USA TODAY International Edition
Debate over, brawl back in streets
Clinton, Trump return to campaigning, await fallout or gains from war of words
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump hit the campaign trail again Tuesday, each claiming momentum from a contentious debate that is likely to be repeated in a dozen days.
While most analysts declared Clinton the winner of what may be the most watched political debate in history, Trump claimed otherwise and said on Twitter that he enjoyed the experience.
“Crooked Hillary says she is going to do so many things,” Trump said. “Why hasn’t she done them in her last 30 years?”
Trump and aides complimented moderator Lester Holt of NBC News right after the debate but criticized him on Tuesday for not raising issues like the Clinton Foundation, the 2012 attacks on a U. S. facility in Benghazi, Libya, and the former secretary of State’s use of private email. “He didn’t ask her about a lot of things that she should have
been asked about,” Trump told Fox & Friends.
Clinton told reporters Tuesday morning that “we had a great time last night,” and “I’m looking forward to the next debate and then the one after that.”
Mocking Trump’s complaints about microphone quality in the debate hall, Clinton said: “Anybody who complains about the microphone is not having a good night.”
Clinton attacked Trump for his past comments about women, his business practices, his questioning of President Obama’s citizenship, and his refusal to release his
tax returns.
She “came ready to debate and ready to be commander in chief,” Clinton running mate, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, told MSNBC. Kaine told CBS This Morning that Trump “kind of got flustered and ran out of gas” at the end of the debate, raising questions about the Republican’s stamina in relation to Clinton.
Initial ratings indicate that more than 80 million people watched the Monday debate at Hofstra University, a record for such an event.
Clinton plans to follow up in the days ahead with campaign events planned in North Carolina, New Hampshire, Iowa and Florida.
Trump, who campaigned nearly every day leading up to Monday’s debate and did not spend as much time preparing for the debate as Clinton, travels Tuesday to Florida. His targets in the days ahead are battleground states, including ones hit by the loss of manufacturing jobs that Trump blames on bad free trade deals. His schedule this week includes Florida, Iowa, Wisconsin, New Hampshire and Michigan.
During an appearance Tuesday in Miami, Trump described the debate as “an interesting evening” and “big league, definitely big league.”
The two candidates meet for another showdown Oct. 9 in St. Louis; a third and final debate is set for Oct. 19 in Las Vegas.
Although some pundits and insta- polls gave Clinton the nod after the debate, both candidates will wait to see if it somehow changes the minds of voters in election preference polls.
In the days leading up to the debate, Clinton took whole days off the campaign trail to practice and prepare for the session. The New York businessman and his team said he did not engage in traditional debate preparation and did not hold a practice debate with another person playing the role of Clinton — and it showed, analysts said.
“It felt like a very clear victory for planning and strategizing before a debate,” said Alan Schroeder, author of Presidential Debates: Risky Business on the Campaign Trail.
It was Trump’s first one- onone debate — the Republican primary confabs featured multiple candidates — and the format forced him to talk for longer stretches at a time.
“You’ve got to have a game plan and you’ve got to have information you can deploy — as she did,” Schroeder said.
Jo- Renee Formicola, political science professor at Seton Hall University, said each viewer — and voter — is likely to have his or her own views of how the debate went.
“Every single person brings their own filter to this,” Formicola said. “They are going to see certain things through that filter.”