The third presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump opened with a civil, policy-focused discussion before it devolved into a highly personal clash, with Trump refusing to say whether he would accept the results of the November election if he loses.
Moderated by Fox news anchor Chris Wallace, the debate touched on a number of issues ranging from abortion to immigration and the civil war in Syria.
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And while it began in a measured tone, the 90-minute debate in Las Vegas descended into attacks between the two candidates on a number of topics including Russian leader Vladimir Putin, immigration and the string of sexual assault allegations that have levelled the Trump campaign.
Here are five things from the third and final presidential debate in Sin City.
Trump refuses to say he will accept election results
Donald Trump had spent the days leading up to the debate cautioning voters the Nov. 8 election would be “rigged” and Wednesday night the GOP nominee refused to say whether he would accept the outcome of the presidential election.
“There is a tradition in this country, in fact one of the prides of this country, is the peaceful transition of power and that no matter how hard fought a campaign is, that at the end of the campaign, that the loser concedes to the winner,” Wallace said. “Are you saying that you are not prepared now to commit to that principle?”
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Trump invoked the email scandal surrounding Clinton before saying “I will tell you at the time. I’ll keep you in suspense.”
Hillary Clinton called the Republican nominee’s answer “horrifying” and accused him of “talking down our democracy” over frustration with his struggling campaign.
Clinton and Trump compare experience
During a particularly heated exchange, Trump criticized Clinton’s years of experience saying “I say the one thing you have over me is experience, but it’s bad experience because what you’ve done has turned out badly.”
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“You talk, but you don’t get anything done, Hillary. You don’t, just like when you ran the state department, $6 billion is missing,” he said.
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Clinton pointed out the $6 billion claim was untrue. Fact-checking website Politifact called this claim “pants on fire” noting the issue is about missing paperwork, not lost money.
The Democratic nominee went on the offensive assailing Trump’s record as a businessman versus her 30 years as a public servant.
“You know, back in the 1970s, I worked for Children’s Defense Fund, and I was taking on discrimination against African-American kids in schools,” Clinton said. “He was getting sued by the Justice Department for racial discrimination in his apartment buildings. In the 1980s, I was working to reform the schools in Arkansas. He was borrowing $14 million from his father to start his businesses. In the 1990s, I went to Beijing and I said, ‘Women’s rights are human rights.’ He insulted a former Miss Universe, Alicia Machado, called her ‘an eating machine.’”
“Give me a break,” Trump interrupted.
“And on the day when I was in the Situation Room, monitoring the raid that brought Osama bin Laden to justice, he was hosting ‘The Celebrity Apprentice,’” Clinton said.
Trump calls Clinton a ‘nasty woman’
Donald J. Trump has repeatedly said that no one respects women more than he does, yet in the final moments of the debate he called the first major-party female presidential nominee in U.S. history “such a nasty woman.”
Clinton was discussing her proposal to preserve Social Security and Medicare, which she noted, would raise taxes on the wealthy.
She took a shot at the billionaire candidate and referenced that in the 1990s Trump wrote-off nearly $1 billion in business losses.
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“That’s part of my commitment to raise taxes on the wealthy. My social security payroll contribution will go up, as will Donald’s, assuming he can’t figure out how to get out of it,” Clinton said.
Trump interrupted saying “such a nasty woman.”
The Twitter hashtag “nastywoman” exploded on social media with many users posting positive comments about the Democratic nominee. The website — nasty women get (expletive) done — redirected visitors to Clinton’s campaign donation page.
Clinton and Trump spar over Putin
While Clinton was defending a claim she supported “open borders,” a phrase revealed by reports from WikiLeaks, the Democratic nominee turned the question on Trump asking him if he would condemn Russia for attempting to interfere in the U.S. Election.
Trump said he “of course” condemns Russia but added he doesn’t necessarily believe Russia hacked emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign, despite what U.S. intelligence officials have said.
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He said Russian President Vladimir Putin is not “my best friend,” but says the Russian leader has “outsmarted” Clinton repeatedly.
“Well, that’s because he’d rather have a puppet as president than the United States,” Clinton responded.
“No puppet. You’re the puppet,” Trump shot back.
Trump and Clinton square off on Roe v. Wade
Donald Trump says that overturning the landmark case on abortion will happen “automatically” if he becomes president and appoints his choice of judges to the U.S. Supreme Court, but stopped short of saying he would personally want to overturn abortion.
“Because I am pro-life, and I will be appointing pro-life judges, I would think that that will go back to the individual states,” Trump said.
Wallace continued to push Trump on the abortion issue, asking him if he personally wants to overturn the 1973 Supreme Court ruling on abortion.
“If we put another two or perhaps three justices, that will happen. That will happen automatically, in my opinion, because I am putting pro-life justices on the court,” Trump said.
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Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton maintained that she strongly believes in a woman’s right to choose when it comes to abortion.
“I strongly support Roe v. Wade which guarantees a constitutional right to a woman to make the most intimate, most difficult in many cases, decisions about her health care that one can imagine,” Clinton said. “I will defend Planned Parenthood. I will defend Roe v. Wade and I will defend women’s rights to make their own healthcare decisions. We have come too far to have that turn back now.”
Trump also attacked Clinton’s position on late-term abortions arguing that the Democratic candidate has said “in the ninth month you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb.”
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention nearly 92 per cent of abortions are performed in the first 13 weeks of pregnancy.
Trump’s comments also sent social media into a frenzy, with some noting that what his comments were describing was a C-section.
https://twitter.com/WalkerBragman/status/788912997330776064
*With files from Monique Scotti and the Associated Press
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