Donald Trump prowled the presidential debate stage on Sunday, threatening to jail an opponent he called “the devil” in a last-ditch bid to staunch his hemorrhaging campaign hopes.
Swaying malevolently behind
Hillary Clinton as she parried attacks on everything from her husband’s sex life to Wall Street and her foreign policy judgment, the intense Republican dominated the night but made little effort to seduce new voters.
Instead, he began the night by assembling a group of women in a press conference to revisit alleged sexual assaults by Bill Clinton, before confronting his opponent hardest on her private email server.
“OK Donald, I know you are into big diversion tonight,” shot back Clinton. “Anything to get away from your campaign and how Republicans are deserting you.”
“Everything you have heard from Donald just now is not true. I am sorry to keep saying this but he lives in an alternative reality,” she added.
The Democratic frontrunner fired off occasional attacks of her own, accusing Trump of being in the pocket of Vladimir Putin, but looked rattled by the brutal onslaught over her record in office.
Trump, embracing the spirit of the “lock her up” mob chants at his rallies, threatened: “If I win I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation – there has never been so many lies and so much deception,” he threatened.
Clinton said it was “awfully good” that someone with the temperament of Trump was not in charge of the law in the country, provoking another Trump jab: “Because you’d be in jail.”
“She got caught in a total lie and now she is blaming the lie on the late, great Abraham Lincoln,” added Trump as Clinton attempted to defend leaked Wall Street speech transcripts.
The Republican’s leonine menace even turned on the moderators at Washington University, demanding half a dozen times why they were interrupting him but not asking tougher questions of Clinton.
Within moments of the candidates meeting on stage – without shaking hands – the night sank into an ugly war of words between two nominees devoid of civility, a spectacle unlike any presidential debate in recent memory.
After briefly sticking to general talking points about Barack Obama’s record and the need to “make America great again”, Trump was easily baited into a contentious exchange with Clinton that saw the Republican nominee threaten to jail his opponent of elected president.
The sparring followed shortly after Trump was asked to address the recently leaked 2005 video which captured him bragging about groping women without their consent.
The former reality TV star apologized, saying he was “embarrassed by it”, but brushed off as “locker room talk” the unguarded content that has sent dozens of Republican lawmakers fleeing from his candidacy.
“I have great respect for women. Nobody has more respect for women than I do,” Trump said.
Clinton responded that the leaked video revealed “what he thinks about women, what he does to women”.
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