democrat hillary clinton and republican donald trump engaged in a fiery presidential debate sunday that featured unprecedented personal attacks, and the candidates also made questionable claims on taxes, foreign policy and other topics raised by participants and moderators in the town-hall debate. mr. trump, questioned about his treatment of women, said mrs. clinton acted cruelly toward women who accused her husband of sexual misconduct. mrs. clinton <u+201c>attacked them viciously,<u+201d> mr. trump said. there is little record of mrs. clinton publicly attacking women who made allegations against bill clinton, her husband and a former president. the trump campaign issued a press release during the debate with a list of incidents it said reflected <u+201c>hillary clinton<u+2019>s horrible treatment of women.<u+201d> those excerpts, however, included no quotations attributed to mrs. clinton but instead focused on allegations against mr. clinton or his campaign<u+2019>s efforts to respond to those charges. mrs. clinton said mr. trump <u+201c>maybe hasn<u+2019>t paid income taxes in 20 years.<u+201d> it is unclear whether this is true. partial tax returns published by the new york times showed mr. trump took a $916 million loss on his 1995 income taxes that could offset his income from 1996 forward. mr. trump hasn<u+2019>t released any of his income-tax records, so the claim isn<u+2019>t possible to check. mr. trump said, <u+201c>of course i do<u+201d> regarding the use of legal provisions that allowed him to lower his taxes. he also has said he has paid federal and other taxes. mr. trump accused mrs. clinton of deleting emails after receiving a subpoena from the fbi. this isn<u+2019>t quite true. a technician deleted an archive after receiving a subpoena, but the fbi said there was no evidence that mrs. clinton or her staff knew about that situation. however, mrs. clinton<u+2019>s attorneys did delete about 30,000 messages that they deemed purely personal before turning over roughly 55,000 pages of email to the state department in 2014. some of the deleted emails were recovered during the fbi<u+2019>s investigation and found to contain work-related material. when asked why she didn<u+2019>t repeal the tax provision he has used to lower his tax bill, mrs. clinton said she was unable to tax carried interest as ordinary income because there was a republican president while she served in the senate. democrats have wanted to tax carried interest as ordinary income, not as capital gains, which gets lower tax rates. mrs. clinton is mostly right about republican opposition, and president george w. bush did threaten to veto the first version of carried-interest legislation that came through congress nearly a decade ago. under democratic control, the house of representatives passed various versions of the carried-interest legislation four times, as early as november 2007 when mrs. clinton was still in the senate. the provision never made it to a president<u+2019>s desk. mr. trump said his proposed ban on muslims entering the u.s. <u+201c>is something that in some form has morphed into an extreme vetting from certain areas of the world.<u+201d> mr. trump first proposed banning all muslims from entering the country last december after the mass shooting at san bernardino, calif. at the time he called for <u+201c>a total and complete shut down<u+201d> of muslim immigration. that proposal remains on his campaign website to this day. in his answer, mr. trump also asserted that <u+201c>many people saw the bombs<u+201d> in the apartment of the husband-and-wife team who carried the san bernardino mass shooting. so far, there is no evidence that <u+201c>many people<u+201d> saw any bombs in the lead up to the shooting, which killed 14 people. mrs. clinton challenged mr. trump<u+2019>s assertion that he opposed the iraq war, saying his claim that he opposed the war has been <u+201c>debunked.<u+201d> in a prewar interview on the howard stern show in 2002, mr. trump said he backed invading iraq. mr. trump has said in recent weeks that he opposed the war in private conversations with fox news host sean hannity, though no records or recordings of those discussions have emerged. on sunday, mr. trump responded that he was against the iraq war. <u+201c>i was against the war in iraq, it has not been debunked,<u+201d> he said. mr. trump said that by the end of the election race, he will have given $100 million of his own funds to the campaign. through august, the latest financial disclosures available, mr. trump has given $54 million to his campaign. that would mean that in the nine weeks from september through nov. 8, he would need to donate $46 million more to his campaign to fulfill that promise. <u+2014>richard rubin contributed to this article. write to reid j. epstein at reid.epstein@wsj.com
evaluating donald trump<u+2019>s, hillary clinton<u+2019>s assertions during second presidential debate    - wsj
reid j. epstein