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Clinton and Trump manage expectations ahead of Monday night debate

Then yesterday, Donald Trump made a decision to kick things up a notch, and tweeted an invite to the debate to former Bill Clinton paramour Gennifer Flowers as some kind of response to Hillary Clinton inviting Mark Cuban.

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BuzzFeed reported Flowers would accept the invitation after Trump tweeted Saturday he might put her in the front roll in retaliation for Clinton inviting Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, a vocal Trump critic who has questioned the candidate’s claims about his wealth.

Later, however, Trump’s campaign manager Kellyanne Conway and his running mate, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, both said Flowers would not be a guest at the debate. “The best case for Hillary Clinton can not be, and is not, that she isn’t Donald Trump”, the newspaper said in an editorial for yesterday’s newspaper that was published online today.

“We have not invited her formally, and we do not expect her to be there as a guest of the Trump campaign”, Conway told CNN’s Jake Tapper.

That position sounds pretty much in line with what is being espoused by the Trump campaign.

Trump’s campaign aides said he was eager to display a knowledge of policy, with his campaign manager even asserting that the brash businessman “is like the Babe Ruth of debating”.

“We need to hear from these two candidates, and I hope and trust the moderators will just facilitate that”, Pence said on CBS’ Face the Nation.

Conway added, “I can’t believe how easily baited the Clinton campaign was”.

Don’t look for Gennifer Flowers in the audience at Monday’s kickoff presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

On Saturday evening Clinton’s camp addressed the issue by saying: “Hillary Clinton plans on using the debate to discuss the issues that make a difference in people’s lives”.

It also remains to be seen whether the Commission on Presidential Debates, which organises the debates, would allow either Cuban or Flowers to sit in the front row.

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Flowers had an extramarital affair with Bill Clinton in the late 1980s. The allegation, which Clinton denied at the time, threatened to ruin his campaign. “She has a right to be there if somebody else gives her a ticket”.

Clinton and Trump manage expectations ahead of Monday night debate