By James Hohmann:
For the third debate in a row, the Republican nominee was calm, cool and collected — for the first 15 minutes. Then he let Hillary Clinton get under his skin.
The pivot point came during a conversation about immigration. Noting his trip to Mexico, the former secretary of state said Trump “choked” by failing to even raise the issue of who would pay for his border wall. Trump, who before that moment seemed like he had taken a tranquilizer, snapped to. In the 75 minutes that followed, he repeatedly took her bait, looking petty, small and unpresidential along the way.
Trump uttered the word “WRONG” at least six times, according to the transcript. Other times he inaudibly mouthed it under his breath.
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The culmination of all this came in the final moments when Clinton, talking about Social Security, took a dig at Trump for not paying federal income taxes. “Such a nasty woman,” he blurted out.
Clinton got under his skin again when she turned a question about her private, paid speeches to banks into an attack on Trump as a “puppet” of Vladimir Putin. “No puppet! No puppet! You’re the puppet,” he shot back. Then he questioned the judgment of the U.S. intelligence community that Russia is behind the recent hacks aimed at meddling in the U.S. election.
Again and again, he could not help himself. Polls show the economy is Trump’s best issue, but given the chance to expound on it, he decided he had to go back to a quip she had made about nuclear weapons earlier.
The Full Story (October 20, 2016)
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