Day after debate, Clinton gets standing ovation, Trump jeered at charity dinner

NEW YORK — Bitter presidential rivals Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump had one more face-to-face showdown before Election Day. And they were supposed to make it funny.

The venue Thursday night — just 24 hours after their third and final debate — was the annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in New York, a white-tie gala which, every four years, becomes a showcase for presidential politics. Tradition dictates that the candidates deliver humorous remarks poking fun at each other and themselves, a jovial custom that seemed hard to envision amid such an ugly campaign.

Trump and Clinton traded sharp barbs and brutal takedowns, with many in the well-heeled crowd turning on the Republican nominee midway through his remarks and showering him with jeers.

They sat one seat apart for the evening, with New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan acting as the only buffer. And when they entered and took their seats, they did not shake hands or make eye contact.

The two later did shake hands and exchange a few words.

Also seated on the dais were a host of political and business leaders, including Mayor Bill de Blasio, who was quietly booed by some in the room when he walked in.

Trump, who had drawn big laughs earlier in the speech, appeared to lose the room as he repeatedly dug in with caustic swipes at Clinton, drawing rare boos at a charity event meant to raise money for impoverished children throughout New York.

He appeared to straddle the line when he talked about how “listening to Hillary rattle on and rattle on” has made him better appreciate his former nemesis Rosie O’Donnell. But he then seemed to cross it when he referred to her as “corrupt” during a lengthy riff on the FBI’s investigation into her use of a private email server as secretary of state.

“Hillary is so corrupt she got kicked off the Watergate Commission. How corrupt do you have to be to get kicked off the Watergate Commission? Pretty corrupt,” he said to loud boos and at least one call demanding he get off the stage.

He then almost appeared to segue into the standard attack lines of his rally speeches, setting aside jokes to bring up material contained in hacked Clinton campaign emails.

“Hillary believes that it’s vital to deceive the people by having one public policy and a totally different policy in private,” he said to growing jeers. “Here she is tonight, in public, pretending not to hate Catholics.”

https://youtu.be/Q0ryocAv8Zw

He had earlier joked that he was best known for his modesty and delivered a great line about his wife Melania’s speech at the Republican National Convention several months ago, a large part of which turned out was plagiarized from Michelle Obama.

“Michelle Obama gives a speech and people absolutely love it, my wife Melania gives the exact same speech, people get on her case,” he said, to uproarious laughter.

He also made Clinton laugh, taking a shot at the controversy surrounding her use of a private email server as secretary of state, saying that after she bumped into him, she’d said, “Pardon me” — an unsubtle reference to the Republican nominee’s frequent declarations that his opponent should go to jail.

Clinton immediately got the joke and tossed her head back to laugh.

Clinton didn’t holding back either, joking: “After listening to your speech, I will also look forward to listening to [GOP running mate] Mike Pence deny that you ever said it.”

The Democratic nominee also took a shot at Trump’s debate style, joking that if Trump didn’t like what she was saying, then he could “shout ‘Wrong.'” She added that she was surprised Trump let her go second because “I didn’t think he’d be OK with a peaceful transition of power.”

And she said Trump “looks at the Statue of Liberty and sees a 4, maybe a 5 if she loses the torch and tablet.”

Her best lines, however, had to do with Russia and Trump’s open admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Clinton first joked about Trump keeping up with a teleprompter, saying she “was sure it’s even harder when you’re translating from the original Russian.

“Donald really is as healthy as a horse,” she later said. “You know, the one Vladimir Putin rides around on,” she said, in reference to a viral photo from a few years ago in which a topless Putin rides a horse.

Putin probably takes him on a private horse-riding trip into the forest, Fred Corleone style pic.twitter.com/RLYTTs9cCC

— Rahul Sharodi (@RSharodi) October 9, 2016

Clinton also took some shots at herself, and opened by saying she had taken “a break from my rigorous nap schedule to be here.”

Trump regularly calls Clinton “Crooked Hillary,” says he’d put her in jail if he wins the presidency, and declared during Wednesday’s debate that she was “a nasty woman.” Clinton has said Trump lives in his own reality, is running a “hateful, divisive campaign” and lacks the temperament to be president.

Both took some early heat from the night’s master of ceremonies, Alfred E. Smith IV, the event’s namesake’s great-grandson. Smith joked that Trump approached Clinton before the event and asked how she was doing, to which Smith responded “I’m fine but now get out of the ladies’ dressing room.”

Trump laughed at the joke, and again when Smith made another joke about the leaked video that captured Trump using vulgar language, saying while the celebrity businessman was “sitting next to a man in a robe, but this is not a locker room. Watch your language!”

Smith also teased Clinton, noting that “titans of Wall Street” were in attendance, but told her to restrain herself from seeking donations and to “remember the children.”

The unprecedentedly bitter campaign between Clinton and Trump threatened the ecumenical goodwill that has defined previous roasts. Since 1960, at least one of the major party nominees has appeared at nearly every election year dinner, which is traditionally the last time the nominees share a stage before voters go to the polls.

Four years ago, President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney set aside their differences to trade (mostly) warm jokes. Romney, scanning the well-heeled crowd in the gilded Waldorf-Astoria ballroom, joked that the event’s white-tie attire finally gave him a chance to publicly don what “Ann and I wear around the house.” Obama, meanwhile, used his speech that year to look ahead to an upcoming debate on foreign policy, previewing his argument by saying “Spoiler alert: we got Bin Laden.”

The roast might feel familiar to Trump, who infamously glowered through Obama’s jokes at his expense during the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner and is not known for being self-deprecating. Last weekend, he tweeted that he did not appreciate Saturday Night Live’s portrayal of him in a send-up of the candidates’ performances in the second presidential debate.

This is the first time that both party’s nominees hail from New York State as a crowd of about 1,500 gathers for the distinctly Gotham event, held each October. Attendees pay between $3,000 and $15,000 to attend the dinner, which raises about $5 million to provide services for impoverished children.

The dinner is named after the former New York governor, who was the first Catholic to receive a major party nomination for president when he unsuccessfully ran in 1928. And fittingly for an event named after a man nicknamed “The Happy Warrior,” the occasion has produced dozens of memorable presidential jokes.

In 2000, then-Texas governor George W. Bush gazed upon the glitzy gathering and declared: “This is an impressive crowd, the haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elite. I call you my base.”

That same year, vice president Al Gore touted his campaign trail ability to weave in stories “of real people in the audience and their everyday challenges.

“Like the woman here tonight whose husband is about to lose his job,” Gore continued. “She’s struggling to get out of public housing and get a job of her own. Hillary Clinton, I want to fight for you.”

And in 2008, John McCain joked about the exalted manner in which the media venerated Obama, noting that “‘Maverick’ I can do, but ‘Messiah’ is above my pay grade.” But he wound down his remarks with a note of grace that, to this point, has been largely absent from the 2016 campaign.

“I can’t wish my opponent luck,” McCain said, turning toward Obama, “but I do wish him well.”