It’s over. Not just the third and final debate, but the prospect, however slim, of Donald Trump becoming the 45th President of the United States. We can relax — just for a moment — and let that fact really sink in.
You’ll read headlines and articles detailing how Hillary Clinton outclassed Trump on policy and demeanour, how she needled him into making mistakes. of undecided voters, which gave Clinton clear victories in the previous two debates, handed her another decisive win.
But analysing what just happened as a political debate doesn’t do it justice. If you didn’t tune in, you missed 90 of the most surreal, trainwreck-captivating minutes of political television ever broadcast. Part grotesque slam poetry recital, part livestreamed self-eulogy, Trump’s performance at the third 2016 Presidential debate was like nothing you have ever seen.
He yelled about “bad hombres” bringing crime over the Mexican border, drugs “poisoning the blood of our youth”, doctors “rip[ping] the baby out of the womb of the mother”. He spent entire minutes praising dictators like Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad. When Clinton claimed he was a “puppet” of the Russian government, he offered this response: “No puppet. No puppet. You’re the puppet. No, you’re the puppet.” He took a minute to reiterate his long-standing grievance that Celebrity Apprentice never won an Emmy.
He belittled and cast aspersions on the women who’ve come forward alleging he sexually assaulted them. He boasted that the allegations were so untrue that he’s never even apologised to his wife over them, ignoring the fact that Melania Trump detailing his apology to her a week ago. When he said, “no one respects women more than I do”, moderator Chris Wallace had to remind the audience not to laugh.
"... the first major Presidential candidate in history to call the legitimacy of America’s democratic elections into doubt"
When he was asked to confirm he would respect the result of the election, he responded: “I’ll keep you in suspense”, making him the first major Presidential candidate in history to call the legitimacy of America’s democratic elections into doubt. “Such a nasty woman”, he muttered under his breath as Clinton answered a question about Medicare. In 90 minutes of debate, as in 16 months of running for President, it’s genuinely impossible to tell if he uttered a coherent sentence from start to finish.
The knowledge of his own impending defeat oozed from him. When talking about the future implications of the Syrian refugee crisis, he jabbed: “Lots of luck, Hillary!” At times, had trouble keeping a straight face at Trump’s peevishness. When the debate finally came to a close, he stood stock-still behind his podium for several long moments, seemingly exhausted.
Before this final debate, it was extremely unlikely Trump was going to stage a comeback of the magnitude he’d need to win the Oval Office. have him more than six percentage points behind Clinton; a deficit has ever overcome this close to an election. Now that this last, fascinating exercise in self-destruction is done, what little doubt remained has been extinguished. He knows it. Clinton knows it. Everybody knows it. It’s over.
It’s tempting not to be so unequivocal about it — to leave room for doubt, for late surprises, for some historic Wikileaks release that reveals Clinton is a lizard person. Trump’s political demise has been confidently predicted since before he even announced he was running, and his success up to this point has proven plenty of professional political commentators and media outlets wrong.
Nor will the election’s aftermath usher in some wonderful new age where we can pretend none of this ever happened. Assuming he doesn’t lead a violent revolution against the United States government (and you can’t automatically assume that he’s not at least toying with the idea), Trump will do his damndest to keep up his public profile. As the debate aired, his Facebook page test-drove something called , a branded network where, presumably, he and his legions of enraged goblins will retreat to keep the dream alive after November 8. As much as we might wish for it, he won’t disappear completely from our lives.
But given the sheer insanity of the last 16 months — the certainties that have been overturned, the compacts of civility and basic decency that have been vandalised, the people who’ve been slandered and assaulted and threatened, the ethnic and religious groups that have been insulted and demonised, the women who’ve been attacked and disbelieved — it’s very important to take a breath and quietly recognise that this carnival of hideousness finally has an end date, and it is very soon.
We can worry about what’s next soon enough. For the moment, take it in. Let out that breath you’ve been holding all these months. He’s done.
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Alex McKinnon is a journalist based in Sydney. Most recently he served as political and opinion editor of pop-culture website Junkee and editor of the Star Observer, Australia's longest-running LGBTI newspaper.
