What we saw during the debate
How Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton looked to Times Opinion writers — before, during and after
Susan Chira
The morning after Hillary Clinton eviscerated Donald J. Trump for his demeaning comments about women, Mr. Trump called into Fox and Friends and doubled down.
I know that person, he said. That person was a Miss Universe person. And she was the worst we ever had, the worst, the absolute worst, she was impossible. She gained a massive amount of weight.
The person in question is Alicia Machado, the Miss Universe winner in 1996. Mr. Trump threatened to fire her and then invited reporters to watch him put her through a workout. He called her Miss Piggy, as Mrs. Clinton reminded the audience last night.
That joke caused me a lot of pain, Ms. Machado said in a video the Clinton campaign posted soon after the debate.
Mr. Trump has long had a fixation with womens weight, and many have felt the sting of his mockery. Join the club. Like most women I know, Im obsessed with weight and bombarded with cultural messages reinforcing that obsession. Skinny jeans. Clingy knits. Flat bellies. Tight torsos. Low-carb diets. French-women-dont-get-fat diets. The voices on the outside are often echoing the ones on the inside.
What Mr. Trump doesnt seem to understand is that when men talk about what women look like, what women hear is somebody saying, Theres something wrong with you. Sadly, women are still too vulnerable to that message.
The question of appearances has bedeviled this campaign a contest between a 70-year-old man who likes to surround himself with women he considers beautiful and a 68-year-old woman whose changing hairstyles and clothing choices have been mercilessly chronicled.
Sexism watchers have been ready to pounce on any comments about Mrs. Clintons sartorial choices; theyve largely been disappointed. But last night, Mr. Trump veered into dangerous territory when he seemed to repeat a criticism that Mrs. Clinton lacked a presidential look. Then his lob at her stamina backfired, allowing her to hit back with one of her most caustic and, analysts said, most effective retorts. As soon as he travels to 112 countries, she said, and matches her list of diplomatic achievements, he can talk to me about stamina.
The Twittersphere lit up with jabs at Mr. Trumps sniffles. Two, it seemed, could play at the appearance game.
By any normal standard, Hillary Clinton crushed Donald Trump in the first presidential debate.
Trump was erratic, inconsistent and incoherent. He did not make a memorable case on any issue except perhaps his call for law and order.
His justification for refusing to release his taxes, his claim that my strongest asset by far is my temperament, his defense of his bankruptcies, his use of debt and his failure to pay creditors, his support for reducing taxes on the wealthy, and his failure to document such broad claims as we have the greatest mess you have even seen all rang weak.
This same pattern became obvious as Trump tried to claim he actually did Obama a favor by pushing for the release of his birth certificate and failed to explain why he continued to make birther claims for years afterward.
Trumps weaknesses were compounded by confused syntax, irritating intrusiveness and disregard for the efforts of Lester Holt, the moderator, to move the debate along.
Clinton, in contrast, was coherent and fact-based, making her arguments in a fashion that the audience could easily understand.
At one point, Trump described Clinton as all talk, no action, but the comment was more applicable to his failure to substantiate his expansive assertions.
On a crucial issue, especially for Clinton, Trump appeared unprepared with anything approaching a plan to deal with matters from ISIS to nuclear weapons to cybersecurity, while Clinton was loaded for bear.
I asked some political aficionados for their thoughts.
Norman Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, emailed me back. Trump, he said, was angry, rambling, fidgety and often simply incoherent. His bar was to look even modestly like a president, in carriage and temperament, plus a very, very low bar on fundamental knowledge. He failed on them all.
Arthur Lupia, a political scientist at the University of Michigan wrote: Her raising of numerous hypotheses about why Trump was not releasing his tax returns was brilliant stagecraft. By raising the ideas as questions, rather than making assertions, the presentation can set the stage for days of questioning about the topic.
Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory, wrote that Trumps performance would not persuade anyone who was on the fence.
The theme of Trumps struggle to express himself versus Clintons forceful presentation built to a crescendo throughout the 90 minutes, culminating in the final minutes when Clinton became the clear aggressor.
This is a man who has called women pigs, slobs and dogs, she declared. As Trump looked on in frustration, Clinton reminded the audience that Trump had once referred to a young Latina Miss Universe, Alicia Machado, as Miss Piggy and Miss Housekeeping.
Trump was so disconcerted that as the debate went on, he got more rattled, telling the audience that he had thought about making some extremely rough attacks on Clinton and her family. But, he added, I said to myself, I just cant do it. Ultimately, he was reduced to whining about Clintons television commercials: Its not a nice thing she has done.
Donald Trump won the first 25 minutes of the first presidential debate. He was too bullying and shout-y, too prone to interrupt, but he seized on an issue, trade, where Hillary Clinton was awkward and defensive, and he hammered away at his strongest campaign theme: linking his opponent to every establishment failure and disappointment, and trying to make her experience a liability rather than a strength.
In response, Clinton stumbled through a series of politicians tics trying out a canned phrase (trumped-up trickle-down), urging people to go to her website and read her campaign book, reaching for the wonders of solar panels when the discussion turned to jobs, and urging the fact-checkers to get to work on her opponent rather than filleting him herself. He seemed passionate; she seemed stilted. His message seemed clear (if, yes, demagogic); hers seemed like a career politicians bob and weave.
But then the rest of the debate happened, and Trump simply couldnt keep it up. As one might have surmised from watching how he handled tough questioning in the primary debates, he lacked the well, stamina to talk about policy in the sustained way required of a one-on-one presidential tilt. So he ended up serving up word salad more and more as the debate wore on, until Clintons stiltedness sounded like eloquence by contrast.
More, as ever in this campaign, he showed no ability to evade or duck or simply retreat on issues his business dealings and his taxes, birtherism and racism where long Trumpish answers make things only worse. Instead he kept over-litigating things and trying clumsy forms of jujitsu (Hillarys the real birther, etc.) that dragged bad moments out, before pivoting to irrelevances or retreating to his slogans. He didnt come across as all that dangerous or fascistic during these moments, but he did come across as vain and foolish, less a master persuader than a babbler whose sales pitches never quite come to the point.
For her part, Clinton improved as Trump began to flail (though there were more scripted lines and another painful fact-checker reference later on), she dug at his vulnerabilities reasonably effectively, and her careful politicians answers were reassuring compared with his solipsistic rambling.
So she won the debate on points, and probably won it in the court of public opinion, and in the process eased liberal anxiety and pushed the race back toward its Hillary by four equilibrium.
What she didnt do, however, was goad Trump into a true meltdown or knock him out with a truly devastating attack. She was careful, cautious and canned; she let him aggress his way into trouble while she hung back and tried to chuckle at him; and even when she got going a little bit accusing him of bigotry and race-baiting, for instance she never seemed intent on going in for the kill. (The words David Duke did not escape her lips.)
Caution is a front-runners strategy, and though the race has tightened Clinton remains the favorite, so the careful way she handled things was a reasonable play especially since her natural gifts dont run toward moments of eloquence or Aaron Sorkin-esque defenestrations.
But her caution probably helped preserve the races drama even though the overall outcome was clear enough. She won the night, but he lived to fight another day.
The candidates covered a considerable amount of ground on foreign policy, though it is shocking that the brutal civil war in Syria received virtually no attention. With her superior knowledge and nuanced understanding of world affairs, Hillary Clinton clearly demonstrated that she could be the next commander in chief. Donald J. Trump espoused many dubious, even dangerous positions in a performance marked by erratic interruptions and twisted facial expressions.
After more than a year of campaigning, one might have expected Mr. Trump to finally be ready to talk about what he would do to defeat the Islamic State. Instead, he kept his secret plan secret despite a mocking comment by Mrs. Clinton and tried to blame her and Mr. Obama for allowing the terrorist group to rise by withdrawing American troops from Iraq. But as Mrs. Clinton correctly pointed out, President George W. Bush made the decision to withdraw the forces, and it could have been reversed only if the Iraqi government agreed, which it refused to do.
Mr. Trump also doubled down on his insistence that he had opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq before it happened, even though numerous fact-checkers have repeatedly proved that he did not.
The Republican candidate repeated his criticism of NATO and his expectation that the trans-Atlantic alliance, as well as American allies South Korea and Japan, will pay more of the cost of its defense by the United States. The allies could do more, but Mr. Trumps crass calculation ignores the fact that such alliances immensely benefit the United States and are partners in the fight against terrorism. Mrs. Clinton assured our allies that she would honor the countrys treaty obligations and other commitments.
Despite criticism from Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump continued to express his odd affinity for Vladimir V. Putin, Russias dictatorial president, by questioning whether Russia really was behind the recent hacking of the Democratic National Committee and other organizations. He slammed the Iran nuclear deal that Mrs. Clinton helped put in place as secretary of state, complaining that it failed to address Irans other destabilizing activities in the Middle East and required the United States to provide Tehran with $1.7 billion in cash. But as Mrs. Clinton rightly argued, the deal is a success because it has halted Irans nuclear program. The regional issues can be tackled if Iran does not have a bomb. As for the money, it originally belonged to Iran, and its return was part of the deal.
One surprising exchange involved nuclear weapons. Both candidates agreed they are a threat, and Mrs. Clinton suggested she was worried about Mr. Trump getting his hands on the nuclear codes. He seemed to say he was both for and against no-first-use of nuclear weapons, and complained that Russia is modernizing its arsenal, while the United States is doing the same.
She is not the only one worried about the power of Mr. Trump with his erratic temperament and lack of understanding of how the world works to use nuclear weapons.
There was a fundamental asymmetry to the exercise, because of the awful truth that one of the participants had nothing truthful to offer.
Trump lost. Really, I think we can work under the assumption that when a candidate is accused of cheering for the housing crisis, its not a good plan to reply: Thats called business, by the way.
There had been some speculation that all Trump needed to do was speak in complete sentences to beat expectations, and if that was the bar, the man did great. When Hillary Clinton suggested he might be withholding his federal returns because he never paid any taxes, he responded: That makes me smart. Complete sentence.
Theres something terrifying in the way Trump cant admit error, even in a case where the incorrect statement in question has become world-famous. There are undoubtedly people in Chad who know that Trump supported the invasion of Iraq before it happened. But when it came up on Monday, he denied it once again, arguing that his much-quoted interview on The Howard Stern Show was something else entirely: I said very lightly I dont know maybe who knows. Essentially. Got that? No wonder he felt there was no need to practice for the debate.
Is it fair to point out that Trump kept sniffling? All I know is, if Clinton did it we would never have heard the end of it. But forget nasal congestion. He made faces. Viewers had to sit all night in front of a split screen, watching one of the candidates grimacing, pouting and smirking. Over on her side, Clinton looked pretty darned normal. Historically speaking, Americans tend to expect more than that of a debate winner. But were in new territory this election cycle.
It does make a difference. Do we want the rest of the world thinking of the United States as the Land of Weird Facial Contortions? Both of these candidates have a lot of baggage and Clinton got past her email burden by admitting she was wrong and saying she was sorry. Not the perfect apology, but it got her through the night.
Trump, for his part, could have anticipated that the business of calling women pigs, slobs and dogs would come up. The correct answer, as his advisers undoubtedly hinted, was to say he regretted it, and hoped hed be a better example for his 10-year-old son. His actual response was to: 1) Claim that nobody likes Rosie ODonnell; 2) Congratulate himself for not saying something extremely rough to Hillary, to her family; and 3) Point out that the polls are looking good.
It was kind of wow.
The night was totally about Trump. Clinton is not a very interesting speaker, and her failure to say anything stupid made her side of the debate all the more unexciting. People tuned in to see Trump and he didnt disappoint. Not every politician would respond to a comment about how he got his start in business with $14 million in family money with: My father gave me a very small loan.
Remember when we made fun of Mitt Romney for his privileged background? Hahahahaha.
I had low expectations for tonights debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, but it took less than an hour for an enormous gulf to emerge between them on the issue that has dominated politics this year race.
The results were truly disturbing.
Lester Holt, the debate moderator, brought up the issue after about 45 minutes of the candidates sparring over taxes (and Trumps refusal to release his returns), trickle-down economics and Clintons emails. His question was: How would each candidate bridge the divide between black and white in our country?
Clinton actually tried to answer, acknowledging that race still determines too much about where people live, the education they receive and how they are treated by the criminal justice system.
Weve got to do several things at the same time, she said. We have to restore trust between communities and the police. We have to work to make sure that our police are using the best training, the best techniques, that theyre well prepared to use force only when necessary.
Clinton said that everyone should be respected by the law and everyone should respect the law and added: Right now, thats not the case in a lot of our neighborhoods.
She also talked about enacting sensible gun control measures to get guns out of the hands of people who should not have them, pointing out that the gun epidemic is the leading cause of death of young African-American men.
Perfect answer? Not really. But what was Trumps response? More police.
First of all, Secretary Clinton doesnt want to use a couple of words, he said. And thats law and order. We need law and order. If we dont have it, were not going to have a country.
Trump said that African-Americans, Hispanics are living in hell because its so dangerous. You walk down the street, you get shot.
He advocated, once again, expanding New Yorks failed and racist stop and frisk program to the rest of the country, making the false claim that it got guns off the streets. (In fact police very rarely found guns in stop-and-frisk searches.)
And, inevitably, Trump managed to turn the conversation to immigrants. We have gangs roaming the streets and in many cases, they are illegally here, they are illegal immigrants, he said.
Thats because, of course, the answer to the racial divides and institutionalized racism in the United States is to put more police on the streets, and to blame illegal immigrants. At least, thats Trumps answer.
If Donald Trump wanted to gain ground from the first debate, there was an obvious strategy: generate a contrast similar to the one George W. Bush skillfully struck against Al Gore in 2000: Big themes and goals, contrasted to a lot of mind-numbing policy details. She may have plans, he needed to argue, while he has the big vision. But strangely, Trump came out of the box declaring that Clinton had no plan, for the economy or to defeat the Islamic State. But then he accused her of telegraphing her plans to the enemy. And then he dropped the point entirely, getting distracted by his own and the complexities of his birtherism and taxes. As a result, Trump had no consistent through-line to his argument, while Clinton held back, resisted the temptation to jump in and rebut every misstatement. She was admirably silent while Trump went on about his excellent temperament. For once, the wonk strategy seems to be working.
Lyndon Johnson lied about Vietnam; Richard Nixon lied about Watergate. They lied, as politicians do, to camouflage the truth. Voters traditionally have cared about the truth, because they believed in facts and judged their leaders accordingly. Likewise, Hillary Clintons success in November will partly depend on how undecided voters viewing this debate perceive the truth content of her answers. Donald Trump, by contrast, is unique among candidates in the modern era: his statements, as George Orwell said of totalitarian propaganda, do not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. His followers, and even undecideds leaning toward him, will judge him by a far more lenient standard, given that they already know the falsity of his pronouncements, but dont care. Thus public reaction to the debate is an important test for Clinton, but less for Trump.
It only took 90 minutes, but Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump fell into a rut that reinforced both of their stereotypes. On most issues, Mrs. Clinton relaxed into wonkery especially on national security and delivered wooden lines about eagerly awaiting fact-checks. Mr. Trumps reactions were a mix of favored rally themes and stream of consciousness boasts, and he interrupted with tangents and confusing non sequiturs, often in praise of himself.
Most people will say Mrs. Clinton got the better of these exchanges and had a good night. But both missed the opportunity to break out and show more repertoire. Mr. Trump continued to own the image of strength, toughness and the notion of shaking up the D.C. status quo. Mrs. Clinton kept her perceived monopoly on empathy and compassion for vulnerable people.
Interesting academic work suggests the most successful politicians defy conventional categories and steal traits that are normally associated with their opponents. The candidates will need to at least attempt this kind of shakeup to have any hope of achieving breakout in this campaign.
This was a strange debate, but Hillary Clinton was the clear winner on every front. She was prepared and graceful and fierce when she needed to be fierce. Donald J. Trump did call her out on her super predator comment which was, rich, coming from him but a solid reminder that as much as she may have evolved, Hillary Clinton still has reckoning to do for that comment and its longstanding effects.
The New York times
