The first presidential debate in late September was a final chance for Trump to change the game, the first time he would appear next to Clinton and have an opportunity to prove arguments about his erratic behavior and angry persona false.
Clinton was once again in the midst of deepened scrutiny. She left a 9/11 memorial event after feeling faint, leading to a wild surge of internet rumors about her health. She hadn’t given a proper press conference in months, leading to a barrage of press criticism (which was never matched when Trump began avoiding the press in the final two months of the campaign). Her campaign chairman, John Podesta, had his e-mail inbox hacked, and his messages leaked by Wikileaks, revealing embarrassing internal deliberations and casting more light on Clinton’s connections to wealthy individuals and corporations.
Trump, sensing his improving position, declined to prepare for his debate, beyond holding bull sessions with a coterie of disgraced politicians, generals, and even media executives, once ousted Fox News chief Roger Ailes briefly found his way into the camp. On his third set of campaign leaders, Trump became ringmaster of his own destiny.
The most important moment came at the close, when Clinton mentioned Trump’s treatment of women, citing a former pageant star named Alicia Machado, who Trump had mocked as fat. Trump’s blustery response was hardly elegant, and he spent the next several days attacking Machado in late-night tweets and falsely saying she had appeared in a sex tape.
That would come back to haunt him days later, when a video tape of Trump on Access Hollywood was published by the Washington Post. The tape featured Trump talking about his treatment of women, how he kisses them without asking and boasting he could do anything, even “grab them by the pussy.” At the next debate, pressed by CNN’s Anderson Cooper on whether he had ever done those things, Trump said no. Soon, more than a dozen women would come forward to allege that Trump had sexually assaulted them by kissing or fondling them without permission. One woman is currently suing Trump in a civil case, alleging that he raped her when she was 13 years old.
Through it all, there was no sign that Trump would change his approach to the contests. Each time he would start with a subdued mien, speaking in husky undertones, before rising to issue a soundbite—”Nasty woman!“—that would echo for days on social media. He doubled down on the alt-right influences in the campaign, now managed by CEO of Breitbart Media, Stephen Bannon. He paraded a line of women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual harassment at the second debate, and promised that he would put Hillary Clinton in jail if he were president. In the third debate, he refused to say he would accept the results of the election if he lost.
His sheer intransigence frustrated elites in both parties, and left many women baffled at his ascent. But another segment of voters appear to see him hectored by these women and, by extension, a victim of Clinton’s political attacks. Some clearly saw hypocrisy in Clinton’s criticism of Trump given her own husband’s past behavior. As Trump gave voice to resentment against new social codes that denigrate casual sexism, Trump won the overwhelming support of male voters in the 2016 election. Clinton’s name on the ballot was a red flag that attracted a bull (Fernholz 8-12).
HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. — Hillary Clinton seemed to overpower Donald Trump in their first presidential debate Monday night as the Republican nominee stumbled over his words and found himself spending most of the night on his heels.
“I think Donald just criticized me for preparing for this debate,” Clinton said at one point. “And yes I did. And you know what else I prepared for is I prepared to be president.”
Moderator Lester Holt of NBC News led the candidates through many of the most explosive issues of this election and Trump found himself re-litigating many of his previous controversial comments. Here are six key moments:
1. Trump gets agitated out of the gate: Despite expectations that Trump would show a cooler, more presidential demeanor, he began repeatedly interrupting Clinton, raising his voice, and sniffing loudly during the very first section of the debate on jobs. It set the tone for the rest of the debate.
Tensions were so high that when Clinton asked the audience to visit her website, Trump admonished her posting her plan to defeat ISIS online, saying Gen. Douglas MacArthur would not approve of Clinton posting. “You're telling the enemy everything you want to do,” Trump said.
2. “A long record of engaging in racist behavior:” After multiple clashes on race, Clinton accused Trump of having “a long record of engaging in racist behavior” going back to a 1973 Department of Justice lawsuit accusing him of discrimination for not renting apartments to black people.
Trump dismissed the issue by saying the suit included lots of companies, and that he settled without admitting guilt. He also praised himself for opening a club in Palm Beach, Florida, that did not discriminate against anyone.
And Trump forcefully defended stop-and-frisk, the controversial policing policy that a court ruled unconstitutional when used in New York City. Trump called it “tremendous beyond belief” and said other cities needed to adopt it in order to implement “law and order.”
3. “I say nothing:” After his five-year crusade to raise questions about Barack Obama’s birth certificate, Trump expressed no contrition and gave no explanation for why he finally changed his mind last week when he admitted Obama was born in the United States.
Instead, Trump tried to blame Clinton for starting the rumor (fact checkers say that’s not true) and praised himself for forcing Obama to produce his birth certificate.
Pressed by Holt what he had to say to African-Americans who were offended by the claim, Trump responded, “I say nothing, because I was able to get it,” he said of the birth certificate. “I think I did a good job.”
4. Tax returns: Trump has refused to release his tax returns and didn’t budge when pressed during the debate, giving Clinton a wide opening. “You’ve got to ask yourself, why won’t he release tax returns?” she asked, speculating that he might not be as rich or charitable as he claims, or that he’s hiding business practices or debts.
Trump retorted by saying that tax returns don’t give the public much information, and that his financial disclosures tell you more, noting that his showed he made over $600 million last year. He also said he has relatively little debt.
Noting her father ran a drapery business, Clinton hit Trump for “stiffing” thousands of vendors, saying, “I’m relieved that my late father didn’t do business with you.”
Clinton also invoked an architect she brought to the debate whom she said Trump had failed to pay in full. “Maybe he didn’t do a good job and I was unsatisfied with his work,” Trump replied.
5. “Presidential look:” Holt asked Trump to turn to Clinton and tell her what he meant when he said she doesn’t have a “presidential look.” Trump said Clinton lacked the “stamina” necessary to be commander in chief.
Then, accusing Clinton’s campaign ads of being “not nice,” Trump ominously said he was refraining from saying something worse. “I was going to say something extremely rough to Hillary and her family,” he said, before adding that he decided against it.
Clinton responded by invoking a litany of comments Trump has made about women, and his former ownership of the Miss Universe pageant. “He loves beauty contests, hanging around them,” she said.
6. Iraq: Trump got bogged down in a lengthy and unconvincing defense of his claim that he opposed the Iraq War from the start, which fact checkers have repeatedly noted is not supported by the public record.
Trump responded with hostility when Holt noted this fact. While he acknowledged that Howard Stern in 2002 that he was in favor of the war, he said he said so “lightly” and argued that his private conversations with Fox News Anchor Sean Hannity — where he allegedly expressed opposition to the war — should be given more weight. Trump lashed out at Holt, accusing him of repeating a “mainstream media thing,” started by Clinton.
Clinton, who has been forced to bear the burden of her vote for the war for years, seemed to delight in Trump’s re-litigation of the issue, before doing some of her own. At a different point in the debate, she delivered a prepared zinger: “Well, Donald, I know you live in your own reality, but that is not the facts,” she said (Seitz-Wald 1-4).
ST. LOUIS — A presidential debate whose tone was expected to be shaped by Donald Trump's lewd and demeaning comments a decade ago fulfilled that billing in a testy back-and-forth Sunday night.
Hillary Clinton and Trump established the tenor from the outset, walking onto the stage for their introductions and, seemingly by mutual agreement, passing on the traditional handshake. Throughout the 90-minute exchange, which included questions posed by audience members in the town hall setting, they exchanged insults, defended themselves and even ventured into actual policy positions. After the opening salvos, the specifics of the tape faded into the background.
Here are five quick takeaways from Sunday's [second] debate:
1). The Elephant In the Room Topped the Show
Donald Trump had the worst weekend of his campaign, and perhaps the worst weekend of any presidential campaign ever. A flood of Republican members of Congress broke from the nominee saying that he should drop out or that they wouldn’t vote for him after video surfaced from 2005 of Trump making obscene comments about how he treated women.
Trump upped the tension just minutes prior to the debate by holding a brief press conference with several women who have in the past accused former President Bill Clinton of various forms of sexual assault — signaling his defense strategy.
And the tapes came up right out of the gate. Moderators Martha Raddatz of ABC News and Anderson Cooper of CNN asked Trump about the video and whether his words constituted sexual assault.
Trump first dismissed some of the video, saying he “didn’t say that all” and said he has “never done those things” and then went on to dismiss it as “locker room talk.”
Finally, he said, “I’m very embarrassed and I hate it,” and claimed "nobody has more respect for women than I do” — a claim he has repeated throughout his candidacy.
Then he turned toward the accusations against Clinton's husband.
“If you look at Bill Clinton. Mine were words and his were action,” Trump said. “There has never been anyone in the history of politics who has been so abusive to women.”
And he attempted to connect the former president’s faults to the current Democratic nominee, saying, “Hillary Clinton has attacked those same women and attacked them viciously.”
For her part, Clinton invoked First Lady Michelle Obama who has said more than once that when opponents go low, she and her husband go high.
And she said of Trump, "he never apologizes.”
2). Clinton Tries to Connect All the Dots
Clinton also used the leaked video as further proof that Trump will only divide the country and is not fit to be president.
“It’s not only women and it’s not only this video that raises questions about his fitness to be president,” Clinton said, listing a litany of instances that Trump has denigrated others.
Clinton pointed to Trump’s mocking of a disabled reporter, his attacks against a Gold Star family, his smear of a former Miss Universe, his comments about women, and questioning the motives of a federal judge and his labeling of Muslims.
“This is not who we are” as Americans, Clinton said.
Trump responded, “It’s just words, folks. It’s just words.” It’s a response that meant that Clinton is all talk and no action, a theme through out the 90-minute debate. But it also could have been a defense for the demeaning things that he’s said to and about others.
3). Trump Takes Email Scandal to Another Level
During the first debate, Trump got in no real effective attacks against Clinton. He learned his lesson.
Trump said he “probably shouldn’t say this,” but that if he were to win the presidency, he’s going to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate her.
“There has never been anything like it,” he said, referring to the deletion of 33,000 emails on her private server when she was Secretary of State.
Clinton responded, saying, her email server was a “mistake and I take responsibility.”
“I’m not making any excuses,” she said while adding that there is “no evidence” that her email was hacked. But instead of dropping it after those concise points, she spent more time trying to litigate the subject, which often makes her look like she's not being truthful or unconcerned.
And when Clinton tried to defend an excerpt of a paid speech that was leaked Friday afternoon where she said she speaks differently about Wall Street in public than in private by saying she was telling a story about former President Abraham Lincoln, Trump interjected in an effective way that made her justification seem absurd.
"She got caught in a total lie. And she lied," Trump said. "Now she’s blaming the lie on the late great Abraham Lincoln."
4). Trump Admits to Not Paying Federal Taxes
Trump admitted that he took advantage of a loophole that allowed him not to pay federal income taxes.
When asked if he didn't pay federal income taxes, Trump said, “Of course.”
“A lot of my write off was depreciation,” Trump said, referring to a New York Times story indicated that Trump could have not paid taxes for up to 18 years since 1995 because of a $916 million loss.
“I absolutely used it,” Trump said.
5). Trump Breaks with His Own Running Mate on Syria
In last week’s vice presidential debate, Trump’s vice presidential candidate Mike Pence broke with Trump on his Syria policy, taking a hard line on Russia and threatening American force if Russia and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad continues to bomb civilians.
But Sunday night, Trump said he doesn’t have the same position as his running mate.
“He and I haven’t spoken, and I disagree,” Trump said, which leads to Trump’s ongoing defense of Russia.
6). Trump Continued to Defend Russia
Clinton said that Russia must be held accountable for atrocities in Syria and that she supports the investigation that Russia, along with Assad, are committing war crimes in Syria by the barrage of bombings in eastern Aleppo.
Trump, meanwhile, defended Russia, insisting that they are bombing ISIS, which the international community does not believe.
“I don’t like Assad at all but Assad is killing ISIS; Russia is killing ISIS,” Trump said.
Both candidates were asked their strategy for the war-torn nation. Clinton said she would continue what the U.S. is currently doing — special forces stationed on the ground, training rebels and counterintelligence missions — but would also enforce a no-fly zone.
Trump didn’t lay out a plan but after a rambling answer about Mosul, Iraq and several other tangents, he said the U.S. should implement a secret mission.
“Why can’t they do something secretly?” Trump asks (Caldwell “Second” 1-4).
LAS VEGAS — The days leading up to the third presidential debate were spent largely in the gutter, the latest chapter of this long and treacherous general election campaign between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. But in this final showdown, hosted by Chris Wallace of Fox News, the two candidates fit in a little bit of policy alongside their attacks on each other's weaknesses and scandals.
At the University of Nevada, Trump, who has been badly trailing Clinton in polls, delivered a more focused performance than any of the previous debates. But an eye-popping comment he made questioning the legitimacy of the election will likely overshadow his other statements.
Here are our five major takeaways:
1. Trump Will Still Not Agree to Accept Election Results
Trump refused to say he would accept the outcome of the election on Nov. 8, after traveling the country for days insisting the process is “rigged.”
“I will look at it at the time,” Trump told Wallace, eliciting a gasp from the audience in the debate hall and in the media filing center.
Clinton called Trump’s answer “horrifying” and said it was part of Trump’s pattern to play the victim and blame the system when he’s down.
She noted that after he called the outcome rigged after losing the Iowa GOP caucuses, and that when his television show didn’t win an Emmy, he blamed the system.
Trump didn’t deny but interjected that he should have won an Emmy.
2. Clinton Again Ties Trump to Russia
When Wallace asked Clinton about a statement she made in a paid speech about wanting an open hemisphere of open borders and open trade, Clinton quickly pivoted to WikiLeaks and evidence the Russian government is hacking emails to influence the election. Clinton's speeches were part of a wide release this week by the organization believed to be connected to Russia and its leader Valdimir Putin.
She reminded voters that Trump has actively encouraged Russia to commit espionage and that he hasn’t since acknowledged that the U.S. intelligence committee believes Russia is the culprit.
“The most important question of this evening,” Clinton said, is if Trump “rejects Russian espionage against Americans.” She also asked Trump to admit that Russia was responsible for the hacks.
He refused, insisting as he has at previous debates, that he’s not sure if Russia is culpable.
Trump said that Putin “doesn’t respect” Clinton or President Obama and insisted anew that he doesn’t know Putin, which is counter to his previous claims. He noted again that Putin has “said nice things about me.”
Clinton said Putin would “rather have a puppet for president of the United States," prompting Trump to insist, "You're the puppet."
3. Trump Denies Allegations By Accusers
Trump denied the claims of the nine women who have come out in the past week alleging unwanted groping and sexual advances, saying falsely the claims had been “debunked.”
“I didn’t even apologize to my wife,” Trump said, “because I didn’t do anything.” That contradicted comments from his wife, Melania, earlier in the week, when she told interviewers he had apologized for boorish comments on the Access Hollywood video.
“Nobody has more respect for women than I do,” Trump added.
Clinton used the topic to make a broader appeal to women, noting that Trump’s denial had extended to attacking his accusers at campaign rallies and saying they’re not attractive enough for him to grope.
“Donald thinks belittling women makes him bigger,” Clinton said.
“This is pattern of divisiveness,” Clinton added, calling it “a very dark and dangerous vision for our country.”
Trump pivoted from the allegations to invoke a video released this week by conservative activist James O’Keefe that claims that Clinton supporters were paid to incite violence at his rallies. The video has not been substantiated by NBC News.
At a Chicago rally earlier this year where numerous fights broke out, Trump said they were “possibly or probably started by her or her sleazy campaign.”
4. Trump Says the Mosul Operation is Political
Trump suggested that the new military operation to reclaim the Iraqi city of Mosul from ISIS was a political move by President Barack Obama to help Clinton.
Clinton, who says she supports the president’s decision, derided Trump’s claim.
“That’s how Donald thinks. He’s always looking … (for) conspiracy theories,” Clinton said.
She said that when she was watching the attack on Osama bin Laden, “he was hosting 'Celebrity Apprentice.'”
5. Clinton Suggested Trump Can’t be Trusted with Nuclear Weapons
Trump flatly denied he had ever suggested that countries like Japan could arm themselves with nuclear weapons, even though he had done so in a Fox News interview with Wallace himself.
Clinton said Trump's contradictions on that issue proved anew that Trump couldn’t be trusted with that responsibility for the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
“The bottom line on nuclear weapons is that when the president gives the order it must be followed,” Clinton said.
Trump noted he has the support of more than 200 military leaders and criticized the U.S. for slashing its nuclear arsenal (Caldwell “Third” 1-4).
Works cited:
Caldwell, Leigh Ann, “Six Major Takeaways from the Second 2016 Presidential Debate.” NBC News. October 10, 2016. Web. https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/2016-presidential-debates/top-six-moments-second-presidential-debate-n663371
Caldwell, Leigh Ann, “Five Major Takeaways from the Third and Final 2016 Presidential Debate.” NBC News, October 20, 2016. Web. https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/2016-presidential-debates/5-major-takeaways-third-final-presidential-debate-n669831#anchor-strong2ClintonAgainTiesTrumptoRussiastrong
Fernholz, Tim, “How Hillary Clinton Blew It.” Quartz, November 8, 2016. Web. https://qz.com/831141/2016-presidential-election-results-how-hillary-clinton-blew-it/
Seitz-Wald, Alex, “Six Keys Moments in the First 2016 Presidential Debate between Trump and Clinton.” NBC News, September 26, 2016. Web. https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/2016-presidential-debates/6-key-moments-first-presidential-debate-between-trump-clinton-n655121 6
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