Donald Trump’s Sniffling Cost Him Debate: U-M Analyst

It wasn’t Donald Trump’s fat shaming. It wasn’t Hillary Clinton’s questions about what is in her opponent’s tax returns that makes him loathe to release them, nor her assertion that he stiffed contractors who worked on his businesses. It wasn’t his fumble on the birther question, or the way she pivoted his claim that she lacks the stamina to handle the rigors of the presidency.

It was the sniffles — the subject of much internet speculation and Trump’s quick denial that about 80 million television viewers heard what they thought they heard — that cost the Republican nominee the first head-to-head presidential debate between the two major party nominees, according to a University of Michigan debate analyst.

Trump immediately went on the defensive, saying the microphone at Hofstra University was faulty and suggesting the device might have been intentionally sabotaged.

Whether the 70-year-old New York businessman had a stuffed-up nose or the microphone was bad, but good enough to pick up the sounds of his breathing, the alleged sniffling was a distraction that made him appear “unprepared” on the national debate stage, Aaron Kall, director of debate at UM-Ann Arbor, told The Detroit News.

“It was very distracting,” Kall told the newspaper. “It’s not the right time to not be at 100 percent when the stakes are so high, and it hurt him.”

Going into the debate, Trump and Clinton were virtually tied in the race for the White House.

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Kall said former Secretary of State Clinton, 68, appeared to be the more prepared of the two, and that Clinton's debate performance helped allay doubts about her stamina.

“She looked like she could go another two debates at the end, and he looked like if this debate went another half hour that he might not make it,” Kall said. “It’s just so ironic that (during) his attack on the stamina that he looked totally unprepared to be there to speak for that much time, to always be on. And she seemed strong as the debate went on.”

The sniffling may be what Americans remember most about the debate, Kall suggested. Fairly or unfairly, the internet crowd was immediately fascinated with what was going on with Trump’s nose.

Physician, former Vermont governor and former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, whose presidential aspirations spiraled downward with a single scream, suggested this:

Late-night television host Stephen Colbert skewered Trump after playing a montage of the candidate's sniffles:

“He sounded like the coked-up best man in the bathroom at a wedding. ‘You guys, I got it, I know how we can fix the entire economy. Let’s buy a boat.’”

Photo by Gage Skidmore via Flickr Commons