The second presidential debate veered into ugly territory Sunday night in St. Louis, as the two nominees swapped insults and interruptions.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at one point said that his rival Hillary Clinton had “hate in her heart,” and showed it by saying that half of his supporters were in the “basket of deplorables.”

Clinton in turn accused Trump of living in an “alternate reality,” and of peddling what she called the “racist lie” that President Obama was not born in the United States.

That exchange came as an especially bitter, boundary-breaking debate neared its conclusion.

The words “sex tape” even made their debut in the solemn tradition of American presidential debates on Sunday night, as Trump denied doing something he had actually done: Asking his Twitter followers to “check out sex tape” of a former Miss Universe with whom he was feuding.

“It wasn’t, ‘Check out a sex tape,’” Trump said, saying instead that he wanted followers to examine the life of Alicia Machado, the former Miss Universe. His rival Hillary Clinton had brought her up in the previous debate, talking about a 1990s episode when Trump made a public spectacle of Machado’s weight gain.

Trump’s message, sent out on Twitter on Sept. 30, was this: “Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting (check out sex tape and past) Alicia M become a U.S. citizen so she could use her in the debate?”

The evening’s most genteel moments came in the very last minutes, when a questioner asked the two to say something nice about one another. Clinton said she respected Trump’s children, but then quickly pivoted to talk about herself, using the night’s last seconds of airtime to run through her campaign résumé.

Trump — who had been on the attack all night — reacted to the same question with a direct, and seemingly sincere, moment of praise for Clinton herself.

“She doesn’t quit. She doesn’t give up. I respect that. I tell it like it is. She’s a fighter,” Trump said. “I consider that to be a very good trait.”

One of the night’s most striking moments came when Trump contradicted his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, on a question of American policy in Syria.

(Washington Post)