CNN: Hillary Clinton Wins Debate, 57-34 Percent

Test Ticker

Please support Mother Jones with a year-end donation. The truth is, we're a long way from our $600,000 goal, and we have to get as close as we can by Tuesday so we don't have to make hard decisions come January. If you value our reporting, please consider pitching in today.

$600,000

We still need to raise 400,000: Whether you can give $5 or $500, it all matters.

Please support Mother Jones with a year-end donation. We need to raise $600,000, or get as close as we can, by Tuesday so we don't need to make hard decisions come January. Whether you can give $5 or $500, it all makes a difference.

Let our journalists help you make sense of the noise: Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter and get a recap of news that matters.

According to CNN, debate watchers thought Hillary Clinton won the debate, 57-34 percent. CNN’s focus group was something like 20-1 in favor of Clinton.

But! Trump did better than expected. He didn’t spontaneously combust on stage, so I suppose that’s a fair comment.

Elsewhere on CNN, the big topic is Trump’s declaration to Hillary Clinton that if he wins he’ll appoint a special prosecutor to “look into your situation.” Aside from the odious Scottie Nell Hughes, this was pretty unanimously panned as un-American and unprecedented. It’s banana republic stuff, not mature democracy stuff. Even Wolf Blitzer felt obliged to denounce it.

Trump has said this before, so it’s not actually news. But saying it on national TV in front of 80 million people? That’s different. The only good news for Trump is that it’s probably not the kind of thing Clinton really wants to talk about.