Hillary has Trump on the backfoot in fiery debate
Hillary came prepared, kept her cool as she clashed with Trump in first presidential debate
Hempstead, United States, Sept. 27: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump traded insults and sparred over temperament, stamina and judgement on Tuesday, in a fiery US presidential debate that often saw the Republican on the backfoot.
With six weeks until election day and polls showing a virtual dead heat, Clinton repeatedly questioned her rival’s fitness to serve in the Oval Office. Before an anticipated television audience of up to 100 million, Clinton painted the celebrity real estate mogul as fatally out of touch and willing to say “crazy things” to get elected.
“You live in your own reality” said the 68-yearold Democrat, accusing Trump of launching his political career on the “racist lie” that Barack Obama is not American.
As Clinton projected steady experience, Trump played the populist bruiser, pitching to frustrated blue-collar voters fed up with politicians.
She doesn’t have the look. I said she doesn’t have the stamina. And I don’t believe she does have the stamina. To be president of this country, you need tremendous stamina — DONALD TRUMP Well, as soon as he travels to 112 countries and negotiates a peace deal, a ceasefire, a release of dissidents... or even spends 11 hours testifying in front of a congressional committee, he can talk to me about stamina. — HILLARY CLINTON
Washington, Sept. 27: Studious and diligent, Hillary Clinton spent weeks getting ready for the first presidential debate, poring over policy papers and sharpening attack lines in practice sessions. Donald Trump did not want to over-prepare and skipped running through a full mock session.
At the first presidential debate, it was clear who had done their homework. She was at her best. He was not at his worst.
Weeks of Super Bowlstyle hype aside, Monday night’s 90 minutes of heated clashes between Clinton and Trump probably didn’t shove many undecided voters off the fence. If Clinton aimed to push her famously unpredictable opponent into a made-for-sharing disqualifying moment, she didn’t quite get there. If Trump set out to show America — particularly women — he’s completed the transformation from cartoonish pop culture staple to leader worthy of the Oval Office, he still has a way to go.
But in a debate full of feisty exchanges and a personal scuffle or two, the candidates demonstrated clearly how they’ve gotten this far. Clinton was polished, prepared and proud of it — a Hermione Granger at a podium. She came with sharp and practiced answers, most notably a newly direct one for the questions about her private email server that has dogged her candidacy for months. She grinned broadly and calmly, even when under fire, and she mocked but only gently the man she called “Donald.” “I think Donald just criticised me for preparing for this debate. And, yes, I did,” Clinton said. “And you know what else I prepared for? I prepared to be president.”
Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta said, “He came in unprepared and what we saw was kind of a meltdown.”
“We’ll have to see how the voters judge this,” Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook told reporters. “But I think the consensus of this entire debate was that Secretary Clinton was the only one on that stage prepared to be president, and I think the totality of the debate proved how deeply unfit he was.”
In the debate, Trump said he will release his tax returns if Clinton releases her 33,000 emails deleted by her from the period when she was the secretary of state in the first term of the Obama Administration.
“As soon as she releases them, I will release,” he said when he was being grilled for not releasing his tax returns. Clinton accused Trump of being “anti-women” and challenged his allegations that she lacked the stamina to be the commanderin-chief.
I want to help all of our allies, but we are losing billions and billions of dollars. We cannot be the policeman of the world, we cannot protect countries all over the world, where they’re not paying us what we need.
— DONALD TRUMP, Republican candidate This is a man who has called women pigs, slobs and dogs, and somebody who has said pregnancy is an inconvenience to employers, who has said women don't deserve equal pay unless they do as good a job as men.
— HILLARY CLINTON, Democrat candidate