Pundits: Trump Failed To Change Election Race In Final Debate
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Political pundits AB Stoddard from Real Clear Politics and John Hayward from Breitbart assessed the third and final presidential debate, which included Donald Trump announcing he may not be willing to accept the outcome of the election if he loses, and concluded that Trump did not reverse the course of a race that has been slipping away from him for weeks.
Stoddard told Chris Stigall on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT that Trump was doing well until his blunder over accepting the will of the voters on election night.
"Donald Trump had his best debate performance yet, but he made sure the headline was all about him keeping us waiting on whether not he would concede a loss and accept the outcome of the election. He steps on his message. He did not land a fatal blow on Hillary. She did not have a fatal stumble and he's not doing what it takes to win."
She believes this error, and other similar mistakes that have plagued Trump throughout the campaign, stem from concerns over his personality, which are unlikely to change even if he wins on November 8th.
"This whole thing where his team gets together to the point where they actually come out to the press in obviously and intentional effort, it's very, sort of, un-Trump world, to have Rudy and Pence and Kellyanne Conway and Ivanka all say he's going to accept the outcome of the election shows that he can agree to something in a meeting, with his advisers, then he gets ornery and he does what he wants. If you think he's going to be different on February 19th than he is now, he's not. I just don't know how he convinces the unconvinced."
John Hayward, from Breitbart, while speaking with Stigall, said that the response of Democrats and the media over Trump's answer is hypocritical and pointed back to the 2000 election dispute and recount between Al Gore and George W Bush as proof.
"It was amazing. It's mass, hysterical, psychotic amnesia. Every liberal in the country completely forgot everything Al Gore did and they started spinning these crazy fairy tails, oh, he conceded on election night, all he did was ask for an audit, it was an automatic recount, I didn't ask for anything. No. Al Gore fought tooth and nail and tried to steal the election. I know you Democrats don't want to hear it. It's what he did."
He also criticized Trump for not making a bigger deal of Clinton's oversight of foreign policy in the Middle East while serving as Secretary of State, singling out Libya as a prime example.
"He keeps letting her off the hook on Libya. Libya is a disaster and he mentioned it. He says it's a disaster, but it was an illegal war from the top down. There was nothing remotely legal about this. It's a weird facet of our government and the way we view this all powerful executive now that nobody really talks about how a blatant violation of the War Powers Act anymore. It absolutely was, but you'd think that that would be an issue in a presidential campaign and he never mentions it."