Politics

Donald Trump thanks Chris Wallace for bringing up Wikileaks at the debate

Donald Trump listens to Hillary Clinton speak during the third U.S. presidential debate. Win McNamee / Getty Images

October 19, 2016

1 minute to read

Donald Trump interrupted the moderator of the third presidential debate to thank him for an uncomfortable question directed at his opponent.

Fox News anchor Chris Wallace delved into the Wikileaks controversy that has dogged Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, forcing her to address the content of her paid Wall Street speeches, among other sticky issues that Republicans have seized upon in recent weeks.

“Secretary Clinton, I want to clear up your position on this issue because in the speech you gave to a Brazilian bank for which you were paid $225,000 we have learned from the Wikileaks that you said this, and I want to quote, ‘My dream is a hemispheric common market with open trade and open borders—’” Wallace asked.

“Thank you,” Trump interjected.

“So that’s the question,” Wallace said as the crowd began laughing. “That’s the question — please, quiet, everybody. Is that your dream, open borders?”

“If you went on to read the rest of the sentence, I was talking about energy,” Clinton clarified, before criticizing the leaks, which national security officials say were orchestrated by Russian hackers. “We’ve never had anything like this happen in any of elections before.”

But Trump didn’t let the topic drop so easily.

“That was a great pivot off the fact that she wants open borders, okay?” Trump responded. “How did we get onto Putin?”

Wallace tried to subdue the laughing crowd and regain control of the candidates.

“Hold on folks, because this is going to end up getting out of control,” he said. “Let’s try to keep it quiet for the candidates and for the American people.”