29 days until vote
Monday marks 29 days until Americans vote in federal and state races on Nov. 8. All year, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has brought you the key moments in those races, and it will continue to cover the campaign's main events, examine the issues and analyze candidates' finance reports until the last ballot is counted. You can follow the developments on the AJC's politics page at http://www.myajc.com/s/news/georgia-politics/ and in the Political Insider blog at http://www.myajc.com/s/news/political-insider/. You can also track our coverage on Twitter at https://twitter.com/GAPoliticsNews or Facebook at https://facebook.com/gapoliticsnewsnow.
A more disciplined but equally combative Republican Donald Trump took the 2016 presidential campaign deeper into uncharted waters Sunday night when he brought up Bill Clinton’s infidelities, calling them “actions” and explaining that his comments 11 years ago that recently surfaced were merely “words” and what he called “locker-room talk.”
In his second debate with Democrat Hillary Clinton, in response to intense questioning by moderator Anderson Cooper, Trump said he never sexually assaulted women, a pivotal answer in an event that will forever be remembered as a bizarre moment in American politics. Cooper had asked him repeatedly to explain the words used in a 2005 video that was released last week.
In the video, Trump claimed in vulgar terms he could grope women with impunity and force himself upon them because he was a “star.”
“I have great respect for women,” the Republican nominee said Sunday. “Nobody has more respect for women than I do. You hear these things that were said. I was embarrassed by those things.”
Clinton said it wasn’t enough to be embarrassed.
“With prior Republican nominees for president, I disagreed with them — politics, policies, principles — but I never questioned their fitness to serve,” she said. “Donald Trump is different.”
The stakes, and the strategy, were set ahead of time. Just more than an hour before the debate, Trump posted a video to Facebook that showed him at a banquet table at the Four Seasons Hotel surrounded by four women who have accused Bill and Hillary Clinton of various abuses. Several of them later were his guests at the debate.
One of the women, Juanita Broaddrick, claimed Bill Clinton raped her, an allegation she leveled decades ago, later recanted and now has made again. It was a stunning development in an already surreal campaign. And one that seemed to emphasize that Trump planned to, as he must see it, fight fire with fire.
And, indeed, during the debate Trump went after the former president who was in the audience.
“If you look at Bill Clinton, far worse,” Trump said. “Mine were words, his were action. Nobody in the history of politics in this nation that has been so abusive of women.”
Clinton never directly rebutted the charge.
Polls over the past week and a half had already begun to crater for Trump, and now with just 30 days until the election, Sunday’s debate was crucial. Trump has been battered for days over the video’s release Friday of a video from 2005 that showed him joking about sexually assaulting women and using other vulgar language.
The video, damaging as it is, also took attention away from the revelation last week that the Republican had likely not paid federal income taxes for 18 years due to a nearly $1 billion business loss claimed on his 1995 return.
Trump spent much of the weekend inside Trump Tower in New York, meeting with advisers and his family. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani served as the campaign's chief surrogate on Sunday morning talk shows.
“It’s wrong,” Giuliani said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” of Trump’s comments from 2005. “He understands that now. He has the weight and responsibility of all these people on his shoulders. He’s very apologetic about it. And (he wants to) move to what’s going to be really important 30 days from now.”
But Trump himself didn’t appear too ready to move on as he re-tweeted a report from conservative Breitbart.com about a woman who had previously accused Bill Clinton of rape.
Hillary Clinton, too, faced uncomfortable questions. WikiLeaks, the internet-based advocates of transparency, released a trove of new emails Friday that showed Clinton chummy with Wall Street and advocating for “open borders” in the hemisphere.
Trump hammered her repeatedly on her handling of electronic communication while secretary of state.
“You should be ashamed,” Trump said, adding that “you should be in prison.”
Earlier in the debate, Clinton said her handling of emails as secretary of state “was a mistake.”
“I take responsibility for using a personal email account,” she said.
But, she said, she wanted to “point out were there are misleading accusations from critics and others. After a yearlong investigation, there is no evidence anyone hacked the server I was using. And there is no evidence anyone can point to at all that any classified material ended up in the wrong hands.”
The debate began low-key enough. The first question, from an audience member, was whether the candidates believed they were setting a good example for the children of the country, many of whom were watching.
“It is very important for us to make clear to our children that our country really is great because we’re good,” said Clinton, who won a coin toss to answer first. “We are going to respect one another, lift each other up, looking for ways to celebrate our diversity. And we are going to try and reach out to every boy and girl as well as every adult to bring them in.”
Trump said he agreed with everything Clinton said, before pointing out that Obamacare is a “horrible thing,” how badly the country’s economy is and more. But, still, the two avoided direct attacks in that first response.
It didn’t last.
Cooper, the CNN moderator, made sure of that, asking Trump directly about the 2005 video. “That was sexual assault,” Cooper said. “You bragged about sexually assaulting women.”
And the the race to the bottom was on.
The second half of the debate focused often on foreign policy, particularly the fight against ISIS, the threat of Russia and the issue of Syrian refugees.
Clinton turned a question about her hacked emails to pivot to Trump’s relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, accusing that country of being responsible for the hacking of the Democratic Party’s computer server.
“We have never in the history of our country been in a situation where an adversary, a foreign power, is working so hard to influence the outcome of the election,” she said. “Maybe because (Trump) praised Putin. Maybe because he wants to do business in Moscow. But we deserve answers. And we should demand Donald release all of his tax returns.”
Trump, in his response, appeared to diverge from his typical answer on Russia. Instead of praising Putin and his relationship with the strongman, Trump on Sunday distanced himself from Putin and Russia.
“She doesn’t know that it’s the Russians doing the hacking,” he said. “Maybe there is no hacking. I know nothing about Russia. I know Russia, but I don’t have business, I have no loans from Russia.”
In another memorable moment, Trump was told that his running mate, Mike Pence, had called for American strength against Russia in Syria. Trump’s response? “He and I haven’t spoken and I disagree.”
But Trump scored points, too, hitting back at Clinton for failing in 30 years of public service to accomplish the things she now promises to do as president. Unlike the first debate, it appeared at times that it was Trump getting under Clinton’s skin.
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