Last time you heard from us, we were down to three candidates. However, during the summer, the National Party Conventions made their choices for the two nominees: the Democratic Party selected Hillary Clinton while the Republican Party selected Donald Trump. 

At the start of the campaign, the Republican Party had 17 candidates and eventually one by one they started dropping out. Compared to the crowded Republican side, the Democratic Party started with six candidates, but quickly went down to a two-candidate race. It narrowed down to Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, after Martin O’Malley dropped out after the Iowa Caucus. However, before the Democratic National Convention, Sanders ended his campaign and started endorsing Clinton. Eventually, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton became the nominees for president. 

September 26, 2016 marked the first presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Two days before the debates, Trump threatened to bring Gennifer Flowers, a woman who had a sexual relationship with Bill Clinton decades ago, to sit with her in the front row. This taunt, according to CNN, was in response to Trump critic Mark Cuban, who planned to sit in the front row of the debate at the invitation on Clinton’s campaign. Trump also, according to CNN, has been attacking Hillary Clinton’s physical and mental health. He even imitated Clinton when she stumbled into her car after a 9/11 ceremony. Clinton’s doctor later on revealed that she had pneumonia and “overheated” at the ceremony, which caused her stumble to the car. 

The first presidential debate was held at Hofstra University in Long Island, N.Y.. Some of the topics discussed, according to Politico,  include, “America’s Direction” and “Securing America.” These topics started as jump off points for Lester Holt’s questions. Lester Holt, “NBC Nightly News” anchor, was the moderator of the first presidential debate. The debate featured six 15-minute segments over a 90 minute period with no commercial breaks. Two of the 15-minute segments were focused on one of the topics listed above.

The first question, “Why are you a better choice than your opponent to create the kinds of jobs that will put more money into the pockets of American works?,” was directed to both candidates, but Hillary Clinton was asked to answer first.  Hillary, according to Washington Post, believes in building an economy that works for everyone. Hillary wants to raise the national minimum wage, have equal pay for women, and have more companies do profit-sharing. She believes this can be done by having the wealthy pay their fair share and close corporate loopholes. On the other hand, Donald Trump goes in another direction. He believes that many of the jobs here in the United States are leaving to other countries. According to Trump, his plan is to lower taxes from 35 to 15 percent for companies. He also believes the United States should renegotiate their trade deals.

Both Trump and Clinton have different views on how a tax plan should be. Trump believes taxes should be lowered because the wealthy don’t want to bring in their money so they just go to other countries and start new jobs there. He believes 5 trillion dollars aren’t able to be brought back into this country. So, this money isn’t able to be put to work. However, Clinton believes that taxes should be higher for the wealthy.  She believes that Trump’s plan is considered the “Trump loophole” because it benefits his family. She states that investing and building on the middle class, cutting debt for college students, etc. would really help boost our economy. The debate went on and Trump’s tax returns came up. He said he would release his tax returns if Clinton released her 33,000 deleted emails. Clinton speculated that maybe Trump doesn’t release his tax returns because he is hiding something. She also responded to Trump’s comments about the emails by admitting she made a mistake in using a private email and if she could go back she would do it different, but she isn’t going to make excuses.

Surprisingly, the debates went smoothly. Trump didn’t threaten to skip the debate and according to CNN, there were no private fights involving the Trump and Clinton campaigns.

A few days before the second presidential debate, a recording of a very vulgar conversation Trump had about women in 2005 was leaked. The video from “Access Hollywood” is of Trump and Billy Bush having an off-camera conversation about women. Trump uses explicit language and brags about grabbing women by their genitals. Late Friday night, Trump released a short video statement saying, “I said it, I was wrong, and I apologize.”He then said that he is very different, both in words and actions, than Bill Clinton; he accused Bill Clinton of abusing women. Republican critics have asked him to drop out of the race, however, he responded with, “We will discuss this more in the coming days. See you at the debate on Sunday.”

The second presidential debate took place Sunday, October 9, 2016, in St. Louis, Missouri. Before the debate, Trump had a surprise meeting with three women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct; he then invited these women into the debate hall as his guests. During this debate, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton often argued on personal terms. Donald Trump, according to CNN, threatened to jail Hillary Clinton, disrespected his running mate on foreign policy plans, and admitted to paying no federal income taxes. Trump then called Hillary “the devil” and claimed she has a great extent of hate in her heart. Moderators Anderson Cooper and Martha Raddatz brought up the leaked conversation of Trump early in the debates. Clinton used this moment to add in Trump’s history of attacks toward Muslims, Mexican immigrants, African-Americans, and a disabled journalist. Still, according to CNN, many Republican political operatives saw how vulnerable Hillary Clinton was on many issues. One clean shot Trump had against Clinton was when she was asked if it was OK to be “two-faced” and have “public” and “private” positions on issues. She leaned on previous statements about Abraham Lincoln to divert this question. However, Trump shot back with, “She lied, and now she’s blaming the lie on the late great Abraham Lincoln, Honest Abe, never lied. That’s the big difference between Abraham Lincoln and you.” Trump’s biggest problem is that he was unable to persuade voters who don’t already support him. Just like the first debate, Trump was noted as making many inaccurate claims. After the debate, a CNN/ORC instant poll of the debate watchers found that Clinton had won, 57% to 34%.

The third, and final, presidential debate takes place on Wednesday, October 19, 2016, at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. This will be the last debate until the presidential election takes place on November 8th.