NEW YORK–Days before the New York primary, Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders faced off in a CNN debate in Brooklyn, New York.
Hillary Clinton says she’s not blaming Vermont for gun violence in New York. But she also says most guns used in crimes in New York come from other states that don’t have serious gun control efforts.
Clinton is attacking Bernie Sanders for his record on gun control and his previous support for liability protections for gun manufacturers.
She says Sanders talks frequently about the greed and recklessness of Wall Street, but she says she is concerned about the recklessness and greed of gun manufacturers and dealers.
However, Sanders says as a senator from a state with virtually no gun control, he’s best qualified to create a consensus on the issue.
Debate moderator Wolf Blitzer asked Sanders if he owed the families of victims from the Newtown, Connecticut, shootings an apology for comments he made last week in an interview. He said he doesn’t.
“No, I don’t think I owe them an apology. They are in court today, and actually they won a preliminary decision today. They have the right to sue, and I support them and anyone else who wants the right to sue.”
He was referring to a decision by a judge on Thursday that will allow the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook tragedy to sue Bushmaster, the manufacturer of guns used by Adam Lanza in the shooting that left 26 dead. The judge’s ruling said thatc a federal law protecting gun-makers from lawsuits does not prevent lawyers for the families of Sandy Hook victims from arguing that the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle is a military weapon and should not have been sold to civilians.
Erica Smegielski, the daughter of Sandy Hook Principal Dawn Hochsprung, who died in the shooting, has been out-spoken since Sanders said in an interview with the New York Daily News last week that the Sandy Hook families should not be able to sue Bushmaster. She had also asked him to apologize for his comments.
During the debate she was tweeting about her displeasure with Sanders’ remarks:
After his comment, he went on to remind voters of his support years ago for banning certain assault weapons.
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More from the Democratic debate in New York:
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10:40 p.m.
Bernie Sanders is pushing Hillary Clinton to clarify her plans for Social Security, asking if she would support lifting the cap on taxable income that supports the program.
Sanders said during Thursday night’s debate in Brooklyn that he supports lifting the cap to ensure the wealthy contribute more.
Clinton is repeating her promises that she would preserve the program and make the wealthy pay more.
Sanders says President Barack Obama supported lifting the cap in 2008, adding that “if you do that, you’re going to extend the life of Social Security for 58 years, you will significantly expand benefits.”
Clinton says, “We are going to pick the best way or combination of ways.”
She says it is “a little bit challenging” to debate Sanders because, “if Senator Sanders doesn’t agree with how you are approaching something, then you are a member of the establishment.”
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10:35 p.m.
Hillary Clinton’s hardline defense of Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians is shedding light on the differences between her and Bernie Sanders on the conflict.
The Vermont senator says the United States should take a more “even-handed” role in mediating the dispute. He says the U.S. must be willing to criticize Israel when it sees an outsized military response and, at times, stand up for the Palestinians.
Clinton answered Sanders by touting her role negotiating a ceasefire in 2012.
She says Israelis do not “invite rockets raining down on their towns and villages.” She is allowing that Israel “must take precautions,” but she is not criticizing Israel or weighing in directly on whether she sees its retaliations in Gaza as disproportionate.
Sanders is accusing Clinton of evading the questions. He says, “We are going to have to say that Netanyahu is not right all the time,” referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
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10:21 p.m.
Finally, a point of agreement between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders: NATO countries in Europe should pay more for the alliance’s collective defense.
Sanders is calling out France, Germany and the U.K. as countries with high standards of living that can afford to pay more for the burden of defense.
He says at Thursday’s Democratic presidential debate that he wouldn’t be embarrassed as president to tell European allies they must pay their fair share.
Neither candidate is calling for pulling out of NATO. Republican Donald Trump has described the military alliance as irrelevant.
Clinton says NATO has probably been the most successful military alliance in history. She says she believes the requirement that NATO allies pay more of the cost should be enforced.
President Barack Obama has urged European countries to contribute 2 percent of their GDP to defense.
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10:12 p.m.
Hillary Clinton says the United States did a “great deal” to try to help Libya after the 2011 intervention.
During the Democratic presidential debate in Brooklyn, Clinton was asked about President Barack Obama’s recent comments in a “Fox News Sunday” interview that his worst mistake was “failing to plan for the day after” the intervention — even though he said he felt the intervention was the right thing to do.
Bernie Sanders is criticizing Clinton, who was Secretary of State at the time, over the intervention and the issues that arose after dictator Moammar Gadhafi was toppled. He argued that “regime change often has unintended consequences.”
Clinton says “the decision was the president’s” and is stressing that the United States will continue to try to help the Libyan people. She also argues that Sanders supported a resolution in the Senate seeking to support a transition to democracy in Libya.
Sanders says that vote was not the same as her role in the administration.
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10:09 p.m.
Bernie Sanders is using Hillary Clinton’s support for natural gas production to impugn her credibility on climate change and the environment.
Sanders says Clinton worked hard to expand the use of “fracking” technology to countries around the world. He’s downplaying the Paris climate agreement and says little steps aren’t enough on climate change.
Clinton says she does support natural gas as a bridge fuel to green and renewable sources of energy.
She says the U.S. should “cross that bridge as quickly as possible.” Clinton is praising President Barack Obama’s approach to the issue and says it has been a firm and decisive move toward clean energy.
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10 p.m.
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders started the conversation talking about campaign donations from big oil and ended where they often do: an argument over who supports President Barack Obama more.
Asked about Sanders’ claim that she’s accepted hundreds of thousands from big oil, Clinton says Sanders is misrepresenting her record. She says both she and Sanders have accepted money from employees at energy companies, “but that is not being supported by Big Oil.”
Sanders responded that Clinton’s support comes from employees at oil companies and lobbyists for the fossil fuel industry. He says he’s ready to go further than Clinton on climate change, including implementing a tax on carbon.
Clinton is pushing back by accusing Sanders of being a perpetual critic, unwilling to support progress. She notes he criticized Obama’s climate deal.
She says, “I really believe that the president has done an incredible job against great odds and deserved to be supported.”
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9:55 p.m.
Hillary Clinton says she is sorry for the unintended consequences of the 1994 crime bill.
Clinton said during Thursday night’s Democratic debate that the bill had some positive components, like an effort to prevent violence against women.
But she says it also created an environment that led to mass incarcerations. The bill was a signature achievement of her husband’s time in the White House, and she notes that he has also apologized.
Bernie Sanders is standing by recent criticism of Bill Clinton for defending Hillary Clinton’s use of the term “super predators” at the time to describe some criminals.
Sanders says, “it was a racist term, everybody knew it was a racist term.”
Sanders voted in favor of the crime bill and agreed it was a mixed bag. He says the United States has a “broken criminal justice system.”
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9:25 p.m.
Hillary Clinton is continuing to insist she will release transcripts of her paid speeches to Wall Street banks only when other presidential candidates do the same.
During the Democratic debate in Brooklyn, Clinton said that this was a “new” expectation of candidates and we should “set the same standard for everybody.”
Clinton has been attacked on the speeches by Bernie Sanders, who cites them as evidence of her close relationships to the financial sector.
Clinton adds that she has released 30 years of tax returns and called on Sanders and Donald Trump to do the same.
Sanders says he would happily release all his speeches because “there were no speeches.”
On his tax returns, he says he would release his information for 2014 on Friday, calling them “very boring tax returns” because “I remain one of the poor members of the United States Senate.”
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9:21 p.m.
Bernie Sanders is struggling to demonstrate how Hillary Clinton was influenced in her policies by donations from Wall Street, as he’s often alleged.
Sanders was asked to name a specific decision Clinton made while serving in the Senate that he believes was influenced by campaign contributions from the nation’s financial services industry.
Sanders says the obvious example is her response to the Great Recession.
Sanders says millions lost their homes because of greed, recklessness and lawbreaking by Wall Street. He says the obvious response was to break up fraudulent operators and says he introduced legislation to accomplish that.
Sanders says Clinton was busy giving high-paid speeches to Goldman Sachs.
Clinton says Sanders can’t come up with an example because there isn’t one. She says it’s important to get the facts straight even if it’s inconvenient.
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9:18 p.m.
Hillary Clinton is trying to show Bernie Sanders isn’t the only candidate ready to break up banks.
Clinton says she would order regulators to break up banks if they don’t pass their stress tests or submit adequate “living wills” as required by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill.
Clinton says she would name regulators who “are tough enough and ready enough to break up” any bank that fails meet the law’s requirements. Clinton says she wants to expand those standards to apply to hedge funds and insurance companies.
Sanders responds that he doesn’t need Dodd-Frank’s guidelines to tell him the banks are too big.
He says, “They are just too big — too much concentration of wealth and power.”
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9:15 p.m.
Hillary Clinton is using President Barack Obama as a shield against Bernie Sanders’ attacks on her campaign contributions.
Clinton was booed at Thursday night’s debate when she said Sanders’ attack was an attack on Obama. She says people may not like the answer, but insists Sanders is mounting a “phony attack.”
Clinton says Obama had a super PAC when he ran for president, and took tens of millions of dollars from contributors. She says despite all that, Obama wasn’t influenced by those factors when he signed the Dodd-Frank financial reforms into law.
Clinton says Sanders’ attack is designed to raise questions despite there being no evidence to support his insinuations.
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9:12 p.m.
Hillary Clinton is swinging hard at Bernie Sanders in the opening round of the latest Democratic debate.
Clinton is pointing to a recent interview Sanders did with the editorial board of the New York Daily News.
She is noting the “kind of problems” Sanders had answering questions about breaking up big banks and saying he could not answer a number of questions on foreign policy.
Clinton says, “I think you need the judgment on day one to be both president and commander in chief.”
Sanders is pushing back, questioning Clinton’s judgment in supporting the war in Iraq and accepting support from super PACs.
He asks, “Do we really feel confident about a candidate saying she is going to bring change in America when she is so dependent on big money interests?”
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9:08 p.m.
Hillary Clinton is pulling out her New York credentials fast.
In her opening statement at Thursday night’s Democratic debate in her home state, Clinton beamed as she noted how happy she was to be in New York. She quickly noted her years as senator representing the state, saying “we faced difficult challenges together.”
Clinton noted the Sept. 11 attacks, her support for first responders and her work trying to bring in jobs from “Buffalo to Albany.”
She says “we worked hard to keep New York values at the center of who we are and what we do together.”
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9:05 p.m.
Bernie Sanders says his campaign is doing as well at it is because he’s doing something radical: telling Americans the truth.
Sanders is touting his recent wins in caucuses and primaries in his opening statement of Thursday night’s Democratic debate. He’s pointing out the progress he’s made in preference polls since his campaign started.
Sanders says the U.S. can’t move forward until the Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United campaign finance case is overturned. He says the U.S. needs “real campaign reform” to prevent super PACs from buying elections.
Sanders says he’s determined to end a “rigged economy” where the rich get richer and everyone else gets poorer. He says he wants to create an economy that works for everyone and not just the top 1 percent of Americans.
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9 p.m.
The final Democratic debate before next week’s New York presidential primary is under way in Brooklyn, with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders getting the first opening statement.
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