Hillary Clinton puts Donald Trump on defensive

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump battled it out in front of millions of undecided American voters over racism, terror and temperament in their first presidential debate on Monday night, with the media declaring the Democratic nominee as the winner of the fiery contest.

The 90-minute clash, watched by an expected television audience of up to 100 million, saw the 68-year-old former secretary of state and the 70-year-old Republican nominee, who have attacked each other for months in separate campaigns, taking the stage together here for the first time to woo a substantial chunk of voters who remain undecided ahead of the November 8 polls.

The CNN/ORC poll declared Ms Clinton as the clear winner in the first of a series of three debates, with a massive 62 per cent of voters giving an edge to the Democrat over the reality TV star, who was deemed winner by only 27 per cent.

The two candidates indulged in a series of combative, acrimonious exchanges as the battle turned personal, with the controversial real estate mogul being questioning the “stamina” of the former secretary of state after her recent bout of pneumonia.

Ms Clinton was seen smiling through the insults and landed jabs of her own to put Mr Trump on the defensive over his temperament, refusal to release his taxes and his past comments on race and women in the debate that set netizens talking about the showdown in huge numbers.

Mr Trump said he will release his tax returns if Ms Clinton releases her 33,000 emails deleted by her from the period when she was the secretary of state in the first term of the Obama administration. “As soon as she releases them, I will release,” he said when being grilled for not releasing his tax returns.