Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump went head to head in Nevada for the third and final presidential debate, clashing on topics including immigration, Iran and Iraq
Lucia Graves: ‘Hillary Clinton spoke directly to women’
On Wednesday night, in the last presidential debate of what has been an emotional tornado of a campaign, Hillary Clinton spoke directly to women.
It began with a commitment to upholding the values laid out in Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 decision legalizing abortion in the United States. Clinton spoke of protecting healthcare centers like Planned Parenthood that make upholding those values possible.
Trump proceeded to make a fool of himself: “If you go with what Hillary is saying,” he began, “ … you can take baby and rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month, on the final day. That’s not acceptable.”
It’s also not true. Late term abortions are extremely rare, and Trump’s insistence that a baby can be torn out of its mother moments before childbirth is pure malarkey. Roe v Wade is meant to protect women’s right to abortion up until “fetal viability”, which in Planned Parenthood v Casey, in 1992, was defined as 23 or 24 weeks or earlier. More recently fights in Congress have centered around an abortion ban at 20 weeks – in other words nowhere near the ninth month.
But the evening was also a referendum on Trump’s personal treatment of women. At one point, Clinton more or less said so. “Donald thinks belittling women makes him bigger. He goes after their dignity, their self-worth, and I don’t think there’s a woman anywhere who doesn’t know what that feels like.”
And unlike his infinite malleability on policy issues, misogyny is the one philosophy Trump clearly hasn’t changed and seems genuinely unable to. He bristled when Clinton recalled his referring to former Miss Universe Alicia Machado as an “eating machine”, but soon after, he was interrupting to call Clinton not just the usual “liar”, which has by now become banal, but “such a nasty woman”, an even more baseless character attack.
I’ve spent the election writing about the women who’ve known Trump. But this isn’t just about the women I interviewed – Machado, Sheena Monnin, Jill Harth. As Clinton made clear tonight, it’s about women everywhere. How fitting it would be if she – another woman he’s insulted – speeds past him to the most powerful job in the world.
Steven W Thrasher: ‘Trump’s biggest grievance is the possibility of losing’
Trump’s campaign has been that of an aggrieved white man, losing his place in the world, who is trying to scare his way back to power with racialized fears of the other. He began it by saying Mexicans were rapists, and he continued in that vein the final debate, saying: “We have some bad hombres here and we have to get them out” – using a not-so-subtle dogwhistle to stoke sexual fears of Latino men. The comment was ironic, given his admission, on tape, of his own sexually predatory actions, and the claims of his many accusers.
Perhaps Trump’s biggest grievance is the possibility of losing. He refused to say if he’ll accept the results of the election, stating: “I’ll tell you at the time, I’ll keep you in suspense.” Among his supporters this can only fuel the idea that black voters are committing voter fraud and will encourage voter intimidation.
Admirably, Clinton kept her cool throughout, particularly Trump when spoke over her to call her “such a nasty woman”. But she also fumbled needlessly, at one point answering a question about Syria by saying the US must work with “American Muslim communities who are on the front lines to identify and prevent attacks,” then awkwardly following up with a non-sequitur: “The killer of the dozens of people at the nightclub in Orlando was born in Queens, the same place Donald was born.”
The night was devoid of poetry, and ended as depressingly as the entire campaign has been conducted.
Jamie Weinstein: ‘The only question is whether he now faces a Mitt Romney-style disaster or a Michael Dukakis-style catastrophe’
Donald Trump needed a devastating knockout. At best he narrowly lost on points.
He came into the third and final presidential debate far behind in the polls. With tens of millions watching, he did little to change the trajectory of the race.
Compared to the first two debates, Trump did do a better job hammering home his message that a vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote for the status quo.
“She’s been doing this for 30 years – why didn’t you do it over the last 15, 20 years,” Trump said of Clinton when talking about negotiating better trade deals.
“You talk but you don’t get anything done Hillary,” he later added.
Trump also did a better job at controlling his emotions when Hillary tried to bait him by calling him a choker and a “puppet”. (Well, at least until the end when he lashed out and called her a “nasty woman”.)
But all this was not nearly enough. The only thing the media will talk about in the hours and days after the debate will be Trump’s refusal to say he will accept the results of the election, making him appear small, petty and conspiratorial.
“I will tell you at the time,” he said when pressed on the question by the election season’s best moderator, Fox News’s Chris Wallace. “I’ll keep you in suspense.”
For her part, Hillary stayed calm and cool, avoiding any serious errors and hitting Trump on his major weaknesses, from his misogynistic comments about women to his perceived lack of presidential temperament.
The major takeaway from the debate is that, barring a stunning revelation of the type that Hillary Clinton is a secret member of Isis, she will be the next president of the United States. The only question that remains is whether Donald Trump faces a Mitt Romney-style disaster or a Michael Dukakis-style catastrophe – and, in that loss, whether Trump brings the Republican House, Senate, party and even conservative movement down with him.
Christopher R Barron: ‘Trump stuck to the issues and forced Hillary to talk policy’
Donald Trump came to this behind in the polls and reeling after weeks of negative media coverage. He needed a big night – and he got one.
For a campaign that prides itself on its mastery of policy, Hillary spent much of the night trying to get Trump to take the bait on sideshow issues.
In previous debates, Trump took the bait. Tonight, however, we saw a much more disciplined candidate. Trump stuck to the issues and forced Hillary to talk policy and – quite frankly – she had her worst debate performance.
Unlike previous moderators, Chris Wallace was willing to properly challenge both Trump and Clinton. His line of questioning, particularly when it came to the Clinton Foundation, kept Hillary off balance.
Clinton also found herself on the defensive on foreign policy, where she seemed more like a George W Bush Republican than a Democrat.
As a result, this ended up being Trump’s best debate. For far too long, the Republican candidate has let the campaign be about the circus and not about policy. If this race is about the circus then Hillary Clinton wins. If its about policy then Trump has a shot. It’s frustrating for me, as a Trump supporter, that it has taken this long for him to focus on where his opponent stands on the issues.
Richard Wolffe: ‘Trump refused to acknowledge that he might just need to play the role of the Loser’
It must be hard to live like Donald Trump. No, really. For years he has styled himself as the world’s greatest gold-plated Winner. Now, at the peak of his celebrity, the GOP nominee is staring at the cold, hard prospect of defeat.
In the final presidential debate of the 2016 carnival, Trump refused to acknowledge that he might just need to play the role of the Loser, and accept the result of an election that is less than a month away.
“I will look at it at the time. I’m not looking at anything now,” he explained. “What I’ve seen, what I’ve seen is so bad.”
What we’ve all seen from Trump is so bad, but he somehow managed to be even worse on stage in Las Vegas. He played a caricature of himself that contrived to be even more childish and temperamental than Alec Baldwin’s rendition of him on Saturday Night Live.
“There was even a time when he didn’t get an Emmy for his TV program three years in a row and he started tweeting that the Emmys were rigged,” said Hillary Clinton. At which point, Trump leaned into his microphone and said: “Should have gotten it.”
It’s one thing to lose your self-control on Twitter. It’s another to thing to lose it while talking about Twitter.
Clinton goaded Trump as easily as an older sister drives her brother into a full-blown tantrum. She called him a puppet of Vladimir Putin. His response? “No, you’re the puppet.”
She said the intelligence agencies blamed election-related cyberattacks on Russia. His response? “She has no idea whether it’s Russia, China or anybody else,” said the puppet. “You have no idea.”
Barely a limo ride away from the Pyramids, the Grand Canal and the Eiffel Tower (the Vegas versions, at least) the GOP nominee explained his foreign policy in remarkable detail. He accused US forces of attacking Isis in Mosul simply to help Clinton get elected, before giving us his Cliffs Notes on the city. “Let me tell you,” he said, “Mosul is so sad. We had Mosul. But when she left, she took everybody out. We lost Mosul. Now we’re fighting again to get Mosul.”
Like the Hangover series, this Trump debate trilogy has grown wan and tired in its final outing. The scriptwriters have run out of ideas. It’s time to replace the clueless man-child character with someone more credible.
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