‘Nasty woman’ and ‘bad hombres’: the real debate winners?

In one corner, we had “bad hombres.” In the other, “nasty woman.”

The phrases were both uttered by Donald Trump during the third and final debate against Hillary Clinton on Wednesday night in Las Vegas, in the bitter race for the White House.

And the Internet pounced, adding them to its meme factory and its profiteering assembly line, even as the terms drew mocking comments and disgust from social media users.

Within hours, dozens of sellers on Etsy had whipped up merchandise — T-shirts and buttons — bearing both slogans. Comedian Chelsea Handler tossed out a poll to Twitter users: “Are you a bad hombre or a nasty woman?” After about 12 hours, “nasty woman” was winning with 60 percent of the vote.

Trump, the Republican nominee, unfurled the “hombre” line when he took on a question about immigration from the moderator, Chris Wallace. “And once the border is secured, at a later date, we’ll make a determination as to the rest. But we have some bad hombres here, and we’re going to get them out,” he said.

Critics howled that the phrase was racist and in line with his previous description of undocumented Mexican immigrants as criminals, drug dealers and “rapists,” though he allowed at the time that some of them were “good people.”

Later in the debate, as Clinton, the Democratic nominee, was explaining her plan to improve the Social Security program, Trump muttered, “Such a nasty woman.”

That set off a fierce reaction on Twitter, as women sought to reclaim and embrace a label that many saw as another in a long line of sexist insults unleashed by Trump at women.

“From one #NastyWoman to another, you were an inspiration last night,” Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House, tweeted Thursday.

“RT if you’re a nasty woman and it’s made your life a freakin’ pleasure,” the actress and creator of “Girls” Lena Dunham posted on Twitter. Within an hour, it had 1,300 retweets.

At Vox, writer Liz Plank said, the phrase was “the feminist rallying cry that Hillary Clinton needed.” A Janet Jackson fan immediately went into action and spliced footage of the debate into a video of her 1986 song “Nasty.”

Clinton herself brushed off the comment. “I just didn’t pay any attention to that,” she said after the debate.

Merriam Webster said “hombre” and “nasty” both topped its list of the mostsearched words during the debate. The dictionary cited uses of the phrase “bad hombre” as far back as the 19th century.

The memes also quickly gained steam on the online marketplace. Some of the craftspeople who sell merchandise on Etsy were primed to take advantage of an election that tends to offer up memes on a daily basis.

Ginger Knight of Philadelphia said she was more focused on the Republican nominee, reading Facebook statuses to see which of Trump’s phrases were catching on with other users. “And I just started making word buttons,” she said.

She made a “bad hombres” button, a “nasty woman” button and a “rigged” button, among others. They’ve been selling “every couple of minutes” she said.