The third presidential debate – as it happened

The third and final presidential debate of the 2016 election cycle is in the can. Here’s what happened:

• Donald Trump said he might not accept the election result. “I will look at it at the time,” Trump said. “I will tell you at the time. I’ll keep you in suspense.”
• “That’s horrifying,” Hillary Clinton replied. “It just shows, you’re not up to doing the job. He is denigrating, he is talking down our democracy, and I for one am appalled.”
• At least three Republican senators, among many alarmed voices, immediately objected to the Trump line, with Arizona’s Jeff Flake calling the remarks “beyond the pale”.
• The debate was surprisingly policy-oriented, with the candidates staking out contrasting positions on abortion, gun laws, Russia and much more. Trump allowed that his supreme court would likely overturn Roe v Wade.
• Trump rejected questions about women who have accused him of sexual assault, branding them fame-seekers and Clinton campaign plants and saying “I don’t know those people”.

• Clinton had a ready response, saying “every time Donald is pushed” – about women, a disabled reporter, the Khan family, John McCain, a federal judge – he denies responsibility and refuses apology.
• “Donald thinks belittling women makes him bigger,” Clinton said. “I don’t think there’s a woman out there who doesn’t know what that feels like.”
• Trump interrupted a Clinton answer about social security by muttering, “Such a nasty woman.” His favorite interruption was “wrong.” “Wrong.”
  
• A new web site was born: www.nastywomengetshitdone.com.

• Clinton turned a question about her emails released by Wikileaks into a challenge to Trump to condemn Russian hacking. He did, provisionally. She called Trump Putin’s “puppet”.
• Trump said the only reason Iraq was going into Mosul was because Clinton was running for president: “She wanted to look tough.” Clinton said he was trapped in conspiratorial thinking.
• Trump warned about “bad hombre” immigrants:

20 Oct 201623.34 EDT

Nicky Woolf

In a brief but jarringly vicious aside towards the end of the debate, Trump leaned in to the microphone to call Clinton a “nasty woman”, slightly undermining his earlier assertion that “nobody has more respect for women than me” (a moment which, according to pollster Frank Luntz, did worse with his live focus group than any other in the debate for Trump).

The response from Twitter was swift and merciless.

Many users even changed their Twitter names:

The chair of the national party joins the crowd rebutting Trump on accepting the election result:

Here now is Sarah Palin, in the spin room, looking a bit cornered but firing away. She’s asked about accepting the results of the election. “If they’re legit results then of course they’ll be accepted,” she says.

“Such a nasty woman”

This from Alabama senator Jeff Sessions, Trump’s most stalwart backer in the senate, who we can’t remember ever having disagreed significantly with the candidate to this point:

Two Republican senators have condemned Trump’s refusal to say he will accept the result of the election. Arizona’s Jeff Flake (see earlier) and now Lindsey Graham of South Carolina:

Trump has departed the debate venue, his campaign tells his assigned media pool.

Easy for her to say.

(Warning: Donald Trump Jr trigger alert):

Lawyer Gloria Allred announces that a “woman who accuses Donald Trump of victimizing her with inappropriate sexual conduct will hold a press conference tomorrow”:

#ff

Here are the top three tweeted moments of the debate according to Twitter:

And check out the top most-retweeted tweet of the night:

20 Oct 201622.40 EDT

Fact check: healthcare, vets and 'inner cities'

Alan Yuhas

Trump: “Next week [the healthcare premiums] are going to go up 100%”

Trump and Clinton both accept the reality that healthcare premiums have increased since the Affordable Care Act was enacted, but Trump appears to be exaggerating wildly. On average, premiums have risen by about 5.8% a year since Barack Obama took office, compared with 13.2% in the nine years before Obama, Politifact found earlier this year. Trump, however, is cherry-picking data from various states and providers where rates have had higher jumps. The most common healthcare plans will increase 9% on average, according to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Trump: “We take care of illegal immigrants … better than we take care of our vets”

This claim flies in the face of evidence and logic. Like all US citizens, veterans enjoy the basic rights and benefits granted by US law (voting rights, social security, Medicaid, etc), while undocumented migrants (noncitizens) do not. Trump has in the past tried to justify this claim by saying the US spends more on undocumented people than on veterans, but has drawn a $113bn price tag from an explicitly anti-immigration foundation. He also inflated that number.

The campaign has said the US spends $2.8bn on housing migrants in prisons, combining an estimate on prison costs and the 2016 budget for the care and processing of children who came to the US without adults. The Veterans Affairs administration has a 2016 budget of $69.7bn. Veterans and undocumented migrants alike have access to K-12 education, though few veterans would likely seek it, and veterans have access to the Affordable Care Act, military benefits and health benefits, while migrants do not.

Trump: “Our inner cities are a disaster. You get shot walking to the store, you have no education, no jobs”

Trump’s repeated claim that “African Americans, Hispanics, are living in hell” defies most of American history, from antebellum slavery through the Jim Crow decades, great depression and segregation. Even if Trump is only referring the past half century, he is still wrong by most metrics.

Data on employment, education and health show empirical evidence for the persistent reality of discrimination against black Americans, but also show major gains in the last few decades. In 2015, black people earned just 75% as much as whites in median hourly earnings, whether full- or part-time, according to a Pew Research analysis. The black unemployment rate in August 2016 was 8.1%, compared with 4.4% for white people, but still lower than for most of the last 40 years. Black life expectancy has increased from the mid-30s around 1900 to the mid-70s in 2016, according to the CDC. Education rates have similarly increased in the last 40 years, according to the census.

Who won? What was the headline? Trump saying he would keep the country in suspense as to whether he will accept the election result? What was that?