up to 10 do you think street and overnight get out. >> they're gone. that's it. that's how you do it. coming up, donald trump's campaign manager kellyanne conway reaction to last night's debate when she joins us live. last night she retweeted robert

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it was politically timed. i think the mosul campaign -- there was an objective to get this done while president obama

still in office. the rise in isis in iraq and syria, the birth of the so-called caliphate has probably been the blackest stain on the obama administration and i think there was a determination to get this operation under way and to get mosul liberated from isis while president obama still in office. >> that was nbc's rich around engel last night with his take on why the u.s. tell graphed the assault on mosul, an operation donald trump suggests is being carried out for political purposes at home. joining us now richard haass and in washington pulitzer prize winning associate editor of the "washington post" bob woodward. is there a point to the political motivation, richard? >> i've never behind in useful to sit around and ascribe people's motives, usually there's many reasons people do things. i can't tell you it's political. the fact is isis has set up shop in iraq and syria, it's good to squeeze them out of both, turn them into, if you will, a normal terrorist organization rather

than a pseudo nation state able to do -- able to do much more. it's going to take a long time, the biggest question is what's going to happen afterwards. for example, if the shia ma ligss are involved in the liberation of mosul it will set the stage for creating a vacuum for a future isis to fill a gap. this is just another chapter. >> i want to ask you quickly, richard, one of the central themes and criticisms of donald trump against hillary clinton is that the obama foreign policy guided and helped for four years by secretary clinton created the vacuum that led to isis. is that a fair criticism? >> it added to the vacuum that created isis, you had things in the middle east itself to explain t but sure, what the united states has not done in syria, the pull out of troops in iraq, afghanistan, going into libya and with no follow-up plan, sure, we helped create geo strategic vacuums that isis and

groups like isis were able to exploit and that to me is part of the obama foreign policy legacy. >> bob woodward, syria is i would say just singularly the black stain, perhaps, on the obama foreign policy legacy. if anything it's going to be politically motivated in terms of action now why wouldn't it be to try to end the suffering there? >> well, because that's such a monument el task but i think your correspondent richard engel had it exactly right. they want to do something, move forward a foreign policy success or at least not another setback before obama ends his term, but for trump to say this is designed to help hillary's campaign, i don't see any evidence of that. you know, in the kind of free-for-all atmosphere you people have here i was listening to joe's early mini outburst

about the reaction to trump's statement that he will not abide by the election results necessarily and i was thinking, you know, what's going to happen if he loses on january 20th when the new president is supposed to move in, is he going to send the trump moving van to the white house? it just won't happen. and if he think thinks are rigged, if he loses the election there is an apparatus, richard haass knows this very well, in transitions where the person who is elected is going to have the information in the moving vans, in the offices and so in a sense i agree with joe that the idea that somehow this has meaning,

no. >> it has no meaning. it has no meaning. and the thing is -- and i guess i'm just old enough that i've been through enough of these situations, richard haass, that were supposed to be constitutional crises, impeachment was a constitutional cries sees, this is the end of the republic. we had the vote, the senate had the vote, america moved on. the 2000 election -- >> battle for the white house. >> we are the laughing stock of america, republicans are rigging the election, we are a banana republic, it's a constitutional -- i swear to god there are three or four times the government shut down in like four years that i heard it was a constitutional crisis from which we will never -- we will. donald trump loses, james carville said it last night, whoever loses suddenly becomes much smaller and becomes irrelevant overnight. >> that's true, but put it in a larger context, the lack of civility, you were talk being with the debate, everything that's come before, the

statement last night. the rest of the world sees this -- >> how long has that lack of civility been around? >> it's gotten worse. in the debate, the whole campaign, i thought again his statement last night. we're supposed to stand for something in the world and -- >> republican -- republicans accused bill clinton of murder back in the 1990s, in 2000 democrats said that george bush basically was a nazi. from 2008 forward republicans have said that barack obama wasn't a christian and he wasn't born in america. it's been pretty bad for a long time and it is bad now, but this is part -- this is a symptom of 25 years of politics as blood sport and it's been gross and it's gross now. >> -- has been around through all of this. >> but it's been a sustained part of mr. trump's campaign and i think, again, from a foreign policy point of view the example american democracy sets is a

powerful tool of our standing in the world. >> right. >> we want to encourage other countries economically and politically to adopt markets, to be more open than closed. i don't think this sort of thing helps. the sort of demonstration we had last night, the questioning -- >> doesn't it look like the center is going to hold. >> if hillary clinton wins? >> the beast is not slouching towards bethlehem, the center is going to hold for all the elites in new york and in washington, d.c., they should be -- they should be relaxed because the center will hold. >> the center will hold in terms of the election outcome. >> right. >> the question of whether the center is able to govern seems to me is a longer story. >> i have a quick question for bob woodward. bob, you said that the last debate when trump talked about insisting on a federal prosecutor i think you might have said that's what nixon. he converted the presidency to an instrument of personal revenge. elaborate for 30 seconds. what are the rm fictions if he

does that. >> i don't think it would happen. you talk to any lawyer and they wouldn't accept the job as attorney general with that sort of instruction. real quickly i thought hillary clinton did a great job last night. what do presidents do? they need to control three things, facts, goals and their emotions and she made it clear she can do this and you could see her, not everyone is going to like it, but you can see her operating as president. >> you know, bob, i would love to have you on again sometime very soon and have you talk. you speak as a man who actually has been in washington, d.c. for more than a few years and knows how things work and i only say that because, you know, i have so many -- people say what if donald trump becomes president? it will be the end of democracy -- i said, well, if he does what he says he's going to do, he'll be impeached in a week or -- you know, he will find out

that paul ryan has more power than he does and that actually the most powerful person in washington is the minority leader of the senate. he will find out that the supreme court will flick away, you know, legislation that they don't like. it's this remarkable -- remarkable system that we have set up that you have seen for 30 years and you talk about nixon, 40 years, that frustrates those who would try to subvert james madison and alexander hamilton's constitution. it just doesn't happen, does it, because of our system of checks and balances. >> bus it would be a jolt to the system to have trump as president. i'm sure of that. >> right. oh, sure. but checks and balances. >> bob woodward, why don't you stay with us because we want to continue this conversation. >> we'll talk about it on the other side.

>> and richard haass stay with us if you can. coming up at the top of the hour the "associated press" offered this lead sentence to their dire wire reports of trump's performance last night threatening to upend a fundamental pillar of american democracy. >> that sounds dramatic. >> my god, what did he say? >> something about cats and dogs living together. >> we will dig into whether that's an overreach and the implication to trump's campaign. plus democratic vice presidential candidate tim kaine -- >> maybe i should stay off the twitter today. >> no twitter for you. >> and trump campaign manager kellyanne conway, join us in our next hour after a debate that descended into name calling.

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she has been outsmarted and outplayed worse than anybody i have ever seen in any government whatsoever and she always will be. >> he's unfit and he proves it every time he talks. >> you are the one that is unfit. john podesta said you have terrible instincts, bernie sanders said you have bad judgment. i agree with both. >> well, you should ask bernie sanders who he is supporting for president. >> if you become president this country is going to be in some mess, believe me. >> i would be happy to compare what we do with the trump foundation which took money from other people and bought a 6 foot portrait of donald. i mean, who does that? >> i mean, who does that? willie geist, our foundation did it. >> didn't you guys -- >> yeah, we did, we started a foundation, it's great, we are in polo like vests and it was worth, it right. >> all off the books, though. we're smart about it. >> good cause. >> and we said it was for the or

fa fans. >> we will come back to "morning joe." >> still with us, we have richard haass, editor of the "washington post" bob woodward, managing editor of bloomberg politics john heilemann. >> it's high noon there. >> he is in vegas. god, he must be tired. >> editor of the weekly standard bill kristol and editor of the fix at the "washington post" -- >> let's get right into this. >> get into the fix. fix, what did you think? who won? >> i thought she won. >> i like this. this is a good answer. >> it's donald trump. >> no. go ahead. >> i thought that she won because he didn't do sort of what he could have done which is the first 30 minutes i thought he was really pretty good and i

tweeted out this is donald trump's best first 30 minutes and then in the 31st minute he immediately starts interrupting her. >> it happened. >> i think he can't -- he can't sort of stay in a certain mode. if he was the donald trump for the first 30 minutes for the next 60 minutes i think he would have won, but anyone who watched that debate i don't think that it changes a bunch of minds. >> that's what matters here. wrist chris sta bill kristol it's all about changing the dynamics. did anything happen last night that would have made anybody change their mind and go back to donald trump? >> no, but i think something happened that would make some people leave donald trump. i don't like -- yes, on style points style was a little better in the first 30 minutes and he had a couple clever insults but that's not the point. the headline out of this debate is obviously the failure to say ahead of time that you will accept the results of the democratic election in america. pretty unprecedented.

doesn't mean that there's going to be violence in the streets, certainly not in others now say who cares what donald trump says. he's going to be a failed fluke presidential candidate and he should be ignored on election night and republicans need so say that. >> failed fluke. >> yes. he won the nomination in a flukey way. >> your people nominated him. that's not a fluke. >> i hope it was a fluke. >> he beat 16 people. the republican party nominated him. >> some republicans refuse to support him and he's going to lose the general election. >> it's not a fluke. >> i think it was a fluke in some ways. >> a fluke is something no one expected. >> the republican party -- does that make you feel better about it? >> yes. >> you feel great because the republican party nominated a guy who is really a bad guy as president and you think it's funny as amusinamusing. >> no, i actually think republicans need to come clean on themselves. >> what is come clean on themselves. >> u.s. j be honest about what's right and wrong. >> what's wrong is donald trump.

this show -- this show was very tough -- this show was really tough on trump in late 2015 and early 2016. >> we were. >> are you going to pretend that. >> we were. >> if that's your way -- >> he wouldn't answer a question. do you mean when he peppered him -- >> a lot of people -- >> mass dee for dated did sh. >> a lot of people accommodated donald trump at different times. i'm not going to get into it. >> you just did. you lied. please don't come on my air and lie. you said in late '15 early december -- i can't even believe you are doing this, i don't know why you are so bitter >> i'm not bitter. i'm trying to say that republicans -- >> you're practically crying. you're practically crying. >> i am upset about this election. >> early december -- in early december 2015 we compared it to germany 1933 what he was doing. >> really? >> really. >> you treated him that way when he called in, is that right? >> we treated him tough. >> you asked the most tough questions. >> we did. >> we don't need to get into

this. >> it's too late. you're bitter -- you come on here practically crying, we have it on tape, you're screaming at mika. >> i'm fine. >> why is paul ryan, why are mitch mcconnell. >> that's what i was going to say. >> that's what mika was going to say. >> we are in agreement. >> don't attack us. >> i'm not attacking us. >> why is paul ryan still endorsin endorsing, why does mitch mcconnell still endorse him. by the way, while you are attacking me personally i said from the beginning i would never vote for him. >> you and i -- >> i said i was voting for jeb bush and i said i was voting for john kasich. then we said after the muslim ban that this is what germany looked like in 1933. so i don't know -- >> sorry if we were easy on him. >> i'm sorry we were easy on him. if comparing him to hitler in 1933 is going easy on him -- that was three months before anybody voted. then we were easy on him.

good on you. >> if you behaved in a great way more power to you. >> we did. if you want to answer the question now -- let's start with paul ryan because we've been asking that question -- >> he should say he does not support donald trump. >> and what if he doesn't? >> it's not a fluke. >> what does that mean it's not a fluke. >> what it means is the most powerful republicans in america are still endorsing him. >> yes, well, i'm very unhappy about this. >> is paul ryan is legitimate contender for president in 2020 if he does not withdraw his endorsement of donald trump? >> that's honestly hard to say. i would have trouble supporting somebody in 2020 that has rationalized trump. >> he's still endorsing him. >> it is not a judgment i agree with, a judgment you two agree with, it's not a judgment most americans are going to agree with. practically speaking in the next two and a half weeks republicans need to say that the election is

democratic. the people who support trump need to say this because trump will get 40 million votes or something like that, 50 million votes and there can be danger if those voters think the election -- >> what about mike pence? is mike pence disqualifying. >> yes, i think so. i think so. and i think chris christie and rudy guiliani and mike pence and all these republicans who have run for office who have won and lost need to say you need to say ahead of time -- you need to say -- we need to say as a country that the election is legitimate and we need to abide by the election results. if donald trump wants to be a sore loser on november 8th he can be a sore loser. >> he didn't say he was going to do that -- >> he was going to leave it up in the area. what's he going to wait and see? >> i don't know. i mean, i'm just saying -- >> you can challenge elections -- i mean -- >> 2000, 2004 -- >> you challenge the rules. adrian gonzales was probably safe at home plate in the second inning last night, there is a photo showing that and he is complaining about that but the

dodgers accepted the result of the game and ahead of time they said they would accept the results of the game. >> as will everybody else. >> oh, my goodness. >> let's watch some of the debate. >> alex, you just choose something. >> just throw it up on the screen. >> do you make the same commitment that you will absolutely -- sir, that you will absolutely accept the result of this election? >> i will look at it at the time. i'm not looking at anything now, i will look it at the time. what i've seen -- what i've seen is so bad. first of all, the media is so dishonest and so corrupt and the pile on is so amazing, "the new york times" actually wrote an article about it, it's so dishonest and they've poisoned the minds of the voters but unfortunately for them i think the voters are seeing through it. if you look at your voter rolls you will see millions of people that are registered to vote, millions, this isn't coming from me, this is coming from pugh report and other places, millions of people that are registered to vote that

shouldn't be registered to vote. so let me just give you within other thing, i talk about the corrupt media, i talk about the millions of people. i will tell you one other thing. she shouldn't be allowed to run. she's guilty of a very, very serious crime. >> you said several things in that debate which were not true, sir. you said that aleppo has basically fallen, in fact -- in fact -- >> it's a at that cast fee. >> it is a catastrophe. >> have you seen it? have you seen it? >> sir -- >> have you seen what's happened to aleppo. >> if i may finish my question. >> take a look at it. >> there are a quarter of a million people still tlifg there and being slaughtered. >> and they are being slaughtered because of bad decisions. >> if i may just finish here and you also said that syria and russia are busy fighting isis, in fact, they have been the ones who have been bombing and

shelling eastern aleppo and they just announced a humanitarian pause in effect admitting that they have been bombing and shelling aleppo. would you like to clear that up, sir? >> aleppo is a disaster, it's a humanitarian nightmare, but it has fallen from the -- from any standpoint. i mean, what do you need a signed document? take a look at aleppo. >> i think a no fly zone could save hines and hasten the end of the conflict. i am well aware of the really legitimate concerns that you have expressed from both the president and the general. this would not be done just on the first day. this would take a lot of negotiation. so i think we could strike a deal and make it very clear to the russians and the syrians that this was something that we believe was in the best interests of the people on the ground in syria, it would help us with our fight against isis. >> what the russians are doing is unspeakable along with assad. donald trump is critical of barack obama's policy but it seems that he doubles down on it

because he doesn't want to do anything to go in to syria to relieve the suffering in aleppo. is hillary clinton for people that -- like us who are concerned about the humanitarian crisis there and the chaos that barack obama's syria policy has caused to the region and the world, is hillary clinton the best bet we have to -- to at least have a shot of bringing hope to aleppo, bringing peace to aleppo, bringing peace to syria? >> i'm not sure at this point there's too much you can do to aleppo. what is aleppo? aleppo is a lot of dead people, a lot of rubble, but there are things we can and should do for syria. >> look at these pictures. there a precedent in u.s. history, recent u.s. history where we have allowed the russians or allowed another major power to kill as many people as the russians and the

syrians have killed and allowed this type of suffering under the watchful eye of drones and the international media? have we ever sat by and let this happen and do nothing? >> not with this kind of external intervention, you could argue in the balkans we were late to intervene, in rwanda we sat on our lines. >> but nothing in this line. >> what history won't understand is why at points over the last five to six years there were things we could and should have done not to solve syria, not to make syria a normal country like sweden but to have kept a lot of people alive who should have been kept alive. >> and the suffering. >> and there's things we can still do now, there's parts of syria we could still create safe near the jordanian border, the answer can't be doing nothing or try to make syria a normal country. there are gray area in between options that we should have done and we could still do and i think hillary clinton is signaling that she would do that. >> bob woodward, is syria as

much barack obama's legacy as iraq was george w. bush's? >> quite possibly. what's happened is obama has been in charge as commander in chief, he does not like war and you dig into this as i've tried to do and he wants to avoid a ground war, ground commitment, he sees what happened in iraq and afghanistan which, you know, is a 15-year war that is not resolved in any way and so his answer as the drone strikes themselves controversial, but he's the one who is making these decisions. hillary clinton was pushing him, lots of people were pushing him, give more support to the rebels in syria and so forth and he's very cautious on this and, you know, he's going to be able to leave office and say i kept this

out of another major war. >> and started a holocaust. all right. put that in your presidential library and smoke it. >> wow. ouch. >> hillary clinton earned her reputation as an interventionist or at least more of an interventionist than president obama is. she was asked about no fly zones, something she has proposed before and raise gs the specter of dog fights over syria. is there evidence that she will change president obama's policy in syria? she's talked around it a little bit but will she be, in fact, more interventionist there? >> i think she would like to be more interventionist broadly speaking. that's who she is. both as secretary of state, in the senate as well, i mean, i think that's her natural bent. the i think this i always caution, and this goes for -- it's more true for foreign policy than domestic policy but i think it's true for both is it's easier to say what you would do in a campaign than to

execute it as a president. there are many things that george w. bush did that barack obama said he would -- i mean, guantanamo bay is the big one, that he would do something about -- >> i hear he's going to close that in a year from the day of his inauguration. very excited about it. because it's so important and he's going to close it in a year. i have it marked down on my calendar. do you remember that, mika? >> yeah. >> that's the difficulty. i mean, look, we all know that campaigning and governing are two different things, some people are good at one, some people are good at the other, but saying that you will do something as it relates to syria and actually when you are president being able to execute it or it making sense to execute is a lot harder. >> it's a lot harder. >> look at president obama's presidency as it relates to foreign policy, i mean, it just is. >> john heilemann, what's interesting is a lot of times you will have candidates overpromise how i'm going to win the war, how i'm going to do this or that.

hillary clinton is in a unique position where she has to underpromise what she's going to do because of her base, because of the bernie sanders democrats. the fact is she's been closer to a neo con than a lot of republicans i think bill kristol would say than like myself over the years but her natural instinct is as madeline albright said of bosnia, to go in, not to hold back. does hillary clinton face if she's elected president of the united states does she face her biggest challenge from her own base when it comes to her instincts on what to do on issues like syria and aleppo? >> well, yeah. i think, you know, there are a variety of areas, i think there is no doubt that she is more interventionist and has a greater instinct towards intervention than either barack obama or her husband for that matter or probably any democrat of the modern era. >> yes. >> probably more interventionist than john kerry, more interventionist than al gore,

too. the democratic party has moved to the left on foreign policy and domestic policy. yeah, i think one of the things -- if hillary clinton wins and wins by a substantial margin on november 8th she's -- she might very well have democrats controlling the senate, probably not the house, but keeping together that coalition, having the democratic party not fracture on any lines foreign and domestic is going to be very important it seems to me going forward. i think on foreign policy that's her biggest challenge but on domestic policy she wants to try to get a bunch of things done in the first year and not blow the democratic party into pieces. >> richard, you disagree with me. >> under our constitution, our political system the president has tremendous latitude, if hillary clinton wants to do more in syria, we are not talking about massive numbers of american ground troops, if she wants to tomorrow if she's elected set up a safe air she can just do it. >> right. >> she has tremendous latitude.

>> i'm just saying there will be, though, given what we know hillary clinton's views on foreign policy are, it actually is closer -- i know you don't want to hurt her chances of beating donald trump right now, but her view on foreign policy and intervention is, say, closer to your view certainly than rand paul. >> yeah. >> certainly than -- >> i hope you are right that she is the secret neo con, she was barack obama's secretary of state for four years when the syria debacle began in 2011/'12 so i do hold that against her. i would be more likely -- more open to voting for hillary clinton if she hadn't been obama's secretary of state, but something said that -- >> what is going on? >> what was that? oh, my god. >> i have you guys so rattled that now bizarre -- >> i'm not rattled it's elvis costello. accidents will happen. >> donald trump checking in to see how he did. >> your phone is going crazy. >> i've been trying to turn this thing off. you will be very pleased to

know, john heilemann, that accidents will happen came up. i swear to god what is -- >> give it to a young person. give it to willie. >> take this. >> i love -- >> god. >> i love that your solution was just to throw it in the garbage can. >> trump has the private number that overrides all -- >> just trying to keep you awake. can i say one thing about what republicans need to do, though, on congress that john said he thought republicans would hold the house, i'm really not sure about that and they need to pivot right now and say hillary clinton is going to be the next president of the united states and if you want checks and balances especially in domestic policy you need a republican congress and especially a republican house. >> the problem with that, though -- >> i know. >> joe heck in nevada he is six points behind. >> trump supporters will put a lot of pressure on them, they don't like hearing that. if they passively -- this is what mika was saying if they passively say i don't like trump but i guess i'm for him they're

going to get dragged down. >> i think the damage is done. i've heard from insiders that people like paul ryan are going to rescind their endorsement when they realize they're going to lose. what did he need to do to get that endorsement or not get that endorsement? it's incredible what they've overlooked. >> transcripts and videotape it lives. the day that paul ryan endorsed trump we said big mistake, you get nothing for it. >> you get nothing for it. >> it's only going to get worse every single day and you've put yourself into a corner without getting any commitments, without getting any promises. >> i agree with that but i do think that republican members now they have done last chance, i suppose, after this debate and the occasion they can use, i mean, the legitimately is his refusal to simply say of course the election is legitimate, of course i will abide by the results, i will follow whatever legal processes other candidates might follow if there have to be recounts but it's different than saying i'll keep you guessing

about what i'm going to say. i think this is the last moment where the republicans can somewhat liberate themselves from donald trump. otherwise mika is going to be right and the party will be much more stained than it needed to have been. >> bob woodward, will the republic survive, bob? >> -- definitely going to. what's interesting, i shouldn't lose sight of what happened last night. joe, you've done this in politics. >> right. >> what hillary clinton did is kept the discussion off the areas that are vulnerable to her. her e-mails and the money, the clinton foundation, it barely came up, she didn't have to talk about it, all of the paid speeches and so forth and tactically it was quite brilliant. if you're donald trump in that debate you're going in and you have got to say let's talk about e-mails, let's talk about the clinton foundation and money and

he totally failed. >> he did bring those up. >> he put them up -- >> he did, but -- >> i've got to say, though, i think almost anybody in tennis terms would suggest that hillary held serve. >> yeah. >> donald trump did not break serve. hillary held serve and so now we're on to the last 19 days basically where we were before the debate began. >> yeah. >> right. >> or maybe a little bit worse if people are offended as the media -- the mainstream media machine and bill kristol who is part of that conspiracy. >> bill, we love having you on. >> i'm flattered. >> bill and i, we fought, we went back and forths we're friends and we will always be friends and this is what you do. >> good to see you, buddy. >> good to see you, thanks for having me. >> i'm going to beat the hell out of you in the hall. >> i know. >> i'm joking.

>> mika had a funny look on her face when you reached over to shake my hands. >> be afraid of mika, don't be afraid of me. >> well, i think we have fun. i love jousting with you. all right. bill chris stall, bob woodward, richard haass and john heilemann, thank you all. still ahead on "morning joe," trump campaign manager kellyanne conway joins us live in just a few minutes, she stands by her candidate's comments last night saying remember al gore in 2000. but first tim kaine joins us live from north carolina where he's campaigning today. he was busy tweeting last night including one that said watching donald defend his behavior makes me sick to my stomach. you're watching "morning joe." we will be right back. sure, we could have stacked these tires. or put them on a rack. but the specialists at ford like to show off their strengths: 13 name brands.

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debate between a presidential candidate and his own running mate. we go head to head on the big issues. the election. >> we will absolutely accept the results of the election. >> the whole thing is one big

fix. >> abortion. >> donald trump and i would never support legislation that punished women. >> there has to be some form of punishment. >> it's prez versus veep and only one can prevail. don't miss the epic battle, the first presidential versus his own vice presidential debate saturday night on sbnbcmb c-span. >> let's go to las vegas right now. managing editor of bloomberg politics mark halperin. look, it's dark outside. there's a solar eclipse. your friend heilemann was in sunlight with cars streaming down the strip. >> he's in a different part of vegas. >> exactly. he was in east vegas, the sun comes up earlier there. so what's it looks like from west vegas? score the fight for us last night. >> i mean, i'm fascinated by a parallel universe in which trump hadn't said what he said about respecting the results because he had a lot of good moments, i

think he got more of his message out than he ever has, he had the demeanor a lot of people wanted to see but it's no doubt that it's the revenge of the elites, elites do not accept that this was an appropriate answer and it's not just the coverage in the immediate aftermath of the debate, the coverage this morning but until he explains it and gets in synch with everyone on his campaign team i don't think he's going to get to talk about much else and that means every bit of good he might have done last night with a strong performance and her strong performance i don't think matters much. >> i'm sure people disagree with me, the suggestion of my question, how many people in scranton, pennsylvania, care about what he said in that answer compared to people in news rooms that are -- whimpering and whining with their, you know -- >> almost -- >> that's why i said it's the revenge of the elites, elites in both parties have been against trump from the beginning, they look at this answer as wrong,

morally wrong against our traditions so the elites have the power to make this the whole debate. kellyanne conway and others came into the spin room and said why are you seizing on one moment? because it's a moment that is out of synch with everyone else on his campaign, a moment that offends the sense iblngts of elites and it will dominate forever what this debate is about. i think what he said was wrong and his tone was wrong and it was an unforced error but there is no doubt, joe, you're right, normal people won't care about that answer. that's why i said again elites corolla lot of this process, they don't like that reason and it was not an acceptable answer in the realm of american discourse. >> i think that's a measured good analysis. >> i think you're exactly right. i have to say mika and i both agree he shouldn't have said it, it was wrong to say, but if you are fighting for your life, if you're fighting for your job in pennsylvania or ohio, you're not freaking out like elites in manhattan or georgetown over

that answer. you're listening about trade, listening about bringing jobs back to america, listening about a corrupt america but there is no doubt that is all elites will going to be listening to. again, it is -- let me say again very clearly -- >> harold for hillary wants to speak. >> let me say -- >> that is grossly unfair. i am for her -- >> can i finish what i was going to say. >> i'd love to react to that. >> let him finish. >> sure. >> what i was going to say if i can that would be awesome. >> yes, sir. >> i think what he did was wrong, i would have never answered it that way. i think for elites, though, and media people that have said "the new york times" have just openly said their position, their editorial policy is to be opposition nael opposed to donald trump to try to boil that entire debate down to that one answer is predictable. >> in scranton, pennsylvania, there are kids that play soccer games, football games and basketball games. so at the end of that game if the parents who lose say we

won't accept the outcome because the referee made three bad calls -- >> but he didn't say he wasn't going to accept the outcome. >> that's exactly what he said. >> that's what he said. >> he said he was going to wait. >> i disagree. >> that is the leap that everybody has made. you look on twitter -- he said he won't accept it. he never said that. which is extraordinary the leap that all the media has made. >> i'm not defending him. not for him. for hillary. >> i just got a text message from an assistant district attorney in suffolk county, massachusetts, makes 45 grand a year he is not an elite, here is part of what he says, i'm sick of no one calling this guy out for what he is, a coward. this guy is so afraid of either accepting his own failure or of the perception of others that he is a failure that he's willing to use his platform to try to em plowed the literal bedrock of

our democracy. that guy is not an elite. >> okay. is he imploding the literal bedrock of american -- >> sounds to me -- >> i'm not going to accept the score. >> he didn't say that. he didn't say that. >> that's exactly what he said. >> guys -- >> you can characterize it any way you want but that's exactly what he said last night. >> literally you look at the words that is not what he said. he said he would wait. mika and i are both opposed to it, but we're also opposed to people projecting and expanding upon what he said and it's the same thing -- this sounds so much like this little republican congressman after obamacare and everything gets passed. every three weeks freedom has died a death. >> i think he said a lot worse. >> with us now the democratic vice presidential nominee, i can't call you the vice president yet. >> but soon.

>> senator of virginia tim kaine is live from charlotte, north carolina, where early voting is getting under way today. go ahead, let me tee it up for you, how did hillary do last night? >> i thought she did great. i thought the demeanor and the level of preparation was very, very strong and there were some, you know, key moments in the debate. you guys are talking about one and trying to put it in context, let me put it this way, if all donald trump had said was we'll wait and see and he hadn't been for weeks talking about the fact that the election was rigged, challenging the ability of america to produce a sound democratic election, them it wouldn't have had a big story but the fact that he has been pushing this notion that if he loses it's got to be because things are rigged against him, that's why the moment was so powerful. i lived in a military dictatorship in honduras 35 years ago working for missionaries there and i sure learned that a central pillar of our democracy is accepting the results of an election and a

peaceful transfer of power. after running a campaign that insults virtually every group possible now donald trump is trying to pull the central pillar down and that was very revealing of a guy who just can't take responsibility for his own failures. >> so do you think that if donald trump is elected that we risk being turned into a honduras-like dictatorship that you actually worked under? >> if donald trump is elected and does the kinds of things he says he will do, the deportation force and so many others, we will not look like the country that i think we're destined to be, joe. i would hope that a congress and other leaders would check and make him not able to do some of the things that he has pledged to do, but our goal now here in charlotte where north carolina early voting starts today and all over the country is just get people to participate. the stakes were very, very clear and, you know, you were talking about whether this transfer of power issue is an elite issue, there are a lot of issue last

night that weren't elite issues, when donald trump says nobody respects women more than me but calls hillary such a nasty woman, i think a lot of regular people saw that for what it was, a disrespectful. when donald trump basically said that the u.s. and iraqi military effort to retake mosul which has been under way for years to try to plan and do it a central city to isil when he said that was engineered to try to help hillary whip the election, that was a shocking display of ignorance that was disrespectful of american troops. there were many moments like that last night and hillary just demonstrated the calm and the poise and the demeanor of a president as she had done in the first two debates. >> senator, it's willie geist. we have a tight window with you and a lot to ask you. i want to follow up on the conversation on syria last night which was the question about the no fly zones there. people are watching this every day, seeing new pictures, new video come out of aleppo, they're horrified and they believe, many americans do, that the obama administration should

do more. if you can boil it down for people who are making a decision on foreign policy, what exactly would hillary clinton do differently now about syria hand president obama is doing? >> well, hillary has basically said that we ought to have a humanitarian zone in northern syria where a syrian refugee could go to seek safety, housing, medical care, food, whether you're fleeing assad or isil or collar or hunger there ought to be a place within syria where people can go to receive aid and yes that would have to be patrolled with military assets, the u.s. assets in the air and then regional forces on the ground to make sure that people would be safe. the purpose of it, though, is not military, the purpose is humanitarian because the u.n. security council passed a resolution in february of 2014 saying this should be done and as yet it's not been enforced. >> why isn't it happening, senator? what's your assessment of why that hasn't happened from the united states point of view?

>> it would take the commitment of military assets to protect this humanitarian zone and the current administration has been unwilling to do it. but the problem is we see millions and millions of syrians fleeing outside the country and destabilizing other nations and there's probably 8 million syrians displaced within syria who will continue to leave to flee violence unless there is some provision of a safe zone for them and hillary clinton believes this strongly and so do i. >> all right. senator tim kaine, thank you so much. >> great to have you on. >> we always love talking to you. >> thanks, senator. >> thanks, guys. appreciate it. >> quickly i think we need to stop right here for one second, mika, and explain. now, for 95% of the people who watch this show you know that since last september we have said that we can't vote for donald trump and you know that in december after this -- what was -- this muslim ban said i could never vote for a republican that proposed that

and also said this is what nazi germany looked like -- or what germany probably looked like in 1933 after david duke -- those were three months before any vote was cast in the primary. if we just want to get the timeline straight. we have had so many people lying about what mika and i said, if it were just on twitter it would be one thing but it's actually a lot of media people lying. even three months beforehand. david duke, i said it was disqualifying, first thing i wrote for the "washington post," i said when he was ignorant about david duke, that that was disqualifying, i think that was like in march. anyway, i said all that to say a lot of people watching this morning saying, oh, god, what are they doing and we get a lot of people that are extremists on the far left or far right saying they are for donald trump. we are actually for accuracy here. when people come on the show and said donald trump said last night that he was not going to accept the results of the

election. it's just not true. what he said is i will look at it at the time. now, if your argument is tim kaine's argument which is if you combine what he said last night with what he has been saying all along, that's a legitimate argument to make, but you've got to make that argument. you can't say last night that he said i'm not going to accept the results. what he said was "i will look at it at the time." and i will be glad to place a bet with anybody here, a truck n fact, that donald trump will go quietly into that dark night. >> i agree with you. >> absolutely. >> and he will accept the results. >> yes. >> and he will shake her hand and -- >> i know him. he would do that. >> and he will try to make a lot of money off of this election and he will continue to say things that offend people, but -- >> so why not just say that last night. >> he didn't say what you all are saying that he said. >> what he said last night was

"i will look at it at the time." >> does that say i will not accept the results? >> it does. it does. >> no, it doesn't actually. >> can i answer your question? >> yeah. >> if he had said what tim kaine had said or those criticizing him, i'm saying what tim kaine said but you should know, joe, you cannot divorce -- no one in their mind is divorcing donald trump's behavior in this campaign and language and narrative over the last few weeks with what he said last night. >> but he did not say -- >> mika, you are not dumb and neither am i. >> i am looking at words. >> don't treatise like we are dumb. >> what he said last night was -- >> was -- >> he said words. >> i'm serious. >> don't show you the words? >> i know what he said. >> he said "i will look at it at the time". >> i'm an intelligent person i know what he has said over the last three weeks, he has said the system is rigged and he has said before he might not accept the result. >> this does not say i will not accept the results. >> i will look at it -- >> look, we can play the semantic --

>> it's not semantics. it's called the english language. you are very good at this, though. i give you -- >> fair enough. >> you would be a good trial lawyer. >> >> in scranton, pennsylvania, i hope you accept the results of football games, basketball games -- >> they do and they look at the game. >> a win is a win and a loss is a loss. >> harold, what i've always taught my kids, i've always taught my kids that if a game is close enough that a ref's call can make a difference -- >> it can. >> -- don't whine about it. go shake their hands and do the right thing. i'm all for that. >> it's what he should have said last night. >> we're not arguing that we're just trying to bring some accuracy to the proceedings. everybody has set their hair on fire saying that he's going to be like yeltsin standing on top of a tank in russia in 1990. >> and that's just bs. >> it's just not the case. he was donald trump being donald trump saying "i will look at it at the time" because he just

can't say he's sorry, he just can't say what we would all say. and that's why he's probably not going to be elected president of the united states. >> correct. >> but he's not going to be yeltsin on a tank. >> it's also what everyone else on his campaign said all night long, ivanka said it, kellyanne conw conway, rudy guiliani, mike pence said it 30 minutes before. >> do you know who is really angry, alex, he's screaming in our ear because we have kellyanne conway coming back with us in just a minute and we will talk to her. gary, gary, gary... i am proud of you, my man. making simple, smart cash back choices... with quicksilver from capital one. you're earning unlimited 1.5% cash back on every purchase, everywhere. like on that new laptop. quicksilver keeps things simple, gary. and smart, like you! and i like that. i guess i am pretty smart. don't let that go to your head, gary.

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it's unbelievable. >> former communications director for president george w. bush nicolle wallace joins the table. let's right away bring in donald trump's campaign manager kellyanne conway live in las vegas. kelly ann. wow. long night for you. i don't know if you heard our previous conversation -- >> i heard joe.

i heard joe talking about yeltsin on the tank, yes. >> is that what he's going to do? >> obviously a lot of people very offended by the fact that donald trump said last night -- and let's actually get the language right because everybody has gotten it wrong, he said, "i will look at it at the time." i know everybody on the campaign staff wanted him to just answer it differently, he didn't because as we all know donald is donald. what does that mean, though? "i will look at it at the time?" >> well, i'm thrilled with his overall debate performance, joe, he won clearly and you will see the polls tightening so next time i visit you we'll talk about that i hope. on this one it would be ridiculous for him to disclose the possibility and go through every hypothetical possible in the world as if he's losing by a couple of points somewhere or a couple of votes somewhere, rather, then perhaps he will look at it then. that's probably what he meant. why would he disclose the possibility until we know what the results are and they're

certified and they're verified. i mean, i know people are picking -- knit picking the analogy to al fwoer, but if you had had him in this seat 16 years ago and asked him, hey, if george w. bush beats you will you accept the results of the election he would have said, sure, joe, absolutely because you are not presenting the hypothetical that you won the popular vote nationwide but less than 600 votes away in the all important state of florida and whoever wins florida wins the presidency. we know what happened next, al gore concede the to george w. bush, retracted the concession and then it threw it into chaos in the supreme court of the united states declaring george w. bush the winner. >> it's willie, the answer that you gave yesterday before the debate, the answer that mike pence gave before the debate, the answer that rudy guiliani gave before the debate, the avenue that ivanka trump gave before the debate was not to nuanced that you laid out. you were asked directly and you said, yes, of course we will accept the outcome of the election. why has that answer changed?

>> it doesn't change for me. what i said, willie, is absent evidence of widespread voter fraud or irregularities or malfeasance that's the season i'm giving, i presume mr. trump was saying he's got to take a look at it and see if there is any there is voter fraud. you even have james carville saying of course there will be some voter fraud. we know there are dead people still registered to vote, irr irregularities somewhere, but i think the whole conversation about american principals and democracy must include the other person on the stage, who has used the state department as a concierge for foreign donations. she takes money from countries that don't respect women, let alone don't respect democracy. so i think it's a two-way conversation on that. >> nicolle. >> i talked to a handful of republicans this week who thought that marco rubio may have catapulted to the top of the 2020 heap should donald

trump fall, regarding wikileaks. i heard people saying the gop should stand strong against russian involvement in the american election. are you completely comfortable with the campaign using and trafficking in information stolen by russian intelligence service. >> i am. donald trump addressed that last night. i thought secretary clinton in some of her answers was almost presuming donald trump had access to this information or knew for sure what the source of the hacking is. and i really take personal offense every time i hear somebody on team clinton, a bunch of great professionals over there whom i respect or secretary clinton saying the trump campaign knows this or is colluding with russia. i'm the campaign manager and that simply is not true. i understand what senator rubio is saying and he makes great points that we certainly abide.

i would take issue with the 2020 field because i think donald trump will be running for re-election then. >> marco can't run in 2020 because he just promised the people of the state of florida just this week he's going to serve out his entire term, which is good. i think promises like that are good. mike, you have a question. >> kellyanne. for several weeks, donald has been pretty specific as he's raise this issue of rigged elections and mentioned philadelphia, chicago, st. louis. so does he have evidence from those three cities or other cities that he's relying on when he states that there is the possibility of a rigged election? >> i know, mike, that he's been looking at past reports. he's been actually scouring a lot of data about where irregularities have taken place, where dead people are still on the roles, and he's looking at past as possibly prologue cou e coupled with his broader message about a corrupt system and you can't have a conversation about donald trump and a rigged corrupt system without looking

at the full measure of his comments which include the fact that he sees hillary clinton has tremendous advantages. we have working journalists giving 96% of their donations to her campaign. i suppose that's their right, but the public also has a right to know that there's a near unanimous financial support for hillary clinton and her presidential campaign over donald trump when it comes to that issue. i think if you write a check, you're expressing your support for someone and it's unfortunate it's working journalists. you see in some of these e-mails individual journalists, certain not all, but some, and we know them, colluding with the clinton campaign about content in written reports about what to say on tv, about how soft the interview will be with secretary clinton. this is not democracy in action. we actually have hard evidence of that and it's very concerning to somebody who has been talking about the rigged corrupt system from the first day he launched his candidacy. >> kellyanne conway, thank you for being on. >> nicolle, did you see anything last night that changes the basic dynamic of the race.

trump this week from, it's funny, first part of the week, a lot of state polls came out, too close to call in a lot of important swing states. last couple of days, though, the polls are just -- something has happened midwook, and the polls have just fallen off the cliff. did anything happen last night to change the central dynamics of the race? >> i was in 30 minutes outside of cleveland on monday talking to moms and that suburbs and you know they matter, there was one undecided voter. >> you know willie and i say, moms matter. >> moms matter. and we love our moms. but they do pick presidents. and i think that what mattered to them isn't what we're all talking about. it was more of the demeanor. they hate the nastiness. it was probably him calling her nasty woman that matter to the kinds of voters that still matter in the outcome of the election. not what we're all talking about. >> right. >> you know, in terms of sort of a lights-out moment, i think stand tlg and being perceived, i understand what you're saying,

but it was largely perceived he may not accept the outcome of the election. i think that will dominate the news. so i'm not sure what these moms will sort of take from what they saw last night. >> i think you're recognize. and again, it's so funny what the media sees, what the elite media sees and what voters see. we were talking about the access hollywood tape, which offended a lot of americans. but then you had all the charges that followed that. trump's internal polls show he was hurt the most by what he said about miss universe. the fat shaming. we're talking about what moms care about. they thought that that showed an extraordinary disrespect for all women. i suspect last night that a lot of these moms, and i think you're on to something, will be far more offended by that, calling her a nasty woman, than saying i will take a look at it at the time. >> i agree with that. what do you figure the real undecided is right now? theerally undecided, percentage

of real undecided voters. >> higher than you think, because people hate them both. it's higher than you think. >> that's the thing. >> it's not undecided in the typical sense of like, oh, they're both so awesome. >> nicolle, that is what we hear constantly, which is you'll hear somebody go, who are you voting for? they'll go, i have to vote for hillary clinton. and then when they're on hillary clinton for a week, she'll do something during the week. they go, oh, i can't vote for her. then we hear the same thing with donald trump. i know a lot of people that said, i'm voting for donald trump and he'll say something that offends him and they say, i just can't vote for donald trump. i think the undecideds are big. >> disillusioned. you call them disillusioned voters, not undecided. >> we'll have mouch more ahead on last night's debate. still ahead, hallie jackson, eugene robinson and mike murphy all join the discussion. "morning joe" is back in a moment.

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has no respect for this person. >> well, that's because he would rather have a puppet as president of the united states. >> no puppet. no puppet. >> it's pretty clear -- >> you're the puppet. >> there was even a time when he didn't get an emmy for his tv program three years in a row and he started tweeting that the emmys were rigged. >> should have gotten it. >> i didn't even apologize to my wife because i didn't do anything. i didn't know any of these women. i didn't see these women. >> my social security pay roll contribution will go up. as will donald's assuming he can't figure out how to get out

of it. but what we want to do -- >> such a nasty woman. >> whoa. good morning, it's thursday, october 20th. welcome to "morning joe," the day after. >> if donald complained about the emmys and those being rigged, we understand. >> we didn't get the nobel peace prize, so whatever. with us on set, what a night. veteran columnist and msnbc contributor, mike barnicle. msnbc political analyst and professor at the university of michigan school of public policy, former democratic congressman, harold ford jr. in las vegas, managing editor of bloomberg politics cohost of with all due respect, john heilemann. where do we begin? perhaps the biggest headline of the night is when donald trump would not commit to saying whether he would recognize the outcome of the election.

>> do you make the same commitment that you will absolutely -- sir, that you will absolutely accept the result of this election. >> i will look at it at the time. i'm not looking at sknng now. i'll look at it at the time. what i have seen, what i have seen is so bad. first of all, the media is so dishonest and so corrupt, and the pile-on is so amazing, the "new york times" actually wrote an article about it that they don't even care. it's so dishonest. they have poisoned the minds of the voters. unfortunately for them, i think the voters are seeing through it. if you look at your voter rolls, you will see millions of people that are registered to vote, millions. this isn't coming from me. this is coming from peer report and other places. millions of people that are registered to vote that shouldn't be registered to vote. so let me just give you one other thing. i talk about the corrupt media. i talk about the millions of people, i tell you one other thing. she shouldn't be allowed to run. it's -- she's guilty of a very,

very serious crime. >> sir, there is a tradition in this country, in fact, one of the prides of this country, is the peaceful transition of power and that no matter how hard fought a campaign is, that at the end of the campaign, that the loser concedes to the winner. not saying that you're necessarily going to be the loser or the winner, but that the loser concedes to the winner and that the country comes together in part for the good of the country. are you saying you're not prepared to commit to that principle. >> i'll tell you at the time. i'll keep you in suspense. >> some republican lawmakers in battleground states condemned donald trump's answer on accepting the election's results. senator jeff flake of arizona tweeted, donald trump saying he might not accept election results is beyond the pale. a peaceful transfer of power and election results is fundamental to our democracy and constitution. this cannot be undermined ever.

and senator lindsey graham said during this debate, mr. trump is doing the party and the country a great disservice. if he loses it will not be because the system is rigged but because he failed as a candidate. >> by the way, all three of those republicans have never supported donald trump, rect? >> no. >> not even close. >> but trump's top campaign surrogates are likening his answers on waiting to see what happened to another disrupted race. the election in 2000. remember that? when a razor thin margin in florida led to a recount, and democrat al gore waited 36 days before conceding to republican george w. bush. >> remember al gore in 2000? nobody says ahead of time that they're going to contest the election, but al gore did. many days. he restratracted his concession. he conceded to george w. bush and then retracted his concession and went all the way to the supreme court. >> he said he would not give in to whatever the result was if he

didn't think it was fairly done. that's what al dpoer did. did he accept the results? he challenged the election and it was a razor thin election and he challenged it. >> the election is too close, of course he wouldn't accept it. al gore didn't accept it, did he? >> he's talking about it being rigged, not too close. >> well, if it's very -- it's a very big margin, even if it's rigged, it wouldn't matter. it will only matter if it's a small margin, and al gore did that. >> everybody is shocked, watching coverage last night and this morn, everybody is shocked and horrified that donald trump would suggest that he was going to wait and that he's even used the words rigged. i heard people last night saying that he's the first person to ever do this. that this actually cuts at the very heart of america's credibility. >> well, there were so many incredible moments last night, both of them came loaded to attack each other. and we want to get to them all,

but to this point, because there was a lot of reaction to this, it is the case that charges of a rigged or stolen election do not exclusively belong to republicans. democrats and liberals have accused the vote of being rigged or stolen for george w. bush both in 2000 and 2004 and have done so for years. in new york magazine, yes, bush v. gore did seal the election. also in 2012, salon asked, is gop stealing the election. >> he said they're right in that article. >> in 2000, jesse jackson demanded an inquiry of the results in florida. saying, 22,000 people are begging for their vote to count and for its intent to be realized. this last vote caused a crisis in the credibility of this election. this is a crisis of integrity. we the american people deserve better. we should settle for nothing

less. rolling stone asked was the 2004 election stolen? they also published an interview with howard dean which said this, howard said this, i'm not confident that the election in ohio was fairly decided. we know that there was substantial voter suppression. and the machines were not reliable. it should not be a surprise that the republicans are willing to do things that are unethical to manipulate elections. that what we suspect happened and we would like to safeguard or elections so democracy can still be counted on to work. later in that year, in october, josh marshall wrote about ohio secretary of state ken blackwell stealing the election. and a portion of michael moore's documentary, 2004, fahrenheit 9/11, tried to delegitimize the 2000 results in florida. >> and you know, also, as you said, willie, as we said coming on set. several people in 2004, tons you can get to, but in 2004, there were certain people around these

parts that were going on tv every night saying that ohio was stolen. that it was rigged. i guess bobby kennedy jr., didn't he write -- >> he wrote the "rolling stone" piece about the voting machines in ohio. donald trump is saying this. the difference is before the election. and it's coming from the very top of the ticket, before anybody goes to vote and he's on a downward slide so it looks like here's my out for why i lose. the other thing is kenny ann conway, mike pence, ruly giuliani, said 30 minutes before the debate, of course we'll respect the results of the election, and he subverted them during the debate and they had to clean that up. this is different. >> a couple things, she won the debate last night. >> why do you say that? how do you just say that and roll right through it? >> i believe that. we can litigate that. >> no, no. >> i thought it was a great fight. >> what he's saying, alabama is going to win the national championship.

you should want to know why. why do you think she won the debate? >> he needed to do more than hao did last night and he didn't do that. i thought she handed him a number of opportunities to actually talk about issues, talk about his vision for the future. he didn't. instead, he fell for the trap. now all we're talking about is whether or not he will accept the results. the difference in all of those quotes you laid out, as willie said, that was all after. what triggered the issue in florida were two things. the closeness of the race, and two, people thought they were voting for al gore and they were voting for something else. that's the reason we had a recount. i respect what kellyanne conway said. i don't understand what rudy giuliani is referring to, but this all happen after the race. in addition, al gore accepted the decision of the supreme court decision, and my understanding is from what mr. trump is saying, he may not be able to accept the outcome. >> what was the quote? >> i'll look at it at the time.

>> he's not willing to accept the outcome. >> no, what that means is he's going to look at it at the time. i love everybody saying, i woke up to screaming headlines saying donald trump will not respect election results. he actually said i'll look at it at the time. >> has there ever been a presidential candidate to say that. >> if there are irregularities -- >> what would you have said? what would your response be to that question? >> certainly. i'll respect the outcome of the election. >> he didn't say nat. >> i would want to make sure it's fair, on the up and up. >> he didn't say that. >> this is an example, the media got something they can freak out about and claim he's an agent of vladimir putin and destroying democracy in america and it's another example of the media having to find a little place and freak out. when as a republican, i have listened to democrats talk about the only two times we won the white house in like 800 years that we stole both elections.

i had to sit through fahrenheit 9/11 and a lady was sobbing violently behind me on the upper west side about the election being stolen from george bush, and i patted her halfway through and go, it's all right. it's all right, ma'am. it's all right. it's all a lie anyway. democrats have been whining for 16 years. they're still writing articles about how bush stole the elections in 2000 and 2004. so this holier than thou attitude about this is first time anyone has suggested that the election is not a sank rosink process is a joke. you guys bathen that hypocrisy if you want to. i would just like to hear how the debate went. go ahead, bathe. >> the difference is what michael just said. it's the candidate himself. you will have spectators, voters, political officials, elected officials contemplating, writers saying this didn't happen this way. bush did this, but you never had the presidential candidate do what he did last night.

>> my target this morning for my mockery are the very people that are writing articles today on their blogs that are saying this is a threat to democracy. the electoral process in america is sank rusank. if we doubt this, are we no better than putin? those are the people i'm mocking. i'm not -- i'm not comparing him to al gore. >> fair enough, but can you acknowledge there's never been a presidential candidate do what he did last night? >> i'm not on the witness stand here. i'm just saying -- >> nor am i trying to treat you that way. >> i had a lady come up to me yesterday who i know very well. she's a dear, dear friend of the family. she said, oh, joe. how horrible will it be if kate has to grow up in a country where a president that doesn't respect women any more than donald trump. i said, it will be about the same as having middle school boys grow up in a world where

bill clinton was president of the united states. it's pretty bad. and you know, i said -- >> i don't know how that relates to what we're talking about. >> it relates to the hypocrisy that democrats forget everything they have been saying on their blogs, newspapers, in magazines over the past 16 years. i'm not even mad about it. it's very funny. here's the great thing. it's all on google. i ask you to do what hillary clinton asked last night. just google all of this. and you will see that democrats who were shocked and stunned and deeply saddened this morning, were the very ones -- hell, even bernie sanders supporters just six months ago were saying that hillary clinton was rigging the election. i mean, seriously. did you all bump your head? a do you just think we're that stup stupid? maybe i am, but the rest of americans aren't. i am going to have a sip now. >> if the charge is hypocrisy among pund uts and the media, no

question about it. sex life of donald trump and bill clinton. >> unbelievable. it is sick. >> but coming from the guy who could be president, coming from this mouth, al gore didn't say this two months before the election in 2000. >> and he accepted the outcome. >> but he contested it. >> it matters because it's been the theme of his campaign, that the country is rigged. everything is rigged. and now here it is, finally as their last act, rigging the vote against us. >> yeah. >> that's new and that's different. >> hillary clinton was asked to comment for her comments revealed by wikileaks that she made in a paid speech to a brazilian bank in which she said her dream is a hemispheric common market with open trade and open borders. >> is that your dream, open borders? >> well, if you went on to read the rest of the sentence, i was talking about energy. you know, we trade more energy with our neighbors than we trade with the rest of the world combined. i do want us to have an electric

grid, an inarg system that crosses borders. i think that would be a great benefit to us. >> under her plan, you have open borders. you would have a sd zadisaster trade and a disaster with open borders. what she doesn't say is that president obama has deported millions and millions of people just the way it is. >> secretary clinton -- >> we will not have open borders. that is a rank mischaracterization. >> secretary clinton -- >> we will have secure borders, but we will also have reform. this used to be a bipartisan issue. >> she wants open borders. people are going to pour into our country. people are going to come in from syria. she wants 550% more people than barack obama. and he has thousands and thousands of people. they have no idea where they come from, and you see, we're going to stop radical islamic terrorism in this country. she won't even mention the words and neither will president obama. >> let's go to john heilemann. what's your general impression

of this third -- this third debate? did trump gain anything? did hillary gain or was it a wash? what was your takeaway? >> my general impression is donald trump has been losing this election for a while. he's losing it more and more each day. and so this was the last big moment of the campaign where he had to fundamentally change the dynamic of the race, and that although he was -- literally, the first 30 minutes were her best 30 minutes of any of the three debates. i think hillary clinton was excellent throughout. i think they both, in fact, in many respects, gave their best debate performances last night. the reality is trump did nothing to do what he had to do less than three weeks away from election day where he's behind everywhere, falling behind by the day further in the national polling and in the battleground state polling. he did not revolutionize the race, and the one thing, and we can argue about this. i know, joe, you have a view about the hypocrisy about people

saying this about the one answer. the truth is the one answer was an answer no one around him wanted him to give. ivanka trump earlier in the day, kellyanne conway earlier in the day, mike pence, just a few minutes before the start of the debate to a bloomberg politics reporter, all said cleanly answered that question. of course, we'll honor the outcome. the results of the outcome. of course, we'll honor the results of the election. that's what they all wanted him to say, and that's not what he said. what he said was something that has created a firestorm, whether you want to call it hypocritical or not, i think it's justifiable that there's a firestorm, but regardless of my views about that, it's clearly blotted out all of the other strong elements of his performance last night. he's going to spend the next couple days trying to clean it up. i will say this. last night on this network, michael steele who is not a hypocritical democrat or pundit, former chairman of the republican party, said what donald trump said was disqualifying for the presidency. i think there are a lot of people, republicans of good will

and faithfulness to the party who feel strongly about the fact that trump violated a pretty fundamental democratic norm by saying that. >> is that the first time that's happened? >> it will certainly blot it out for the mead withdraw who will obsess over the this over the next 48 hours. we'll see what the rank and file voters think about it. but so john, what you're saying is they both may have turned in their best debate performance, but there just wasn't anything that would change the fundamental dynamics of this race? >> right. you know, joe, these debates are about moments. that's what they always are about. they're about the couple moment that get remembered and the two things i think most people will remember about this debate, one was the thing we have been discussing that i think will get a huge amount of coverage for the rest of today and halfway into the week and we'll keep bring it back to the question of does trump continue to talk about the election being stolen and a rigged election. he's been doing it for a week. does he keep doing that? does it continue to crowd out any message he has? that one. the other moment at the end when

he made that very snide comment where he said that hillary clinton was a nasty woman. for a guy who needs to change perceptions of him, primarily with college educated women voters, many of whom he's lost in the course of the last ten days who hillary clinton was focused ipa laser like way, if you look ought whae she was talking ability, that was the only group she was talking about. if she keeps her strength up with that group, the election is over. trump made it worse for himself with that one snide, nasty comabout about her. >> still ahead on "morning joe," who could still be decided after last night's debate and months of election coverage. believe it or not, jacob soboroff found them. plus, our political roundtable with eugene robinson and mike murphy. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. sure, we could have stacked these tires. or put them on a rack. but the specialists at ford like to show off their strengths: 13 name brands.

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i ask a simple question. she's been doing this for 30 years. why the hell didn't you do it over the last 15, 20 years? you were very much involved. excuse me, my turn. you were very much involved in every aspect of this country. very much. and you do have experience. i say the one thing you have over me is experience, but it's bad experience. because what you have done has turned out badly. >> he raised the 30 years of experience, so let me just talk briefly about that. you know, back in the 1970s, i worked for the children's defense fund and i was taking on discrimination against african-american kids in schools. he was getting sued by the justice department for racial discrimination in his apartment buildings. in the 1980s, i was working to reform the schools in arkansas. he was borrowing $14 million from his father to start his businesses. in the 1990s, i went to beijing

and i said women's rights are human rights. he insulted a former miss universe, alicia machado, called her an eating machine. on the day where i was in the situation room, monitoring the raid that brought osama bin laden to justice, he was hosting the celebrity apprentice. >> coming up on "morning joe," you know it was a very strange debate night. >> very strange. >> when hillary clinton spoke to reporters last night after the event and donald trump did not. hallie jackson joins us with her reporting on the mood inside the trump campaign when "morning joe" continues. hey listen, when you tell our friends about your job, maybe let's play up the digital part. but it's a manufacturing job. yeah, well ge is doing a lot of cool things digitally to help machines communicate, might want to at least mention that. i'm building world-changing machines. with my two hands. does that threaten you? no! don't be silly. i'm just, uh, going to go to chop some wood. with that?

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i want to build a wall. we need the wall. and the border patrol, i.c.e., they all want the wall. we stop the drugs. we shore up the border. one of my first acts will be to get all of the drug lords, the bad ones. we have bad, bad people in this country that have to go out. we're going to get them out. we're going to secure the border. and once the border is secured at a later date we'll make a determination as to the rest. but we have some bad hombrys here and we're going to get them out. >> i don't want to rip families apart. i don't want to be sending parents away from children. i don't want to see the deportation force that donald has talked about in action in our country. when it comes to the wall that donald talks about building, he went to mexico, he had a meeting with the mexican president.

didn't even raise it. he choked. and then got into a twitter war because the mexican president said we're not paying for that wall. so i think we are both a nation of immigrants and we're a nation of laws. and that we can act accordingly, and that's why i'm introducing comprehensive immigration reform within the first 100 days with a path to citizenship. >> wow. joining us from las vegas, nbc news correspondent hallie jackson. hallie, you caught up with donald trump's running mate, governor mike pence last night in the spin room after the debate. how did it go? >> it was interesting. you know, mike pence came out. obviously, the first question to him was on the idea that donald trump said he, you know, may potentially refuse to accept the outcome of the election. pence, governor pence said it wouldn't matter because donald trump will win. so we pushed him on that idea. i want to play you a little bit of that interaction. listen. >> do you think donald trump should do what you did, which is say you will accept the results of the election without qualification? >> let me say, what donald trump

said tonight and i wrote it down, his quote. he said i'll look at it at the time. and i think he's made a point that is resonating with millions of americans. we're going to continue to call on people all across this country to respectfully participate in the electoral process, to insure we can all be confident in the vote. and if the vote is fair, i'm confident that we'll accept it. >> there it is. if the vote is fair, i'm confident he would accept it. so it got cut off, but i went back again, listen, you're saying something different than your candidate said on the stage. pence said he's going to win the election so it would be, i'm paraphrasing here, irrelevant. the other comment we asked about whauz the nasty woman moment. i think you played that earlier. donald trump saying of hillary clinton, such a nasty woman. mike pence, as you know, has decried the insult laden tone of the campaign. he's not a name caller, he says. although his running mate has not been shy about calling names. pence said he thought it was a

rough and tumble debate, but some of that was necessary because he says the stakes are so high. >> he's called one commentator neurotic, crazy. >> yes, yes. >> in your words, i am -- you say you are neurotic. >> sometimes he gets it right, you know what i'm saying? >> i think he missed the mark there. >> calling mika neurotic? you really haven't spent a lot of time around her. >> no, no. she's not neurotic. sometimes she plays one on television, but she's not neurotic. >> we'll talk. >> joining us now, pulitzer prize winning columnist and msnbc analyst eugene robinson who does thought think i'm neurotic, and republican strategist, nbc analyst, and host of a podcast, mike murphy. >> hello. good morning. i'm glad i'm not mike pence. he looks like he's part of the recruiting department of the baghdad bomb squad. it's never been safer.

>> okay. defend donald trump's statement last night about the election outcome. please. >> i think it's indefensible. i can make something up. >> no, no, your job is to find a way to do this. >> i will try. >> okay. >> he should say, look, i understand in the highfalutin world of the elite media, you purse all this language carefully. all i'm saying is if something crazy happens in the election, i'm keeping my options open. >> what about donald trump's personality and behavior throughout this entire election cycle leads you to believe he was saying anything but what you just said? >> i'm not sure i understand. what about -- >> that's what he was saying. >> what you just said. >> yes, the problem is when you run for president of the united states, you have to know some of the code words. >> i agree because she shot himself in the foot. >> we have a system where you're not just ahead of the government, you're head of the state.

you have certain possibilities and one of the third rails is you don't talk about our great democracy being corrupt. >> he spent the last couple weeks talking about how the election is going to be rigged. how there's massive voter fraud. how republicans who deny that there is massive ongoing voter fraud, are so naive. >> you mean like his running mate? >> like his running mate, who at that point said, well, actually, no. actually no, actually, we will respect the election results. although mike pence seems to have had a change of heart and realized his first answer wasn't quite that right. >> if it occurred in a vacuum, you could interpret it the way mike was able to spin it, but it didn't happen in a vacuum. remember, on sunday, all these guys were saying, rudy giuliani said to me on sunday, no, he's not talking about the polling place. he's talking about the media. an hour later, donald trump tweeted, no, i'm talking about the polling place.

his comment comes at the end of a week of saying that. >> could you imagine? >> you know what i took away from the debate, a political hacks thing, but it really shows, and joe, you'll remember this from your candidate debates. when you wake up to newspaper polls where you're crushing it everywhere, you suddenly become 12 feet tall. you could see that on her. she walked in there and was slapping him around. it was her best debate. you can tell he knows that the big curtain is getting ready to drop. that, i think, drains some of the energy out of him. >> what i thought was interesting, and she clearly has learned this somewhere in the middle of the first debate. she learned that if you keep needling at him, if you stick in, you know, just needle him, just a little bit, eventually, it's going to crack. and you know -- >> she had little -- got them in there. >> the little lines in there. >> fantastic. >> less to make points with the audience than to make donald uncomfortable. >> i think both candidates did what they wanted to do.

i think hillary held serve. i think she was, like you said, very confident. if you're hillary clinton, you've got to be very, very happy with how last night went. donald trump, he wanted to speak to his base. he wanted to keep that hard boiled base. whether it's for the presidency or whether it's for his tv network, and there was no better example of that than the top of the debate where he gave evangelicals basically a free pass to vote for him. what he said the first 5, 10, 15 minutes of the debate allowed them to go to their pastor and say, yes, he's a bad man. but we have to vote for him. let's run the clip. this is the first night's section. we talked about a lot of key issues that were litmus tests for social conservatives. this is what donald trump said. >> the kinds of cases that fall at the end of pregnancy are often the most heartbreaking, painful decisions for families

to make. i do not think the united states government should be stepping in and making those most personal of decisions. >> well, i think it's terrible, if you go with what hillary is saying, in the ninth month, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother. just prior to the birth of the baby. now, you can say that that's okay. and hillary can say that that's okay, but it's not okay with me. >> mike murphy, also, a strong defense of the second amendment. a strong defense -- again, all of these sort of ring the bell social issues. not to win election campaigns in california, but to keep your 35%, 36%, 37%, 38%. >> he's doing what he intends to do, which is try to win the republican primary. i think he has a real choke hold on it now. but for a guy who needs white women more than anything in the world to vote for him, again, i don't think that's in his computer.

>> we're laughing about he has a choke hold on the republican party. that is a problem for paul ryan in janesville, wisconsin. a problem for pat toomey, who needs the trump voters all across the state. >> the point you made earlier, trump may be setting up the future. and kind of become an oracle in the primary. i think he'll have the same grip of our party after dukakis had. >> it's so easy to forget this, but sarah palin for a couple years would go out. she would put her wand on somebody, and they would win. nikki haley was in fourth place, an unknown state legislator. she wonent down there, put her wand on there, she immediately became front runner. joni ernst, the same thing. and again, this won't get him elected president, but for those republicans hoping he is going to go quietly away. >> he has a plan not to. yeah. i agree with that. i think -- i don't know if it will work. >> that effect, i mean, it was

up here for a while and then it went like that. so it can decline. >> i just think it's a mistake to ever stop underestimating him. still ahead on "morning joe," the nuclear options. >> gee whiz, nobody has them. so north korea has nukes. japan has a problem with that. they have a big problem with that. maybe they would in fact be better off if they defend themselves from north korea. >> with nukes? >> including with nukes. yes, including with nukes. >> in south korea with nukes. >> south korea is right next door, so you understand. >> a nuclear arms race on the korean peninsula. >> we already have it. >> that was donald trump with chris wallace in april. he took a different tact last night. straight ahead. you're not a cook, if you don't cook. you're not a firefighter, if you don't fight fires. or a coach, if you don't coach. and you can't be our leader, if you don't lead.

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for patients like lynn, advanced genomic testing may lead to other treatment options that can work. learn how genomic testing is changing the way we fight cancer at cancercenter.com/genomics i'm going to make this as simple as possible for you. you can go ahead and stick with that complicated credit card that limits where you earn bonus cash back. or... you can get the quicksilver card from capital one. quicksilver earns you unlimited 1.5% cash back on ev-e-ry purchase, ev-e-ry-where. i shouldn't have to ask. what's in your wallet? i find it ironic that he's raising nuclear weapons. this is a person who has been very cavalier, even casual about

the use of nuclear weapons. >> wrong. >> he's advocated more countries getting them, japan, korea, even saudi arabia. he's said, well, if we have them, why don't we use them, which i think is terrifying. >> as far as japan and other countries, we are being ripped off by everybody, we're defended other countries. we're spending a fortune doing it. they have the bargain of the century. all i said is, we have to renegotiate these agreements because our country cannot afford to defend saudi arabia, japan, germany, south korea, and many other places. we cannot continue to afford. she took that as saying nuclear weapons. lo look, she's been proven to be a liar in so many ways. this isgist another lie. >> i'm just quoting you. >> no quote. you're not going to find a quote from me. >> nuclear competition in asia, you said, go ahead, enjoy yourselves, folks. that kind of --

>> and defend yourselves. >> well -- >> and defend yourselves. i didn't say nuclear. >> gene robinson, we were talking before. a lot of americans, like my dad, would sit in a chair and watch tv and say why are we buying nukes for japan when they bombed us? that is sort of, he's been called the archie bunker billionaire. that sort of talk horrifies foreign policy analysts and experts. >> it horrifies me, too. you know, just because -- for good reason. you don't want a bunch of countries to have nuclear weapons. >> at the same time, that america first message resonates. >> i understand the america first message. i get that. you know, it's a crazythening to wish, however, that japan and germany have nuclear weapons. >> but mike -- >> however, what's amazes me is he said i never said nuclear, to

chris wallace. he said it to chris wallace. in an interview. >> willie, it's like we ask, though, if the germans -- if you have a big army and nuclear wepps, what kwd go wrong? what could go wrong? >> trump could be the guy that gets the japanese, if he got out of nato and forced the germans to get in the nuclear weapon business, that would be a change. >> he's already won over the archie bunker billionaire people. he won them over in the primary, people who liked what he was saying there are cheering him on. he already has them. he never took the next step to broaden his support. >> mike murphy, thank you. up next, are the undecided voters or as we discussed earlier, disillusioned voters. jacob soboroff watched last night's debate with college students who have yet to make up their minds. we'll be back with reaction to the debate which at times turned cartoonish. >> everything i see has no respect for this woman person. >> well, that's because he would rather have a puppet as president. >> no puppet. no puppet.

>> it's pretty clear -- >> you're the puppet. >> it's pretty clear you won't -- >> you're the puppet. >> don't preach to me. >> i can preach to you all i want because you're stupid. >> you're stupid. >> you're a towel. tworks are gr we're talking within a 1% difference in reliability of each other. and, sprint saves you 50% on most current national carrier rates. save money on your phone bill, invest it in your small business. wouldn't you love more customers? i would definitely love some new customers. sprint will help you add customers and cut your costs. switch your business to sprint and save 50% on most current verizon, at&t and t-mobile rates. don't let a 1% difference cost you twice as much. whoooo! for people with hearing loss, visit sprintrelay.com. they said a bottle was just a bottle. that no one would ever notice me. but i knew i could be more. that one day, i would make people smile.

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nevada, is msnbc correspondent jacob soboroff who watched last night's debate with young voters still on the fence. what did you find out? >> reporter: hey, good morning, mika. i was at the college of southern nevada, which is a two-year college, 35 students here. the biggest university actually in the state, and i heard what you were talking about earlier. are these people really truly undecided or just disaffected vot voters? who are these rare, endangered species of people who have not made up their mind. it's puzzle to me. and this is what i found out from some of them. take a look. any of the issues that these guys are talking about tonight sway you as a young voter. >> still undecided. >> how after all this time can you be undecided? is it that you don't like what they have to say, you haven't been paying attention? >> i feel like a lot of politics can be negative and consume with

all of the negatives so i have been kind of backed off a little bit, so i haven't been doing my research or staying up to date with what's going on in the news. and i know that's -- i'm supposed to and i should be more knowledgeable of this. >> there's a lot of young people in the room. do you think what these guys are talking about right now, the issues in the supreme court like the second amendment, the right to bear arms, like roe v. wade, are those issues that resonate with young people? >> these are hot button issues and things that tend to go up, but these aren't things that affect people in their daily lives. most people don't wake up thinking about these things. they think about more more important things that affect their daily life, getting a job, going to school, those kinds of things. so there's some disconnect in that sense. >> in fairness to the second woman, she was going for hillary clinton. i guess the issue is with voters with the first young woman i talked to and the other undecided voters, we'll hear clips from them throughout the day, and i know this is another hot button topic, when donald

trump says things like he may or may not accept the results of the election in a country where we know young people don't turn out to vote. we got some of the lowest voter turnout in any nation in the world, is not particularly inspiring to these young voters to go out and vote as best, and at worst, maybe it's discouraging and makes them want to stay at home. >> thank you so much. we love your reports, and really, really appreciate it. >> we're back in a moment with more on last night's debate and the state of the race, now just 19 days left until election day. you work at ge? yeah, i do. you guys are working on some pretty big stuff over there, right? like a new language for crazy-big, world-changing machines. well, not me specifically. i work on the industrial side. so i build the world-changing machines. i get it. you can't talk because it's super high-level. no, i actually do build the machines. blink if what you're doing involves encrypted data transfer. wait, what? wowwww...

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from the university of nevada, las vegas, the final presidential debate ever, i think. i don't think there will ever be another one. wasn't as much back and forth, which is hard for donald trump because that's what he likes, but to his credit, he did manage his interruptions, he did manage to keep them short. gr he was for the invasion of iraq. >> wrong. >> he has consistently denied -- >> wrong. >> a fact that before the -- >> your husband disagrees with you. >> what we want to do is replenish -- >> such a nasty woman. >> started tweeting at the emmys were rigged. >> should have gotten it. >> hello, young people. what vegetable do the candidates remind you of? >> he reminds me of a carrot.

>> she looks like an onian. >> how about this guy? >> paul something. >> paul something? this is mike pence. >> i think that mike pence is like more friendly than donald, describing their faces. >> just looking at his face. >> donald trump seems like he's losing his mind every day. >> who makes a better president? a man or a woman? >> a woman. >> a woman. >> a woman. >> i think it's time for our first girl president because all of the other 44 are men. >> you're going to get a lot of action with that attitude. a lot. >> so good. >> time to talk about what we learned. what did you learn today? >> this was tough. >> i adopted my sixth rescue yesterday. look how cute this dog is. i'm sorry, look how cute this dog is, everybody. from the little pink shelter, his name is albert. look how cute he is. do you see how cute he is?

>> do you have six dogs now? >> no y have three dogs, two cats, a rabbit, another rabbit. anyhow, look. >> you have a zoo. >> a zoo. >> isn't he tcutest thing you have ever seen? >> we tried to stop her. >> he's doing so well. thank you to holly at the little pink shelter. he was found on the side of the road in arkansas, tied to a sip pres tree next to a bag of food that he ate. >> good for you. >> he's happy. >> i have a similar story but i'm going to be quiet about it. i escaped. willie -- that's what i'm saying. yeah, but you know what. i didn't hold it against my parents. you know. i spilled some carrots on the floor. >> get out of the car, see what that is over there. we talked about politics now for 57 and a half minutes without mentioning that the chicago cubs

tied the nlcs at two games to two. if they had lost that game, down 3-1, it might have been game time, but the cubs are back in it. >> ari emanuel does not -- >> ari. >> he's worked very hard over the past three years to not yell so he's not like the character on entourage. he called me up yesterday morning screaming at the top of this lungs. i couldn't even understand him. he kept screaming. then i heard something about cubs and words i can't repeat here. he's happier this morning. 2-2, and they not only won, the cubs really make a statement. >> who else? >> i'm surprised he did that because he's such a patient guy. >> he has learned to not yell. but the cubs, all of chicago. >> but that family, bad language. >> unbelievable. >> listen, he's on to it. we've got the debates, they were

over with, the election coming up in less than three weeks. that's part of who we are. we understand that. but the potential of the cubs against the indians in the world series, great for both cities. you have theo epstein, former general manager of the red sox running the cubs. tito francona, his former manager with the red sox who broke the curse in 2004 managing the indians. bring it on. >> tuesday night, game one is in cleveland, next door, literally across the street, the cleveland cavaliers raise their championship banner. what a night for banner. >> what an amazing year. >> not so fast. >> what i learned today is that i checked off another day. 19 days. 19 days. the first day of the rest of our lives. >> going to feel like papi. >> with all due respect to our friends in los angeles, it would be cool to have a great lakes series. >> yeah.

cleveland/chicago. >> that does it for us for now. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. have a great day. >> thanks so much. hi, there, i'm stephanie ruhle. the final showdown. trump and clinton square off. >> he would rather have a puppet as president off the united states. >> no puppet, no puppet. you're the puppet. >> in a debate that ends with a bombshell, donald trump refusing to say he'll accept the results of the election. >> what i'm saying is i'll keep you in respenls. >> that refusal setting off a firestorm within the republican party. >> he is going to win. >> possibly creating a giant opening for hillary clinton. >> you know, it was horrifying what he said on the debate stage tonight. >> and putting a nation on edge for the next 19 days. >> oh, oh,