Hillary Clinton speaks in Kansas City at religious convention

On Wednesday night, Seth Meyers took A Closer Look at both candidates’ scandals, and how they compare to each other.

Clinton, who has cast Trump as dangerously ill-prepared to be commander in chief, tried to center the discussion on her foreign policy proposals. His briefers, he said, were “not happy about” Obama’s failure to “follow what our experts” advised. The Clinton Foundation provides life-saving care to AIDS patients, while the Trump Foundation once gave $250 to the Special Olympics, and $100 to the March of Dimes. ‘I think this will be the last election that the Republicans have a chance of winning because you’re going to have people flowing across the border, you’re going to have illegal immigrants coming in and they’re going to be legalized and they’re going to be able to vote and once that all happens you can forget it’. The New York Times rounded up thoughts from figures like Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler, political commentator Norman Ornstein and Clinton press secretary Nick Merrill on Twitter, noting it captures a common complaint about media coverage this election cycle: “that news organizations and interviewers treat Mrs. Clinton as a serious candidate worthy of tough questions, while Mr. Trump is sometimes handled more benignly”. I am doing better than any Democrat, he is doing worse than recent Republicans. Those attending the event include Michael Chertoff, who served as Homeland Security secretary under President George W. Bush. “If I win, I don’t want to broadcast to the enemy exactly what my plan is”, he said. The one-hour forum was co-hosted by NBC News and the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, and was moderated by NBC’s Matt Lauer.

But they also believe her missteps have been given far more weight than those of Trump.

When a tweet in which Trump seemed dismissive of sexual assault in the military came up, the mogul got to have it every which way, saying first that the tweet was “correct”, and then that “many” agree with him, and finally, in so many words, that he no longer supports it. That was an echo of his earlier advice to women that if they didn’t like being sexually harassed at work they should change jobs. It’s part of a pattern of stories that make me queasy about Hillary Clinton’s management style.

“I don’t know what Trump knew”, King told Burnett with regard to where his Politicking show is distributed. The Pentagon issued a stern warning to Damascus and Moscow to keep their aircraft well clear of where American troops on the ground in Syria are working to support the indigenous forces in the fight against ISIS.

In the end, she may land in the White House because voters indeed decided she was the least detestable of two vile candidates. She also flushed out several national security priorities if she is elected, including trying to take out the leader of the Islamic State and vowing to defeat the extremist group without putting US troops on the ground in Iraq or Syria.

On Friday, the chairman of NBC News, Andrew Lack, sent an upbeat memo to his staff that declared the forum a success, noting that the event had generated days of headlines about Trump’s praise of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and criticism of the USA military leadership.

Donald Trump just cited Vladimir Putin’s approval rating. But the idea that this is going to be a debate between the moderator and the candidates is the wrong idea. “She comes off well in one-on-ones”, he said. Corrections have to be made when the cameras are rolling, otherwise the door is open to self-serving interpretations.

At the televised forum on Wednesday night, Trump said he was “shocked” by information he got during the briefing.

Meanwhile, what was a near double digit lead for Clinton coming out of the Democratic Convention in late July has steadily closed, with Clinton and Trump this week exchanging 1 or 2 percentage point leads, both nationwide and in key battleground states.

Hillary Clinton held her first formal press conference in months Thursday morning, taking questions on the tarmac of the White Plains, New York, airport before making her way to a rally in North Carolina.

Margaret Carlson is a Bloomberg View columnist.