Trump vs. Clinton: Her jabs put him on the defensive in first debate
By Philip Rucker and Anne Gearan September 26 at 11:21 PM
HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. — Donald Trump unrelentingly blamed the nation’s chronic problems on “typical politician” Hillary Clinton, yet he found himself mostly on the defensive in their first debate here Monday night as she denounced him for racial insensitivity, hiding potential conflicts of interest and “stiffing” those who helped build his business empire.
After circling each other for months, Clinton and Trump finally took the stage together for the first time, and each tried in a series of combative, acrimonious exchanges to discredit the other.
Trump, the Republican nominee, spent much of the evening explaining himself — over his temperament, treatment of women and minorities, business practices and readiness to be commander in chief, as well as over his long perpetuation of a falsehood about Barack Obama’s birthplace to delegitimize his presidency.
“He has a long record of engaging in racist behavior, and the birther lie was a very hurtful one,” said Clinton, the Democratic nominee. “Barack Obama is a man of great dignity, and I could tell how much it bothered him and annoyed him that this was being touted and used against him.”
Trump, who earlier this month at last acknowledged Obama’s birth in Hawaii, replied by invoking Clinton’s 2008 rivalry with Obama: “When you try to act holier than thou, it really doesn’t work.”
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/attacks-fly-in-first-presidential-debate-as-clintons-jabs-put-trump-on-defensive/2016/09/26/c7bfc896-8402-11e6-a3ef-f35afb41797f_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1
