‘I’ll keep you in suspense’
Trump won’t say if he’ll accept vote results
LAS VEGAS — A defiant Donald Trump used the high-profile setting of the final presidential debate here Wednesday night to amplify one of the most explosive charges of his candidacy: that if he loses the election, he might consider the outcome illegitimate because the process is rigged.
Questioned directly as to whether he would accept the outcome should Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton prevail on Nov. 8, Trump demurred. “I’ll keep you in suspense,” the Republican nominee said. Clinton called Trump’s answer “horrifying,” saying he was “talking down our democracy.”
After a sober start, the candidates shifted
Donald thinks belittling women makes him bigger. Hillary Clinton
No one has more respect for women than I do. Donald Trump
gears into a series of fiery exchanges over their fitness to serve as president and character traits. But over the course of the third and final debate, they delved deeper into their substantive differences than they did in the first two forums and offered a clearer contrast in the directions they would take the country. They drew sharp distinctions on the economy, trade, terrorism, immigration and hot-button social issues including abortion and guns.
Russian President Vladimir Putin loomed as an unseen third presence onstage. Clinton and Trump sparred over which of them would be more effective as commander in chief in dealing with his aggression and Russian cyberattacks. Clinton labeled Trump as Putin’s “puppet” — prompting Trump to snap back, “You’re the puppet!” — while Trump charged that Putin had “outsmarted and outplayed” her when she was secretary of state.
After Clinton cited the findings of 17 U.S. intelligence agencies that the Russian government had committed espionage — including by hacking the emails of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta — to interfere in the U.S. election, Trump said he did not agree with that conclusion.
Clinton and Trump clashed intensely about each other’s character deficiencies in an urgent bid to persuade undecided voters just 20 days before Election Day and as people in many states already have begun casting ballots.
Though Trump was clearly trying to present himself in a more presidential light than at the previous two debates, at times he could not contain his impulses to jab and insult.
As Clinton was needling Trump for not paying taxes, Trump interjected, “Such a nasty woman.”
The animus between them had reached such a critical mass that they dispensed with the traditional gesture of shaking hands, before and after the debate.
Trump responded angrily to a question about the chorus of women who have accused him of unwanted kissing and groping in the 10 days since the previous debate. “I didn’t know any of these women,” Trump insisted, dismissing all of their stories as “lies.”
Clinton sought to claim the moral high ground by recounting Trump’s recent mockery of the women’s appearances and physiques on the campaign trail.
“Donald thinks belittling women makes him bigger,” Clinton said. “We now know what Donald thinks, what he says and how he acts toward women. That’s who Donald is. I think it’s up to all of us to demonstrate who we are.”
Trump’s retort: “Nobody has more respect for women than I do.”
The 90-minute debate, moderated by Chris Wallace of Fox News Channel and held on the sprawling campus of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, covered a range of issues that have received scant attention on the campaign trail, such as the Supreme Court and abortion rights.
The debate opened with a discussion of filling at least one vacancy on the Supreme Court. Clinton cast herself as a champion for progressive values, saying she would appoint justices who would defend women’s rights, gay rights and help to overturn the Citizens United ruling that has opened the floodgates to money in politics.
Trump said he would appoint conservative justices who would be strict constitutionalists. He accused Clinton of wanting to appoint justices who would severely restrict gun rights, saying the Second Amendment is “under absolute siege.”
Clinton noted that because she lived in Arkansas for 18 years and represented upstate New York in the Senate, she has an appreciation for gun traditions. “But I also believe that there can and must be reasonable regulation,” Clinton said.
Clinton and Trump sparred intensively over abortion rights, with Trump acknowledging that if he gets two or three appointees to the Supreme Court, the Roe v. Wade decision would be overturned “automatically.”
Trump went on to describe late-term abortion procedures in graphic language, suggesting that many women end their pregnancies in the final one to four days. “You can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb,” he said.
Clinton told Trump: “You should meet with some of the women I’ve met with, women I’ve known over the course of my life. This is one of the worst possible choices that any woman and her family could possibly make. … The government has no business in the decisions that women make with their families.”
One of the sharpest differences was on immigration and border security. Trump tried to put Clinton on the defensive, saying the country would fall apart if the border with Mexico is not strengthened.
“We have no country if we have no border,” Trump said, vowing to build a wall. “Hillary wants to give amnesty. She wants to have open borders.”
Clinton said she opposes mass deportations, as Trump has proposed, because “I don’t want to rip families apart.” And she portrayed Trump as a hypocrite because he has used undocumented workers to grow his real estate empire, including to build Trump Tower, his iconic showpiece in New York.