Donald Trump has one more chance to save his flailing White House campaign.
Trump will square off Sunday night against Hillary Clinton in the second presidential debate, an opportunity to look the nation in the eye and express genuine contrition for lewd and sexually aggressive comments about women he made a decade ago. New revelations emerged Saturday after CNN’s Kfile reviewed hours of newly uncovered audio of demeaning conversations Trump held over a 17-year period with radio shock-jock Howard Stern.
The developments have tipped the Republican Party into chaos. Dozens of elected Republicans in Washington and state capitals around the country have condemned Trump — and many have called for him to step aside. His own running mate, Mike Pence, said Saturday he can’t defend Trump’s comments.
President Barack Obama joined in the condemnation Sunday, saying the comments suggest Trump “doesn’t care much about the basic values.”
“One of the most disturbing things about this election is just the unbelievable rhetoric coming at the top of the Republican ticket,” Obama said at a campaign event in Chicago for US Senate candidate Tammy Duckworth. “I don’t need to repeat it. There are children in the room.”
Meanwhile, Clinton has largely stayed quiet, letting the turmoil in the GOP unfold and preparing to address the controversy publicly for the first time before an audience of millions.
Trump heads into the debate, which begins at 9 p.m. ET and will be co-moderated by CNN’s Anderson Cooper, under intense pressure to deliver a powerful performance that demonstrates regret and remorse for his conduct. Only a top-notch showing will help Trump stem the GOP exodus away from his campaign that kicked into full gear Saturday.
On Sunday, he struck back, hinting to Republicans distancing themselves from him that they would would regret it.
“So many self-righteous hypocrites. Watch their poll numbers – and elections – go down!” he tweeted.
And his top Sunday show surrogate, Rudy Giuliani, tried to deflect concerns while showing contrition.
“The fact is that men at times talk like that. Not all men, but men do. He was wrong for doing it. I am not justifying it. I believe it’s wrong. I know he believes it’s wrong. I believe this is not the man we’re talking about today,” Giuliani told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”
Knockout punch for Clinton?
Clinton will enter the showdown sensing she might be able to land a knockout punch that finally kills off Trump’s campaign at its moment of greatest vulnerability, less than a month before voters go to the polls. But she will be on guard for any risky gambit by Trump to try to deflect from the uproar surrounding his lascivious past by bringing up allegations of sexual misconduct by her husband, former President Bill Clinton, in the 1980s and 1990s.
The drama will unfold before tens of millions of viewers and will be a fresh reminder how the former star of “The Apprentice” has effectively turned American politics in 2016 into one giant reality show revolving around himself and consuming the whole country.
Trump’s attempt to rescue his campaign will be all the more complicated since the debate will use a town hall format — a tricky one for novice candidates — and will take place in front of a group of undecided voters, some of whom could have pointed questions about his behavior.
Trump must address female voters in particular, given that there is no path to the White House for him unless he can improve his standing among college educated suburban women in key swing states like Pennsylvania and Colorado.
“He needs to come out in the first couple of minutes and he has to express genuine contrition,” said Lanhee Chen, Mitt Romney’s former policy director Saturday on CNN. “He has to look into the camera and say, ‘look, I understand I hurt a lot of people. I am sorry.’ Not qualified, not as an attack on Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, then move on to talking about the issues.”
His task is made even more daunting given that he botched the first debate nearly two weeks ago, crushing all the momentum he built up in September and sending his campaign into a spiral, from which, it has not recovered.
Amid mounting calls from elite Republicans for Trump to quit the GOP ticket, one of his most loyal allies, Giuliani, hinted Saturday that Trump would try to recreate the anti-establishment mojo that fired his early primary bid to try to mount a comeback.
‘The populist candidate’
“Donald Trump is the populist candidate,” Giuliani told reporters. “Most of the people that have turned on him are members of the establishment, so I would see this as if you want change in Washington, you vote for Donald Trump. If you want things the same, you vote for Hillary Clinton.”
But dealing with the immediate crisis is only the first part of Trump’s assignment Sunday. He must also do a far better job at the debate of exploiting Clinton’s vulnerabilities on issues such as her email server and questions about her character and honesty than he did during the first debate.
Trump’s weekend troubles, which produced the most stunning 24 hours of an already rollicking 2016 campaign, forced the Clinton campaign into some last minute adjustments before the debate.
The former secretary of state spent Saturday retooling her strategy. Sunday’s showdown offers her a chance to hit Trump when he is down and to deliver a closing argument about why his current troubles validate the central theme of her campaign, that he lacks the temperament and character required of a president in the Oval Office.
“I think what she needs to is come out fierce, come out and condemn Donald Trump in the strongest words she has ever used,” Patti Solis Doyle, who ran Clinton’s 2008 primary campaign, said Saturday on CNN. “She needs to stand up for these women that he has insulted, that he has offended.”
Clinton’s communications director Jennifer Palmieri told reporters Sunday that the candidate had been briefed on Trump’s comments during debate prep but couldn’t confirm that Clinton had actually watched the video.
“We briefed her on it during debate prep,” Palmieri said. “So many memorable moments in this campaign that they no longer become memorable. This is one of them.”
As well as going on the offensive against Trump, Clinton is also likely to take advantage of Sunday’s massive television audience to lay out some of the policy approaches she would adopt to improve the lives of everyday Americans.
But all eyes will be on how Trump responds to the crisis enveloping his campaign. His attempt to save his White House hopes with a big television moment has few precedents in modern political history.
Ironically, one parallel might involve Clinton herself. The future first lady appeared on “60 Minutes” with her husband in 1992 and turned in a stunning performance to rescue his Democratic primary campaign and political career after he was assailed by allegations of infidelity.
Forty years earlier, Richard Nixon pulled off the same kind of high wire act on television that faces Trump when he was in danger of being thrown off Dwight Eisenhower’s presidential ticket due to a campaign finance scandal. His appearance, which came to be known as the Checkers speech, was good enough for him to be retained as vice presidential nominee and saved his political future.
Trump needs nothing less on Sunday.