Trump and Clinton mainly treated the audience and their questions as an annoying interlude to their dispute, flashing fake smiles before launching into their next tirade. Both candidates came off like divorcing parents interrupted by their concerned kids, thus angering them further. The final questioner even asked Clinton and Trump to say something nice about each other.
It was sad and it was a bit scary.
Did Trump win? It’s hard to say if such a debate, where two ultra-rich New Yorkers yell at each other about tax avoidance can be won — but if it can then Trump did win, in my view. He won by hammering home every point repeatedly, commandeering the town hall’s narrative and forcing Clinton constantly on the defensive at every opportunity. Trump won by sucking up all the oxygen in the debate hall. He won by taking the debate to the absolute maximum of serious, alarming accusations and showing how Clinton would only respond to it by saying mean things he had said.
Trump may be a king of flip flopping, but he still made Clinton look worse. This debate will be seen as a particularly big win for Trump among voters unimpressed by the media’s perceived crusade against their beloved real estate tycoon.
– From The Hill article: Trump Plays the Berserk Card for the Win
With his back completely up against the wall and everything on the line, Trump did exactly what he had to do last night to stay in the game and shift enough people’s attention away from the damaging audio released on Friday. Trump’s primary purpose in this debate couldn’t have been to shift the entire election back in his favor, that would’ve been virtually impossible outside of Hillary literally collapsing on stage. His primary objective was to stem the bleeding, and provide justification to those still open to the idea of “voting against Hillary Clinton” in this election. I think he did that.
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