Final US Election Debate: Trump Refuses To Accept Result
MEP: US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has refused to say that he would accept the election result if he loses, as the third and final debate with his rival Hillary Clinton took place on Wednesday night in the city of Las Vegas in Nevada.
When pressed by the moderator to confirm that he will accept the outcome of the vote, he said: “I will look at it at the time.
“I will keep you in suspense.”
Trump has leaned on an increasingly brazen strategy in the campaign’s closing weeks, including peddling charges that the election will be rigged, despite no evidence of widespread voter fraud in previous US presidential contests.
“I will tell you at the time,” he told moderator Chris Wallace. For days he has claimed the election is “rigged”.
The Las Vegas debate continued the campaign’s bitter tone, with Mr Trump calling Mrs Clinton a “nasty woman”.
“The media is so dishonest and so corrupt and the pile on is so amazing, The New York Times wrote an article about it. They don’t even care, it’s so dishonest, they’ve poisoned the minds of the voters, but unfortunately for them, I think the voters are seeing through it,” he added.
Clinton shot back at Trump, describing his stand as “horrifying”. She went on to assert that accepting the results of an election is fundamental to American democracy.
“This is how Donald thinks, it’s funny, but it’s really troubling. That is not the way our democracy works,” Clinton stated.
To end the debate, each candidate was asked by moderator Chris Wallace to give an unprepared one-minute closing statement.
Trump reiterated his campaign’s slogan “Make America Great Again,” before diving into his top issues.
“We take care of illegal immigrants,” he said, “better than we take care of our vets.”
“That can’t happen,” the businessman added.
Trump then moved on to his appeals to traditionally Democratic-voting minority communities.
“Our inner-cities are a disaster,” he said, promising to fix them. “They get shot walking to the store. They have no education, they have no jobs.”
Trump accused Clinton of talking to African-Americans and Latinos only long enough to get their votes, and said she would turn her back on them once elected. He concluded that a Clinton victory would mean four more years of Obama-style leadership.
After discussing the wars in Syria and Iraq, the discussion turned to refugees in need of protection. While Trump repeated his claim that the US does not know who it is letting into the country, Clinton said: “I am not going to let anyone into this country who is not vetted … but I am not going to slam the door on women and children.”
But D’Angelo Gore, a fact-checker with the website Politifact, told Al Jazeera that both candidates mischaracterised each other’s policy proposals during the debate.
“Trump said that Clinton’s immigration policy was to simply grant amnesty to all the immigrants living in the United States, which is inaccurate,” Gore said. “The reality is that Clinton’s immigration reform is much more comprehensive, including increased border control.”
