At one point, Trump – who interrupted Clinton dozens of times throughout the evening – refused to move on as requested.
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But, in fact, the debate was far from conclusive.
Both campaigns knew the highly anticipated first debate could mark a turning point six weeks before Election Day, but it was unclear if either candidate would reap significant gains. Almost half said it had no effect at all. Twitter said the “final share of conversation around the candidates on stage” was 62% for Trump and 38% for Clinton.
In a separate CNN-commissioned focus group, just 4 of the 20 participants felt that the debate had convinced them to vote for Clinton.
And this morning, Trump was back out there defending calling a Miss Universe contestant “Miss Piggy” because she gained too much weight, in his words.
The debate actually felt like two contests.
Several hours later, on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends”, Trump said he thought Holt earned a C or a C-plus for his debate performance, and that he asked unfair questions. I was really struck by the format of the debate compared to other times we’ve heard the candidates, particularly Trump, speak in rallies and the primary debates.
One of Clinton’s best lines of the night came during the racial justice portion of the debate, when she stated, “implicit [racial] bias is a problem for everyone, not just the police”.
Clinton pulled back a bit after indicating she did not want to start an escalatory conflict in cyberspace.
“Crooked Hillary says she is going to do so many things”, Trump said. He predicted the Fed would raise interest rates if Clinton were elected, which one analysis called a “baseless accusation.”
On Facebook, the results were even more lopsided, with Trump earning 79% share of conversation and Clinton having the remaining 21%.
Just like the millions of people across the US and probably the world who tuned in to last night’s presidential debate, Hollywood did too. Trump once again falsely claimed he opposed the war all along, and it was unclear if the objections of either Clinton or the moderator, Lester Holt, were able to break through.
Trump also suggested the U.S. government is not leading the world when it comes to cybersecurity. To some observers, it could have, had Clinton sprung on Trump when he glibly said he paid no taxes because he was “smart”. She has often used the struggles of her mother, Dorothy Rodham, who was abandoned by her own parents and worked as a housekeeper as a teenager, to highlight her middle-class roots and contrast her upbringing with that of Trump. When Al Gore adopted a similar stance against George W. Bush in 1988, though, it was widely perceived as an error.
Holt inserted that Clinton has become the first woman to be nominated for president when he asked his first question. Trump was respectful, even as he attacked Clinton’s policies.
But Greisa Martinez, advocacy director of United We Dream Action, the political arm of an immigrant advocacy group, blamed moderator Lester Holt and Hillary Clinton for a “missed opportunity to make the case for why Trump’s deportation doctrine is unsafe and why providing relief for immigrants is right”.
The figures represent averages across the entire span of the debate, which lasted more than 90 minutes starting at 9 p.m. It was a draw.
I’ll stop there. As the humorist Andy Borowitz predicted a few days ago: “Trump Warns That Clinton Will Rig Debate by Using Facts”.
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A second debate will be held in St. Louis on October 9 and a third in Las Vegas on October 19. As a result, he was unable to shine as consistently as he might have.
