Comedian Rosie O’Donnell called Donald Trump an “orange anus” after the Republican nominee said in last night’s debate that she “deserves” his criticism, which includes him calling her a “fat pig,” “slob,” and “loser.”
During the debate at Hofstra University, Trump was quizzed on his comments about women’s bodies.
“Some of it’s said — somebody who’s been very vicious to me, Rosie O’Donnell, I said very tough things to her, and I think everybody would agree that she deserves it and nobody feels sorry for her,” said Trump.
In response, O’Donnell tweeted a video from The View where she mocked Trump’s hair and pointed out his bankruptcies, failed marriages and called him a “snake oil salesman.” She says it was this moment that resulted in Trump’s vicious attacks against her.
Ted Cruz, the former Trump foe turned reluctant supporter applauded Trump for his debate performance last night, telling a radio host he had his “strongest debate performance” so far and that the media is only saying Clinton won because they support her.
Cruz was a top college debater and he was regarded as the toughest Republican debater of the primaries.
“Anyone who is swooning at Hillary’s performance last night, that’s a pretty good indication that you’re a card-carrying member of the liberal media, especially in the first half hour. I think Donald very much had the upper hand over Hillary,” said Cruz in a radio interview with Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday.
“And the biggest thing is her answers, they sound old and tired, and I don’t mean that in a comment on her health. It mean it on a comment on her ideas. Her ideas are rehashed 1960s Great Society, big government programs. And to me, they did not rise to the occasion remotely. Now of course the media is going to hyperventilate at how terrific she is, because that’s what they do,” said Cruz.
After the conventions back in July, Lauren Leatherby from the Guardian US interactive team, analyzed the post-convention bump Hillary Clinton was experiencing. She noted that debates also influence polls, writing in August:
In the past, debates have had a big influence on the number of people who say they will vote for a given candidate. After the 2004 and 2012 convention seasons, both George W Bush and Obama were able to hold onto their convention bumps for a few weeks. (For Bush, his post-convention bump lasted about a month. For Obama, his numbers stayed high for two weeks.)
But, in both cases, the candidates’ poll numbers took a hit after the first debate.
Despite trailing Bush in the polls for much of the fall of 2004, a majority of viewers polled thought John Kerry won the first debate. The candidates sparred over the war in Iraq for nearly two-thirds of the debate, and Bush’s defenses appeared weak in the face of Kerry’s persistent criticisms. Bush subsequently lost around five points of his polling lead.
A similar scene played out again in 2012, between another incumbent, Obama, and Republican challenger Mitt Romney. Despite trailing in the polls, Romney was well prepared for the first debate, and Obama – often glancing at his notes – didn’t perform particularly well. More than seven in 10 Americans told Gallup that Romney did a better job, which was reflected in post-debate polls when Obama’s lead decreased by around three points.
If Clinton’s current lead holds up by the first debate in late September (which would be a very long post-convention bump indeed), her debate performance could once again change the balance of the race.
Clinton’s post-DNC bump had disappeared almost entirely by yesterday, with the latest shows pre-debate showing the pair neck-and-neck.
But largely favorable reviews across the board for Clinton’s debate performance may now affect polls - even if that may not reflect the eventual election winner.
Hip hop queen Mary J Blige interviewed Hillary Clinton for a new show to be unveiled on Apple Music Friday, with a preview showing Blige questioning Clinton about race and singing to her.
“A lot of people in my community think Obama was blocked in Congress because he was black. How are you going to do what he wasn’t able to do?” asks Blige, in an Apple music preview put on Instagram.
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The 411 with Mary Blige appears to be a new Apple Music show where the R&B star interviews people, the name taken from Blige’s 1992 album ‘What’s the 411’.
In another 30-second preview available on iTunes, the camera focuses on Blige, who belts out a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s American Skin - which is about the police killing of unarmed black man Amadou Diallo in 1999 - to a rather awkward-looking Clinton.
“It ain’t no secret/No secret my friend/You can get killed/Just for living in your American skin,” she sings as she sits in front of Clinton, reaching out to grab hold of her hand.
“I just want to know where we go from here,” asks Blige. Clinton opens her mouth, and the camera cuts to show name and its September 27 release date.
Just how bizarre will this interview be?
"what will you do to fix the national epidemic of hateration in this dancerie?" pic.twitter.com/jVDy3eJBCP
Last night Lester Holt, the host from NBC Nightly News, moderated the debate, under a bright spotlight after his colleague Matt Lauer was criticized for going soft on Trump during a major interview and the Trump campaign declaring that Holt’s job was as moderator not fact checker.
Holt pushed back on Trump’s claims that he did never supported the Iraq War and his argument that the stop-and-frisk policy in NYC was a big success, and news outlets including Washington Post and Think Progress applauded him for fact-checking.
Holt reminded viewers he’s liberal – from pushing the birther issue to harassing Trump about his tax returns to a wildly biased question about Clinton as “the first woman nominated by a party” not having “the look.” Clinton skated by with a 15-second response on her emails while Trump was asked repeated follow-up questions while Hillary was not. There was no “deplorables” question and Holt promoted the birther meme without noting its origin in the Clinton camp.
Holt’s performance, like Hillary Clinton’s, was not a total knockout. But like Clinton’s, it was more than adequate. And in a year like this one, that counts as a victory for a beleaguered press corps.
The biggest critique of Holt one could make ― and some did on social media ― was that he was too hands-off. However, moderators try to avoid becoming the third debater on stage, and instead force the candidates to spar with one another. There were moments, especially early on, that Holt could have been more forceful in maintaining order. But he also wisely used his discretion to keep the debate going at times instead of sticking to the somewhat arbitrary 15 minutes allotted for each segment.
He was silent for minutes at a time, allowing Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump to joust and bicker between themselves — and sometimes talk right over him — prompting some viewers to wonder if Mr. Holt had left the building.
But his reticence as moderator also gave viewers an unfiltered glimpse of the candidates: their views, speaking styles, and reactions under pressure.
In the early going, it looked like it was going to be an ideal, Jim Lehrer-style performance from Lester Holt, the “NBC Nightly News” anchor. Lehrer was so boringly nonpartisan, so unwilling to play gotcha that he was always hotly in demand to moderate debates. For the first half or so, Holt gave simple, broad, open-ended questions and let the candidates go at it. He didn’t venture into live fact-checking, didn’t much quarrel with the nominees, didn’t ask persnickety questions... But in the last half of the show, Holt started going after Trump.
For example, Trump on trade: his supporters saw it as a dominant showing where he was able to get his message across, Clinton supporters saw him constantly interrupting her in a sexist way.
Who do you think won the debate? Please share in the comments.
On Fox and Friends this morning, Trump claimed that he won the debate because online polls showed it to be true - although those poll numbers may be a little dodgy.
“I know I did better than Hillary and ever poll shows that,” said Trump.
“I won Slate, I won Drudge, I won CBS, I won Time magazine. I won every poll apart from CNN and not many people are watching CNN,” he declared.
Except, Major Garrett from CBS rebuked Trump’s claim:
Ben Collins from the Daily Beast notes that the very polls Trump is claiming he won were gamed by Trump supporters on 4chan and Reddit.
...some users took time to attempt to game online polls soliciting opinions on who won the debate, imploring users to “abuse airplane mode toggling” to allow for more votes for Trump on websites like CNBC, Time, ABC News, and CNN.
Trump then spent the night pointing his Twitter users to those same poll numbers, which had been brigaded by 4chan and Trump’s Reddit community r/The_Donald.
Undecided voters pick Clinton as winner, reports Lauren Gambino from Philadelphia.
In a clash between the two most unpopular presidential nominees in modern history, a group of undecided voters in the battleground state of Pennsylvania declared Hillary Clinton the clear winner of Monday night’s debate; but remained deeply pessimistic about their choices in November.
“It’s like asking me to choose between a heart attack and a stroke,” said one of the 27 voters selected to participate in the focus group conducted by Republican pollster Frank Luntz in Philadelphia on Monday.
The visceral electoral anger that helped fuel Trump’s rise was felt in the room at the National Constitution Center where the mood was perhaps best encapsulated by Luntz’s opening question: “How the hell did we get here?”
The Pennsylvania voters shared some of the same entrenched views that voters across the country have expressed over the past 18 months. They described Clinton as a “liar”, “corrupt”, “secretive” and “self-centered”. They labeled Trump “scary”, “fake”, an “egomaniac” and a “shape-shifter”.
The battleground state voters watched the debate from a room inside the National Constitution Center and recorded their snap reactions throughout the 90-minute debate. On display behind the voters were large, expressionistic paintings of an American flag, John F Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Trump and Clinton by artist and GOP darling Steve Penley.
At the end of the debate, 16 of the 27 participants agreed that Clinton had won while just six believed Trump had won the debate. In near uniformity, the voters said the outcome of the debate was the result of Trump’s failure rather than Clinton’s success.
Hello and welcome to our live-wire coverage of the 2016 race for the White House.
Last night Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton battled it out at Hofstra University in the first 2016 presidential debate. This morning, we’re wading through the reviews, columns and analysis.
First a look at some Guardian stories to check out:
Our politics team - Dan Roberts, Sabrina Siddiqui and Ben Jacobs – covered the debate from inside the room, declaring that Clinton kept her cool while Trump lost his.
Alan Yuhas fact-checked, clarifying exactly which candidates’ arguments hold up to inspection.
Trump defensive on Fox News this morning
Trump has already come out on the defensive on Fox and Friends this morning, declaring that moderator Lester Holt asked him “hostile questions” but didn’t drill Clinton on her own scandals, and said his microphone suffered audio problems possibly “on purpose”.
“I thought it went really well ... It was the debate of debates,” Trump declared at 7am.
Trump said he thought the NBC Nightly News host did a “fine” job, although he argued that he got asked much tougher questions, including about his support of the birther conspiracy, his refusal to release his tax returns and former employees’ lawsuits against him.
“He didn’t ask her about the emails. Didn’t ask her about her scandals. Didn’t ask her about the Benghazi deal she destroyed. He didn’t ask her about a lot of things ... Didn’t ask about her foundation,” said Trump.
He also echoed his claim made after the debate last night, that after Clinton grilled him on his treatment of women, including former Miss Universe winner Alicia Machado, he wanted to bring up Bill Clinton’s extramarital affairs but didn’t out of respect for their daughter Chelsea Clinton.
“I didn’t feel comfortable doing it with Chelsea in the room,” said Trump.
But he said he might mention the affairs in the next debate. “I may hit her harder in certain ways. I really eased up in certain ways because I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings,” he said.
Trump admitted that Clinton’s comments about Alicia Machado riled him up, as he tried to explain his “Miss Piggy” comments about her:
“She was the winner, she gained a massive amount of weight, it was a real problem,” said Trump. “Not only that, her attitude, we had a real problem with her.”
He noted that the comments happened years ago and says the Clinton campaign “found a girl and talked about her as if she was Mother Theresa and it wasn’t quite that way, but that’s OK, Hillary has to do what she has to.”
"She gained a massive amount of weight, and it was a real problem." —Trump just defended his attacks on Fmr. Miss Universe Alicia Machado. pic.twitter.com/HbVtaBpK3R
Except ... he claims it was a microphone issue and that he wasn’t sniffling.
“I had a problem with my mic that didn’t work, I wonder if it was set up on purpose. In the room they couldn’t hear me, not exactly great ... I wonder if it was set up that way,” said Trump.
He said his mic dropped in and out. “I don’t want to believe in conspiracy theories. But it was crackling. To me, it was a bad problem,” said Trump.
When he was specifically asked about the sniffling, he replied:
No, no sniffles. No, the mic was very bad, but maybe it was good enough to hear breathing. But no sniffles. No allergies. No cold.
Vice-president and Clinton supporter Joe Biden was on Facebook last night after the debate to criticize Trump over his bragging that he hadn’t paid federal taxes:
Donald Trump all but admitted he hasn’t paid federal taxes on his income. He says that makes him smart. But what does that say to the factory worker or the nurse or the teacher earning $40,000 or $50,000 or $60,000 a year and paying almost 15% of their income to support our troops, keep our neighborhoods safe and clean, and rebuild our roads? Does he really think these patriotic Americans are not smart? He’s a guy who is proud of a phrase he made famous: “You’re fired.”
In today’s campaign movements:
Trump is off to Melbourne, Florida, for a rally tonight (reporter Ben Jacobs will be there). His VP pick Mike Pence was supposed to hold and event in Wisconsin, but that’s since been cancelled. Clinton’s hosting a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, and has her surrogates out in force today. Her VP pick Tim Kaine has a canvass kickoff in Orlando, while husband Bill is hosting events in Ohio. Joe Biden will speak at a rally in Philadelphia.
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