presidential candidates starts right now. first up, michael bloomberg. ♪ >> we're live in charleston, south carolina. this is cnn town hall event. i'm anderson cooper. we just heard from president trump addressing the administration's response to the coronavirus as well as the latest on the shooting at the molson coors complex in milwaukee. information is coming in on that shooting. as of now there are multiple fatalities and the alleged shooter is also dead. we're going to bring you updates throughout the evening as we learn more. we'll discuss coronavirus and gun violence throughout the evening with the four democratic presidential hopefuls. mike bloomberg is here, joe

biden, jamie klobuchar, and elizabeth warren. we are three days away from a major test in south carolina, the most diverse in this election cycle so far. so, let's get started. making his first appearance at a cnn presidential town hall, please welcome former new york city mayor, mike bloomberg. >> thank you. thank you. thank you, everyone. >> before we get to the audience, i want to ask you what the president just talked about. we just heard from the president. he said the u.s. is ready for this talking about the coronavirus. they've done a great job keeping it at a minimum in the united states and he's putting vice president pence in charge of the effort. do you have confidence in this administration to handle a potential pandemic? what would you do differently? >> i feel so much better.

no! remember when he fired the pandemic team two years ago. number two, he's been defunding centers for disease control, so we don't have the experts in place that we need. i hope he's right that the virus doesn't come here, that nobody gets sick. that would be a wonderful outcome. but the bottom line is we are not ready for this kind of thing. and the president is not a scientist is a nice way to phrase it, doesn't seem to believe in science. we are as exposed to this kind of thing as we've ever been, probably more so. >> what would you do if you were president right now? >> well, right now you have to marshall the teams. unfortunately he doesn't have a team in place. i can tell you what we did in city hall back in new york. we had for hurricane sandy, for 9/11, for the swine flu, there are a whole bunch of things that happened during the 12 years i was in office, and we were ready for it in the sense that we had played out what would happen, how we would communicate with

people, how we would distribute drugs, how we would include the hospitals and nurses and what do you do about the seniors homes and people with special needs and that sort of thing. you can't just walk in and all of a sudden go and create the kind of environment where everybody gets taken care of. and he has left us very exposed. and i think it just -- i spell team t-e-a-m, there's no i in team. but the only word he uses is i. he doesn't have any understanding of science, of public health. and he is left us without the team that he needs to address the issues. now, there are some people in cdc and these other agencies that are competent and there, but you have to plan for this stuff. you have to game it out. you have to see what will work and what doesn't. and none of this stuff is easy.

you say all of a sudden what happens if this -- we'll move people. it turns out there's no electricity when that happens so the buses don't work, the cars don't go, the street lights stop. unless you go through a simulation all the time, you just can't feel comfortable and be prepared. then you have to trust to luck. and i hope we have some luck, but that's not a good strategy. >> i want to go into our audience. as you know, we talked about as i mentioned at the top the major of milwaukee reports multiple people have been ill cannkilled millercoors campus. i want you to meet melvin graham junior. he was a beloved librarian here in charleston for 31 years. she was killed in the shooting at emanuel church. melvin is supporting vice president biden.

melvin, i'm so sorry for your loss. what is your question? >> my question is what can you do to bring common sense gun control into law and close all the loopholes with and without congress? >> well, we've created an organization, every town for gun violence. it has 6 million members across the country. a subgroup within it is something called moms demand action. you see them with these red shirts on, moms demand action on it. and what we've done so far is we have about 20 -- i think it's 20, 21 states that now have background checks which i'll come back to in a second. and also red flag laws. unfortunately, last time i checked, there were 50 states in the union and we have 30 to go. it would be easier to do this at a federal level. i know this backstage when i was watching the president, he said our prayers should be with the families. i'm sympathetic with that. what he should have said is and we're going to do something

about background checks to stop guns from being sold to people who shouldn't buy them. [ cheers and applause ] look, whether you look it or not, the second amendment gives you the right to bear arms. but the supreme court has said there are reasonable restrictions that we can put on that privilege without violating the constitution. the reasonable privileges include things like having background checks so you don't sell guns to minors or people with psychiatric problems or people with criminal records. the if you did that and just took 24 hours to go through the background check, you would make a big difference in this country. let me give you the numbers. this year, 40,000 people will be shot with illegal and legal hand guns. forget about the assault weapons which is another disgrace. we shouldn't be selling assault weapons to the average person. they're designed for the military to kill as many people

as possible. they're not used for going out and hunting. the last time i saw a deer with a flak jacket was a long time ago. so, you really have to focus on this. and if you have background checks -- let me stop for a second. the federal law requires you to have a background check before you can buy a gun in this country if you buy it from a gun store. so, the gun rights activists would say oh, you're going to take away my freedoms. no, right now you can't go into a gun store and buy a gun if you have psychiatric problems, you're a criminal or a minor. and in fact, what my organization has done is we sent undercover people into these stores to see whether or not they would insist on a background check. and when they didn't, we sued them. and you can measure the fact that they've really done something. [ cheers and applause ] out of the 40,000 people that

are going to get killed, majority of them are suicides. one thing about them suicides, generally if you want to commit suicide and you can't do it right away, you forget about it. so, they would say the first thing to save lives with suicides is just to stop people from doing it for 24 hours. and that's what the background check does. if they can't get a done, they don't change and go to another way of killing themselves. they just don't. in the 20 states we have background checks, the suicide rate with guns has gone drown dramatically and it has not gone up with other ways of killing yourself. so, an answer to your question is have the background checks applied to gun show sales and internet sales. the reason they're not covered by the law is when the law was written, the internet didn't exist and gun shows didn't exist. those were creations to go around the background check law for stores.

and we would be much better off if we could do that on a national level. so, i think you should ban ak-47s, automatic weapons and insist on background checks for anybody no matter how they buy it, whether it's on the internet or gun show or in gun stores. and then the other thing you've got to do is have some education and have something called red flag laws. red flag laws are laws where you can go to a judge and say look, my friend or my family member is acting strangely. and there is a gun in the house. i would like you to take away the gun while we get psychiatric help for this person. and it's just a preventive thing. and it actually does save some lives. none of these things are panaceas for the gun problem, but they certainly make an enormous difference in how we

address it. and thanks to the moms to make a difference who picket to change background check laws -- there's a lot of donors to this. it's an interesting thing. >> another question on gun vie e violence. >> mayor, you may have answered this question. but republicans and second amendment rights advocates are afraid you'll take away their guns. claiming that mental health is the real issue. what more can be done to address mental health? >> well, we have a mental health problem in the country and an awful lot of insurance plans don't cover mental health and they should. and i can just tell you -- i can't speak for everybody. my company, we have 20,000 employees and there's different plans around the world. but in america we certainly provide mental health assistance. yet it's true that if you take a gun and shoot somebody, you probably needed mental health counseling or something. it's not a normal thing to do.

but the real answer is to just get the guns off the streets. what has happened in america in the last decade or so, the gun manufacturers have been working 24/7 making guns and selling them. if you take a look at the number of houses that have guns in them, it's gone from about 35% down to 25%. so, where do the guns go if they keep manufacturing guns and if the houses don't have them? the answer is people that have guns, a lot of them tend to have lots of guns. they say they're collectors or something like that. but they can have 10 or 20 guns. and if you have a gun in your house and you have a child, you really should think very seriously about fixing that. we all know when we were kids you went and you looked up and see in your parents closet and we were all inquisitive. and if you have a gun in the house, the likelihood of a young kid taking that gun and playing

with it is really pretty high. and so just -- you don't want to have guns. if you have a gun in your house, you have something like 22 times as likely to get killed with a gun. there's domestic violence. there's children playing. there's accidents. >> i want to follow up. i want to ask you about something. you recently tweeted about senator sanders. you said he's beholden to the gun lobby. he voted against the brady bill five times, voted against lawsuits -- >> if that isn't being in nra's pocket, i don't know what is. >> he said it was wrong and wants to expand background checks. >> i hope he changed his mind. i don't wish him ill. if he changed his mind to do the right thing, that's good. >> do you really believe he's beholden to the gun lobby? >> he voted against background checks five times in a row. he also voted against the bill that gives gun manufacturers protections against you suing

them for misuse of their product. it's the only industry in america that is protected, the only one. and he was the sponsor of that piece of legislation. so, i don't know. >> he said it was a bad vote now. >> okay. that's fine. look, people make mistakes and if you fix them, that's better than if you don't fix them. it would be better off if you hadn't made them in the beginning. >> this is tracy hughes, owner of a travel agency, supporter of vice president biden. >> hello, mayor bloomberg. how are you? >> good. >> yes, my question is in lieu of your apology to your constituents, after supporting and implementing stop and frisk, what have you done to reverse the negative and life changing effects that stop and frisk has had in your communities? [ applause ] >> let me start by saying it's a little bit difficult to talk about it because i'm looking back on 12 years.

i'm not so sure that isn't something i think about a lot. i think i made a mistake. let me tell you about stop and frisk. it is a procedure that all big cities use. it was done in new york before i got there, and they still do it now. what happened here is the police got very aggressive and it got out of control and then you start stopping people. there's less evidence that they might have a gun. and the number of guns you get goes down. and you want -- you don't want to find guns. so, that was what happened. i stopped the process, cut 95% of them out. and then what i've done in the last 20 years since then really is tried to improve the schools, tried -- because if the kids don't have an education, they tend more to get in trouble. tried to get them after school programs so they had something new and give them some counseling. athletics is an obvious one, but a number of those kinds of

things. getting jobs for people. if the kids don't have a job, then they all stand around and they get in trouble. so, i'm trying to do those kinds of things. we built the 175,000 units of affordable housing and created 500,000 jobs. but trying to do some things to take away the incentive for kids to have guns so we don't have to ever bring backstop and frisk. but i think it's still done by all cities. and i will say that, you know, i apologized to those kids we stopped and shouldn't have. i can't rewrite history. i look back and if i had something -- if i could do it elsewhere, again, i would do it differently. but i've apologized. i've met way number of leaders of the african-american community to try to get their perspective on it and what i should have done and how i can rephrase it. but, you know, i made a mistake. and one of the things about me, when i make a mistake and i'm going to make more in life, i'm

sure, i don't sit around and -- i think about it. i try to apologize, and i try to fix it and not make that mistake again. >> let me ask you -- just follow up on that. [ applause ] you said here and also last night at the debate you said we let it get out of control. when i realized that, i cut it back 95%. you continued to defend this policy for years. you told "the new york times" it was a technique that was appropriate at the time and for a lot of people, it seems like you only had a change of heart when you decided to run for president. >> no, the process -- that's not true. look, if there is an incident, a shooting or something, the police show up. and they would check to make sure that nobody there has a gun. all cops are going to do that. they want to make sure we're safe and there's nobody that's a shooter that's going to do other

things. here what happened is we did it too much, and we did it so much that we lost some sense of how many people we should stop and who was likely -- >> a judge said it was unconstitutional. >> no, she said we applied it in the wrong ways but not that the practice was unconstitutional. i don't want to get down in the weeds and talk about it. we made a mistake. we did too much of it. and i cut back to almost zero. and we're not doing it again. our current police department does the same thing. i read an article the other day in new york city, it had gone up but only a little in all fairness. >> the federal judge granted a class action status to the lawsuit challenging the department stop and frisk tactics saying she was disturbed by the cities deeply troubling apathy towards new yorker's constitutional rights. >> she did say that. the first right is the right to live. you've got to make sure that we're safe and stop the guns.

but i see it coming back to this. we just did it much too much and an awful lot of innocent people got stopped who didn't have guns. and it was my mistake, and i apologized for it. i've asked for forgiveness. but i can't rewrite history and i've got to make sure we don't do it in the future. and hopefully my successor has learned the lesson from my mistake. >> senator sanders called it a racist policy. do you think it's a racist policy? >> no, if you -- one of the things i did to answer the question back there of what we did after that is i made sure that our police department is a majority minority -- of minorities as is the city. >> you want the police department to reflect the city. >> reflect is the exact right word. you want people to think that the cops understand them, their culture, and whatever. that doesn't mean you're going to find somebody that you have a lot in common with every time

you meet a police officer. but you'll know that someplace in the police department, if 1/10 of 1% of the police department -- of the citizens of new york come from egypt, i can tell you 1/10 of 1% of our police department would come from egypt. the only place we don't mirror the population exactly is men and women because the city is 50/50 roughly and only about 35% of the police department are female. a lot more i think than most other police departments and we're recruiting and trying to get there. >> i want you to meet ms. white. she's undecided. welcome. >> hi. happy to be hear. my question to you is do you have any reparation plans for the deaccidescendants of the transatlantic slave trade. the disparity has carried over for generations.

reparations is a small way that america can say we're sorry for the trauma and pain that your ancestors went through. and that still impacts black people to this day. >> do you know -- [ applause ] do you know where greenwood, oklahoma is? it's a town right by tulsa. and i was in tulsa, oklahoma maybe three months ago and heard about this and then went over to see it. and then gave an economic plan in greenwood. greenwood, for those of you who don't know was called a black wall street. it had nothing to do with finance so i don't know where that name came from. but it was a wealthy african-american community outside tulsa. in 1921 there was a group of white thugs that came through in the middle of the night, burned the town to the ground, and

killed 200 people. that's what happened there. there's been terrible things going on in this country. i think it's jackson, mississippi, there is a memorial to the 4,000 african-americans who were lynched in this country. we've done some terrible things. hopefully those will never happen again. but in the case of reparations, i would agree to a study. i was asked to sign on to that. i said fine, and we'll see. my personal opinion is the first thing we have to do is focus on education because you are never going to fix poverty unless you do something. and if you take a look, the average -- i think this number is staggeringed. the average black family in america has only 1/10 of the wealth of the average white family. just think about that number, 90%less. we have to do something about that. so, i've focused on creating jobs and improving education. i have a plan coming out of the greenwood -- called the

greenwood initiative. our objective is to have a million more homes in black hands over the text ten years. so, it's a good idea. thank you. [ applause ] to increase wealth by a third and to create two times the number of black of had owned businesses that are here right now. the other thing i'm working on a lot is to try to get banks to put branches in minority neighborhoods because if you don't have a branch bank, you can't really have a checking account. if you don't have a checking account, you can't get a mortgage. if you don't have a mortgage, you can't own a house. and most americans' wealth is tied up in their houses. so, unfortunately, thor approximate sei the percentage of african-americans who own a house is almost zero compared to whites. it starts with little things like not having branch banking in all of these neighborhoods.

>> i just want to follow up on the question. tom steyer said he would support reparations in the form of direct cash payments. what do you think of that? >> i think it's very complex if you look at the logistics of how you would do it and who you would do it. that's why i think we do need a study. i don't want to wait for a study. i want to do some things now. that's what i'm focusing on, doing these things. when i say i will do it, i will do it. even if i'm not president, my foundation leads the kinds of things we can work on and i think we can work on it. >> this is michael sweet. he's on the faculty of the charleston school of law. he's currently undecided. welcome. >> mayor bloomberg, for democrats to win in november, there must be unity within the party. yet throughout the campaign and particularly the last two debates, you have all taken shots at one another, some quite personal. there's also a vast divide between some of your policies

and world views and those of the other candidates. if you become the democratic nominee, how do you plan to bridge the gap within the party and earn the votes of the most fervid supporters of some of your democratic competitors? [ applause ] >> i guess i'm a believer that we can all say whatever we want to say and we can all say it when it's politically expedient to do it and tell everybody we're going to give them a chicken in every pot and everybody's going to be happy. what i look for is show me you believe these things and have done it. i take a look at what we've done in new york city. i've been elected three times in new york city in an overwhelmingly democratic populist city, the biggest city in the country. and i can tell you what we did in terms of pulling people together. i went up to albany which is state capital in new york. the senate was in republican

hands and the was in democratic hands. i want to permit gay marriages in new york city. it's none of our business who you love, who you want to marry. you should be able to do that. [ applause ] so, i went up to albany and i went to the republicans and i sat down with a bunch of them. and i convinced the republicans, even though i was very liberal new york city mayor. i convinced them to vote for gay marriage. and the way i did it was talking to each one of them and explaining if it was somebody in your family that came to you, your kid, and said look, daddy, i want to marry somebody and you're not going to like who it is, but this is who i'm in love with, what would you say? you wouldn't want to say no. it's your child. you might not be thrilled about it, but you -- in the end you want to give your child what that child wants. and so i convinced them on that bay basis to go and pass a gay

marriage bill. same thing with taking control of the school system. we had a school system that was dysfunctional. when i got to new york city in january 1st of 2002, there were zero new york city schools on the state's list of the top 25 schools in the state. when i left, i think it was 23 out of 25 were from new york city. you can improve schools. [ applause ] and we cut the gap between the wealthy kids and the poor kids and how they tested. we actually cut it dramatically. you can do those things if you try to work together and get people to cooperate. and you do it by reaching out. and i've always done that. my company is 20,000 people. we deal all over the world. and i -- when i walk down the street, everybody says hello. i'm very popular in new york. that's a good thing. i like it. and i always walk -- if i walk

into a building and there's a doorman, i shake the doorman's hand first. why? because that doorman cares that mike bloomberg said hello to him -- or to her, mostly male there. or they go home and say i'm personal friends with mike, my friend mike. and it's just a ways of giving people recognition and respect. and in the end, rich or poor, no matter what your ethnicity, orientation, gender, whatever, we all want to have recognition and respect. and that's exactly what i know how to do. i'm a manager and i had 300,000 people that i supervised. and i think people would say -- and if you have any friends in new york city, it was certainly 12 very good years and it was because our work force cooperated and the public understood and the public cooperated. pulling people together, making them feel that they're part of the solution is what management is all about. that's what i do. >> mike bloomberg, we'll be right back with more from former mayor bloomberg. we'll be right back.

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welcome back. we're going to go back to the audience in just a second. i wanted to ask you, right before the break we were talking about -- the question was about bringing the party together if elected. you have promised to -- or i saw your campaign manager in february 24th said in an interview that you promise to support any of the democratic candidates. your campaign manager said you would use your money to support senator sanders if he wins the nomination. last night a top sanders adviser weaver said it's hard -- it's a hard no on accepting your help. in response, one of your aides last night said it wouldn't be prudent to spend on someone who didn't want it. to be clear, if senator sanders wins the nominations -- >> i always thought it's ridiculous to say i will support

the candidate no matter who it is because you might not agree with him. that's how we got donald trump. the party supported him no matter how bad he was. they shouldn't have done that. it's easy to make the commitment to support any of the democratic candidates if they get the nomination. but it's easy to do it because the alternative is donald trump, and that we don't want. [ cheers and applause ] >> and let me also say i made a commitment that we have these campaign offices all over the country, and we will keep the main ones open through november 3rd. so, whoever is the nominee can use those. >> wow. how much -- do you know -- [ applause ] you probably haven't made thought about not winning, but if it's not you, do you know how much you would spend for the nominee? >> no, i don't know. i haven't thought about that because i plan to be the nominee obviously. >> that's what i thought.

all right. our next comes from alex, a vice president for a digital marketing agency. he's still undecided. alex, welcome. >> good evening, mayor bloomberg. living in a coastal city like charleston, we love our nature since it surrounds us. but our city is prone to extensive flooding. if elected, what steps would you take to ensure that coastal cities like charleston are not underwater in 10, 20, or 30 years from now? [ applause ] >> well, work being the sierra club is trying to close all the coal powered plants in the country. coal is a polluting type of fuel although natural gas is not all that much better, but somewhat better. so far we have closed or in the process of closing 304 out of the 530 coal powered power plants in the country.

we have a plan, i think we will get it done in the next five years of getting all the coal powered plants. if you can do that, that's the biggest thing you can do to reduce greenhouse gases. and in the united states, we brought greenhouse gases down 14% already just based on that. but we also do a lot of work trying to encourage people to behave responsibly. if you want to do something for the climate, turn off your air conditioner when you leave in the morning if there's nobody home. that saves a lot of energy and you're going to save the greenhouse gases that come from producing that energy. paint your roof white. we had a program in new york city. al gore and i got up on these flat roof buildings and had these rollers and we were painting. and people laughed at us, but the white paint reflects off the sun, reduces the need for energy to cool your house. if you fly over new york city, almost every single building has been painted white because for two cans of paint, you save 25%

on your electric bill. we've tried to push people to buy complex fluorescent light bulbs rather than incandescent light bulbs, drive fuel efficient cars. electric cars make a good deal of difference as long as you don't generate the electricity from coal. that's what's happening in india. they're going to all electric cars. that's their objective. except they make the electricity with coal so it's worse if they make them the old ways. we're doing the kinds of things do renew greenhouse gases and there's education. we have a president that does not understand and doesn't believe this is happening. you can measure -- just turn on the television and look at the floods. look at the fires. look at the storms. this is not something that is going to happen 2050 which some people talk about or even 2040. the numbers are coming in so much worse than all of the scientists had predicted. you should be talking about 2030

which is only ten years from now, nine years from now, for an awful lot of those things. at the rate the glaciers are melting, at the rate the oceans are warming up which gives you bigger storms, the rate the oceans are going up -- i saw today the president took away money from a flood control system they wanted to build in new york -- i don't know if it was the right one or no. i've been out of the office for a few years. but we really dealt with hurricane sandy when the tides came up and did an awful lot of damage and we need something like that. and you need it in a lot of places. you have to understand in this city and in cities around the world you are going to have higher oceans and so you have to start getting prepared for it. but now is the time to do it. and just holding your head or burying it in the sand is not a good strategy. you have to deal with bigger storms that move slower so they'll do more damage when they hit you and ones that have tidal

surges and bring a lot of water into the cities. and most cities are not prepared. most people live very close to the ocean. >> there's obviously societal changes involved with a lot of that. for coal workers, what happens? >> i'm a believer that we have to find programs, training programs, for people to get displaced by technology and changing patterns and changing tastes. and it's not just coal miners. the number of coal miners in the country is dramatically less than it used to be. if i remember the number, it's like 1980 there were 200 or 300,000 coal miners. in the '20s, there were a million coal miners. today it's about 50,000 people work in the industry. and as the coal mines get phased out, you can use them to bring some of the land back because coal -- people that own coal mines have an obligation to repair the land after they take the coal out which they tend not to do and they tend to walk away from their obligations for

health care for the miners and all of the pensions they promised. so, it's really -- the coal miners just get a double barrelled bad luck here. but we have to do something about it. so you have programs to try to train them. it is difficult because you're not going to get somebody in west virginia to move to california instead of working in a coal mine to make solar panels. that's not realistic. you're going to have to find jobs in west virginia where they live because it's very difficult to move and a lot of these families have been there for generations. and i think we have a societal obligation. but there's people that work in retail and lots of other stores that are being pushed out of work. in new york city, we have a couple of empty stores in almost every block in manhattan and they were all clothes companies -- clothes stores and retail stores that no longer have customers or customers are buying the product online or customers are renting.

real people sell their clothes. rent the runway, people rent clothes instead of buying them. and the stores that used to sell clothing go out of business and all the people that work there are unemployed. can't walk away. that's one of the great challenges. and ai is going to make this so much worse because ai -- >> artificial intelligence. >> yes, artificial intelligence can do a lot of the things that white collar workers can do. a lot of the white collar workers moving papers around, ai can do that much better. the problem of how you create jobs is a serious one. that's one of the things i have experience. we created a lot of jobs in new york city to address this. i don't want to tell you new york has done everything right. but new york is a microcosm of the country and we've gone through a lot of this stuff already. >> this is ashley falls, an attorney from charleston, currently undecided. welcome. >> i can help you with the decision. >> mandatory forced arbitration

of employment disputes including workplace sexual harassment, discrimination, and wage/hour disputes is an important topic, particularly now in the me too era. if you are elected, would you support a bill seeking to end forced arbitration of all employment disputes in the workplace? >> well, yes, but -- [ applause ] i can just tell you in my company we do not force arbitration. period. we've never done it. certainly not going to start it. and i think that should be the standard for the entire country. i think you're 100% right. >> let me follow up on that. elizabeth warren as you know is calling for a blanket release from ndas from women who filed complaints within your company. you said you went back 40 years, could find only three cases where women said they were uncomfortable with comments you made. how many complaints of that nature to find in your company

overall? >> most of the non-disclosure companies every company has have to do with severance. when somebody leaves, people get different severance settlements and there's an agreement, just standard, to not talk about it. but elizabeth did say she wanted me to release the people who were covered by the non-disclosure agreements that applied to me. and i'm the one running for president, not the company. and so i thought about it and i said yes we would do that. and we've called the three people -- or their lawyer, i assume -- and what we've said you're released if you want to go and say something. i don't know whether anybody will. but i can tell you that what i really did was i changed the policy in the company which i still own. i will put it to a blind trust and sell it if i become president because i don't want the conflicts that donald trump has -- [ applause ]

but i've released -- we've made a change of policy so we no longer use non-disclosure agreements any place in the company even around the world going forward. and i think if we have done it, maybe some other big companies will do it and maybe we can start a national trend because i think the conduct that the me too movement has exposed is really outrageous. i think nobody thought about it in the past. me too movement has been a good thing and it's brought this to everybody's attention, put it on the front page. and maybe that's what it takes to fix some of these things. >> the implication by elizabeth -- the implication by senator warren in asking to release anybody who signed any kind of nda, even if it doesn't involve you per se but against the company is that there was a culture or i guess her implication is there was a culture of harassment or kind of all boys club. >> all i can tell you is i think we have one of the most friendly

environment. we have enormous percentage of women. women get the same pay as men women have the same promotion path as men do, and we make sure the same number move up with time. we were just awarded the designation as the second most friendly company to work for in america. if we weren't doing the right thing, that wouldn't have happened. >> i want you to meet morgan, a student. she's still undecided. >> how would you enforce human rights policies such as china's persecution of muslims despite economic pressures that may arise? at the end of the day, would you put human rights first or the american economy? [ applause ] >> well, number one it's a disgrace that it's human rights policies. and it's not just the uighurs and other ethnic groups in china, particularly in the northwest part of china. and we should try to pressure

them to stop it. i think it's also unrealistic to say that we are going to stop doing business with china for a few reasons. number one, the biggest problem facing the world is climate change because it can kill us all and china is a very big part of that solution. so, you have to have relations with them and try to convince them. and they've got to be part of the solution. otherwise we can cut all the greenhou greenhouse gases out of america. but china and india are so big you have almost as big of a problem as if we didn't do it. and also american economy and the chinese economy are linked. you don't realize how many products that you buy are either made there or how many products we manufacture here are sold there. so, it's just unrealistic to think that we're going to stop doing business with china, but it is not unrealistic to try to pressure them into doing things on human rights. but it's not just human rights.

they steal intellectual property. i don't think there's any question about that. they are very unfair in treaties and the way we do business. we can't own something there. they can own it in our country. a lot of the students who come here to study and get degrees, we are letting them go back to china. we should try to keep them here. one of the things in immigration is you've got to do some things quickly in immigration. stop this craziness with 11 million people living in a shadow. you've got to give them a clear path to citizenship. you've got to staple a green card on every degree when they get out of college, particularly if they're studying s.t.e.m. a whole bunch of these things. we need more immigrants, not less immigrants. and a lot of them come from china. >> just to follow up last night you were criticized by some on the stage -- >> i'm shocked. i was krcriticized?

>> you might have noticed. you said the chinese leader is not a dictator. do you stand by that? >> it's a question of what is a dictator. they don't have a democracy in the sense that they have general elections. that is true. they do have a system where a small group of people appoint the head. and they turn overperiodically. there have been a number of people who have had the same position xi jinping has. i think the question is if your definition is a democracy where people vote and pick their leaders, that is not what china's about. and they don't seem to want it. they like their system and i think they're wrong. i think they would be better off opening things up, having freedom of the press which they don't have, having lots of different cultures come in. that's the great strength of america. they don't seem to think that. and i think we should work as hard as we can to change that. but you're not going to go to war and try to force them.

it is the second biggest economic power, and we should get used to the fact that china is going to keep growing and become stronger. and we have to figure out a way to work with them while protecting our industries and protecting our country militarily. >> we're going to take another quick break. we'll be right back with mayor bloomberg after this. (mom) were you planning on mowing the lawn today? [thunder] (son) no. (burke) seen it. covered it. at farmers insurance, we know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two. so call 1-800 farmers to get a quote. ♪ we are farmers. bum-pa-dum, bum-bum-bum-bum ♪ the united i liexplorer card. makes things easy. traveling lighter. taking a shortcut. woooo! taking a breather. rewarded! learn more at the explorer card dot com. ♪ ♪

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vomike bloomberg has a recordgue of doing something. as mayor, he protected women's reproductive rights. expanded health coverage to 700,000 new yorkers. and decreased infant-mortality rates to historic lows. as president, he'll build on obamacare, cap medical costs, and will always protect a woman's right to choose. mike bloomberg: a record on health care nobody can argue about. mike: i'm mike bloomberg and i approve this message.

and welcome back. we are here with former new york city mayor, michael bloomberg. i want to follow up on something which you were criticized for last night, so you can explain -- >> there was a lot of things i was criticized for last night. >> there was a lot to choose from. no, no, i mean -- >> that's okay. >> no, what i meant was, there was a lot for me to choose from to ask him about, not for them to -- anyway! >> but what's interesting and i didn't realize it when i did the first debate last week, which didn't turn out so well, just in case you didn't notice, it's not an attempt to find out the truth, it's an attempt to get your sound bite out there and

they talk over each other again and again and again. and i found that difficult. i this time forced myself to do it a little bit, but i didn't grow up where you step on people. and that's what they do all the time. >> we like these town hall formats. it gives you a chance to. >> yes, yes. >> you rejoined the democratic party in 2018 after leaving the party for many years. for the folks out there who look at you askance and say, why should democratic voters trust you to lead their party, what do you say? >> i come from massachusetts where there are no republicans, so i was a democrat there for sure. i moved to new york city, where there are no republicans, so i was a democrat there. it is true win ran as a republican twice and an independent once because the democratic party wouldn't let me go out and get on the ballot. and i was an outsider. okay, that's the way it is. but if you want to know my democratic credentials, i spoke for hillary clinton at the dnc convention in philadelphia in

2016. i certainly supported barack obama and joe biden. he says "no," but i was there both times for them, thank you very much. i campaigned among the conference of mayors for the affordable care act, obamacare. i've spent a lot of time working on democratic causes, one of which was electing 21 or helping to elect 21 congresspeople who were good on guns, good on climate. those were my two issues. and we helped 21 get elected this time. that swung the house from red to blue, put nancy pelosi in charge, and gave her the ability to start the impeachment process, because i think that congress' job is to oversee the executive branch. you need that check and balance. and so we did there. i worked hard in virginia, the statehouse, and the governors all went from red to blue. so, you know, you can do these things and i go around the

country working on democratic causes. you know, nobody's bigger on guns and climate change and that sort of stuff. i don't just talk about it, this year -- i gave away a lot of my money this year because my alma mater, johns hopkins, i gave them $2 billion so that all kids -- everybody that goes to johns hopkins, if you don't have the money, you can still go. a normal year, i give away away all of my company profits, which is $800 million, and to causes which basically all democratic liberal policies. >> mayor bloomberg, thank you very much. appreciate it. i want to thank our live audience. coming up next, we'll hear from former vice president joe biden. we'll be right back. (howling wind) (howling wind)

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all right. welcome back. we're live tonight from

charleston, south carolina, for a cnn town hall event. i'm chris cuomo here at the meminger auditorium. we just heard from president trump tonight addressing the administration's response to the coronavirus, as well as discussing the latest on the shooting at the mullson coors complex in milwaukee. information still coming in, but we know one more tragedy to deal with. as of now, authorities say there are multiple fatalities. the alleged shooter also dead. we'll continue to bring you any updates throughout the evening, as we learn more, and of course, we'll be discussing the coronavirus as well as what is an obvious problem with gun violence in our society tonight with democratic presidential hopefuls. now we have former vice president joe biden. after him, senator amy klobuchar, and senator elizabeth warren. just three days until the primary. the democrats making their final pitch to undecided voters right here in south carolina. so, please help welcome to the stage the