WASHINGTON: Republican candidate Donald Trump used the second US presidential debate on Sunday to remind American Muslims that they still have to spy on the extremists within their ranks if they want to continue living in America, but Democrat Hillary Clinton warned that this approach would only help the extremists.

Opinion polls, released on Monday, said Ms Clinton won the second debate as well, but they also noted that Mr Trump did not “meltdown on the stage” as many had expected him to. His campaign has been in freefall since Friday when The Washington Post released a 2005 video showing him crudely bragging about using his fame to force himself on women.

Mr Trump, who evaded several questions about this infamous tape, did respond to a Muslim woman, Gorbah Hameed, who reminded the two candidates that there were 3.3 million Muslims in the United States and asked how would they help them deal with Islamophobia and with the consequences of being labelled as a threat to the country.

“You’re right about Islamophobia, and that’s a shame. But whether we like it or not, there is a problem,” said Mr Trump. “We have to be sure that Muslims come in and report when they see something going on. When they see hatred going on, they have to report it.”

Ms Clinton said that Mr Trump’s statement was a “gift” to the militant Islamic State (IS) group and violent jihadist terrorists who would present it to fan anti-American sentiments.

“We are not at war with Islam. And it is a mistake and it plays into the hands of the terrorists to act as though we are. So I want a country where citizens like you and your family are just as welcome as anyone else,” she said.

In his initial response to questions about the 2005 video, Mr Trump did apologise to “my family and the American people” for making those remarks. But every time he was asked about the lewd remarks he made in the video, Mr Trump started talking about the situation in the Middle East, Ms Clinton’s handling of the Libyan crisis when she was the secretary of state, failures of the Obama administration and former president Bill Clinton’s sex scandals.

Monday’s newspapers in the US reported that Mr Trump had been advised by his aides not to talk about the video as it was indefensible. Even foreign leaders, who usually avoid commenting on electoral politics of another country, were now commenting on the 2005 video, the reports added.

Earlier on Monday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said in an interview that Mr Trump’s comments in the 2005 tape were “sordid and revealing about his personality”.

Yet, Ms Clinton, who was expected to destroy Mr Trump by bringing up this issue, could not. But he did go home badly bruised. Apparently, the debate failed to achieve its target: helping non-committed voters to decide who they should vote for.

The two journalists conducting the debate tried but failed to focus Mr Trump’s attention on the video.

This was the most watched debate ever on the social media, as 20 million Americans watched it on Facebook and 17m on Twitter. But it could not match the 80m viewers rating of the first debate which remained the most watched debate in American history.

In a CNN/ORC poll of people who watched, 57 per cent declared Ms Clinton the victor, while 34pc voted for Mr Trump. But the majority said the Republican had performed better than they had expected.

Several major US media outlets pointed out that the debate was “too combative, dark and ugly”. One outlet noted that while “there’s no clear winner, American people are the obvious loser” for being subjected to 90 minutes of continued attacks and counter-attacks.

The media also noted that the candidates did not shake hands when they entered the venue – Washington University, St. Louis – and did not follow the age-old tradition of presidential candidates being polite to each other in face-to-face encounters.

While responding to the question from the Muslim woman, Mr Trump taunted Ms Clinton for not naming ‘the problem’. “She won’t say the name and President Obama won’t say the name. But the name is there. It’s radical Islamic terror. And before you solve it, you have to say the name.”

Ms Clinton responded by reminding tens of millions of Americans watching the debate that it’s “very short-sighted and even dangerous to be engaging in the kind of demagogic rhetoric that Donald has about Muslims”.

She said that many Muslim majority nations were part of the US-led coalition against the extremists like IS and Al Qaeda. “Right now, a lot of those nations are hearing what Donald says and wondering, why should we cooperate with the Americans?”

Ms Clinton pointed out that her Republican rival was a “very divisive” figure who had said “dark things” about Muslims. She recalled that even Captain Humayun Khan, a Pakistani America who sacrificed himself defending the United States, had been subject to attack by her rival.

Her remarks forced Mr Trump to acknowledge that “Captain Khan is an American hero”.

One of the two journalists conducting the debate told Mr Trump that his running mate Governor Mike Pence said earlier this week that the Muslim ban was no longer their position now.

Mr Trump acknowledged that he had slightly changed his position on this issue and no longer wanted to ban Muslims from coming to the United States. “The Muslim ban is something that in some form has morphed into an extreme vetting from certain areas of the world,” he said.

But when the journalist pressed him for clarification, Mr Trump would not say what it had morphed into beyond “extreme vetting”.

As the debate progressed, Mr Trump repeatedly interrupted the Democratic nominee, called her “a liar” and “the Devil” and threatened to send her to jail, if elected. As Ms Clinton addressed the audience in the town-hall-style debate, Mr Trump lurked just an arm’s length behind her with a grimace on his face.

Published in Dawn October 11th, 2016