‘Locker room talk’ video dominates second presidential debate
The second presidential debate Sunday evening was a slugfest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump courtesy of the moderators, CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Martha Raddatz, of ABC. It’s heralded as a political game changer.
Though there was some conversation about the humanity crisis in Syria and equality in the United States, much of the hour-and-a-half town hall debate focused on the character of the candidates, Trump hitting Clinton with the deleted emails and President Bill Clinton’s sexual scandal, and Clinton jabbing Trump on the recent discovery of a video which shows him making lewd comments about women.
Clinton and Trump did not shake hands in the beginning of the debate at Washington University in Saint Louis. But by the end of the exchange, the two complimented each other, only when prompted by a question, ending the debate on a positive note.
The video was mentioned in the beginning of the debate. Trump summarized it as “locker room talk” and reminded the nation he would destroy the Islamic State.
“I’m not proud of it,” he said. “I apologize to my family. To the American people. Certainly, I’m not proud of it. But this is locker room talk,” Trump said. “When we have a world where you have ISIS chopping off heads, where you have frankly drowning people in steel cages, wars, and horrible, horrible fights all over — so many bad things happening. Yes, I’m very embarrassed by it. I hate it. But it’s locker room talk and it’s one of those things. I will knock the hell out of ISIS. We’re going to defeat ISIS.”
Trump then pushed one of the moderators, Anderson Cooper, to “get on to much more important things and much bigger things,” like Clinton’s email scandal.
“Well, like everyone else, I spent a lot of time thinking over the last 48 hours about what we heard and saw,” Clinton said. “I said starting back in June, that he was not fit to be president and commander-in-chief. And many Republicans and independents have said the same thing. What we all saw and heard on Friday was Donald talking about women.”
The candidates paced back and forth throughout the debate, with a crowd of undecided voters sitting behind them. Sitting in Trump’s family box were four women who accused Bill Clinton, Hillary’s husband, of sexual abuse.
As she did in the first debate, Clinton told the crowd to go to her website and fact-check everything she and Trump said.
“You can fact check him in real time, last time at the first debate, we had millions of people fact-checking, so expect we’ll have millions more fact checking,” Clinton said. “It’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law of our country.”
Trump replied with, “because you’d be in jail.”
The final question from an undecided audience member was, “would either of you be willing to name one positive thing you respect in one another?”
Clinton praised Trump’s children, while Trump admired Hillary’s drive.
The next and final presidential debate will be held at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 19.
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