Clinton pushes the right Trump buttons

NEW YORK — Mr Donald Trump had one job: Don’t take the bait.

But he let Mrs Hillary Clinton get under his skin minutes into their first presidential debate early yesterday, first by her suggestion that he owed his success to his father’s money, and he only got more agitated as the prime time debate wore on.

Smiling, serene, egged on by each groan and grunt and interruption she goaded from her rival, Mrs Clinton provoked Mr Trump again and again over his refusal to release his tax returns, his years-long “racist lie” about President Barack Obama’s birthplace, his foreign policy views and his treatment of women. Meanwhile, Mr Trump drew some blood on the issue of trade, specifically calling out crucial battleground states in the process, but found little on Mrs Clinton’s most vulnerable fronts: Email, family foundation and policy crises of her tenure as Secretary of State.

“Trump took the bait virtually every time she attacked him,” said Ms Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a political communications expert at the University of Pennsylvania. “And his responses to the attacks weren’t strong.”

The Democratic presidential nominee, whose significant lead in the polls dwindled to a dead heat this week, was seeking to exploit a major weakness of her Republican rival. Surveys say large numbers of Americans, majorities even, doubt Mr Trump has the temperament to be President.

“Clinton has clearly been able to get under his skin time and again,” said Mr Brian Walsh, a former Senate Republican leadership aide.

Mr Trump started the debate relatively subdued, but grew increasingly testy as the night wore on and as Mrs Clinton’s jabs kept coming. The GOP nominee used negative emotion words like “terrible,” “stupid,” and “disaster” about 50 per cent more often at the end of the debate than the start, according to a Bloomberg Politics analysis with Quantified Communications.

Mr Trump went on to appraise his own temperament, calling it “my strongest asset, maybe by far”, before attacking Mrs Clinton’s. She smiled. “Woo! Okay,” she said, to laughter from the audience.

His son, Mr Donald Trump Jr, defended his father after the debate: “There’s a time for temperament, and there’s a time where you actually have to defend yourself,” he said.

Mrs Clinton’s broad critique of Mr Trump’s character extended from the start to the end of the debate, pressing her advantage on temperament. She went into the night with “a clear goal” to show herself “steady in command and to disqualify Trump”, said Mr Ben LaBolt, a former spokesman for Mr Obama’s 2012 campaign. “She did both without ever getting frazzled.”

“He was rattled and looked far from presidential,” said Mr Jim Manley, a former communications strategist for Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid. “She won.”

After the debate, Trump spokesman Jason Miller argued that polls have been moving in his direction recently, and that he has more time to pull ahead.

“The next debate is the foreign policy debate. It’s the national security debate, so a number of things that didn’t come up tonight will come up then.”

US Representative Peter King, a New York Republican, said the debate “went very well” for Mr Trump. “On key issues like trade,” he said, Mrs Clinton “never had any counter to what Donald Trump was saying.”AGENCIES