[John King, Cnn Anchor:] September 11th, 15 years later. A pause to remember, but only after escalating insults.
[Hillary Clinton , Presidential Nominee:] You could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables.
[Donald Trump , Presidential Nominee:] She is the corrupt establishment.
[King:] And in a fierce debate over being commander in chief.
[Trump:] She is trigger happy and very unstable.
[Clinton:] He is temperamentally unfit and totally unqualified to be commander-in-chief.
[King:] Plus, Donald Trump's constant praise of Vladimir Putin draws Republican scorn.
[Rep. Paul Ryan , Speaker Of The House:] Vladimir Putin is an aggressor that does not share our interests.
[King:] INSIDE POLITICS, the biggest stories sourced by the best reporters, now. Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS. I'm John King. Thank you very much for sharing your Sunday morning on this special and solemn day. We'll have an abbreviated program today, just 30 minutes, so we can bring you some of the 911 events this morning. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is part of that, plan separate visits to Ground Zero this year and we will take you there when it happens. The 15th anniversary falls 58 days before Election Day 2016. Clinton and Trump both pulling TV ads for the day and promising no political attacks. But the tough and controversial tone of the rhetoric this weekend suggests the respite will be brief. Here is Trump in Pensacola, Florida, taking a detour from his scripted teleprompter remarks.
[Trump:] Because she is being so protected, she could walk into this arena right now and shoot somebody with 20,000 people watching right smack in the middle of the heart, and she wouldn't be prosecuted, OK? That's what's happened. That is what's happened to our country. I never thought I would see the day when this is happening to our country.
[King:] That would likely be driving the political conversation this weekend, except for this. Listen here as Clinton at a high-dollar New York City fund-raiser attacks not only Trump but his supporters.
[Clinton:] To just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables.
[King:] A lot to talk about. With us to share their reporting and their insights, CNN's Nia-Malika Henderson, Jonathan Martin of "The New York Times", CNN's Jeff Zeleny, and Jennifer Jacobs of Bloomberg Politics. Let's get to the basket of deplorables and she could walk into and shot people in one second, but the context of this the context is we are 58 days away. Brand new polling this morning, here's a national poll from ABC and "The Washington Post" showing a 5-point Clinton lead. We have another poll showing Trump on top, a close race, but right there, 46-41, nine and two for the third party candidates. A very competitive election nationally. NBC"Wall Street Journal"Marist has released new polling showing in the four-way race, Donald Trump up two in Arizona. A dead heat. Donald Trump up two in Georgia. Dead heat. Donald Trump up one in Nevada. A dead heat. Hillary Clinton up two in New Hampshire. A dead heat. This on the heels of Quinnipiac polling in Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and Pennsylvania showing very close races, Clinton up five in Pennsylvania. The others closer than that. Fifty-eight days out, it's a tossup.
[Nia-malika Henderson, Cnn Senior Political Reporter:] Yes, it's a tossup. And you can see that pressure, I think, on the different candidates with Hillary Clinton making the statement at that fund- raiser. It wasn't an instance where we saw before with the 47 percent remark or clinging to guns and faith from Obama. She was very openly doing that. I think she knows that there isn't a lot of enthusiasm for her candidacy and there is also the thought among a lot of Democrats and voters generally that she'll win. So, they very much need to gin up those supporters. And I think for Trump, he's got to do the same thing.
[King:] I think the chip of complacency has fallen off the shoulders of a lot of Democrats in the last week or two as these polls have tightened, especially the last five or six days. But to this point, you're right, you're right, Mitt Romney, you should have known but it was a closed event. Somebody popped up and got him on a cellphone. Somebody recorded the president when he said in Pennsylvania, they cling to their guns their god and their guns. She knew she was on camera, but shouldn't she know better? Shouldn't she know better? If you want to say some of Trump's supporters or Trump has behind him or Trump panders to these people, that's one thing. But you're insulting voters there. You're insulting voters there. So, she, in a statement Saturday said, "Last night, I was grossly generalistic and that's never a good idea. I regret saying "half" that was wrong." She didn't say sorry. She said she got the math wrong.
[Jonathan Martin, The New York Times:] Right, she still believes that some of Trump's voters have those views. I think the Clinton folks deeply regret saying "half," because that makes the story much worse for them. But I think they're actually okay having a larger conversation about race and Donald Trump in part because of what you mentioned. It's a motivational tool for their voters. The biggest challenge he has now is not Donald Trump. This race, to me, is not a tossup. She still has an advantage. The challenge that she does have, though, is motivating skeptical voters who hate Donald Trump but just aren't that into her. They're sitting on Gary Johnson or Jill Stein right now, or they're just claiming their undecided or soft Clinton. It's getting them to the polls. This issue, litigating this question is the kind of material that can get Clinton skeptics out to stop Trump.
[Jeff Zeleny, Cnn Senior Washington Correspodent:] And it's also, though, I mean, we saw her act faster on this than we've seen her
[Unidentified Female:] And Romney didn't.
[Zeleny:] express her regret before. She has dug her heels in. It was clear she had to say something yesterday. But they do want to have a broader conversation on race. That is sort of the issue here.
[King:] There is a way to do that without insulting voters.
[Zeleny:] millions of Americans.
[King:] Right.
[Zeleny:] And doing it at a fund-raiser with Barbra Streisand here. So, that is her challenge, tone deaf, he tone deafness.
[Jennifer Jacobs, Bloomberg Politics:] They asked all their surrogates today to refrain from doing any television or radio interviews out of respect for September 11th. And they said, if you go on social media, only tweet about our men and women in the military. So, they lost a day today to attack Clinton on this. They had to do a bit of a ceasefire, which, you know, hurt a little bit of their window for the attack, but they said this is not going away and this is going to be something that they're really going to be
[King:] Before the ceasefire went into effect, Mike Pence was here in Washington yesterday for the Value Voter Summit and he seized on it. And listen to how he says because this is important to your point about where the Trump campaign is going with this.
[Gov. Mike Pence , Vice Presidential Nominee:] The men and women who support Donald Trump's campaign are hard-working Americans, farmers, coal miners, teachers, veterans, members of our law enforcement community. So, let me just say from the bottom of my heart: Hillary, they are not a basket of anything. They are Americans and they deserve your respect.
[King:] It's very similar to what the Obama campaign did with the 47 percent, essentially saying you are insulting, mocking, showing your elitist disrespect for hard-working Americans.
[Zeleny:] And it shows, again, how I think a lot of Democrats and a lot of them on the Clinton campaign do not understand what is driving the Trump campaign. They, I don't think, have this whole time, and they don't understand, you know, some of his supporters and the frustration out there in the country. Now, granted, most of those people are not voting for her anyway. But that doesn't matter necessarily. There are going to be people in Middle America, some of the swing states, who will be offended by this remark. So, I think she'll have to address this directly this week as she is campaigning. But it is a fundamental misunderstanding of what is driving Donald Trump supporters.
[Henderson:] They think they do understand, at least partly, what is driving these voters. She had that alt-right speech. If she is listening to any of the women I am listening to in the focus groups, these are Republican women who would say Donald Trump was a racist. If you look at the polls even, 30 percent of the Republicans feel like some of the words that Trump say appeal to bigotry, and certainly, 70 to 75 percent if you look at non-white. So, they want to keep driving the message with this sort of sorry-not sorry allows them to make that point that they think really binds the Obama coalition together.
[Zeleny:] It's hard to imagine Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama saying something like that as Jeff pointed out in front of Barbra Streisand at a New York fund-raiser. It shows why a lot of Democrats fear this race is closer than it should be.
[King:] And everybody, remember, we're at the point in the campaign where everybody, the candidates too, are exhausted. This is when you get tired and this is when you make mistakes. Up next the race as we know is trending Trump's way in several key states and the commander in chief test. Why isn't it just Democrats who are very alarmed by Trump's repeated praise of Vladimir Putin?