CNN Democratic Debate Transcript: How to Find Full Remarks for the First Democratic Debate
On Tuesday night, CNN hosted the first of six Democratic presidential debates in Las Vegas. Over the course of several hours, more than 15 million people tuned in to watch as the party's five candidate spiraled through their positions on a number of topics, including gun control, the criminal justice system, climate change, nuclear weapons and foreign relations with Russia, China and the Middle East.
Following the debate, CBS published a full transcript of the candidates' remarks.
Onstage Tuesday evening were the top-polling Democratic candidates: former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee, former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
The transcript is helpful is setting the record straight no how the candidates responded to the tough questions.
On Wednesday, many media outlets reported that Sanders didn't take a hard enough stance on the issue, after a strained exchange with Clinton on the issue. Without detailed quotes or the debate transcript in hand, and at first listen, Sander's response to the gun control inquiry might imply that the inverse of his stance is true.
"As a senator from a rural state, what I can tell Secretary Clinton [is] that all the shouting in the world is not going to do what I would hope all of us want, and that is keep guns out of the hands of people who should not have those guns and end this horrible violence that we are seeing," Sanders said.
"We can raise our voices, but I come from a rural state, and the views on gun control in rural states are different than in urban states, whether we like it or not," Sanders added, after a challenge from O'Malley. "Our job is to bring people together around strong, commonsense gun legislation. I think there is a vast majority in this country who want to do the right thing, and I intend to lead the country in bringing our people together."
Though Sanders argued for restricting guns in some sense, he was quicker than his opponents to doubt the feasibility of such a feat, and pointed to differing opinions in urban and rural states by way of explanation.
Check out the transcript from CBS for a detailed rundown of everything the candidates said on Tuesday, and head here for the full schedule of Democratic presidential debates in the countdown to the 2016 election.
