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Las Vegas: Hillary Clinton & Donald Trump Face Off in Final Debate

HeadlineOct 19, 2016

In election news, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are slated to face off tonight in the third and final presidential debate at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. The final debate comes as Donald Trump’s campaign is reeling from a series of accusations of sexual assault from nine different women. Trump has denied these allegations. On Tuesday, People magazine published an article quoting six different people who all corroborated People magazine journalist Natasha Stoynoff’s account of being sexually assaulted by Donald Trump in 2005 at his Mar-a-Lago resort. Stoynoff says Trump pushed her against the wall and kissed her against her will. The six cited in the article include two People magazine editors and one of her co-workers, Paul McLaughlin, who said, “I advised her not to say anything, because I believed Trump would deny it and try to destroy her.” Clinton, meanwhile, is facing questions about newly released and leaked emails, which reveal everything from Clinton’s State Department prioritizing “Friends of Bill Clinton” while assigning aid contracts after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, to Clinton bashing environmentalists and anti-fracking advocates during a meeting with the building trades union in 2015, where she said the activists should “get a life.” Ahead of tonight’s debate in Las Vegas, people are placing bets on everything from whether Clinton will take a drug test—as Trump has called for—to whether Trump will show up at all.

Ben Eckstein: “We have odds of 15 to 1 right now that Hillary will take a drug test before the debate—15 to 1. You can get odds of 8 to 1 that Donald Trump will walk out during the debate if he gets a tough question. And how about 25 to 1 that he doesn’t show at all? There you go. These are great things.”

Donald Trump has confirmed he’ll be bringing President Obama’s half-brother, Malik Obama, to the debate tonight. Malik is a Trump supporter. At the last debate, Trump brought three women who have accused Bill Clinton of sexual crimes, including Juanita Broaddrick, who alleges she was raped by Bill Clinton nearly 40 years ago and that Hillary Clinton worked to cover it up. Tonight’s debate comes as both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are facing record unfavorability ratings and the widespread characterization that this year’s election cycle has been a “circus”—a description that is angering some professional circus workers.

Taylor Albin: “As a clown—I’m a professional clown. I have worked my whole life. This is a dream of mine to be a clown with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. I have gone to school. I have had training. And I would never associate the president of the United States of America as a clown. I would never do that. And I think, in this election, doing that is kind of an insult. I think it’s an insult to me.”

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