Donald Trump should have expressed more remorse if he hoped to win the second presidential debate on Sunday evening after a tape surfaced online on Friday that captured him making predatory comments about women eleven years ago, said US policy expert Dr Sarah Graham.
“He needed to seem contrite, he needed to connect with the questioners in the Town Hall format and show a bit of empathy,” Dr Graham from the United States Studies Centre told SBS.
“Instead he kind of came out with this really robust set of attacks on Hillary Clinton, on her temperament, on her integrity, on her honesty, on her record as a lawmaker and her record of representing the American people.”
That, Dr Graham said, put him on the back foot in the debate against Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
The behaviour of the candidates in the first debate was immediately called into question and both candidates sought to blame the other for the acrimony.
“I have heard from many teachers and parents about some of their concerns are about some of the things that are being said and done in this campaign," Clinton answered first.
"I want us to heal our country and bring it together. That is the best way for us to get the future that our children and grandchildren deserve."
Trump said he agreed with everything Clinton had said.
"I began this campaign because I was so tired of seeing such foolish things happen to our country," he said.
The debate then inevitably turned to the controversial Trump tapes that showed Trump bragging about his power to sexually assault women.
He did not back down from his previous dismissal of his behaviour as “locker room talk”.
"I am not proud of it and I apologise to my family and to the American people,” he said.
“Certainly I am not proud of it but this is locker room talk."
Clinton used the tapes to reassert her argument that Trump was the first candidate in which she had ever questioned their fitness to lead.
"I said starting back in June, that he was not fit to be and commander-in-chief," she said.
"What we all saw and heard on Friday was Donald talking about women, what he thinks about women, what he does to women and he has said that the video does not represent who he is.
"But I think it's clear to anyone who heard it that it represents exactly who he is. We have seen this throughout the campaign."
Dr Graham also believed Trump had taken the wrong path in attacking Clinton this way, given the Republican Party was focusing on the senate and congressional races that are also in play.
“They are going to have to reckon with Trump’s record on women here and the implications of this recording.
“To the extent that I think they were hoping Trump would seem genuinely sorry and try and account for this in some fashion, but we didn’t see Trump doing that.”
