“We’ve heard this before, Hillary,” Republican candidate Donald Trump said around the end of the third and final presidential debate on Oct. 19. The same can be said about the entire debate, during which neither Trump nor Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton offered any new insight into how they are going to lead the country, instead sticking to the tired shtick of taking potshots at one another.
Moderator Chris Wallace, an anchor for Fox News, did a tremendous job keeping things fair and balanced as he silenced any attempts at applause from the crowd. He fought the loud-mouthed candidates when they refused to follow the rules of the debate but, in spite of his best efforts, Wallace could not stop the moments of childish shouting between the two candidates.
The majority of Clinton’s speeches have been predictable and this debate was no different. She rarely discussed how she will do things differently from her predecessor, President Barack Obama. Instead, she talked about how she is going to make things fair and just. Clinton did nothing to win over undecided voters.
On the other hand, Trump gave Saturday Night Live writers an excess of material with his thin-skinned attitude during the debate. Instead of owning up to his obnoxious, mean-spirited behavior, Trump lied when being called out on past remarks. Trump adamantly denied Clinton’s allegations of his making fun of disabled individuals, when there is video evidence of him doing so at a rally earlier this year.
Trump also continued saying the media has rigged the debate by portraying him as a bad guy. Yet Trump makes it no easier for himself when he constantly says idiotic, divisive statements. This was proven again at the debate when he discussed his immigration plan, saying, “We have some bad hombres in here!” As long as Trump continues to talk like a child instead of a presidential candidate, he is going to be publicly criticized.
Another question Wallace posed to both candidates is how they would respond to non-partisan economic analysts whose research has shown their national debt plans would not work. Trump said that those analysts were flat-out wrong and that his ideas were right, while Clinton simply compared herself to Trump to put her vision over as the better of the two. Again, neither candidate really tried to answer the question.
It was easy to hope that this would be a different debate, but it wasn’t. Trump and Clinton continued the name-calling and the show-boating, instead of giving intelligent answers to the American public’s questions. With less than a month before the election, everything is still as it was before any of the debates took place. There are those for Trump and those for Clinton, and the rest of of the American public continues to shake their heads at this embarrassment of a race to the White House.
