Trump calls Clinton a devil, Clinton says Trump abuses women
ST LOUIS, Missouri
AFP Photo
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump threatened to jail Democratic rival “devil” Hillary Clinton and accused her husband of abusing women in a vicious presidential debate that appeared unlikely to improve his ratings after a damaging weekend, polls showed Oct. 10.Before tens of millions of viewers and a live audience including Bill Clinton and three women who accuse him of past abuse, the Republican nominee shattered the last vestiges of political decorum and issued incendiary allegations against the former president.
With his campaign in a tailspin, Trump apologized for “locker room talk” in which he bragged about groping women, but stated baldly that “Bill Clinton was abusive to women.”
“If you look at Bill Clinton, far worse,” Trump insisted. “Mine are words, his was action,” he said.
The New York businessman called Clinton a “devil” who repeatedly lies.
Going a step further, the 70-year-old real estate mogul threatened his 2016 Democratic rival - whom he accused of having “hate in her heart” - with imprisonment if he wins the presidency.
“If I win, I’m going to instruct the attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation because there’s never been so many lies, so much deception,” Trump said.
Hillary Clinton, facing a deeply wounded candidate with one month to go before Election Day, pushed back by saying Trump’s lewd comments merely showed his true self.
“This is who Donald Trump is, and the question for us, the question our country must answer is that this is not who we are.”
When Clinton said that it was “awfully good” that someone with Trump’s temperament was not leading the nation, he shot back: “Because you’d be in jail.”
Two separate polls showed Clinton had prevailed in the second of three presidential debates.
A CNN/ORC survey of debate watchers put her 57-34 up while a YouGov snap poll put her margin of victory closer at 47-42.
Several American professional athletes slammed Donald Trump on Sunday after the Republican presidential nominee tried to dismiss his sexual comments about women by describing them as “locker-room talk.”
“I haven’t heard that one in any locker rooms,” NBA Portland Trail Blazers player CJ McCollum wrote on Twitter.
Tennis legend Martina Navratilova, who won 18 grand slam singles titles between 1978 and 1990, said the vulgar comments are simply a reflection of Trumps’ true self.
“Locker room talk? Not on your life- this was Trump exactly how he is. Authentic. Obnoxious. Criminal. Etc....,” Navratilova said on Twitter.
The debate’s opening minutes were tense, with Trump slinging mud even at the two moderators, whom he accused of bias - it was “one against three” he said - between a continuous series of interruptions.
Clinton, 68, largely refused to take the bait, opting to adhere to advice from First Lady Michelle Obama: “When they go low, you go high.”
“This is not an ordinary time and this is not an ordinary election,” she said, appealing directly to voters.
But, as in the first debate, she also laid a series of traps for Trump, prodding him toward admitting he had not paid federal income tax in around two decades.