LAS VEGAS — Donald Trump refused to say outright whether he would accept whether he would accept the election results, implying he wanted to wait and see if there were irregularities if he lost, while Hillary Clinton said he was “talking down our democracy” during Wednesday night’s presidential debate.
“I will keep you in suspense,” Trump told moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News. Clinton mocked Trump for thinking everything is rigged against him. “There was even a time when he didn’t win an Emmy, and he said the Emmys were rigged,” she said.
“Should’ve gotten it,” Trump shot back jokingly.
The two major candidates initially squared off on the Supreme Court, gun control, abortion and other issues Wednesday night that have traditionally separated Democrats and Republicans, a departure from previous debates.
Trump vowed his Supreme Court appointees would protect the Second Amendment, which he said Clinton would turn into a small “replica,” and suggested they would overturn Roe v. Wade.
“The Supreme Court,” he declared, “that’s what it’s all about.”
As Clinton and Trump debated for the third and final time, it might have been the Republican nominee’s last chance to sway an electorate that polls show decisively moving against him.
The stage was set with Trump inviting President Obama’s half-brother as a guest of the campaign, a sequel to bringing three women who have accused former President Bill Clinton of rape or sexual assault to the second debate. The maneuver reportedly led to the Clinton camp requesting to scrap the pre-debate handshake with the Trump family in Las Vegas, a symbol of how ugly the campaign has become in its waning days.
It certainly was reflected on the debate stage Wednesday night. Clinton and Trump did not shake hands before they went to their podiums. She called him a “puppet” of Russian President Vladimir Putin and said he likes to belittle women.
“Such a nasty woman,” Trump said of Clinton at one point during the debate.
Clinton repeated her claim that Trump’s tax cut was the continuation of failed Republican policies of the past. Trump once again described NAFTA as the worst trade deal in history and vowed to re-negotiate it. He also said he would “repeal and replace” Obamacare, as Americans are now experiencing higher premiums.
Trump began his descent in most national and battleground state polls after he turned in a widely panned performance during the first debate with Clinton in New York. In the days after the encounter, Trump compounded his problems by veering off the script that served him well as he gained ground in September.
October, however, has been a disaster for the Trump campaign. Although his running mate Mike Pence was widely perceived as the winner of the vice presidential debate and Trump did better in his second encounter with Clinton, he has been rocked by multiple allegations that he mistreated women.
The deluge began when audio of Trump making lewd comments about women on the set of “Access Hollywood” in 2005 was leaked to the press on Oct. 7. His remarks were undeniably vulgar and could plausibly be read as describing sexual assault, since he said that rich and famous men like himself could “grab [women] by the pussy.”
At the second debate, Trump was asked directly by moderator Anderson Cooper whether he had actual behaved in the manner described in what the GOP candidate called “locker room banter” with television personality Billy Bush. In the days after Trump answered in the negative, multiple women came forward and accused him of sexual assault.
Trump already suffered serious image problems with women. The allegations have further damaged him in that area, as one poll showed nearly seven in 10 voters believed his accusers that he made unwanted sexual advances.
While Trump has categorically denied all the allegations and his wife Melania submitted to two major television interviews to defend him, some of his remarks in his own defense haven’t necessarily been helpful. He and his surrogates have suggested the accusers might not have been attractive enough to elicit such behavior from the Republican nominee.
Clinton has also been battling a steady drip of emails from her campaign chairman’s inbox being publicly released by WikiLeaks. Though the details aren’t anywhere near as salacious as the Trump scandals dominating the headlines, several of them might have done real political damage in the absence of wall-to-wall coverage of her Republican opponent.
In the days before the debate, Trump laid out a series of ethics reform proposals praised even by anti-Trump Republican Sen. Ben Sasse and called for congressional term limits, a perennially popular measure. But his “drain the swamp” in Washington critique did not come up in the debate, though he did argue Clinton was beholden to her powerful donors and had only “Bad experience.”
Clinton argued that Trump was temperamentally unfit to be president. She once again challenged Trump’s campaign slogan “Make America Great Again.”
“We already are already great because we are good,” she said. The former secretary of state suggested that by rejecting Trump’s character flaws, the country can make a statement about its own character.
Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster who was in Las Vegas and set to moderate a debate focus group of Nevada voters, said before the event that Trump still had an opportunity to close the gap with Clinton.
Clinton led by more than 6 percentage points in the latest RealClearPolitics average of recent national polls.
But Luntz warned ahead of the debate that Trump wouldn’t give himself an opportunity to do so if he insisted on focusing on issues such as Bill Clinton’s past marital infidelities and other matters that distract attention away from what voters care about.
“That’s what Trump does. He talks about something that the voters could care less about, and he ignores what they care the most about,” Luntz told reporters. “Stop with the old relationships.”
“Tonight is the last chance to move anybody,” Luntz added. “He has to win tonight … He has to have a greater impact on voters than she does.”
But even some of the Republican nominee’s top surrogates can’t seem to ditch their complaints about extraneous issues, casting doubt about Trump’s ability to get it together Wednesday evening, and for the final three weeks of the campaign.
Speaking to reporters just prior to the debate, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry blamed Trump’s deficit in the polls on a biased mainstream media that has been too willing to publish stories about the multiple women who have accused the nominee of unwanted groping.
Perry also said the media is spending enough time reporting on Clinton and the apparent illegal hacking of her campaign chairman John Podesta’s email account.
“Those of you in the media taking accusations and running with them as the truth without doing your background — but again I want to go back to this whole journalism issue,” Perry said.
“Do you not think those emails are of great concern to you who spend your life — I mean you went to college, you did everything to be a professional journalist. And then we see that there is clear coordination, exchanging information,” he added. “You think that’s professional journalism?”
Trump’s camp argued he does have a compelling case to make on the issues voters care about.
“He’s going to make clear who the change candidate is, for voters who are looking to go in a different direction, for voters who believe this economy has left them behind, for people who look at the ‘rigged system’ and are pissed off at the Washington insiders controlling things, who want to push back against the very biased media trying to determine the winners and losers in this race,” said Trump senior communications adviser Jason Miller.
“If you are looking for a candidate who has a real economic plan, a plan to defeat radical Islamic terrorism, Donald Trump is that candidate,” he added.
Asked if Trump’s debate guest list would distract for the case, Miller said no.
“This is Hillary Clinton’s opportunity to apologize to Pat Stevens for not saving her son in Benghazi,” the Trump aide replied. This is an opportunity to showcase that even the president’s half-brother thinks the country is going in the wrong direction, that we need to do things differently and that he supports Mr. Trump. So I don’t think this is a distraction to what we’re doing at all.”
As it turned out, Trump did not talk about Bill Clinton and his criticisms of Hillary Clinton’s State Department email practices reflect public concerns. The question is whether his comments about the legitimacy of the election shove the bread-and-butter concerns he raised during the debate.
Discussion of Trump’s refusal to say that he would honor the results of the election was the dominant theme as political reporters in Las Vegas peppered campaign representatives with questions about the debate.
It was an easier question for Clinton officials to answer. When asked by moderator Chris Wallace if she would honor the results of the election, win or lose, the Democratic nominee said that she would.
Reminiscent of the very first debate of the 2016 campaign, when Trump was asked if he would support the eventual GOP nominee if it wasn’t him, he made clear he was reserving the right not to concede on Election Night, no matter the results.
“Well, you honor the results of the election, yes,” Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., said. “But you have every right not to accept the vote total that came out the day of the election if you think it’s fraudulent or there’s errors.”
Trump, Sessions said, was “justified” in his position, and as with other Trump campaign surrogates, did not believe the remarks diminished Trump’s debate performance — at all.
“I think he did fantastic, on issue after issue,” said Sean Spicer, a top strategist at the Republican National Committee. Regarding Trump’s refusal to commit to honoring the election results, Spicer added, in regard to the RNC’s position: “We will accept the will of the people.”
The Clinton campaign couldn’t have been happier with the Trump campaign’s apparent confidence coming out of the third and final debate, because they were so convinced it is misplaced.
Clinton’s team said that its candidate hit the marks it set out to in debate prep.
The plan going in was to be aggressive and go on the attack, rather than playing it safe and trying to run out the clock on Clinton’s lead in most state and national polls.
But it was ultimately Trump’s refusal to abide by the election results that left Clinton’s team confident that the story line of the debate, and emanating from it in the coming days, would bolster its campaign and eliminate any chance that Trump might use Wednesday’s performance to turn things around.
“It’s shocking and it’s frightening, and I think it’s going to alienate him from a lot of voters,” Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said.
The third and final presidential debate — always crucial — could matter more than usual this year.
While Clinton has gained ground in state and national polls since the first two debates, both candidates are unusually unpopular for major party nominees, leaving an electorate that is unsettled and possibly less committed than in previous elections.
For Clinton, a strong performance Wednesday evening could seal the deal and cut Trump off at the pass. Trump desperately needs to one-up the Democratic nominee if he is to have any shot at turning the race around.
“She will go to great lengths to communicate a positive message. You can’t entirely disengage from the other guy on the stage because the format of this, even more than the town hall, lends itself to back and forth exchanges between the two candidates,” Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said.
But, added Fallon, “we view this as the beginning of our closing argument.”
Unscripted closing arguments were exactly what Chris Wallace invited the two candidates to make in the final minutes of the debate. Clinton appealed for bipartisan support. “I’m reaching out to all Americans,” she said.
“We cannot afford four more years of Obama and that is what you get” with Clinton, Trump concluded.
