Tensions heighten at candidates’ town hall

Donald Trump said his proposal to ban foreign Muslims from entering the United States has “morphed,” but the Republican nominee declined to give details about what it had morphed into, during Sunday night’s presidential debate.

“The Muslim ban is something that, in some form, has morphed into an extreme vetting from certain areas of the world,” Trump said, when asked if he had backed off the position.

Moderator Martha Raddatz sought to gain clarification, interrupting Trump at several points to ask what his position was. “Would you please explain whether or not the Muslim ban still stands”

“It’s called extreme vetting,” Trump said, but did not say much more about how the vetting process would work - or how it would be different from the current methods used to screen immigrants and refugees for terrorist affiliations.

Trump also asserted, once again, that he had opposed the War in Iraq before it began. That is incorrect. In fact, Trump was asked on Sept. 11, 2002 - before the invasion - if he supported the war.

“Yeah, I guess so. You know, I wish the first time it was done correctly,” Trump told interviewer Howard Stern during a radio interview, referring the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

“It’s been debunked,” Democrat Hillary Clinton said, about Trump’s claim to have opposed the war.

“I was against the War in Iraq, and it hasn’t been debunked,” Trump said.

Earlier, in an unprecedented threat during a presidential debate, Trump promised that - if he was elected — he would instruct the Justice Department to investigate his rival.

“I didn’t think I’d say this, but I’m going to say this, and I hate to say it, but if I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation,” Trump said. “There’s never been anything like it. And we’re going to get a special prosecutor.”

Trump seemed to be speaking specifically about Clinton’s use of a personal email server to handle government business while she was secretary of state. That has already been the subject of an FBI inquiry, which ended with FBI Director James Comey calling Clinton and her staff “extremely careless” but recommending no criminal charges.

His promise to use his executive power to re-open that case, and have it investigated again, was unlike anything in recent presidential debates.

“It’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country,” Clinton said.

“Because you’d be in jail,” Trump said.

The first half-hour of this debate was dominated not by questions from the undecided voters in the audience, but by interruptions and accusations by Trump himself. At one point, Trump referred to the endorsement by Sen. Bernie Sanders, Vt., of Clinton as a deal with “the devil.”

The debate opened with a question as to whether the campaigns were setting a good example for the nation’s youth, but it quickly turned to discussion about a recent revelation of a damaging video for Trump.

The Republican nominee rejected a question that called his remarks about groping women — captured in a 2005 video — “sexual assault,” during the second presidential debate on Sunday night.

“That is sexual assault. You bragged that you committed sexual assault,” moderator Anderson Cooper said, and then asked Trump if he understood the implications of what he said.

“I didn’t say that at all. I don’t think you understood what was said. This was locker-room talk,” Trump said. “Certainly I’m not proud of it. But this is locker-room talk.”

Cooper kept on, asking Trump if he had actually committed the acts he alluded to in the video — which included kissing women without their consent, and groping women’s genitals. Trump repeatedly sought to turn the subject to other subjects, including in some cases with seeming non-sequitor.

“I’m very embarrassed by it. I hate it. It’s locker room talk,” Trump said at one point. “I will knock the hell out of ISIS.”

Clinton, in her response, said that she considered Trump different than past Republican nominees.

“I never questioned their fitness to serve. Donald Trump is different,” she said. “What we all saw and heard on Friday was Donald talking about women, what he thinks about women, what he does to women, and he has said that the video doesn’t represent who he is. . .It represents exactly who he is.”

About 90 minutes before the debate began at Washington University in St. Louis, Trump hosted a short — and highly unusual — news conference with four women, all of whom said they had been mistreated by Hillary Clinton or former president Bill Clinton. One of the women was Paula Jones, who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual harassment in the early 1990s. Another was Juanita Broaddrick, who at the news conference said Bill Clinton had raped her in 1978.

“Mr. Trump may have said some bad words,” Broaddrick said. “But Bill Clinton raped me and Hillary Clinton threatened me. I don’t think there’s any comparison.”

Broaddrick has made such statements before, but it has never been criminally litigated, and the Clintons deny the accusations.

As Trump began and ended the news conference, reporters shouted questions related to the 2005 video. “Mr. Trump does your star power allow you to touch women without their consent?” a reporter asked. Trump ignored the questions, then left.

For Trump, the stakes for this debate would have been high in any event: He had seen his poll numbers begin to slide after a weak and rambling performance during the first debate in late September.

Now, however, Trump is in worse shape — and in far greater need of a surprising, campaign-changing performance. That’s due to the release of the 2005, video, first published by The Washington Post. It set off a cascade of criticism from Trump’s fellow Republicans — and led dozens of them to formally renounce the party’s nominee.

Trump’s supporters said they were hoping to see a humble, focused performance, in which he could seem contrite about the 2005 remarks, and then move on.

“He has to reach inside himself and realize what he’s capable of doing. He has to live it out, and it’s going to be a uniquely personal moment. No one else can figure it out,” said former House speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga.

On Sunday, however, Trump was showing no sign of a contrite approach. Instead, in interviews and social media posts, Trump made clear that he has no plans to back down — and that he intends to criticize Clinton for her treatment of women who over the years have accused her husband of unwanted sexual advances.

This story was originally published October 9, 2016 at 10:37 PM with the headline "Tensions heighten at candidates’ town hall."