After being caught on tape bragging about making sexual advances to a married woman and being able to grab women “by the pussy” because of his fame, will Donald Trump decide he has nothing left to lose in Sunday night’s second presidential debate?  The Republican had promised not to bring up Bill Clinton’s past marital infidelities with the likes of Gennifer Flowers and Monica Lewinsky. “I want to win this election on my policies for the future, not on Bill Clinton’s past,” he said in an email to the Page Six website. “Jobs, trade, ending illegal immigration, veteran care, and strengthening our military is what I really want to be talking about.”  But what if he takes another beating, finds himself on the ropes and is tempted to lash out? After all, his video apology for the “groping” tape included the following not-very-apologetic words: “Bill Clinton has actually abused women and Hillary has bullied, attacked, shamed and intimidated his victims. We will discuss this more in the coming days. See you at the debate on Sunday.”  This is, remember, the candidate who began one primary debate with a reference to the size of his genitalia. The Trump camp, the Clinton camp and indeed anyone who feels the dignity of western politics is dangling by a thread after this year must be praying that, just for once, the shoot-without-aiming demagogue can keep his cool, however unlikely that may now seem.  You could say this will be a good temperament test for a man who may yet take control of the nuclear arsenal.  And the winner is … Mike Pence! No surprise that the Republican National Committee should declare their man victorious in the vice-presidential debate this week. What did raise eyebrows, however, was the timing: the article was put online a couple of hours before the contest had even begun.  Such premature publication is the nightmare of every newspaper obituarist. Twitter erupted and the RNC hastily took the article down, but there was no sign of an apology stating that Pence’s triumph had been greatly exaggerated.  As it happens, most watchers did declare Pence the winner once the debate had actually happened. But there was little to suggest that anyone cared. The Huffington Post called it “the thrilla in vanilla” while Politico mused that it was “less a game changer than a channel changer”. About 37.2 million people tuned in to the nine television channels that carried it live, according to Nielsen, making this the least-watched VP duel since Dick Cheney v Joe Lieberman in 2000. The first Clinton-Trump debate got around 84 million.  But Tuesday night’s TV audience did include Walter Mondale, vice-president under Jimmy Carter. He took part in a live interaction with the New York Times website, headlined “Messaging With Mondale: Real-Time Reactions From an Ex-Vice President”. Among the highlights on a night of unbearable passionate intensity:  NYT: Does it ever amaze you that the tone of politics has gotten to this point?  NYT: Did we learn anything we really needed to know?  The editorials are in and the verdict is clear: Trump is not remotely up to the job. The Atlantic, for example, suggests that he “might be the most ostentatiously unqualified major-party candidate in the 227-year history of the American presidency” and has made an endorsement (Clinton) for only the third time in its history (the others were Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon Johnson).  But while US newspapers and magazines in effect speak with one voice, the rightwing cable station Fox News can be relied upon to fawn over Trump like a deferential BBC reporter from 1950s Britain asking the prime minister if he’d like to say anything to the nation. Fox News itself, however, is in disarray this year following the abrupt departure of Roger Ailes, the once all-powerful chairman at the centre of a sexual harassment investigation.  The discord deepened this week when host Megyn Kelly complained that Trump only speaks to friendly interviewers such as her colleague Sean Hannity “and will not venture out to the unsafe spaces these days”. Hannity retorted that Kelly was biased in favour of Clinton, although the two later announced on Twitter that they had made up. Meanwhile, a segment featuring correspondent Jesse Watters doing mocking interviews with Asian Americans in New York’s Chinatown neighborhood, interspersed with dated cliches and stereotypes, was branded “vile” by New York’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, and triggered protests outside Fox News HQ.  Those who believe that Rupert Murdoch’s channel, which turned 20 on Friday, has long been poisoning the political well and more or less enabled Trump’s rise could be forgiven a hint of schadenfreude.  Trump’s support spans far and wide. Peter Wolland first came to the US from New Zealand in the late 60s as the drummer for the band Mary and the Maoris. He quit the band in the early 70s and got his citizenship; now, he’s a Trump supporter.  “I’m sick of all the lying that goes on in Washington,” he said at a Trump rally in Reno, Nevada. For Wolland, when Trump said in last week’s debate that he was being smart by not paying any federal taxes, he was “just being honest”.  Trump has “a great attitude towards women”, Wolland said through an impressive moustache. “He’s hired more women – more people – than Hillary even knows. Some of his top executives are women.”  There is confidence in Britain, at least, that Trump won’t be a kind of Brexit redux. Bookmaker William Hill says it has taken the biggest bet ever staked on either the UK general or US presidential elections: €550,000 (equating to £481,232 or $615,000 when it was struck) on Hillary Clinton becoming president, at odds of 4/11. As a result of the wager, placed by a 46-year-old woman, William Hill has shortened Clinton’s odds to 1/3 (75% chance) and lengthened Donald Trump’s from 9/4 to 5/2.  You’ve whipped out that Mexican thing again.  – Mike Pence finally takes the bait during the vice-presidential debate  See, I told you his hair wasn’t orange!  – Children in Las Vegas react to Trump during his visit to their school  @IvankaTrump in a city of 8 million - we meet face 2 face - i thank u 4 listening - mother 2 mother - on this new years week - my best 2 u  Rosie O’Donnell on her chance meeting with arch-enemy Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka at a Manhattan restaurant.  72: times that Tim Kaine interrupted Mike Pence during the vice-presidential debate, according to a video, Tim Kaine Interrupts, compiled by the Republican National Committee.  Ted Cruz, runner-up to Donald Trump in the Republican primary election, phone banking for the party and apparently telling whoever will listen: “I coulda been a contender.”
David Smith chronicles a week in which the VP debate underwhelms Americans and Trump can’t seem to decide if he wants to dredge up Bill Clinton’s past