HIGH COURT CHOICE LEADS LAST DEBATE
Trump vows to appoint ‘pro-life’ justices with ‘conservative bent’ to court. Clinton backs Roe v. Wade: ‘We have come too far to have that turned back now.’
Hillary Clinton and LAS VEGAS — Donald Trump outlined starkly different visions for the Supreme Court under their potential presidencies in Wednesday night’s final debate, with the Republican declaring the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion would be overturned by his judicial nominees.
Clinton vowed to appoint justices who would uphold the ruling legalizing abortion, saying, “We have come too far to have that turned back now.”
The third and final presidential debate opened with a measured, policy-focused discussion — a stark contrast to the heated and highly personal clashes that defined the earlier contests. However, within 30 minutes, Trump reverted to his previous style of repeatedly bursting in to interrupt Clinton as well as moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News.
The 90-minute contest in Las Vegas came just under three weeks before Election Day and with early voting underway in more than 30 states.
For Trump, the debate marked one of his final chances to reshape a race that appears to be slipping away from him. One of the main reasons many conservatives cite for their continued support of him is that the next president is likely to nominate a justice for the court’s current open seat, vacated by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, and could make additional appointments that will shape the evenly divided panel for decades to come.
Clinton said she supports a Supreme Court that stands “on the side of the American people” and not the “powerful corporations and the wealthy.” She took particular aim at the court’s 2008 Heller decision that found the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to bear arms for self-defense.
She said she supports the Second Amendment but thinks the court prevented a reasonable attempt to make guns safer in the decision, which struck down the District of Columbia’s requirements for a trigger lock on all guns.
Republican Trump said statements like that are one of the reasons supporters of the Second Amendment don’t trust Clinton. He vowed to appoint justices who will uphold gun rights, saying they are” under such trauma.”
Trump also said he would appoint judges who are “prolife” and have a “conservative bent.”
“The Supreme Court is what it’s all about,” he said, adding it is “imperative that we have the right justices.”
Trump also said the Constitution should be interpreted “the way the Founders wanted it.”
A new release of hacked emails by Wikileaks, stolen from Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta, was expected to become fodder for the debate, and Trump did not disappoint. He charged that Clinton supports open borders for immigration and quoted from the emails to prove it, citing part of a speech Clinton made to a Wall Street audience that was kept secret before the emails were released.
Clinton said in the private speech that her “dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders.”
In response, she pointed out that she went on to say that vision includes “energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere.” She said she was talking about open borders for energy, not immigration.
Clinton began the debate with a lead in most battleground states. Her challenge was to both keep up her efforts to paint Trump as unfit to be president and start moving to ease America’s deep divisions, which have only been exacerbated during the campaign — no easy task for the Democratic nominee, given the public’s persistent questions about her honesty and trustworthiness.
Trump has leaned on an increasingly provocative strategy in the campaign’s closing weeks, including contending the election will be rigged, despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud in U.S. presidential contests.
Clinton, who has meticulously prepared for the three debates at the expense of time in battleground states, visibly rattled Trump in their first showdown by using his own controversial comments about women and minorities against him. The businessman was on defense at the start of the second debate — which came days after the release of a video in which he brags about kissing and grabbing women — but ended on stronger footing, hammering Clinton for being a creature of Washington who won’t be able to bring about change.