--- title: Presidential Debate: Donald Trump Staggers Into Danger description: Donald Trump was in deep trouble before vulgar footage surfaced Friday. Now he heads into a second debate with Hillary Clinton. canonical: https://time.com/4523324/second-presidential-debate-donald-trump-town-hall/ author: Alex Altman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-10-09T11:15:51.000Z article:modified_time: 2023-12-13T18:03:12.000Z article:section: Politics og:title: Trump Staggers Into Sunday's Dangerous Debate og:description: A showdown fraught with peril for both candidates og:url: https://time.com/4523324/second-presidential-debate-donald-trump-town-hall/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt536907be5a3c9f55/6988a94ae20a872394a92b67/trump-clinton-debate-lede.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2560 og:image:height: 1440 og:image:alt: TIMEPOL og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Trump Staggers Into Sunday's Dangerous Debate twitter:description: A showdown fraught with peril for both candidates twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt536907be5a3c9f55/6988a94ae20a872394a92b67/trump-clinton-debate-lede.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Donald Trump Staggers Into Sunday's Dangerous Debate > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, twice a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=f65390a8-80e4-4671-a264-479744370c5f&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1) ## Video: The Biggest Moments from the Second Presidential Debate [Watch (HLS stream): The Biggest Moments from the Second Presidential Debate](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/0oFylqsH.m3u8) (3:19)  _Published 2016-10-10. The two candidates face off in the second of three presidential debates._  by [Alex Altman](https://time.com/author/alex-altman/)  ## Alex Altman Altman is the executive features editor and deputy Washington bureau chief at TIME. Updated: Dec 13, 2023 6:03 PM UTCPublished: Oct 9, 2016 11:15 AM UTC  by [Alex Altman](https://time.com/author/alex-altman/)  ## Alex Altman Altman is the executive features editor and deputy Washington bureau chief at TIME. Updated: Dec 13, 2023 6:03 PM UTCPublished: Oct 9, 2016 11:15 AM UTC Donald Trump was in deep trouble before [vulgar](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-recorded-having-extremely-lewd-conversation-about-women-in-2005/2016/10/07/3b9ce776-8cb4-11e6-bf8a-3d26847eeed4%5Fstory.html?postshare=3561475870579757&tid=ss%5Ftw) footage surfaced Friday of him boasting of groping and attempting to seduce married women. The Republican nominee’s poll numbers have plunged since his shellacking in the first presidential debate. Now trailing Hillary Clinton in nearly every swing state, he is being outspent on the airwaves and out-organized in the field. Just 30 days from the Nov. 8 election, a growing chorus of Republicans are calling on him to quit his White House bid over the video. All of which made [Sunday night’s showdown](http://time.com/money/4522711/second-presidential-debate-online-watch-stream/) with Hillary Clinton a do-or-die moment for his faltering White House bid—and a dangerous one for both him and Hillary Clinton. This second debate, held at Washington University in St. Louis, may be the last best chance for Trump to make his case to millions of Americans. Early voting is underway. His campaign is in crisis. A repeat of his rocky performance in the first contest with Clinton could prompt party allies to abandon him in hopes of salvaging their Senate majority. And yet if the debate is a must-win, Trump almost seemed to be trying to lose it, even before the 2005 tape was released Friday. He resisted a push by his aides to hold mock debates designed to refine his techniques. Instead, as for the first debate, he preferred to prep with informal conversations, while Clinton hunkered down to cram. As the debate began Sunday evening, it was clear that he was not going to pull any punches. Clinton and Trump declined to shake hands at the beginning of the debate, and Trump soon brought on a litany of personal and political accusations. If Trump’s challenge Sunday night wasn’t tough enough, the format of the event presents an additional hurdle. The 90-minute debate will be town-hall style. Half the questions will be posed by moderators Anderson Cooper of CNN and Martha Raddatz of ABC News. The other half will be posed by members of the audience, a group of uncommitted voters selected by the polling company Gallup. Town halls can be tricky for any politician—just ask George H.W. Bush, whose efforts to telegraph empathy in 1992 were derailed by a stray glance at his watch. They are intimate gatherings, sometimes marked by testy exchanges or encroachments on a candidate’s physical space. For Trump, the format is fraught with peril. Throughout the campaign, his most damaging foes have been ordinary people: the Muslim parents of a slain U.S. soldier, an Indiana judge with Mexican ancestry, a Latina pageant queen who battled weight gain. Trump has held very few retail campaign events over the past year. Now the billionaire developer will be facing down questions from voters before a televised audience in the tens of millions. If challenged by an angry voter, history suggests he won’t be able to resist lashing back—if not onstage, then by re-litigating the dispute for days after. The campaign has tried to prepare him. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican ally known as a strong performer in town halls, is working closely with the candidate, and advisers have tightened his inner circle to limit distractions. But Trump has blanched at traditional practice techniques. The best his campaign could do was to arrange a town-hall style event Thursday night in Sandown, N.H. It was a weak imitation of the actual challenges he will face Sunday. The invitation-only gathering featured pre-screened questions recited by a friendly moderator, Boston-area conservative radio host Howie Carr. “This isn’t practice. This has nothing to do with Sunday,” Trump insisted at the outset, dismissing such preparation as childish. During a truncated question-and-answer session, Trump dredged up old feuds, criticizing a Republican Senator, media personalities and the glitchy microphone on which he blamed his performance in the first debate. Clinton is dealing with issues of her own. On Friday, Wikileaks published a cache of hacked emails purported to be the private correspondence of Clinton campaign chief John Podesta. (The Clinton confirm has not confirmed the authenticity of individual documents, though they released a statement acknowledging the emails were stolen.) Among the trove are alleged excerpts from some of Clinton’s paid speeches, which have never been publicly released and which became a source of controversy during the Democratic primary. In the meantime, the former Secretary of State has followed the same regimented formula that catapulted her to a clear victory in their first contest. She is devouring briefing books. Advisers are drawing up ways for the Democrat to goad Trump into losing his cool. And there is little to suggest that he will be able to maintain it. Clinton’s team also knows that Trump, with his back against the wall, will be a dangerous foe. Prodded by aides, Trump had forsworn raising Bill Clinton’s extramarital affairs during the debate. But in a terse statement, issued shortly after the Washington _Post_ published a 2005 video of Trump, caught on a hot mic, making lewd remarks about kissing and groping women—while married to his wife, Melania—he invoked the former President’s own behavior in the second sentence. “This was locker room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago. Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course—not even close,” Trump said. “I apologize if anyone was offended.” He invoked Clinton again in an early Saturday morning video. Allies say that he will zero in on the former President’s dalliances on Sunday night. With Trump’s campaign in meltdown mode, his best option is to try to blow up Clinton’s too. Which is why both sides—along with millions of viewers—should brace for fireworks on Sunday night. ## Transcript [ APPLAUSE ] Hello. Hello. Certainly, I'm not proud of it. But this is lock- a- room talk, you know. When we have a world. Where you have Isis chopping off heads, where you have, and frankly drowning people in steel cages, where you have wars and horrible, horrible sights all over. I think it's clear to anyone who heard it that it represents exactly who he is, because we've seen this throughout the campaign. We have seen him insult women. We've seen him rate women on their appearance, ranking them from one to ten. We've seen him embarrass women on TV and on Twitter. It's just words folks. It's just words. If I win, I am going to instruct my Attorney General. To get a special prosecutor to look into your situation. Our intelligence community just came out and said in the last few days that the Kremlin, meaning Putin and the Russian government, are directing the attacks, the hacking, on American accounts to influence our election. And believe me, they're not doing it to get me elected. To solve a problem, you have to be able to state what the problem is, or at least say the name. She won't say the name and President Obama won't say the name. But the name is there. It's radical Islamic terror. It's also very shortsighted and even dangerous. To be engaging in the kind of demagogic rhetoric that Donald has about Muslims. It is sort of amusing to hear somebody who hasn't paid federal income taxes in maybe 20 years talking about what he's going to do, but I'll tell you what he's going to do. His plan will give the wealthy and corporations The biggest tax cuts they've ever had. Did you use that $ 960 million loss to avoid paying personal federal income taxes for- Of course I do! Of course I do! And so do all of her donors, or most of her donors. I know many of her donors, her donors took massive tax write- offs. [ CROSSTALK ] Personal federal income tax- A lot of my write- off was depreciation and other things that Hillary, as a senator, allowed. Russia hasn't paid any attention to ISIS. They're interested in keeping Assad in power. You're two minutes is up. I don't like Assad at all, but Assad is killing ISIS. Russia is killing ISIS. And Iran is killing ISIS. And those three have now lined up Because of our weak foreign policy. Would either of you name one positive thing that you respect in one another. [ LAUGH ] [ APPLAUSE ] Look, I respect his children. His children are incredibly able And devoted, and I think that says a lot about Donald. I will say this about Hillary, she doesn't quit, she doesn't give up. I respect that. [ APPLAUSE ] And that's it, the 90 minute debate is now over. History has been made. 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