At one point in the second presidential debate Sunday night, Donald Trump was given the chance to discuss what should've been a good topic for him: Hillary Clinton's paid speeches.
A few transcripts from the speeches Clinton gave behind closed doors — which the campaign has refused to release in the past — were leaked on Friday afternoon by WikiLeaks.
Clinton had said that a quote in her speech about having private opinions and public opinions was a reference to Abraham Lincoln, and then went on to use the 2012 film Lincoln as an analogy for her "principled and ... strategic" methods for getting legislation passed.
She had also noted in the debate that on Friday, the Department of Homeland Security and Director of National Intelligence publicly accused Russia of being the source of hacks on the Democratic National Convention and of attempting to influence the US election. And that's where Trump went off:
Here's his full answer:
Well, I think I should respond, because — so ridiculous. Look, now she's blaming — she got caught in a total lie. Her papers went out to all her friends at the banks, Goldman Sachs and everybody else, and she said things — WikiLeaks that just came out. And she lied. Now she's blaming the lie on the late, great Abraham Lincoln. That's one that I haven't...
OK, Honest Abe, Honest Abe never lied. That's the good thing. That's the big difference between Abraham Lincoln and you. That's a big, big difference. We're talking about some difference.
But as far as other elements of what she was saying, I don't know Putin. I think it would be great if we got along with Russia because we could fight ISIS together, as an example. But I don't know Putin.
But I notice, anytime anything wrong happens, they like to say the Russians are — she doesn't know if it's the Russians doing the hacking. Maybe there is no hacking. But they always blame Russia.
And the reason they blame Russia because they think they're trying to tarnish me with Russia. I know nothing about Russia. I know — I know about Russia, but I know nothing about the inner workings of Russia. I don't deal there. I have no businesses there. I have no loans from Russia.
I have a very, very great balance sheet, so great that when I did the Old Post Office on Pennsylvania Avenue, the United States government, because of my balance sheet, which they actually know very well, chose me to do the Old Post Office, between the White House and Congress, chose me to do the Old Post Office. One of the primary area things, in fact, perhaps the primary thing was balance sheet. But I have no loans with Russia. You could go to the United States government, and they would probably tell you that, because they know my sheet very well in order to get that development I had to have.
Now, the taxes are a very simple thing. As soon as I have — first of all, I pay hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes. Many of her friends took bigger deductions. Warren Buffett took a massive deduction. Soros, who's a friend of hers, took a massive deduction. Many of the people that are giving her all this money that she can do many more commercials than me gave her — took massive deductions.
I pay hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes. But — but as soon as my routine audit is finished, I'll release my returns. I'll be very proud to. They're actually quite great.