Candidates seize on debate outcome
Trump and Clinton vow to move forward
HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. — The presidential race was seen as venturing deeper into profoundly personal territory Tuesday as Hillary Clinton seized on Donald Trump’s criticism of a former beauty queen and the Republican indicated he would step up his attacks on her husband’s infidelities.
Trying to rebound from what many viewed as a rocky performance at Monday’s first and mostwatched presidential debate ever — with 84 million viewers — Mr. Trump said Tuesday that he may invoke former President Bill Clinton’s “many affairs” at the next showdown in October, adding that he only held back because the Clintons’ daughter, Chelsea, was in the audience.
And Ms. Clinton tried to capitalize on what was seen as a strong showing by criticizing Mr. Trump’s treatment of Alicia Machado, the 1996 winner of a pageant he once owned. Mr. Trump told Fox News on Tuesday that Ms.
Machado, who was 19 when she was crowned, “gained a massive amount of weight, and it was a real problem.”
A web ad released Tuesday, in an attempt to win over skeptical voters who have expressed deep reservations about Mr. Trump’s campaign, features Ms. Machado claiming he called her “Miss Housekeeping” and “Miss Piggy.”
After brushing off Ms. Clinton’s debate claim that he’d once shamed Ms. Machado for her weight, he dug deeper Tuesday.
But Mr. Trump’s latest comments about Ms. Machado were seen as striking in that they came just as he was working to broaden his appeal among minority voters and women. Indeed, Mr. Trump on Tuesday briefly visited Miami’s Little Havana.
And many women said Tuesday that Mr. Trump subjected the first female presidential candidate from a major party to indignities they experience from men daily, including constant interruption, a condescending tone and eye-rolling.
Clinton aides on Tuesday acknowledged they’d laid a trap for Mr. Trump.
With six weeks before the election and early voting underway in some states, national polls show Mr. Trump has effectively erased Ms. Clinton’s oncehefty advantage. The two are deadlocked in most battleground states.
The New York businessman added trips to the Democratic strongholds of Michigan and Wisconsin to his treks to the battleground states of Iowa and New Hampshire.
And Ms. Clinton journeyed Tuesday to Raleigh, N.C., for the first of three planned visits this week to the state by the candidate and her daughter, Chelsea. The tossup state is one of her top targets. Mr. Trump and Ms. Clinton are neck-andneck, as opposed to neighboring battleground Virginia, where she is maintaining a comfortable lead.
Ms. Clinton’s campaign announced Tuesday that she had gained the support of former Virginia Sen. John Warner, a Republican who also served as Navy secretary in the 1970s.
As Mr. Trump courted Hispanic voters in Miami, Ms. Clinton hammered on an allegation she’d leveled the night before: that he is refusing to release his returns because he goes years without paying any federal taxes. “That makes me smart,” was Mr. Trump’s coy response in the debate, but on Tuesday, Ms. Clinton insisted it was nothing to brag about.
“If not paying taxes makes him smart, what does that make all the rest of us?”
A CNN/ORC flash poll found that 62 percent said the Democrat won, compared to 27 percent who picked Mr. Trump.
Some Republicans were privately furious with Mr. Trump over what they saw as a lack of preparedness.
“I really eased up because I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings,” Mr. Trump told Fox News, saying he thought it would have been inappropriate to invoke Mr. Clinton’s infidelities with Chelsea Clinton in the audience.
After the debate, he blamed NBC moderator Lester Holt’s line of questioning and a bad microphone for his uneven performance, suggesting that debate organizers intentionally set his microphone to a lower volume than Ms. Clinton’s to sabotage him.
In Little Havana, Mr. Trump was asked whether he would commit to the next two debates. He mouthed, “Sure.”
Meanwhile, Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence was meeting Tuesday with Gov. Scott Walker for debate preparation in Wisconsin, one week before Mr. Pence squares off against Virginia U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, Ms. Clinton’s running mate, in their only debate.