US race hits new low

Slime and sleaze has bubbled to the top in the most revolting US Presidential election in living memory courtesy Republican Party nominee Donald Trump.

The billionaire entertainment mogul's forays into smut and smudge about a former Latina beauty contestant has resulted in a blowback about his own peccadillos, even as he has threatened to raise marital issues involving his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton and her spouse in the second presidential debate.

"She's nasty," Trump told The New York Times on Hillary Clinton in an interview published Friday night, "but I can be nastier than she ever can be."

"Hillary Clinton was married to the single greatest abuser of women in the history of politics," Trump told The Times. "Hillary was an enabler, and she attacked the women who Bill Clinton mistreated afterward. I think it's a serious problem for them, and it's something that I'm considering talking about more in the near future."

He also told the Times that his own marriage history does not prevent him from being able to make attacks against the Clintons' relationship. Trump has been married three times, and his first marriage fell apart after he carried on an affair with Marla Maples.

And when asked specifically about his affair with Maples, he responded, "I don't talk about it. I wasn't president of the United States."

That came after, much of America is still in shock after Trump came unhinged in a series of 3am tweets casting aspersions on a former Miss Universe who he had termed as Miss Piggy (because she was overweight), including urging them to "check out sex tape and her past."

The exhortation only resulted in his critics and rivals checking out Trump's own past, to discover that had told a radio show of watching the infamous pornographic video of billionaire heiress Paris Hilton, and finding her attractive when she was only 12. Worse followed: The tabloid media, and even some of his supporters, went catatonic after it emerged that Trump himself appeared in a soft-porn Playboy video in 2000.

The Democrat said that Trump's overnight attacks on the former beauty queen as new evidence that he is lacks the steadiness to be president. The Machado issue helps Clinton with both women and Hispanics, key voters in a battleground state like Florida.

The latest polls show Clinton starting to regain the lead after she was in a deadheat with Trump on the eve of the first debate.  Clinton pulled ahead of Trump by three percentage points in a Fox News national poll out Friday, besting the billionaire 43 to 40 percent.

The nationwide results come as Clinton's numbers improve in a number of critical swing states including Florida and Michigan.