He was wounded. It was ugly.

His candidacy teetering on the verge of collapse, a sullen Donald Trump used the beginning of the second presidential debate to unleash an unprecedented barrage of personal attacks on Hillary Clinton and her husband — and, in a shocking departure from democratic norms, to call for her prosecution and imprisonment.

Clinton, trying hard to maintain a bewildered smile, attempted to turn the subject to Trump’s extensive history of demeaning remarks about women and minorities. The caught-on-tape comments that have jeopardized his chances, she said, represent precisely “who he is.”

They did not shake hands at the outset. Though they eventually got into matters of policy — Obamacare, taxes, Syria — Sunday’s debate seemed destined to be remembered as the night the battle for the American presidency turned for minutes at a time into something resembling a Springer episode, complete with surprise guests.

The town hall debate began on the subject of Trump’s 2005 comments to Access Hollywood, leaked on Friday, in which he said he kisses and gropes women without their consent. Trump, facing a Republican insurrection over the tape, denied that he had actually done what he said he had done, and he said he had merely been using “locker-room talk.”

There was little evidence of the contrition some of his allies insisted he show, and he quickly changed the subject, first to terrorists and then to Clinton’s husband. The real predator, he said, was Bill Clinton — whose accusers he had strategically sitting in the audience in St. Louis.

He did not stop there. An hour before the debate, Trump made an appearance with three women who have accused Bill Clinton of sexual harassment or assault: Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey and Paula Jones. He used them to try to blunt Clinton’s criticism of his own words.

“Certainly, I’m not proud of it, but that was something that happened. If you look at Bill Clinton, far worse,” he said. “Mine are words, his was action. This is what he has done to women. Never been anybody in history of politics in this nation that’s been so abusive to women, so you can say any way you want to say it, but Bill Clinton was abusive to women.”

He accused Hillary Clinton of “viciously” attacking the same women. He added that she “should be ashamed of herself.”

Clinton, paraphrasing First Lady Michelle Obama’s insistence that “when they go low, you go high,” declined to respond directly. Instead, she portrayed his comments as part of a broader pattern of disparagement.

“Because he has also targeted immigrants, African-Americans, Latinos, people with disabilities, Muslims, and others,” she said. “So this is who Donald Trump is. And the question for us, the question our country must answer, is that this is not who we are,” she said.

“I want to send a message; we all should. To every boy and girl and indeed to the entire world. That America is great, and we are great because we are good, and we will respect one another. And we will work with one another and we will celebrate our diversity.”

Trump, as per usual, uttered a lengthy series of lies without batting an eye. Among others, he falsely insisted he had been opposed to the war in Iraq, falsely claimed that Muslims had seen bombs on the floor of the San Bernardino terrorists’ homes, and even that he had not, just last week, urge people to check out the “sex tape,” which does not actually exist, of a former beauty queen with whom he was feuding.

Perhaps spontaneously — “I didn’t think I’d say this and I’m going to say it and hate to say it,” he began — he made a dramatic announcement: “If I win, I’m going to instruct the attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation because there’s never been so many lies, so much deception.”

Clinton’s rejoinder: “It’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law of our country.”

Trump countered: “Because you’d be in jail.”

In another highly unusual moment, Trump said he disagreed with his own running mate, Mike Pence, on the subject of Syria, saying that he does not himself believe that Russian provocations there should be met with American force.

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And he provided yet more ammunition for Democrats’ attempts to chip away at his credibility as an economic populist. When pressed on the suggestion, raised last week by the New York Times, that he used a giant 1995 income loss to avoid paying taxes for 18 years, he said, “Of course I do.”

Canada rated a rare mention when Trump falsely accused Clinton of seeking to create a Canadian-style single-payer health care system. He described ours as “catastrophic in certain ways,” citing the Canadians who cross the border for some surgeries.

He seemed, on various occasions, to be talking only to his devoted base, referring to figures, like longtime Clinton ally Sidney Blumenthal and Democratic leader Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who are largely unknown by the general public.

Trump steadied himself at least slightly in the debate’s last half. He was strongest on the subject of Clinton’s much-questioned judgment, attacking her for her decision to delete thousands of emails from her controversial personal server. Clinton, who in the last debate simply apologized for her mistake, this time attempted once more to litigate the specifics of the matter. Trump punched back.

And he got off his best line of the night when Clinton was forced to explain her speeches to Wall St. businesspeople, revealed by WikiLeaks last week, in which she said at one point that leaders “need both a public and a private position” on some issues. She explained that she had just seen a movie about Abraham Lincoln.

“She lied. Now she’s blaming the lie on the late, great Abraham Lincoln,” Trump responded. “That’s one that I haven’t — okay, Honest Abe never lied. That’s the good thing. That’s the big difference between Abraham Lincoln and you.”

His body language raised eyebrows again. At times, he hovered close behind Clinton as she answered questions. Sniffling and grimacing, he made little effort to conceal his mood, sporadically lashing out at moderators Anderson Cooper and Martha Raddatz for what he perceived as unfairness.

His decision to raise the subject of Bill Clinton’s past carried severe risks for Trump. Three decades worth of research suggests that the discussion of her husband’s sexual behaviour actually renders her more sympathetic to voters.

She was up as of Sunday an average of five points, a large margin in presidential politics. And that was before any polls were taken after the explosive story about his caught-on-tape comments to an Access Hollywood host in 2005, which prompted dozens of Republican elected officials to withdraw their support for him

Recap: Second U.S. Presidential Debate

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