Alicia Machado, former Miss Universe Photograph: Carmen Delaney/The Guardian
Ratings for the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are starting to trickle in, and while 83 million Americans watched, viewership was not quite as “yuge” as anticipated. Still, the figures are enough to break the 80.6 million viewer record set by the Ronald Reagan’s debate with Jimmy Carter in 1980.Reagan and Carter had just a few channels competing for viewers, and no internet. The latest figure is all the more impressive given the number of digital streaming options available to viewers – CBS’s digital news division, CBSN, said it had logged 2.98m streams and 1.4 million unique viewers in total. YouTube said just under 2 million people streamed video of the debate from six news outlets that officially used its platform. Facebook, too, hosted live showings of the event contributed by multiple news outlets. The total audience across the largest broadcast and cable networks had been predicted to reach 100 million viewers – the low end of the range for a Super Bowl game.
Among late-night TV hosts, the consensus on who won Monday night’s debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton is resoundingly clear: Clinton dominated the evening, with Trump emerging as the blustering loser.
The Daily Show, Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert all opted to air live following the first of three presidential debates, to offer comedic and pointed roundups of the chaotic clash.Trevor Noah’s Daily Show was the first up, with the host opening by taking a swipe at moderator Lester Holt, who New Yorker humorist Andy Borowitz mocked in a piece titled “CNN Launches Manhunt after Lester Holt Vanishes from Debate”. After playing a montage of the debate’s most heated exchanges, Noah said: “At that point, Lester Holt wasn’t even moderating anymore, he was just eating popcorn like everyone else.”
Hillary Clinton drilled into Donald Trump during Monday night’s presidential debate on his treatment of women after he called a Miss Universe winner “Miss Piggy”, but the Republican nominee didn’t back away from the comment, telling Fox and Friends on Tuesday morning that “she gained a massive amount of weight”.
Alicia Machado from Venezuela won the Miss Universe contest in 1996, shortly after Trump became executive producer of the contest. She gained weight in her year as winner – CNN at the time reported a 60-pound increase; Machado says it was closer to 15 pounds – which Trump and the Miss Universe contest viewed as a significant problem.“She was the worst we ever had, the worst, she was impossible,” Trump told Fox and Friends on Tuesday. “She was the winner and she gained a massive amount of weight and it was a real problem,” said Trump. “Not only that, her attitude. We had a real problem with her.”
Donald Trump Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
He still insisted that every poll showed him winning the debates but cited only internet surveys to prove this; every scientific poll taken in the aftermath of the debate showed a majority of viewers believing Clinton had won.
The Republican nominee’s unhappiness with coverage of his widely panned performance showed. Three times in the course of the rally, Trump called out “the corrupt corporate media” and gestured towards his supporters to turn towards the press pen to boo, hiss and even, in one instance, shout “go to hell”.
Trump constantly revisited different moments in the debate and told of how, before taking the stage, “I took a deep breath and pretended I was talking to my family.” He recounted what he felt were his best lines during the debate – like, “You are experienced but it’s bad experience” – and touted how he had done well on the issue of trade and exposed Clinton’s “real positions” on Nafta, which he described as “the single worst deal you’ll ever see”.
He even bashed Lester Holt, the debate moderator, whom Trump described as “the emcee”, for challenging him when he praised stop and frisk, a controversial police tactic that involved New York police officers stopping pedestrians without a warrant, asking them questions and checking them for weapons. A federal judge ruled in 2013 that the practice was unconstitutional as it disproportionately targeted African Americans and Latinos. Trump insisted, “I also explained last night stop and frisk was constitutional. The emcee argued with me, taking up the time. Law enforcement does stop and frisk every day.”
Trump also re-litigated his false claim that he had opposed the Iraq war from the beginning, asking the crowd for approval. “And does everybody believe me, I was against going into Iraq?” he asked the crowd.
Arizona Republic endorses first Democratic presidential candidate in 126 years
The Arizona Republic has endorsed Hillary Clinton for president, making her the first Democratic presidential candidate to earn the newspaper’s endorsement in its 126-year history.
“Since The Arizona Republic began publication in 1890, we have never endorsed a Democrat over a Republican for president. Never,” wrote the editorial board of Arizona’s most widely read daily newspaper. “This reflects a deep philosophical appreciation for conservative ideals and Republican principles. This year is different. The 2016 Republican candidate is not conservative and he is not qualified.”
The newspaper’s editorial board makes no bones about what it views as the temperamental deficiencies of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump: “Clinton has the temperament and experience to be president. Donald Trump does not.”
Calling Trump’s antics on and off the debate stage “beneath our national dignity,” the Arizona Republic’s editorial board dismissed Trump’s stance on immigration as inflammatory and ineffective - a potentially consequential assertion in the border state.
“Arizona went down the hardline immigration road Trump travels. It led our state to SB 1070, the 2010 ‘show me your papers’ law that earned Arizona international condemnation and did nothing to resolve real problems with undocumented immigration,” the editorial board writes. “Arizona understands that we don’t need a repeat of that divisive, unproductive fiasco on the national level.”
Former GOP senator John Warner to endorse Hillary Clinton
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has scored another endorsement from a Republican politician, this time from former Virginia senator John Warner, according to the Washington Post.
Warner, an icon in the commonwealth with strong ties to the military community, joins a long list of Republicans who have avoided endorsing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, instead attaching himself to a ticket that already features another Virginian: current senator Tim Kaine, Clinton’s running mate.
“For 30 years, Virginians trusted John Warner in the senate, and for good reason: he has dedicated his life to defending our country, from serving in the Navy in World War II to chairing the senate armed services committee, where I had the honor of working with him to support our men and women in uniform and their families,” Clinton wrote in a statement. “I am proud to have John’s support, and to know that someone with his decades of experience would trust me with the weighty responsibility of being commander in chief.”
Donald Trump: I 'held back' in last night's debate
Speaking to a campaign rally audience in Melbourne, Florida, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump declared that the only reason he didn’t get in more jabs in last night’s first presidential debate was that he “held back” because he “didn’t want to embarrass” Hillary Clinton.
“For 90 minutes, I watched her very carefully and I was also holding back, I didn’t want to do anything to embarrass her, but I watched her and she was stuck in the past,” Trump said. “For 90 minutes on issue after issue, Hillary Clinton defended the terrible status quo, while I laid our plan, all of us together, to bring jobs, security and prosperity back to the American people.”
“For 90 minutes, she argued against change, while I called for dramatic change. We have to have dramatic change. We have to get rid of Obamacare, we have to strengthen up our depleted military. It’s in such bad shape. We’re gonna do a lot of great things, folks. November 8, you have to get out there and vote.”
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Melissa Joan Hart named as Gary Johnson's Connecticut campaign chair
Actress Melissa Joan Hart - best known as Sabrina in Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Clarissa in Clarissa Explains It All - has joined Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson’s campaign, under the title of Connecticut campaign chair.
Hart has previously supported Republican candidates, tweeting in 2012 that she planned to vote for Mitt Romney:
Can't get too political in only 140 chac but for those asking, I'm voting #RomneyRyan.
...but has previously announced support for Johnson’s campaign earlier this year.
“I want to break away from this two-party system and I think it’s important for people to know that there’s another candidate out there who really toes the line between Democrat and Republican,” Hart told People Magazine. “I mean, he’s libertarian, but socially he’s liberal, but fiscally conservative.”
“Governors, I love, because they already ran their state as like a little president,” Hart continued, referring to Johnson’s service as the governor of New Mexico. “So he gets the way, you know, things run. The politics of it all. He was on a border state, so if you want to talk about immigration, he’s the guy.”
Colin Kaepernick to Trump: 'America has never been great for people of color'
Bryan Armen Graham
Colin Kaepernick has hit back at Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s assertion that the quarterback “should find another country that works better for him” in response to his decision to kneel for the national anthem.
Kaepernick, whose protest has sparked a national discussion over racial injustice and inspired dozens of other professional and collegiate players to follow suit, characterized Trump’s comment as a “very ignorant statement” during this afternoon’s media availability at the team’s practice facility.
San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick meets with Seattle Seahawks wide receiver Doug Baldwin. Photograph: Troy Wayrynen/USA Today Sports
“It’s a very ignorant statement that, if you don’t agree with what’s going on, hearing that if you want justice and liberty and freedom for all, then you should leave the country,” Kaepernick told reporters in a video shared by the Bay Area News Group. “He always says make America great again. Well, America has never been great for people of color. And that’s something that needs to be addressed. Let’s make America great for the first time.”
Kaepernick’s remarks came the morning after Monday’s first presidential debate, where Trumped doubled down on his call for the national introduction of “stop and frisk”, the controversial police tactic ruled unconstitutional in 2013 when a federal judge found it disproportionately targeted African American and Latino neighborhoods.
Trump first addressed Kaepernick’s protest in an appearance last month on the Dori Monson Show, a conservative afternoon talk-radio program in the Seattle area.
“I have followed it and I think it’s personally not a good thing,” the GOP candidate said. “I think it’s a terrible thing, and you know, maybe he should find a country that works better for him. Let him try: it won’t happen.”
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