SOUND OF SABOTAGE
Trump hints mic toyed with
Donald Trump hinted that the presidential debate commission may have intentionally sabotaged his microphone during his first showdown with Hillary Clinton, after the panel admitted late yesterday there were “issues” with the mic.
“It was difficult and, you know when you have a situation like that and you know it’s bad, and you think, you have 100 million people watching — what do you do, stop the show? Please fix?” Trump told a crowd at a Michigan rally last night. “It was bad. I wonder why it was bad. Think of that. I wonder why it was bad.”
The Commission on Presidential Debates released a one-sentence statement yesterday acknowledging a problem with Trump’s microphone without elaborating.
“Regarding the first debate, there were issues regarding Donald Trump’s audio that affected the sound level in the debate hall,” the statement read.
Yet despite stressing on its website the importance of the debates providing “the best possible information to viewers and listeners,” the panel was tight-lipped last night. No one returned multiple phone calls and emails left by the Herald seeking answers to basic questions about the audio “issues.”
“Working that microphone was a hell of a lot more difficult than working Crooked Hillary Clinton — that I can tell you,” Trump said at the rally.
The New York real estate mogul was roundly mocked in the days after the debate, including when Clinton told reporters, “Anybody who complains about the microphone is not having a good night.”
Yet a Fox News poll conducted in the days after the faceoff shows the former secretary of state improving her slight lead among likely voters to 3 points, 43-40 percent, with Libertarian Gary Johnson at 8 percent.
Likely voters who watched the debate decisively sided with Clinton after the showdown, with 60 percent saying she had won and just 22 percent handing it to Trump.
There were other key findings in the Fox poll with just 38 days until the election. While Clinton still holds a 20-point lead among women, 53-33 percent, Trump actually leads with white women, 44-40 percent.
Trump, meanwhile, continues to dominate among white men with no college degree, with 62 percent, while Clinton (13 percent) actually finishes behind Johnson (14 percent) in the same demographic.
Some 35 percent of Trump supporters also said they would not accept Clinton as the “fair” and “legitimate leader” if the brash billionaire loses.
But a tad more people — 62 percent — believe Trump is not honest and trustworthy compared to the 61 percent who feel the same about Clinton.
Other post-debate polls in battleground states show troubling signs for Trump. He’s down 4 points in Florida in a Mason-Dixon poll, and down 7 points in a new Michigan survey.