'Bad hombres,' Assad & huge debt: Final Trump-Clinton debate's top moments

20 Oct, 2016 08:58 / Updated 8 years ago

From Russia's alleged hacking and cooperation with Trump, to WikiLeaks and Assad, Wednesday night's debate was full of zingers. Here are eight of the top moments between the two outspoken candidates, whose loathing for each other shone through.

'Such a nasty woman'

While Clinton was discussing her tax plan, she said: “My social security contribution payroll will go up, as will Donald’s, assuming he can’t figure out how to get out of it.”

“Such a nasty woman,” Trump responded.

Given that Trump has previously said that no one has more respect for women than himself, the internet then responded accordingly, by losing its collective mind.

How have you spent the past three decades?

The vastly different backgrounds of the two candidates were also a topic of discussion – particularly what each has done over the past 30 years.

While Trump admitted that the “one thing” Clinton has over him is experience, he said it was “bad experience.”

“For 30 years, you've been in a position to help. You talk, but you don't get anything done,” he said.

In response, Clinton took a quick jab at Trump and his entertainment background.

“When I was in the situation room monitoring the raid that brought Osama bin Laden to justice, he was on 'Celebrity Apprentice,'” she said.

‘Bad hombres’

On immigration, the standout moment, by far, was Trump’s use of the term “hombre.”

“One of my first acts will be to get all of the drug lords, all of the bad ones,” Trump said. “We have some bad, bad people in this country that have to go out. We’re going to get them out, we’re going to secure the border, and once the border is secured, at a later date, we’ll make a determination as to the rest.”

“But we have some bad hombres here, and we’re gonna get ‘em out,” he added.

That left many Americans scrambling for their dusty old online dictionary to look up the word.

The topic did bring more substance to the debate, however.

Clinton defended her record of voting for immigration reform in the Senate, saying, “I voted for border security,” to which Trump interjected, “and the wall.”

“President Obama has moved millions of people out,” Trump said. “No one knows about it, no one talks about it.”

Trump then offered a different outlook on fixing legal immigration, or at least stated his policy position from a different perspective.

“We have millions of people that did it the right way,” he said. “We’re going to speed up the process, because it’s very unfair.”

On the highest national debt since just after WWII

Trump promised to create “tremendous jobs,” claiming GDP growth would be “less than zero” if Hillary became president.

The Republican candidate denied an analysis that claimed his plan would cause debt to rise to 105 percent of GDP over the next 10 years.

Instead, he said his plan would involve bringing GDP growth from 1 percent up to 4 percent.

“I actually think we can go higher than 4 percent, I think we can go to 5 or 6 percent,” he said, claiming his team would create a “tremendous economic machine.”

He said the US has become “very, very sloppy,” reminding that the US used to be a great country from the standpoint of industry.

Clinton took the opportunity to note the irony of Trump's slogan of “Make America Great Again,” claiming he has been criticizing the US government for decades.

Responding to claims that her plan would cause debt to rise 86 percent of GDP over the next 10 years, Clinton said her plan does not “add a penny to the national debt.”

She said she is going to “go where the money is,” asking the wealthy and corporations to “pay their fair share” in order to achieve her goals of paying for education, investing in infrastructure, and bringing the cost of prescription drugs down.

“There is no evidence whatsoever that that will slow down or diminish our growth,” she said.

Putin enters debate from a continent away

During the immigration section of the debate, Chris Wallace asked Hillary Clinton about the open border policies she seemed to support in a speech to Brazilian bank Banco Itau. Clinton denied that the excerpt released by WikiLeaks referred to a concrete plan to eliminate national borders, but rather energy policies.

While acknowledging that the text from the speech was real, Clinton quickly turned focus to Russia, saying “The Russian government has engaged in espionage against Americans,” adding “this has come from the highest levels of the Russian government, clearly from Putin himself... to influence our election.”

“That was a great pivot,” Trump said, “Off the fact that she wants open borders. How did we get on to Putin?”

That may actually be a good question, but it went unanswered as Clinton continued to talk about the “Russian hacks,” while accusing Trump of benefitting from them.

Meanwhile, Trump asserted that Putin, “from everything I’ve seen, has no respect for this person [Hillary].”

“He’d rather have a puppet as president,” Clinton replied.

“No, you’re the puppet,” Trump responded.

On WikiLeaks & Russia

WikiLeaks inspired more bickering between the two potential presidents of the free world, with Hillary insisting that Trump’s refusal to blame various hacks and leaks on Russia was connected with him being Russia’s choice for president.

The Kremlin has refuted this claim, saying it has no favorite in the race, and that it is solely up to the American people to decide who becomes their next president.

“It is pretty clear you won’t admit the Russians have engaged in cyber-attacks against the United States of America. That you encouraged espionage against our people. That you are willing to spout the Putin line, sign up for his wish list, break up NATO, do whatever he wants to do. And that you continue to get help from him because he has a very clear favorite in this race,” Clinton said.

Trump denied Clintons claims, along with her confidence in blaming Russia for the cyber-attacks, saying, “she has no idea whether it is Russia, China, or anybody else.”

“She doesn’t like Putin because Putin has outsmarted her at every step of the way. Excuse me. Putin has outsmarted her in Syria,” he added.

On 'tough' Assad

When the debate turned to the Syrian refugee crisis, Trump called the city of Aleppo “a disaster.”

“It’s a humanitarian nightmare,” he said, adding, “It has fallen from any standpoint. I mean, what do you need, a signed document?”

The Republican nominee pinned “a lot” of it on Clinton, “because what’s happened is, by fighting [Syrian President Bashar al-Assad], who turned out to be a lot tougher than she thought, and now she’s [Clinton] going to say, ‘Oh, he [Trump] loves Assad,’ — he’s [Assad] just much tougher and much smarter than her and Obama.”

Trump claimed Clinton’s policies had “caused the great migration, where she’s taking in tens of thousands of Syrian refugees, who probably in many cases — not probably, who are definitely in many cases – ISIS-aligned.”

“This is going to be the great Trojan horse,” he added. “And wait until you see what happens in the coming years. Lots of luck, Hillary. Thanks a lot for doing a great job.”

On accepting election results (or not)

Trump’s statement that he may not accept the election results left many viewers shocked. In the past week, he has made repeated claims that the election is rigged, while pointing out the potential for voter fraud. However, both Ivanka Trump and Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, claimed that Trump would accept the results.

Trump’s answer on Wednesday was a little bit different, however. “I will look at it at the time,” he told moderator Chris Wallace, “I’m not looking at anything now. I’ll look at it at the time.” Trump also took the opportunity to slam the “dishonest media” once again for “[poisoning] the minds of the voters.”

Wallace continued to press the question, saying one of the prides of the country is the "peaceful transition of power,” but Trump responded saying “I will tell you at the time. I will keep you in suspense, okay?”

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