Presidential candidates Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton will take on each other in the third and last debate on Wednesday, on the most contentious issues of this election. Debt and entitlements, immigration, economy, the Supreme Court, foreign hot spots, candidates’ fitness to be President are the six topics picked by moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News.
These issues have sharply polarised the American voters and the candidates have radically different views on each. These topics will also make the setting for them to call into question each other’s character, a dominant trend in recent weeks. Nine women have charged Mr. Trump with sexual assault since the second debate, while hacked emails of her top advisers showed that Ms. Clinton had taken private political positions that did not match her public posturing.
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While debates are meant to throw fresh light into the thinking of the candidates on issues, the third one has become crucial for an unlikely reason – to see whether one of the candidates trusts this election process at all or not. Repeatedly stating that the election is rigged, Mr. Trump has called upon his supporters to check voter fraud. “Either we win this election, or we lose our country,” he said on Tuesday. The moderator is expected to draw Mr. Trump out on the most elementary of questions – will he trust the outcome if he loses?
In a state-wise polls released ahead of the debate, Mr. Trump is leading by a sustainable margin only in two of the 15 battleground states. Ms. Clinton has a convincing lead in nine states, while Mr. Trump has marginal leads in the other four. Overall, if Ms. Clinton sustains her current position, she could capture as many as 304 electoral college votes against the halfway mark of 270.
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As in the two previous debates, both candidates have invited guests who could unsettle the opponent. President Barack Obama’s half-brother Malik Obama and the mother of an American solider who was killed in Bengazhi when Ms. Clinton was Secretary of State are among Mr. Trump’s guests. A housekeeper at one of the Trump hotels who criticised the candidate for his anti-women comments and Hewlett-Packard CEO Meg Whitman, who gave up her lifelong Republican loyalty this year, are among Ms. Clinton’s guests. The President’s half-brother said Mr. Trump “has a lot of energy and is very straightforward.”
Meanwhile, two undercover videos released by conservative platform Project Veritas’ on Monday and Tuesday have claimed the jobs of two Democratic strategists who were caught bragging about disrupting Trump rallies and manipulating the election process. James O’Keefe, who leads the outlet, was earlier convicted for doctoring a video to indict Planned Parenthood, an organisation that provides affordable reproductive health services to women. Mr. O’Keefe said he would be releasing several such videos until the election day, under a series “rigging the election. ”
The strategists caught on tape were working for the Democratic National Committee (DNC). “I mean, honestly, it’s not hard to get some of these a……s to pop off,” one of them says on the tape. “It’s a matter of showing up, to want to get into the rally, in a Planned Parenthood T-shirt. Or, Trump is a Nazi,’ you know. You can message to draw them out and draw them to punch you,” he says. Several Trump rallies were marred by violence when his supporters clashed with protestors.