Complete transcript.
KING: Are you worried?
MCCAIN: Well, I don't think it's...
MCCAIN: I don't think it's "worried." I think, obviously, I know we're still the underdog. We're now 2 or 3 or 4 points down. And we've got six days to go to make that up. But it's not a matter of worry; it's just, you know, you and I have been together long enough, you know I love the underdog status. I just want to leave that status at the time the polls close.
(CROSSTALK)
(LAUGHTER)
KING: ... be favored.
All right. Sen. Obama had a 30-minute ad buy tonight. It ran right before we went on the air. Does that make it hard for you, the amount of money being spent against you?
MCCAIN: Well, let me tell what's ...
KING: Frankly?
MCCAIN: Let me -- frankly, what's disturbing about it is that he signed a piece of paper back when he was a long shot candidate. And he signed it, said I won't -- I will take public financing for the presidential campaign if John McCain will. I mean, it's a living document.
He didn't tell the American people the truth. And then twice he looked into the camera when he was in debate with Sen. Clinton and said, "I'll sit down and negotiate with John McCain before I decide on public financing."
Well, he didn't tell the American people the truth. He never had any -- I'm still waiting for the call. So -- and what has happened now is that there are hundreds of millions of dollars that are undocumented credit cards. And we don't know where they came from; we don't know who contributed it. Video Watch McCain talk about public financing »
And all my career, I've been trying to increase transparency, accountability, and bring courage (phonetic) to the flow of money. You tell me the next time now a presidential candidate will take public financing when Sen. Obama has shown you can raise millions of dollars.
KING: (INAUDIBLE)
MCCAIN: And so we don't know who those donors are. Their response will be, oh, well, they're just small donors. We don't know that. We don't know that, because they're undocumented.
KING: All right.
(CROSSTALK)
MCCAIN: We document every penny ...
(CROSSTALK)
KING: If it wasn't a change of mind, what are you suspicious of?
MCCAIN: What am I suspicious ...
KING: You make it sound like you're suspicious of something.
MCCAIN: Well, whenever you have hundreds of millions of dollars undocumented in campaign contributions, these are the "small contributions," of course it opens itself up to question, because the one thing we need in financing of campaigns and contributions is transparency.
Sen. Obama has not told the American people the truth. So therefore he now is able to buy these half-hour infomercials and, frankly, is going to try to convince the American people through his rhetoric what his record shows that he's not.
KING: You told me some time ago, like back in February, that what you wanted this race to be was clean. You wanted the race solely based on issues. What happened?
MCCAIN: Well, the first thing that happened is that I asked Sen. Obama urgently and repeatedly to come and do town hall meetings with me the way Jack Kennedy and Barry Goldwater had agreed to do before the tragedy of Dallas intervened.
When you're on the stage with someone, and you're -- every few days, and you're having to talk to the American people directly, that changes the tenor of an entire campaign. You know that, you've seen it, and I've seen it.
So he refused. So he refused to do that. Now, the fact is that Sen. Obama now has paid more for negative advertising against me than any presidential campaign in history, in history.
KING: And you haven't done that?
MCCAIN: Of course we have run ads that point out his record and also point out his associations. And I still think, you know, we're watching now, a major newspaper has a tape that apparently has Mr. William Ayers in it. I don't know if it does or not. That's the allegation.
But that newspaper and their parent, the Tribune Company, and the Obama campaign refuse to release that. Shouldn't the American people know about that? At least they should have full information.
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