Clinton capitalises on debate woes
A former beauty pageant winner becomes the centre of a new row between the two campaigns as Trump says ‘she was the worst we ever had’
Hillary Clinton moved to capitalise on a sharp-edged debate performance that exposed vulnerabilities for Donald Trump, excoriating his values and character in an effort to expand her coalition of women, minorities and young voters.
Trump scrambled to move his campaign forward. While the Republican nominee insisted that he was not unnerved, he and his advisers grasped at excuses to explain why he did not perform better at the first presidential debate.
Trump yesterday was unrepentant and eager to defend his past, denigrating a former beauty pageant winner whom he targeted as his latest foil and vowing to attack Clinton over her husband's marital infidelities in their next showdown.
In a country divided over two historically unpopular candidates, Trump's turn is unlikely to shake his core support. But Democrats said they felt assured that Trump's hot temperament, scattered demeanour and series of statements that left him exposed to further scrutiny would make it increasingly difficult for him to win over the undecided voters he has been courting, especially moderate white women.
“I look back as a former practitioner and say, ‘Is there anything Donald Trump did to convince somebody who wasn't in his column to be for him?'” said David Plouffe, President Barack Obama's former campaign manager. “I have a hard time thinking there's many of those people. I don't think he lost anybody. But that's not his challenge now. He's got to add.”
Clinton was ebullient as she returned to the campaign trail in Raleigh, North Carolina, and strove to keep alive the controversies that marred Trump's debate performance.
“The real point is about temperament and fitness and qualification to hold the most important, hardest job in the world, and I think people saw last night some very clear differences between us,” Clinton told reporters.
Trump did little to change the subject. In an interview on Fox News
Channel, Trump said debate moderator Lester Holt was biased, and the Republican complained about the quality of his microphone. Clinton jabbed him for that, telling reporters, “Anybody who complains about the microphone is not having a good night”.
Trump also disparaged a former Miss Universe pageant winner, Alicia Machado, for her physique. In the debate, Clinton raised Trump's past comments about the Venezuela-born woman, who was crowned Miss Universe at age 19 in 1996.
“He called this woman ‘Miss Piggy,' and then he called her ‘Miss Housekeeping,' because she is Latina,” Clinton said in one of the debate's more electric exchanges.
Trump offered an indignant defence of how he dealt with Machado when he was a partner in the company that owned the Miss Universe contest.
“She was the worst we ever had,” he said on Fox, adding: “She gained a massive amount of weight, and it was a real problem.”
The Clinton campaign released a web video featuring the beauty queenturned-actor, now a US citizen who lives in California, and arranging a conference call for reporters with Machado, who described the election as “like a bad dream”.
Like Trump's feud with the Muslim parents of a dead US soldier, the Machado episode rapidly emerged as a microcosm of the campaign — and a test of whether Trump can expand his support beyond his base of aggrieved white voters, most of them men.
Mike Murphy, a veteran Republican strategist who has been critical of the party's nominee, said Trump's comments about Machado were “hugely tone deaf”. The debate overall, he said, was for many Republicans “an ‘Oh, crap' moment. If you thought he had a spring in his step for the last few weeks and was getting back in the hunt, that's pretty much gone”.
An estimated 81 million people watched the clash at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, making it the most-watched presidential debate in history.