Post- debate rivals look ahead
Trump reassesses; Clinton says course set
RALEIGH, N. C. — Donald Trump said Tuesday that he may hit Democratic rival Hillary Clinton harder in their next encounter and that her efforts to get under his skin during their first debate didn’t work.
“I really eased up because I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings,” Trump said on Fox News, saying he would have brought up “the many affairs that Bill Clinton had” but held back because the Clintons’ daughter, Chelsea, was in the audience. Trump said he might bring that subject up at one of the candidates’ future face- offs.
“I didn’t think it was worth the shot,” he said. “I didn’t think it was nice.”
Trump’s post- debate comments, including new jabs he took at a former Miss Universe about her weight and complaints that his microphone was malfunctioning, kept the focus on his performance during Monday’s event at Hofstra University on Long Island.
For her part, Clinton told reporters that she had a “great, great time.”
“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,” the Democratic nominee said on her campaign plane before flying to North Carolina.
The former secretary of state declined to respond to Trump’s suggestion that he might go after her husband’s
personal life.
“He can run his campaign however he chooses,” Clinton said. “I will continue to talk about what I want to do for the American people.”
Before going to her seat, she added. “Anybody who complains about the microphone,” Clinton said with a smile, “is not having a good night.”
On Fox News, Trump allowed that he was irritated “at the end, maybe,” when Clinton brought up Trump’s treatment of Alicia Machado, a woman from Venezuela who was crowned the 1996 Miss Universe at age 19.
“She was the worst we ever had,” Trump said on Fox News’ Fox and Friends, adding, “She gained a massive amount of weight, and it was a real problem.”
The Clinton campaign moved quickly to capitalize on the issue, releasing a Web video featuring Machado, who said Trump called her “Miss Piggy” and “Miss Housekeeping.”
The ad also features footage from the 1990s of Trump saying in an interview that Machado went from 117 or 118 pounds to 160 or 170: “So this is somebody that likes to eat.”
Clinton’s campaign also dispatched Machado to tell reporters how she spent years struggling with eating disorders after being humiliated publicly by Trump.
“I never imagined then, 20 years later I would be in this position, I would be in this moment, like, watching this guy again doing stupid things and stupid comments,” Machado said. “It’s really a bad dream for me.”
Trump did not address his criticism of Machado as he faced Hispanic voters in a small theater blocks from Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood. In rather subdued tones, he only briefly addressed his debate performance the night before.
“It was an interesting evening certainly. Big league. Definitely big league,” Trump said. “I really enjoyed it.”
CHARTING COURSES
Both campaigns are using the first debate — the mostwatched televised presidential debate in history, with some 84 million people tuning in, according to the Nielsen company — to gauge the path forward into the final six weeks before Election Day.
Ke l lyanne Conway, Trump’s campaign manager, said that voters will see Trump as a “change- maker,” praising the real estate developer for being “polite and a gentleman.”
Conway told CNN that Trump was prepared to bring up Bill Clinton’s marital indiscretions during the debate but that he made a “a split- second spontaneous decision” not to raise the issue. That will earn him points with female voters, she said.
“I think that whole exchange will grow in importance over the next couple of days,” she said. “Women will like that.”
Conway said Trump deserved credit for holding back from that particular subject.
Rudolph Giuliani, a former New York City mayor, called for a far harsher approach. Trump, he told a reporter for the website Elite Daily, had been “too reserved” in his confrontation with Hillary Clinton.
Giuliani recommended attacking the Democratic nominee for having questioned Monica Lewinsky’s credibility in claiming an affair with Bill Clinton, and he called Hillary Clinton “too stupid to be president.”
Clinton moved quickly after the debate, debuting new attacks on Trump’s failure to release his tax returns and profiting from the subprime mortgage crisis.
As Trump courted Hispanic voters in Miami, Clinton hammered on an allegation she’d leveled the night before: that he is refusing to release his returns because he has gone years without paying any federal taxes. “That makes me smart” was Trump’s coy response in the debate, but, on Tuesday, Clinton insisted it was nothing to brag about.
“If not paying taxes makes him smart, what does that make all the rest of us?”
Added an incredulous Joe Biden, campaigning for Clinton in Pennsylvania: “What in the hell is he talking about?”
U. S. Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, Clinton’s running mate, told CBS This Morning that Monday night showed Trump can be “easily rattled.”
“That was very, very apparent throughout the debate,” he said. “And the longer the debate went on, the more apparent that was.”
Trump’s running mate, Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, also toured the morning TV programs, but with an upbeat message. Appearing on ABC’sGood Morning America, Pence proclaimed Monday had been a “great night” in which Trump showcased the “kind of energy” and the “kind of leadership” that had animated his campaign.
“Donald Trump took command of the stage, and I think the American people saw his leadership qualities,” Pence said.
HEAT AND WARMING
Pence, appearing separately on CNN, also said Tuesday that “there’s no question” that human activity affects both the climate and the environment.
“Let’s follow the science,” Pence said in his interview, before he warned against rushing into environmental restrictions that drive jobs out of the country and put Americans out of work.
At Monday’s presidential debate, Democrat Hillary Clinton challenged Trump’s views, saying: “Donald thinks that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. I think it’s real.” Trump interrupted with, “I did not, I do not say that.”
In 2012, Trump tweeted that the “concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non- competitive.” He later said he was kidding. In 2014, Trump tweeted: “Snowing in Texas and Louisiana, record setting freezing temperatures throughout the country and beyond. Global warming is an expensive hoax!”
Pence offered an explanation for those tweets, saying, “What Donald Trump said was a hoax is that bureaucrats in Washington, D. C ., can control the climate of the earth .”
He added, “There’s no question that the activities that take place in this country and in countries around the world have some impact on the environment and some impact on climate.”
Conway dismissed Trump’s previous tweets on climate change, saying on CNN that Trump believes “that climate change is naturally occurring” but the causes are not man- made.
She questioned how “we’re supposed to understand all of his policies” based on tweets or casual remarks he gave before entering politics.
“We don’t know what Hillary Clinton believes because nobody ever asks her,” Conway said. She derided Clinton’s response in the debate, where she said that climate change is real, as “canned” and “scripted.”
MORE TO COME
Reflecting on his performance, Trump said he was pleased with the points he made on immigration, trade and jobs in the first half hour of the debate. He gave his Democratic rival a “C plus” when asked to grade her performance, but declined to grade himself, saying: “I know I did better than Hillary.”
Despite his apparent sniffles throughout the night, Trump said he did not have a cold or allergies. He blamed the noises on his microphone, which he said could not be heard well in the room.
“I don’t want to believe in conspiracy theories, of course,” Trump said. “But it was much lower than hers,
and it was crackling.”
During the 95- minute debate, Trump blamed the nation’s problems on Clinton as a “typical politician.”
“I watched her very carefully, and I was also holding back,” Trump said of Clinton during a Tuesday evening rally in Melbourne, Fla. “I didn’t want to do anything to embarrass her.”
Yet he found himself mostly on the ropes as she denounced him for racial insensitivity, hiding potential conflicts of interest and “stiffing” those who helped build his business empire.
Monday’s debate was the first of three debates between Clinton and Trump sponsored by the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates; the other two are Oct. 9 in St. Louis and Oct. 19 in Las Vegas. The vice- presidential nominees, Kaine and Pence, will face off once, on Tuesday in Farmville, Va.
The third- party candidates did not qualify to participate in the first debate because they did not meet a minimum polling threshold. Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein both made appearances on Hofstra’s campus Monday for media interviews. Stein staged a protest and at one point was ushered off campus by security because she did not have necessary credentials.
Separately, Clinton’s campaign announced Tuesday night that she had gained the support of former Sen. John Warner of Virginia, a Republican who also served as Navy secretary in the 1970s under President Richard Nixon. Warner is to appear at an event today in Virginia with Kaine.