US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton accused US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump of racism, sexism and tax avoidance on Monday, putting him on the defensive during a US presidential debate rife with blistering insults and short on policy.
Trump, a real-estate tycoon making his first run for public office, said Clinton’s long years of service represented “bad experience” with few results, adding that she lacked the stamina to serve as commander-in-chief.
Clinton was under pressure to perform well after a bout with pneumonia and a drop in opinion polls, but her long days of preparation appeared to pay off in her highly anticipated first 90-minute standoff with Trump.
Trump, a former reality TV star who eschewed a lot of debate practice, was strong early on, but appeared to become repetitive and more undisciplined as the night wore on in front of a televised audience that could have reached upward of a record 100 million people.
A CNN/ORC snap poll said 62 percent of respondents felt Clinton won and 27 percent believed Trump was the winner.
In signs that investors also awarded the debate to Clinton, Asian shares recovered from an early bout of nerves, while the Mexican peso surged yesterday.
Her chances in the Nov. 8 election also improved on online betting markets.
“You feel good tonight?” Clinton asked supporters after the event. “I sure do. We had a great debate.”
Trump, 70, declared himself the winner to reporters at Hofstra University, then opted against a visit to a local debate watch party that his staff had left open as a possibility.
Clinton, 68, relentlessly sought to raise questions about her opponent’s temperament, business acumen and knowledge.
Trump used much of his time to argue that the former first lady, US senator and secretary of state had achieved little in public life and wants to pursue policies begun by US President Barack Obama that have failed to repair a shattered middle class, with jobs lost to outsourcing and overregulation.
Trump suggested her disavowal of a trade deal with Asian countries was insincere and said her handling of a nuclear deal with Iran and the Islamic State militancy were disasters.
In one of their more heated exchanges, Clinton accused Trump of promulgating a “racist lie” by suggesting Obama, the first African-American US president, was not born in the US.
The president, who was born in Hawaii, released a long-form birth certificate in 2011 to put the issue to rest. Only this month did Trump say publicly that he believed Obama was US-born.
“He has really started his political activity based on this racist lie that our first black president was not an American citizen. There was absolutely no evidence for it, but he persisted. He persisted year after year,” Clinton said.
Trump repeated his false accusation that Clinton’s failed 2008 presidential campaign against Obama had initiated the so-called “birther” issue.
“Nobody was pressing it, nobody was caring much about it... I was the one that got him to produce the birth certificate and I think I did a good job,” Trump said.
Clinton suggested Trump was refusing to release his tax returns to avoid showing Americans he paid next to nothing in federal taxes or that he is not as wealthy as he says he is.
“It must be something really important, even terrible, that he’s trying to hide,” she said.
Trump said that as a businessman, paying low taxes was important.
“That makes me smart,” Trump said.
Trump sniffed loudly at points — a campaign aide said the candidate had no cold — but largely contained himself.
He said he would release his tax documents after a government audit.
However, Clinton, the first woman to win the presidential nomination of a major US political party, seemed to pique Trump’s ire when she brought up Trump’s past insults about women.
“He loves beauty contests, supporting them and hanging around them and he called this one ‘Miss Piggy’ and then he called her ‘Miss Housekeeping,’” she said.
Beforehand, there was much speculation about how much debate moderator Lester Holt should intervene to correct facts, and the NBC News anchorman largely left the candidates to fight it out.
Trump repeated his campaign assertion that he opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq, despite having voiced support for it in a 2002 interview.
“The record shows otherwise,” Holt said.
“The record does not show that,” Trump said in response.
At other times, the candidates corrected each other.
Toward the end of the debate, Trump said Hillary Clinton did not have the endurance to be president, but avoided mentioning her bout with pneumonia this month.
“She doesn’t have the look, she doesn’t have the stamina,” he said.
“As soon as he travels to 112 countries and negotiates a peace deal, a ceasefire, a release of dissidents ... or even spends 11 hours testifying in front of a congressional committee, he can talk to me about stamina,” Hillary Clinton said.
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