Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump will hold a rally in Ambridge, Pennsylvania this afternoon, his first event since the second presidential debate.
Trump will speak from Ambridge Area Senior High School beginning at 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time. It can be viewed in the embedded YouTube player via Right Side Broadcasting.
The Republican nominee for president will address his supporters today hours after the presidential town hall debate. Most scientific polls have shown that viewers felt Hillary Clinton again won the debate, but that Trump performed slightly better than expected. After the first debate, Trump immediately began complaining about the debate’s moderator and about his microphone, and during last night’s town hall itself, Trump was flat out accusing the moderators of teaming up against him. He will almost certainly hammer that point home in Ambridge this afternoon, accusing Anderson Cooper and Martha Raddatz of being in the tank for Hillary Clinton.
This is also Trump’s first time addressing supporters since a leaked tape showed him bragging about being able to sexually assault women because he’s a Hollywood celebrity. This caused dozens of members of the Republican party to abandon Trump and rescind their endorsements, including former candidate John McMain. But during the second presidential debate, Trump mostly dismissed any concern over the leaked tape, saying that his description of grabbing women by their private parts without permission was just “locker room banter.” During his Ambridge rally, we’ll for the first time see how Trump addresses the recent controversy in a scripted form.
Trump made a few other controversial statements that have dominated the news ever since the debate ended, including the fact that if he became president, he would throw Hillary Clinton in jail, even though she has not been accused of any crime and even though a exhaustive FBI investigation cleared her of any wrongdoing. Trump has mainly held back in engaging in the “lock her up” rhetoric of many of his supporters, but as of last night, he’s officially going there.
Also a bit suspect was Trump completely contradicting his running mate’s position on how to handle the crisis in Syria, with Trump saying that he and Mike Pence have not spoken about that issue. Mike Pence tried to downplay this in interviews on Monday morning, claiming his original position on Syria was misinterpreted and that he agrees with what Trump said.
In Pennsylvania, where today’s rally will be held, Trump is down by an average of 9.4 percentage points, according to Real Clear Politics’ polling average.