Clinton
stays calm while Trump loses cool during first presidential debate
Clinton
repeatedly puts Trump on defensive, accusing him of perpetrating a
‘racist lie’ with birther movement and ‘stiffing thousands’
of blue-collar workers
Dan Roberts, Ben
Jacobs and Sabrina Siddiqui in Hempstead, New York
Tuesday 27 September
2016 09.00 BST
Donald Trump’s
freewheeling approach spun wildly out of control in the first
presidential debate as he was forced on the defensive during a
chaotic clash with Hillary Clinton.
Goaded by Clinton
and pressed hard by moderator Lester Holt, the Republican nominee
angrily defended his record against charges of racism, sexism and tax
avoidance for much of the 90-minute clash at Hofstra University,
outside New York.
Trump hit Clinton on
trade and her political record – issues that have helped him draw
level in recent polls and may yet dominate the election – but the
property tycoon appeared thin-skinned and under-prepared as he
sniffled his way through the debate.
“It’s all words,
it’s all soundbites,” he retorted after a particularly one-sided
exchange, adding that Clinton was a “typical politician: all talk,
no action”.
But the Democratic
nominee seized on Trump’s meandering responses and apparent loss of
focus as their long-anticipated clash wore on.
“Words matter when
you run for president, and they really do matter when you are
president,” said Clinton.
“I think Donald
just criticized me for preparing for this debate. And yes I did. You
know what else I did? I prepared to be president,” she added.
In her sharpest
exchanges, the former secretary of state accused Trump of racism for
questioning Barack Obama’s citizenship.
“He has a long
record of engaging in racist behavior. And the birther lie was a very
hurtful one,” said Clinton.
She also accused him
of “stiffing thousands” of contractors by declaring bankruptcy as
a businessman. And in a powerful closing argument she highlighted
Trump’s record of sexism, noted that he had called women pigs and
slobs and, in one case, called a beauty contest Miss Housekeeping
“because she was Latina”.
In turn, Trump
attacked Clinton’s suitability as president in blunt terms. “She
doesn’t have the look and she doesn’t have the stamina,” he
said. “I’ve been all over the place. You decided to stay home,”
he added.
But after rattling
off her record of visiting 112 countries in four years as secretary
of state, Clinton shot back: “When Donald Trump spends 11 hours
testifying in front of a congressional committee, he can talk to me
about stamina.”
Questions of stamina
and temperament were levelled instead at Trump as he appeared to lose
concentration during the uninterrupted appearance – his first
one-on-one appearance on a political debate stage.
Some of his
responses seemed little more than free-associative non-sequiturs. “I
have a son who’s 10, he’s so good with computers,” said Trump
when asked about US cybersecurity weaknesses.
Trump took to the
media spin room immediately after his debate to defend his
performance. Boris Epsheteyn, a Trump campaign spokesman, criticized
the moderator: “Lester Holt interrupted Mr Trump more. He followed
up with Mr Trump more. He was much harder on Mr Trump.” However,
Trump himself said that he thought Holt did “a great job”.
Meanwhile, Clinton’s
campaign basked in a victory lap – declaring that the debate had
underscored Trump was both “unhinged and unfit to be president” –
but was cautious not to bolster expectations on its impact.
“He came in
unprepared and what we saw was kind of a meltdown,” said Clinton
campaign chairman John Podesta.
“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.”
Aides to Clinton
said they had expected Trump to showcase a more subdued demeanor,
citing his efforts in recent weeks to stick to a teleprompter on the
campaign trail and tone down his bombast.
”We thought we’d
see a more disciplined Trump tonight – maybe someone who’d try to
steal an early headline with a gesture of grace and show some
magnanimity,” said Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon.
“Instead, this was
the same Donald Trump in the primary. Which, of course, is the true
Trump.”
Trump had
participated in a pre-debate walk-through of the venue at Hofstra
University, 20 miles outside New York City in the densely populated
suburbs of Nassau County, while Clinton spent the afternoon preparing
with aides at the nearby Garden City Hotel.
Afterwards, while
Trump was filmed hastily disappearing in his car, Clinton told
supporters at a debate watch party to keep fighting, telling them:
“You saw tonight how high the stakes are.”
Inside the hall, a
small live audience were given strict instructions not to clap or
respond to the debate. Though dwarfed by an estimated television
audience of up to 100 million people, they included well-known
political figures including former presidential candidate Jesse
Jackson, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and New York City mayor Bill de
Blasio as well as celebrities such as billionaire Mark Cuban and
controversial boxing promoter Don King.
At first Trump
appeared to be trying to rein in his more aggressive tendency. “Is
that OK? I want you to be happy. It’s very important to me,” he
said to Clinton, using her title, Secretary Clinton.
But Trump, who was
sniffing and sounded nasally congested, quickly grew agitated,
repeatedly interrupting Clinton and often shouting over her as she
attempted to respond to questions.
In particular, he
aggressively went after her record on trade – interjecting as
Clinton spoke, by pointing to her husband Bill Clinton’s signing of
Nafta in the 1990s.
Clinton immediately
jabbed at Trump, making reference to the $14m that the Republican
nominee got in a series of loans from his father, Fred, to start his
business empire. The older Trump, a successful real estate developer,
helped to fund his son’s effort to remodel the Grand Hyatt hotel in
midtown Manhattan and also aided his son with his political
connections. Trump immediately fired back, insisting that “it was
only a small loan” from his father, taking the bait offered by his
Democratic rival.
Trump then knocked
Clinton for previously supporting the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the
landmark 12-nation trade pact brokered under the Obama
administration. When Clinton sought to clarify that she no longer
backed the agreement, Trump intervened again and began drowning her
out with shouts of: “Is it President Obama’s fault? Is it
President Obama’s fault?”
Clinton largely kept
her cool, eventually offering wryly with a smile: “Donald, I know
you live in your own reality.”
Moderator Holt
appeared to struggle to remain on topic as Trump and Clinton traded
barbs that vacillated between policy and the personal. Trump was
especially challenging to control, as he launched frequently into
tirades that did not necessarily address the question asked.
The two candidates
entered into a fiery exchange about Trump’s taxes as the Republican
nominee pledged to release his tax returns provided that Clinton
released the 33,000 emails that were deleted from her private home
server. Clinton fired back and proceeded to lay out all the
hypothetical reasons that Trump, who has claimed he is under a tax
inspector’s audit, was not releasing his tax returns. Clinton said
perhaps Trump was “not as rich as he says he is, not as charitable
as he says he is” and even suggested that Trump hadn’t paid any
income tax for several years. The Republican nominee responded “that
makes me smart” and Clinton continued to admonish him by
suggesting: “I think he is probably not all that enthusiastic about
having the rest of the country see because it must be something
really important, even terrible that he is trying to hide.”
Afterwards, Jason
Miller, Trump’s senior communications adviser, avoided repeated
questions from reporters about whether the Republican nominee has
paid federal income taxes. Miller insisted “of course he pays
taxes” and that “he has paid taxes at every level” but
repeatedly declined to state whether Trump had paid federal income
tax every year in the past 20 years. In two of five years in the
1970s where Trump had to share his tax returns with the New Jersey
state casino control commisssion in order to receive a gaming
license, he paid zero taxes.
Trump also had
difficulty under attack for on his past support of the Iraq war and
of climate change. The Republican nominee repeatedly stood by his
false claim that he was against the war in 2002; Trump expressed his
support for the invasion of Iraq at the time and has since denied it.
On climate change,
Trump denied his past skepticism after Clinton jabbed: “Donald
thinks climate change is a hoax by the Chinese.” “I did not say
that,” responded the Republican nominee, even though Trump tweeted
in November 2012: “The concept of global warming was created by and
for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive.”
He has also repeatedly called global warming “a hoax”.
Despite Trump’s
uneven performance, where he repeatedly contradicted himself
–sometimes in the course of the same sentence, the Republican
nominee has already persevered through a multitude of controversies
and missteps in the course of his campaign.
On this momentous
night in a long campaign, he didn’t change his tactics or approach.
The question as polls have tightened in recent days is whether voters
will end up supporting the uncouth demagogue who has confounded
pundits in the past 15 months.
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