For Donald Trump supporters, the first presidential debate was a disappointment, with many wondering why pulled his punches despite the debate moderator and Hillary Clinton piling on, with multiple follow-up questions being asked of him, none of Clinton, his words and actions highlighted while Clinton's many scandals were ignored...... well last night during the second presidential debate, the gloves came off.
A STROKE OF GENIUS
While ANP will be offering an analysis of the second debate as a whole in another article, the focus of this article is specific to the initial question, how Trump turned a potentially campaign ending scandal into a reminder of the Clinton's sexual abuse scandals as well as proving that while Trump can think on his feet, showing moments of brilliance when the pressure is on as the leader of America must do, Clinton is so "prepped" with memorized arguments she is unable to adjust her game plan on the fly.
The Trump campaign headed toward debate night reeling from a release of an 11 year old tape where he and others were talking crudely about women, with the press once again salivating over their "gotcha" moment and declaring Trump's campaign dead in the water... for the nth time, showing they have learned nothing from the past year where no matter how many times they claimed his campaign could not recover from whatever the "offense" of the day was, he knocked out 16 other primary opponents and became the GOP presidential nominee.
By October 8, 2016, those of us old enough to remember the Clinton presidency and the sexual abuse scandals that surrounded Bill and Hillary Clinton, knew exactly how Trump was going to turn this around, when he retweeted comments made by Juanita Broaddrick, who has accused Bill Clinton of brutally raping her back in April 1978 when she was 35 years old and he was Arkansas Attorney General.
Debate night, Sunday, October 9, 2016, approximately an hour and a half before the debate was set to begin, Trump sent out a message stating on Facebook, "Join me in St. Louis, Missouri - as I conclude my debate prep."
There was one more woman there as well, and that was Kathy Shelton, who was raped when she was 12 years old by a 41 year old man who was defended by Hillary Clinton back in 1975. Clinton was later interviewed and could be heard laughing about how her client passed his polygraph test, stating "He took a lie detector test. I had him take a polygraph, which he passed, which forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs." Clinton managed get her client's first-degree rape charges dropped to "unlawful fondling of a child under 14." (Clinton's interview can be heard here, with sub-titles, and Shelton describing her ordeal can be seen here where she states "Hillary Clinton is not for women and children")
In the presser with Clinton's rape accusers and Shelton,, each woman stated they were supporting Donald Trump, but it is at the end of the short clip below, when reporters were yelling questions to Trump asking if he touched women without consent that Paul Jones yells out "Why don't you all ask Bill Clinton that? Why don't you all ask Bill Clinton that? Go ahead and ask Hillary as well!"
Then Trump brought the women to the debate to sit in the audience, in prepartion for the predictability of the first question asked being about his leaked 11 year old tape.
Trump acknowledged the question, said he was embarassed and he apologized to his family and to the American people and then brought up the state of the world we live, the atrocities being seen across the globe, saying "we should get on with much more important things, bigger things."
HILLARY'S FATAL MISTAKE
This is where Hillary Clinton made a fatal mistake, in more ways than one.
It is quite obvious after watching the debate, Clinton had prepared her attack on Trump in regards to the 11 year old leaked audio and proving she in unable to think on her feet, change her rehearsed arguments accordingly when faced with a set of circumstances that calls for it, she jumped on the bandwagon anyway, despite knowing that Trump had multiple women that has accused Bill Clinton of rape, and her of threatening them with retaliation, sitting right there in the audience.
What followed was a stroke of genius on Trump's part, when he responded to her practiced attacks with "That was locker-room talk, I'm not proud of it, I am a person who has great respect for people, for my family, for the people of this country, certainly I'm not proud of it, but that was something that happened. If you look at Bill Clinton, far worse, mine are words and his was action. What he has done to women, theres never been anybody in the history of politics, in this nation, thats been so abusive to women. So, you can say anyway you want to say it, but Bill Clinton was abusive to women. Hillary Clinton attacked those same women and attacked them viciously, four of them are here tonight. One of the women, who is a wonderful woman, at 12 years old was raped, at 12! Her client [points to Hillary], she represented and got him off and she's seen laughing on two separate occassions, laughing at the girl that was raped. Kathy Shelton, that young woman, is here with us tonight."
Trump's response can be seen at the beginning of the video below, followed by clips of the MSM desperate to take back the narrative and redirect the focus away from the Clinton sexual abuse scandals and Hillary's defense of a rapist and attacking a 12 year old rape victim.
Needless to say, Bill Clinton, didn't appear to be very happy sitting in the audience with multiple woman that have accused him of sexual assault as Trump was highlighting them and explaining his "locker-room" talk was nothing in comparison to Bill and Hillary's actual actions.
Prior to the debate, a number of "Wanted" posters appeared at St. Louis’ Washington University campus just hours before the debate was to begin. The Wanted posters mimicked a "mug shot" of Bill Clinton holding a sign up with the names of his victims, "Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey, Paula Jones, many more," and under the image the words "RAPIST - WANTS BACK IN THE WHITE HOUSE - #BillClintonIsARapist
BOTTOM LINE
While many important issues were addressed in the second presidential debate, which ANP will cover in-depth, Donald Trump did exactly what his supporters said he needed to do. He stayed on the offense, he took off the kid gloves and he came out swinging and continued to hammer Clinton throughout the night.
More importantly, Trump showed conclusively that he is capable of making changes on the fly if a situation calls for it, while Hillary Clinton showed she cannot, and that her carefully rehearsed and memorized talking points are all she is capable of.
NOTE - In the 1,100-plus comments by ANP readers as we livestreamed the presidential debate last night, we noted the difference in reactions from the first debate in comparison to the second debate, were like night and day. Trump supporters and even those on the fence, were all observing a marked change as Trump called out the moderators for their bias, hit Clinton hard on her many scandals, educated younger voters on the Clinton sexual abuse allegations, and reminded others of the many Clinton victims.
In the words of the featured comment from our live event last night, via Battlesheep: "He started off slow and was facing three barrels (Clinton and two biased moderators) but he kept gaining momentum and wouldn't put up with the moderators crap. I would have to score ROUND #2 in the great Worldwide Match between Hillary Clinton (The CADAVER) vs. Donald Trump (The TRUMPINATOR) as a win for Donald J. Trump.
For those that missed the debate or skipped it because they are usually boring affairs, the full debate is shown below.... it is definitely not boring!
