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Trump has 'blown it', says Gergen, and Hillary could soon be on her way to the White House

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By Noel Young, Correspondent

October 10, 2016 | 4 min read

David Gergen, who was a lead commentator on CNN, opined later on the channel's website that whatever chances Donald Trump still had of capturing the White House ”largely evaporated Sunday night in his second debate with Hillary Clinton".

David Gergen

David Gergen

Gergen said that coming off the worst ten days of any campaign in recent history, “Trump desperately needed a win in order to reverse his slide in the polls. He was indeed better than in the first debate and she was not as commanding."

“Even so, he blew his opportunity for victory in the first 20 minutes and could never fully recover.”

CNN's poll found that by 57-34 per cent, a majority of voters watching them thought she got the best of him.

His loss came through a series of bizarre moments, said Gergen.

“The first was his surprise pre-debate appearance with four female accusers of Bill Clinton. While a case can be made for re-hearing their claims of long ago, the event seemed like a stunt and Trump never made real use of it in the debate."

More damning, said Gergen, still was the way Trump handled the disgusting video from 11 years ago in which he made vulgar sexual remarks.

“Trump could possibly have achieved a measure of forgiveness if he had issued a sincere, thoughtful apology about his past as well as some ugly incidents in this campaign. But his apology was limited in scope, seemed slightly dismissive, and went off track when he mixed ISIS into the conversation.”

Adding insult to injury, he then went into an incredulous rant about Hillary's deleted emails.

"It was an entirely legitimate attack," said Gergen, until he vowed that if elected, he would "instruct" his attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor to pursue her and that if he were president today, she would be in jail.

Gergen's view: This is what tin-pot dictators do, jailing their political opponents.

“If he had done a half hour studying up (something that seems beyond him), he would know that under the law, a president can request -- but not order -- the Justice Department to appoint a special prosecutor and Justice must then make a decision independent from White House control.”

Overall, Trump's debate performance may have given heart to his base supporters, stopping his slide, but did little to bring new voters into the fold, especially women.

Having told moderator Anderson Cooper that he never actually groped or assaulted any women the way he bragged about in the tape, Trump's apology also leaves him wide open to new women contradicting his claims and to new tapes of scurrilous remarks, said Gergen.

Hillary's team shouldn't yet measure the drapes in the Oval Office, "but I bet their transition folks are now working with fresh energy," said the commentator, who has s served as an adviser to four U.S. presidents

Gergens’s verdict: Victory -- and perhaps a big one -- seems almost within their grasp.

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