Down in the gutters as Trump-Clinton bout turns ugly
Kevin Rafferty says the second presidential debate was a dark day for democracy, as the insults flew and the game got personal and nasty
US Republican nominee Donald Trump threatened to jail opponent Hillary Clinton if he succeeded in becoming president in next month’s election. He accused her of “lies and deception” and endangering people’s lives when in office. Later, Trump called Clinton “the devil”.
Clinton responded that Trump was not fit to be president, in a debate that saw both leading candidates go straight to fighting in the gutter. The first 20 minutes were more personal and nasty than anything seen in 56 years of American presidential debates. It was more fitting for a banana republic than for the self-proclaimed largest democracy in the world. If this is democracy at work, it’s time to run far away.
Trump came to the debate just days after a leaked 2005 video showed him bragging in lewd and vulgar terms about getting his wicked way with women by assaulting them, grabbing their genitals and forcibly kissing them. “I am not proud of it,” he admitted when pressed. “I apologised to my family. I apologised to the American people.”
Trump’s message was that ... his crude words were merely ‘locker-room talk’
He then immediately diverted to the wickedness of the world today. “When we have a world where you have ISIS (Islamic State) chopping off heads and, frankly, drowning people in steel cages, where you have wars and horrible sights all over, where you have so many bad things happening, this is like medieval times. We haven’t seen anything like this, the carnage all over the world.”
His message was that in the grand scheme of things, his crude words were merely “locker-room talk”, an excuse he used several times, though at age 59, as Trump was then, he was old for a locker-room.
Immediately before the debate, Trump upped the stakes by appearing at a press conference with women who claimed to have been abused by former president Bill Clinton. Trump drew attention to their presence in the audience. “There has never been anyone in the history of politics in this nation that’s been so abusive to women (as Bill Clinton).”
