And the winner of the debate is...
Four polls of people who watched the presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump returned varying results. Both candidates are trying to win support from one-in-three voters still undecided |
Hillary Clinton accused Donald Trump of selfdealing and racism and he attacked her long political record as empty and ineffectual as the two rivals bared their deep personal dislike in a slashing and sharply pointed first presidential debate.
The two differed — among many issues — over taxes, the state of the economy and how to mend the country’s fraught race relations.
Mostly they clashed over the virtues of a career spent in public service, as Clinton has done, versus the role of a political neophyte, like Trump, who has devoted himself to building a personal real estate fortune and fame as a reality TV star.
Clinton accused Trump of favouring massive tax cuts for the well-to-do, such as himself, in a return to the kind of trickledown economics that led to the Great Recession.
“I call it Trumped-up trickledown,” she said, suggesting his plan would add trillions of dollars to the national debt and pitch the economy back into recession.
Testy from the start
Trump asserted that she was wrong and said his plan would have a galvanising effect, creating millions of good-paying jobs and contrasting that with Clinton’s “all-talk” approach to economic policy. “Typical politician,” he scoffed.
The 90-minute session on the campus of Long Island’s Hofstra University was testy from the start. Within moments, the candidates began talking over each other as they argued about their past, their future plans and comments each has made over the course of the rancorous campaign. In his eagerness to oneup Clinton, Trump made some unforced errors that Democrats were certain to jump on, including a possible concession that he paid no taxes.
Trump deflected persistent questions about whether he would release his tax returns by saying he is under audit; he has repeatedly said that prevents him from disclosing the records. NBC’s Lester Holt, the moderator, pointed out, however, there was no prohibition on releasing the returns during an audit.
“I think you’ve just seen another example of bait-andswitch here,” Clinton said. “I have no reason to believe he’s ever going to release his tax returns because there’s something he’s hiding.”
She then suggested a number of possibilities: Trump is not as wealthy as he says, he is not as charitable as he claims, he has financial conflicts of interest he does not want to disclose, or he is not paying any income taxes.
“That makes me smart,” Trump said, interrupting Clinton.
But he said he would violate his attorneys’ advice to keep his returns private — and instead release them — if Clinton would put out the 33,000 emails she deleted from the private server she used when she was secretary of State.
“I made a mistake using a private email,” Clinton tersely stated.
For Trump, the session was his first one-on-one encounter with a political opponent, and he often vented his frustration by interrupting Clinton with glib remarks or appealing to Holt to allow him to continue speaking beyond his allotted time.
Clinton entered the debate in the stronger political position, holding a consistent lead in most national surveys and, more significant, an advantage in the route to 270 electoral college votes.
Clinton and Trump are scheduled to debate twice more, on October 9 in St. Louis and October 19 in Las Vegas.