The final presidential debate started to go off the rails once Russian President Vladimir Putin was brought up. When Donald Trump began discussing how Putin has no respect for Hillary Clinton or President Obama, Clinton shot back calling Trump Putin’s puppet. And like a grade school student, Trump called her a puppet right back.
What makes the back and forth interesting is that moderator Chris Wallace had originally asked Clinton a question regarding her stance on open borders that was revealed in a WikiLeaks dump. Clinton corrected Wallace saying she was actually discussing energy, but the open discussion soon went off the rails once Putin was brought up.
Clinton used the Wikileaks question to discuss reports the Russian government was responsible for numerous online hacks the U.S. has suffered the past few months. Clinton said the hacks were a threat they have to deal with:
“They have hacked American websites, American accounts of private people, of institutions, then they have given that information to WikiLeaks for the purpose of putting it on the Internet. This has come from the highest levels of the Russian government clearly from Putin himself.”
Trump then criticized Clinton for pivoting on the initial question, but his blood seemed to boil as he talked about Putin. Trump, who stated he has never met Putin, said problems will be solved if we worked with Putin and that the Russian president doesn’t respect Clinton. That’s when Clinton dropped the hammer saying “Well, that’s because he’d rather have a puppet for president than the United States and it’s pretty clear.”
Trump’s response was on par with how an elementary school student would react to being called a name, saying “No puppet. You’re the puppet.” The presidential debate has turned into a schoolyard argument.
