thanks for joining us for the second hour of 360. if you thought you heard it all in this election, one candidate says vladimir putin is more of a leader than the sitting president of the united states. the head of the rnc is criticizing the first woman nominated by a major party because he thinks she didn t smile enough last night. there are still two months to go. the first debate just a few weeks away. we have reports from both camps. sara murray joins us now. trump spent a lot of today explaining what he said in the forum last night. reporter: that s right. he did go after hillary clinton. he took another opportunity to take a couple shots at her for her use of a private e-mail server but he launched into a very lengthy defense today of his view of the war in iraq. he again restated that he was opposed to the war before it began and this went on for quite awhile. i want to play just a portion of it for you. before the war, much closer to the war, i gave statements
promised there would be no ground troops used if iraq or syria. and she s gotten some criticism from people who say she s taking an important option off of the table here, anderson. she said that she would support american troops, special forces, doing reconnaissance assisting, indigenous or local forces and providing advisory roles which is the terminology currently used by the white house. some also thought that by not acknowledging that some special forces are currently in combat situations in iraq and syria, she was also, you know, sort of perpetuating this idea that there are no troops who are in harm s way. in fact, they are. some of them have actually died. dru donald trump hitting her on this saying she s telegraphing isis, she commented on donald trump not having a firm grasp of the facts when it comes to national security and the issues that were discussed last night. trump had an event earlier today. he also tried to address some of the things that were said in t
how can he serve all americans? this is cnn tonight. i m don lemon. meanwhile trump insisting he was against the iraq war from the beginning and he says his interview with esquire magazine proves it. and in august of 2004, very early in the conflict, extremely early in the conflict, right at the beginning, i made a detailed statement in an interview to esquire magazine. tonight the writer who did that interview tells me what else trump said. plus libertarian candidate gary johnson finds himself in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. what would you do if you were elected about aleppo? about? aleppo. and what is aleppo? you re kidding? no. will johnson s voters jump ship and who will get their support? i want to go to executive editor mark preston. we re doing to talk about that. what a stunning moment. i saw it happening live. let s talk about the fallout from last night s military forum, a lot of back-and-forth attacks today. does any of this ch
president obama thinks. we will bring that to you live. welcome to early start. i m john berman. i m christine romans. it is 4:00 a.m. on the east coast. breaking news. hillary clinton and donald trump giving surprising answers on national security to surprising questions and non-questions at a national security forum in new york. trump defended a tweet about women in the military and defended vladimir putin and issued new claims about information and impressions from inside his national security briefing. hillary clinton faced tough questions about e-mails and foreign policy choices. do you know more about isis than they do? i think under the leadership of barack obama and hillary clinton, the generals have been reduced to rubble. i think that the decision to go to war in iraq was a mistake. we must learn what led us down that path so it never happens again. i m asking to be judged on the totality of my record. when referring to a comment about putin made of you,
in new york. this as her campaign is touting 110 now retired generals and admirals backing her. mean while, donald trump is taking his remarkable embrace of vladimir putin to russian owned air waves, declaring the russian leader is probably not meddling in the u.s. election, contrary to what u.s. intelligence conversation, contrary to what republican house speaker paul ryan says. i don t know i mean, i ve been hearing about it. i ve been reading about it. i think it s probably unlikely. i think maybe maybe the democrats are putting that out. who knows. but i think that it s pretty unlikely. but, you know, who knows. i hope that if they are doing something, i hope that somebody s going to find out so they can end it. because that would not be appropriate at all. so the trump campaign now claims they did not know this interview was airing on a kremlin-owned television network. they say they thought it was just a pod cost done as a favor for donald trump s friend larry