Summary
- Trump launches a blistering assault on Clinton, pummelling her on her husband's sex scandals and saying she ought to be in jail for her private email server
- Clinton hits back, saying Trump's remarks about groping women showed he wasn't fit to be president
- Shortly before the debate in St Louis, Missouri, Trump stunned media by hosting a panel with women who have accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault
Live reporting
BBC
Claim: Trump is backed by 200 military leaders.
Reality Check verdict: This seems overblown. The Trump campaign website, in September, said 88 retired US admirals and generals had signed a letter endorsing the Republican candidate.
Donald Trump entered this debate threatening to unload every bit of malicious allegations and rumours on Hillary Clinton. After a bit of, er, pussyfooting, he did.
Accusations of Bill Clinton's sexual impropriety? Check. Her work as a public defender representing a rapist? Yup. He even tied it up in a bow by remarking that his Democratic opponent should be in jail.
Mrs Clinton said she would take the high road, but she did get in her shots as well, saying the illicit video of Mr Trump's lewd comments showed who he really is. And then, after that nuclear exchange, the debate chugged along - with Mr Trump often gaining the upper hand.
If his weakness is policy knowledge, there were few opportunities where his shortcoming were exposed. Instead, there was plenty of time for Mrs Clinton to offer a yet another muddled answer on her email server and essentially confirm that the Wikileaks hacked speech excerpts are accurate.
Mr Trump offered word salads in answers about healthcare reform and Syria policy. If anything, from there the debate was a draw. With Mrs Clinton ahead right now, a draw will probably suit her just fine. But it wasn't the knock-out blow her supporters probably hoped for.
BBC
BBC
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It's over. The two candidates shook hands, after not doing so during their greeting at the beginning of the debate.
Wow, that was a bloodbath!
Some kind words at last...
Trump says: "She doesn't quit, she doesn't give up, she's a fighter, I disagree with much of what she's fighting for, but she does fight hard and she doesn't give up and she doesn't quit and I consider that to be a very good trait."
"Would either of you name one positive thing that you respect in one another?" an audience member asks each candidate.
Clinton says she respects Trump's children.
"I respect his children. His children are incredibly able and devoted and I think that says a lot about Donald. I don't agree with nearly anything else he does", she said.
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We're in overtime! Clinton is talking about energy policy, accusing Trump of buying steel made in the China he criticises.
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Last question is on energy policies.
"We are killing, absolutely killing, our energy business in this country," Trump says, adding that he approves of wind and solar energy.
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Clinton says she wants to appoint judges "who understand the way the world really works".
She wants to reverse Citizens United and get "dark money" out of politics. She says she also wants to protect voting rights, women's reproductive rights as well as marriage equality.
She calls the Senate's decision to block Obama's Supreme Court nominee a "dereliction of duty".
BBC
Claim: Donald Trump attacks Hillary Clinton over her record on defending women's rights
Reality Check verdict: It would be a stretch to say Clinton was laughing at the victim. Trump was referring to a case from the mid-1980s, when she was working as a lawyer, She defended a factory worker accused of raping a 12-year-old girl. In unpublished audio recordings of an interview she had with an Arkansas reporter, she is heard laughing four times while discussing the trial. In one instance she says: “Of course he [the defendant] claimed he didn’t [rape her]…He took a lie detector test. I had him take a polygraph, which he passed, which forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs”. Clinton and the reporter are then heard laughing. The accused ultimately admitted a reduced charge and the victim has since said Clinton put “me through hell”.
Moderator Cooper presses Trump about his early hours Twitter rant against former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, saying is that the discipline of a president?
Trump again deflects and begins talking about Clinton and Benghazi.
When pressed about his tweet referencing a sex tape, Trump said that was not all what he said. But his tweet in fact directed supporters to do just that.
"Tweeting happens to be a modern-day form of communication,” he says.
"I'm not unproud of it," he says.
BBC
Trump brings up the 2012 attack on the US consulate in Libya, says Clinton ignored multiple requests for more security from the US ambassador who was killed in Benghazi.
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Clinton says: "Children listen to what is being said. There is a lot of fear - in fact teachers and parents are calling it the Trump effect."
"I will do everything I can to reach everybody - if you don't vote for me I still want to be your president."
Clinton apologises for her "basket of deplorables" comment in reference to Trump supporters.
"My argument is not with his suppporters, it's with him, the inciting of violence at his rallies, the very brutal comments about, not just women, but all kinds of Americans," she says.
Trump says: "She has tremendous hate in her heart. When she says 'basket of deplorables', she meant it."
BBC
"I will be a president for all our our people", Trump says, citing a remark Clinton made, saying that half Trump's supporters are a "basket of deplorables".
Trump surrogates have been told by the campaign to keep bringing up that phrase, which Trump supporters are insulted by.
Raddatz: "Would you introduce the threat of US military force beyond a no-fly zone to back up Syrian diplomacy?"
Clinton says she would not advocate military force, but she does support using the special forces that are currently in place.
She then says she would specifically target IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
The Hillary campaign is firing out emails at the rate of about one per minute.
Here's the headlines to a few:
"Trump Dangerously Promotes Russia’s Brutal Bombing Campaign in Syria"
"Trump’s Foreign Policy: Fiction and Hypocrisy"
"Clinton's Real Record on Syria, and Trump's Dangerously Unserious Approach"
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BBC
"Tell me what your strategy is," demands moderator Martha Raddatz as Trump riffs on what he calls America's "stupidity in the Middle East" by announcing its military plans against the so-called Islamic State before attacking.
The general "are spinning in their graves", he adds.
Trump continues to attack Clinton's record as secretary of state.
"I don't like Assad at all, but Assad is killing ISIS. Russia is killing ISIS and Iran is killing ISIS," and the three have lined up together, he says, as moderator Martha Raddatz tells him his time is up.
Raddatz presses Trump on what he thinks will happen if Aleppo falls into the hands of the so-called Islamic State.
"I think that it basically has fallen," he responds.
BBC
Claim: Donald Trump mocks Hillary Clinton for saying she was just quoting from the film Lincoln when she said that politicians should have different positions in public and private. "Abraham Lincoln never lied - that is the big difference between Abraham Lincoln and you," he tells his Democratic rival.
Reality Check verdict: The Clinton quote comes from an April 2013 speech to the National Multifamily Housing Council. It was one of the paid speeches she gave before launching her presidential bid, which she refused to release, but details of which have now been revealed in leaked emails.
She did give an example from the movie Lincoln, and the deal-making that went into passage of the 13th Amendment, a process she compared to sausage-making.
She said: "It is unsavory, and it always has been that way, but we usually end up where we need to be, but if everybody's watching, you know, all of the back-room discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous to say the least. So, you need both a public and a private position.''
Clinton answers a question about whether the Syrian civil war and the Holocaust in Europe are similar.
She's advocating for a no-fly zone, saying that "we need leverage with the Russians" in order to bring them to the negotiating table.
But she warns that the US needs to be careful about the aggression and ambitions of Russia.
"I would go to the negotiating table with more leverage than we have now," but adds she does support prosecuting war crimes against Russia and Syria.
Clinton cites her legislative experience as the New York senator, and the laws that she helped to pass.
"She was a disaster as a Senator, a disaster," Trump says.
Trump attacks Clinton's judgement for her role in US interventions in "Libya, Syria, and Iraq", focusing on the so-called Islamic State.
"Now they're in 32 different nations. Congratulations, great job," he said turning to face Clinton.
Moderator Cooper asks: "Did you use that $916m loss to avoid paying federal taxes?"
"Of course I do," he said, before adding that many of Clinton's donors did the same thing.
"I absolutely used it, but so did Warren Buffet and so did George Soros," he said.
If she had a problem, she had 30 years to fix it, he said. "She's all talk".
Trump contends that if Clinton was an effective senator, she could have passed legislation getting rid of carried-interest provisions, in which some financial managers can claim income as capital gains.
She responds by outlining all that she has accomplished in her tenure.
Trump says he knows the tax code better than any other candidate, a statement he made immediately after the New York Times reported on his taxes a week ago. He pivots to saying Clinton has done nothing to rectify the messy tax code after 30 years of public life.
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