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" (Optional Video Accompaniment To This Post) HEMPSTEAD, LONG ISLAND\u2014Let us be charitable and mention that there was a moment, one obvious moment, where he had her.  There was a wrangle over what is lazily called &amp;quot;transparency.&amp;quot; Hillary Rodham Clinton was jabbing at Donald Trump over his failure to release his tax returns. He was countering with some stuff about her e-mail server. HRC had used his failure to release the returns as a door to talk about the possibility that he isn&amp;#039;t as rich as he wants the country to believe he is, or as charitable, or perhaps that he is the money-slave of foreign interests. He said he&amp;#039;ll release the returns when she releases the e-mails. Things were about at a draw. And then this happened. HOLT: He also\u2014he also raised the issue of your e-mails. Do you want to respond to that? CLINTON: I do. You know, I made a mistake using a private e- mail. TRUMP: That&amp;#039;s for sure. CLINTON: And if I had to do it over again, I would, obviously, do it differently. But I&amp;#039;m not going to make any excuses. It was a mistake, and I take responsibility for that. HOLT: Mr. Trump? TRUMP: That was more than a mistake. That was done purposely. OK? That was not a mistake. That was done purposely. When you have your staff taking the Fifth Amendment, taking the Fifth so they&amp;#039;re not prosecuted, when you have the man that set up the illegal server taking the Fifth, I think it&amp;#039;s disgraceful. And believe me, this country thinks it&amp;#039;s\u2014really thinks it&amp;#039;s disgraceful, also. This was good moment for him. Her answer was short and clipped and something she&amp;#039;s said approximately 400 times. He could have gone hard at it. But she had lodged something sharp in his monumental ego, and he just couldn&amp;#039;t let it go. &amp;quot;As far as my tax returns, you don&amp;#039;t learn that much from tax returns. That I can tell you. You learn a lot from financial disclosure. And you should go down and take a look at that. The other thing, I&amp;#039;m extremely underleveraged. The report that said $650\u2014which, by the way, a lot of friends of mine that know my business say, boy, that&amp;#039;s really not a lot of money. It&amp;#039;s not a lot of money relative to what I had. The buildings that were in question, they said in the same report, which was\u2014actually, it wasn&amp;#039;t even a bad story, to be honest with you, but the buildings are worth $3.9 billion. And the $650 isn&amp;#039;t even on that. But it&amp;#039;s not $650. It&amp;#039;s much less than that. But I could give you a list of banks, I would\u2014if that would help you, I would give you a list of banks. These are very fine institutions, very fine banks. I could do that very quickly. I am very underleveraged. I have a great company. I have a tremendous income. And the reason I say that is not in a braggadocios way. It&amp;#039;s because it&amp;#039;s about time that this country had somebody running it that has an idea about money. When we have $20 trillion in debt, and our country&amp;#039;s a mess, you know, it&amp;#039;s one thing to have $20 trillion in debt and our roads are good and our bridges are good and everything&amp;#039;s in great shape, our airports. Our airports are like from a third world country. You land at LaGuardia, you land at Kennedy, you land at LAX, you land at Newark, and you come in from Dubai and Qatar and you see these incredible\u2014you come in from China, you see these incredible airports, and you land\u2014we&amp;#039;ve become a third world country. So the worst of all things has happened. We owe $20 trillion, and we&amp;#039;re a mess. We haven&amp;#039;t even started. And we&amp;#039;ve spent $6 trillion in the Middle East, according to a report that I just saw. Whether it&amp;#039;s 6 or 5, but it looks like it&amp;#039;s 6, $6 trillion in the Middle East, we could have rebuilt our country twice. And it&amp;#039;s really a shame. And it&amp;#039;s politicians like Secretary Clinton that have caused this problem. Our country has tremendous problems. We&amp;#039;re a debtor nation. We&amp;#039;re a serious debtor nation. And we have a country that needs new roads, new tunnels, new bridges, new airports, new schools, new hospitals. And we don&amp;#039;t have the money, because it&amp;#039;s been squandered on so many of your ideas. HOLT: We&amp;#039;ll let you respond and we&amp;#039;ll move on to the next segment. CLINTON: And maybe because you haven&amp;#039;t paid any federal income tax for a lot of years. Hell, Mitt Romney would have put that one away, but Mitt Romney has actual liquid wealth and he is an actual politician. Donald J. Trump is (likely) neither of those. And that was it, the one moment he had, a moment pissed away in the wind because El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago couldn&amp;#039;t be bothered to learn how to debate because he has always measured his IQ by his bank balance and by the toys in his various mansions.  I learned quite early in this campaign year that I live in a completely different ecosystem from most people, and from practically all of the people who boosted Donald Trump to a most improbable Republican presidential nomination. But how anyone could have watched the proceedings at Hofstra on Monday night and not seen a complete bloodbath is beyond me. There were two presidents on that stage. One was Hillary Rodham Clinton and the other one was Lester Holt. There also was a curiosity\u2014a walking YouTube comment thread who knew nothing, cared less, and didn&amp;#039;t even notice when he was setting his own feet on fire.    This was true 21st century Know-Nothingism. He plainly had not done even the most rudimentary preparation for the most important political night of his life. He spent the whole night drunk on the applause he&amp;#039;s had from his frothing, adoring public over the past 18 months. His entire appearance was an insult to his supporters, to the audience, to everyone watching at home, and to the entire concept of democratic governance going back to Pericles. He is running for president as a guy who doesn&amp;#039;t care enough to do the real work.  And, whatever you may think about HRC, she gave you all the respect of actually preparing for the debate. The examples are numerous and almost beyond belief. TRUMP: Wait a minute. I was against the war in Iraq. Just so you put it out. HOLT: The record shows otherwise, but why\u2014why was... TRUMP: The record does not show that. HOLT: Why was\u2014is your judgment any... TRUMP: The record shows that I&amp;#039;m right. When I did an interview with Howard Stern, very lightly, first time anyone&amp;#039;s asked me that, I said, very lightly, I don&amp;#039;t know, maybe, who knows? Essentially. I then did an interview with Neil Cavuto. We talked about the economy is more important. I then spoke to Sean Hannity, which everybody refuses to call Sean Hannity. I had numerous conversations with Sean Hannity at Fox. And Sean Hannity said\u2014and he called me the other day\u2014and I spoke to him about it\u2014he said you were totally against the war, because he was for the war. HOLT: Why is your judgment better than... TRUMP: And when he\u2014excuse me. And that was before the war started. Sean Hannity said very strongly to me and other people\u2014he&amp;#039;s willing to say it, but nobody wants to call him. I was against the war. He said, you used to have fights with me, because Sean was in favor of the war. And I understand that side, also, not very much, because we should have never been there. But nobody called Sean Hannity. Or, when he drove an icepick through his entire image as a Friend Of The Working Man. CLINTON: Third, we don&amp;#039;t know all of his business dealings, but we have been told through investigative reporting that he owes about $650 million to Wall Street and foreign banks. Or maybe he doesn&amp;#039;t want the American people, all of you watching tonight, to know that he&amp;#039;s paid nothing in federal taxes, because the only years that anybody&amp;#039;s ever seen were a couple of years when he had to turn them over to state authorities when he was trying to get a casino license, and they showed he didn&amp;#039;t pay any federal income tax. TRUMP: That makes me smart. Yeah, that&amp;#039;ll be a commercial by noon. Taxes are for suckers. Or, when he tried to slither away from birtherism and fell down a well\u2026 HOLT: Mr. Trump, for five years, you perpetuated a false claim that the nation&amp;#039;s first black president was not a natural-born citizen. You questioned his legitimacy. In the last couple of weeks, you acknowledged what most Americans have accepted for years: The president was born in the United States. Can you tell us what took you so long? TRUMP: I&amp;#039;ll tell you very\u2014well, just very simple to say. Sidney Blumenthal works for the campaign and close\u2014very close friend of Secretary Clinton\u2026 Look, it&amp;#039;s true. Sidney Blumenthal sent a reporter\u2014you just have to take a look at CNN, the last week, the interview with your former campaign manager. Or, when he\u2026well, I don&amp;#039;t know what in the hell he was doing here\u2026 TRUMP: And look at her website. You know what? It&amp;#039;s no difference than this. She&amp;#039;s telling us how to fight ISIS. Just go to her website. She tells you how to fight ISIS on her website. I don&amp;#039;t think General Douglas MacArthur would like that too much. Or, my singularly favorite moment\u2026 TRUMP: You know, Hillary is hitting me with tremendous commercials. Some of it&amp;#039;s said in entertainment. Some of it&amp;#039;s said\u2014somebody who&amp;#039;s been very vicious to me, Rosie O&amp;#039;Donnell, I said very tough things to her, and I think everybody would agree that she deserves it and nobody feels sorry for her. But you want to know the truth? I was going to say something\u2026 HOLT: Please very quickly. TRUMP: \u2026 extremely rough to Hillary, to her family, and I said to myself, &amp;quot;I can&amp;#039;t do it. I just can&amp;#039;t do it. It&amp;#039;s inappropriate. It&amp;#039;s not nice.&amp;quot; But she spent hundreds of millions of dollars on negative ads on me, many of which are absolutely untrue. They&amp;#039;re untrue. And they&amp;#039;re misrepresentations. And I will tell you this, Lester: It&amp;#039;s not nice. The man has a glass fee-fee, there&amp;#039;s no doubt about that. Spectacularly, he came into the spin room after the debate and talked darkly about all the things he could have said about the Clintons and their marriage, but that he gallantly refrained from saying in deference to their daughter. He also claimed that &amp;quot;they&amp;quot; had given him a defective mic, by which he might have meant that it actually worked.     In all honesty, there were points at which HRC was allowed to wave her hand at genuine questions beyond her e-mail. Her actions as Secretary of State as regards Syria and Libya certainly would be grist for a competent opponent, as would her earlier defense of some of the Clinton-era policies that even she admits have led to some of the problems she would like us to elect her now to solve, particularly in the area of criminal justice reform.  But Donald Trump is so damned proud of how he doesn&amp;#039;t really know dick about anything, and so damned convinced that not knowing dick about anything actually makes him smarter than the rest of us mortals, that he was utterly incapable of raising any of these points in a coherent fashion. There were two presidents on that stage on Monday night and he wasn&amp;#039;t one of them.  Hell, I wouldn&amp;#039;t let him park my car. Click here to respond to this post on the official Esquire Politics Facebook page. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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