damon. "nightline" is live from las vegas next. here's byron pitts! thank you, jimmy. the presidential debate was the hottest show in las vegas tonight. we'll take you behind the scenes. this is a special edition of "nightline." inside the final 30. trump ace october bombshell. refusing to say he would accept the election results. >> i will tell you at the time. i'll keep you in suspense. >> well, chris, let me respond to horrifying. >> we're right there in las vegas from the spin room breaking down the night. >> this here tonight is the biggest show in town. >> trump and clinton trading policy punches on gun control, immigration, and abortion rights. >> i am putting pro-life justices on the court. >> we have come too far to have that turned back now. >> the backing of vladimir putin. >> he'd rather have a puppet as president -- >> no puppet, you're the puppet.

>> such a nasty woman. >> we'll be right back with a

putting a wife to work is a very dangerous thing. planned parenthood should absolutely be defunded. and congressman hardy said he supported trump 100%. like trump, hardy opposed legislation to ensure equal pay. and hardy fought to defund planned parenthood, just like trump. ruben kihuen respects women. kihuen fought for equal pay for equal work. and ruben kihuen will protect our right to make our own health decisions. for the content of this advertising. this is a special edition of "nightline." inside the final 30. good evening. thank you for joining us. tonight, donald trump and hillary clinton going head to head for a final time in repeated heated exchanges

will it change minds? here's abc's terry moran from the spin room in las vegas. >> thanks, byron. that was a slugfest, quite a night here tonight. a proper debate and some big headlines. let's get right to it. jon karl, rick kline. john, what is the big head line what did you make of tonight? >> the fact that donald trump would not commit to accepting the results of this election is the biggest moment of that debate. but really the real moment of this entire election, that as principle of american democracy, the loser concedes, the winner accepts, we move on. >> i agree, this was a singular moment in american debates to have that candidate out there saying, i may not accept that. to leave that lingering i think is going to have republicans squirming to try to explain that away. donald trump needed to have a very big moment, he had it, but it was exactly the wrong kind of moment for him. this felt like a debate in a race that already ended. >> he seemed a little more focused at times? >> i thought during the first

incredibly focused. he kept on the issues. he did not take the bait. as the debate went on he lost focus, he started to flail around. that's when the big mistakes happened. >> does it change the game at all? >> i think it ensures a bad story line for donald trump for these next couple of weeks. and it limits him. i think this was a play to his own base. in talking about the election results, talking about the issues, the name-calling even, i think it's inherently restricting to what his campaign can mean. i think he needs something dramic course of this race. right now he is on a path that heads in the wrong direction. >> he needed the big change and he didn't get it. >> but it was an entertaining debate. for the blow by blow in this slugfest let's go to david wright who's taking us through the big moments. >> tonight, one final showdown. >> she should never have been allowed to run for the presidency. >> the dust-up in the desert.

talking down our democracy -- >> reporter: las vegas, nevada. host of prize fights but none quite like this. >> such a nasty woman. >> reporter: clinton called trump a hypocrite on the issue of saving american jobs. >> in fact, the trump holt ri h route here in las vegas was made with chinese steel. he goes around with crocodile tears about how terrible it is but he has given jobs to chinese steel workers, not american steel workers. >> she's been doing this for 30 years, why the hell didn't you do it years? you were very much involved -- excuse me, my turn. >> there's only one of us on this stage who's actually shipped jobs to mexico, because that's donald. he's shipped jobs to 12 countries, including mexico. >> reporter: trump questioned the value of her experience. >> you do have experience, i say the one thing you have over me is experience, but it's bad experience. because what you've done has turned out badly. >> she pushed back on the notion that she has the wrong sort of experience. >> absolutely. and she seemed prepared for

that she was doing with what donald trump was doing. >> in the 1990s i went to beijing. and i said women's rights are human rights. he insulted a former miss universe, called her an eating machine. >> give me a break. >> on the day when i was in the situation room, monitoring the raid that brought osama bin laden to justice, he was hosting "the celebrity apprentice." so i'm happy to compare my 30 years of experience. >> it's a line i think we're going to again the next 20 days. >> reporter: the two debated the significance of the boys on the bus. >> grab them by the [ bleep ]. >> reporter: bully bush's "access hollywood" bus, of course. >> mr. trump, at the last debate you said your talk about grabbing women was just that, talk. and that you'd never actually done it. and since then, as we all know, nine women have come forward and said that you either groped them, or kissed them, without

>> first of all, those stories have been largely debunked. those people, i don't know those people. i have a feeling how they came and i believe it was her campaign that did it. >> secretary clinton. >> reporter: clinton hit back. >> he held a number of big rallies where he said that he could not possibly have done those things to those women because they were not attractive enough for -- >> i did not say that, i did not say that. >> in fact, he went on -- >> it's getting ugly. >> he goes after their their self-worth, and i don't think there is a woman anywhere who doesn't know what that feels like. so we now know what donald thinks and what he says and how he acts toward women. that's who donald is. >> nobody has more respect for women than i do. nobody. nobody has more respect -- >> reporter: russian president vladimir putin had a cameo. >> he'd rather have a puppet as president -- >> no puppet, you're the puppet.

clinton debated abortion. sharp differences. >> i am pro-life and i will be appointing pro-life judges. >> i strongly support roe v. wade which guarantees a constitutional right to a woman to make the most intimate, most difficult in many cases, decisions about her health care that one can imagine. >> reporter: but high-minded by 2016 standards. >> this is the first time abortion has come up in any of these debates. >> while i think it's terrible, if you go with what hillary is saying, in the ninth month you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby. >> well, that is not what happens in these cases. and using that kind of scare rhetoric is just terribly unfortunate. >> reporter: on other issues they went straight for the jugular. immigration, for instance. >> when it comes to the wall that donald talks about building, he went to mexico. he had a meeting with the mexican president. didn't even raise it. he choked.

good meeting with the president of mexico. very nice man. we will be doing very much better with mexico on trade deals, believe me. the nafta deal signed by her husband is one of the worst deals ever made of any kind signed by anybody. >> donald knows a lot about this, he used undocumented labor to build the trump tower. >> we're going to secure the border and once the border is secured at a later date we'll make a determination as to the rest. but we have some bad hombres here and we're going to get them out. >> the term trending on twitter, apparently a lot of people found it offensive a lot of people might not understand the connotation of that. so i'm going to lay it out there. this is not political, this is not partisan, this has nothithi to do with anybody running for office, it's the word and the way it was used. it was derogatory, it was offensive. >> he's unfit and he proves it

>> reporter: trump tried to use leaked e-mails from clinton's campaign manager against her. >> john podesta said you have terrible instincts. bernie sanders said you have bad judgment. i agree with both. >> you should ask bernie sanders who he's supporting for president, and he has said -- >> which is a big mistake. >> he's campaigned for me around the country saying you're the most dangerous person to run for president in the united states history, i think he's >> reporter: donald trump calls this a rigged election. >> the election is being rigged. they have rigged it from the beginning. the election is being rigged by corrupt media. >> reporter: tonight an astonishing moment. trump refused to say if he'll accept the results of the election. >> i will look at it at the time. i'm not looking it now, i'll look at it at the time. >> are you saying urnot prepared now -- >> what i am saying is i will tell you at the time, i'll keep you in suspense. >> chris, let me respond to that

>> reporter: trump accused clinton of conspiring with the media against him. >> she shouldn't be allowed to run. she's guilty of a very, very serious crime. she should not be howed to run. just in that respect i say, it's rigged. >> reporter: clinton suggested trump is just a sore loser by nature. >> there was even a time when he didn't get an emmoor for his tv program three years in a row and he started tweeting the emmys were rigged. >> should have >> this is a mindset. this is how donald thinks. and it's funny but it's also really troubling. >> how surprised were you that trump wouldn't promise to accept the results? >> i thought it was stunning. this is really a hallmark of our democracy. both his daughter and his running mate said that they would commit to it. and there he said he was going to keep the country in suspense. >> reporter: right after the

dowd for instant analysis. >> let's go over here where we can get a little more light. i didn't see them shake hands at the end, did you? >> no, they didn't shake hands. >> not at all? >> not at all. not at the beginning and not at the end. >> were you surprised to his answer about the question will you respect the results of the election? >> i was shocked. i've never heard an answer like that in all the elections i've been involved in. >> that's not part of the american tradition? >> no. my fear is that he's setting it up for a divide in the country that is going to be very hard to heal. >> it's still 19 >> yes. >> as of tomorrow. >> yes. >> maybe he'll come around. >> i think he's going to get serious criticism by frps over the next 48 hours. >> really. >> yeah. up next, complete debate analysis from abc news political contributors l.d. granderson and cokie rob bears. who they say was the big winner tonight. that'd be devastating.

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it was a contentious presidential debate but which candidate emerged the victor? i'm joined by abc news political contributors l.z. granderson and cokie roberts. cokie, start with you and trump's refusal to say whether he would accept the results the election. >> it was absolutely extraordinary. he said, i will look at it at the time. and then went into the media's so corrupt, they poison the minds of the voters, the stuff he's been saying on the campaign trail and at his rallies that gets everybody ginned up. we really did expect him when asked directly that he would say, of course i will accept the will of the american people.

mate has and as his daughter did. >> put this in context. have you ever -- >> no. >> before you finish asking. >> right, right? >> this whole campaign has been, have i ever? the answer is no. and i've been doing it a very long time. but really, this strikes right at the heart of our system. you know, we expect the peaceful transfer of power. it's one of the things that has made us great for a very long time. the beginning. we followed the constitution and accepted it and everybody thought it was extraordinary. and it is extraordinary. but we do it and we expect it. >> i think had that question been asked earlier in the debate, when he wasn't quite as agitated, perhaps the answer would have been different. at that point of the debate he was full-on enraged, angry, you could see it on his face. i think he was in a mood where he was saying, i'm digging in on everything, i'm not going to just go along to get along.

all of these debates, where for the first 20 minutes to a half hour he does what all his advisers tell him to do. >> right, right. >> where he's calm and tries to be presidential and he tries to keep his face under control and all of that. and then he just goes off. >> speaking of enraged, the moment that blew up on twitter was when donald trump used the word hombre. what's your take on that? cecilia vega talked about that, she talked about the response she heard in e-mails and texts from frien about that. >> it's par for the course, unfortunately, for what he has sewn into his campaign. there was a report last week during "celebrity apprentice" he was using the term uncle tom to describe an african-american. this is a pattern of his. is it purposeful racist? perhaps not for him. but what it is means that he's been living in a bubble for much of his life. there's a level of insensitivity. these phrases he's been using

they're offensive. >> you are a woman of the south. you have real sensitivity to race in this country. what do you make of how trump uses words? >> well, i agree completely with l.z. in this case, that he probably didn't even know how offensive it is. a lot of us don't know how offensive it is, to be honest. first of all, be careful. you know, which he's not. but secondly, put it in the context. because after all, he started his campaign by saying, mexicans are coming into this they're rapists and drug -- i mean, that's the worst thing he's said, they're rapists. >> one of the things trump had to accomplish tonight was he had to expand his reach to women. in particular, educated white women. with remarks like "such a nasty woman," does that help him? >> no. >> does he expand his base at all? >> it was interesting, i asked him a question on the air where he said to me, "that's a nasty

challenged. and of course in a debate that's what happens. and so as she continued to come after him, which she really did, he just couldn't table ke it. >> she called him putin's puppet. used sharp language. where does she fall short tonight? >> for me two areas. first, i honestly believe she needed to make some sort of appeal to johnson voters. there are certain states in which she is in a tight battle with donald trump -- >> north carolina. >> north ca johnson is polling very well. and there are things she could have said tonight i believe that could have maybe appealed to those voters saying, hey, don't go with johnson, he's not a bernie alternative, go for me. she didn't take that opportunity. number two, i would have liabled to have seen her drill him harder on his economic plan. his whole campaign is based on immigration, and i'm a great businessman, i can turn the economy around. chris wallace's question, we thought your plan was going to

yours, she should have attacked his plan and when chris wallace's question went there, hit that point harder that your plan is worse than my plan. >> clinton was well prepared. cokie, where do you think she fell short tonight? >> i agree she could have gone after -- i disagree with l.z. about the johnson voters. we talked about this earlier. >> right. >> because it's true in certain states, but that's the place where surrogates can make a tremendous difference. boy are her surrogates out. they are really doing their job for her. and people just don't like her. and it's very hard to convince them, like me. you know? >> final question, who won tonight, and will it make a difference? >> i think hillary clinton won tonight. and it would have made a difference had she lost. because all of the momentum was with her and if it had stopped that momentum, that would have made a difference. but i don't think that is the case. >> i agree. i definitely think hillary clinton won, and she had two moments which i think she sewed

number one her response to the supreme court nominee, talking about abortion, talking about how personal it is for a woman. number two, allowing donald trump to characterize women who accused him of sexual abuse as seeking fame and fortune. women who have been sexually abused or raped are not coming public because of seeking fame and fortune, they're seeking justice. >> l.z., cokie, thanks so much. be right back with some closing thoughts. [ "on the road again," by willie nelson ] ? on the road again ? [ rear alert sounds ] [ music stops ] [ front assist sounds ] [ music stops ] [ girl laughs ] ? on the road again ? ? like a band of gypsies we go down the highway ? [ beetle horn honks ] no matter which passat you choose, you get more standard features, for less than you expected. hurry in and lease the 2017 passat s for just $199 a month. it's endless shrimp at red lobster.

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following tonight's rough and tumble and at times nasty debate, we were reminded of the words of thomas jefferson. the boisterousness of liberty is never without a wave. thanks for watching abc news. tune in for complete coverage in the money. as always we're online at

"nightline" facebook page. thanks for watching, america, good night. they think the dwining moment is >> judge judy: there was a problem. >> yeah, there was. >> announcer: a tenancy in trouble before it began. >> he cornered me against the refrigerator and starting raging at me, spraying me with spit 'cause he was foaming at the

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