Clinton team girds for all-out assault
A Donald Trump video released Friday changed expectations for Sunday’s town hall debate so dramatically that a Democrat close to Bill and Hillary Clinton has a new perspective on St. Louis: “Wait for Armageddon. “Hillary Clinton takes to the University of Washington debate stage on Sunday, prepared to take on an opponent who many of her allies say has already lost the election. , and a day after an unprecedented drop in support and calls for him to step down from his own party leaders, the second debate now comes at the most unexpected time of the election.
This puts Clinton in a more precarious position on the debate stage. “I think Trump realizes that he has nothing to lose, so he might as well give it his all,” said the Democrat, who is close to the Clintons. Longtime Democratic strategist Robert Shrum, who sessions the presidential campaigns of Al Gore and John Kerry, said that “to the extent that it has any chance at all — and I don’t think it does — this debate is do-or-die. It’s meant to do no harm, and connect with voters.”
A Clinton campaign official said Saturday that the Democratic nominee plans to address the Trump bombshell for the first time since the debate, and the campaign went dark Saturday to take advantage of one of the largest audiences with 30 days left in the race. in to hear your answer. But in pre-debate sessions in the week leading up to the debate, Clinton aides encouraged the Democratic nominee to stay focused on the real people asking questions at the town hall forum, rather than engaging in nasty back-and-forths with Trump. The goal, they say, should be to show the caring, connecting, maternal side of Clinton that voters are less familiar with than the steely warhorse who endured an 11-hour hearing in Benghazi last fall.
However, the events of the weekend upset expectations of a normal debate. In a video statement released late Friday night, Trump said that “Bill Clinton did abuse women and Hillary Clinton harassed, assaulted, shamed and intimidated his victims. We’ll be talking more about that in the coming days.”
On Saturday night, Trump presented his strategy with nothing to lose, retweeting Juanita Broaddrick, the woman who accused Bill Clinton of raping her in 1978. Bill Clinton denied Broaddrick’s 1999 accusations of having an affair. With Monica Lewinsky.
Clinton also prepared to answer questions about her paid Wall Street speeches that surfaced on WikiLeaks after campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails were hacked. In one line, he emphasized the importance of “public and private positions” on controversial political issues. A source familiar with the preparations for the debate said he wanted to drop any scrutiny of the leaked details of his speech because it was no different from what he had said publicly.
