Barry Soper: US presidential debate with Trump, Clinton left no clear winner

The biggest surprise from the first US presidential debate in the Big Apple is that those who watched it are divided on who actually won the day.

It's surprising because the expectation going into it was that Donald Trump would bomb out. Unlike Hillary Clinton, he'd done little, or no preparatory work, something he scowled at Clinton for.

And his lack of preparation showed.

He came across as a nasty little boy who frequently puckered his lips when he was accused of telling porkies. But she came across as the condescending mother, tempting him with the early childhood birthday invitations but refusing to give him one.

She called for the fact checker on several occasions which, in a debate with scattergun Trump, would seem to be a wasted effort. When he was challenged, and when he clearly knew she was on the button, he accused her of having the mainstream media on her campaign team.

Yeah well it was his beloved social media that tripped him up, like her claim that he blamed climate change on the Chinese who were trying to collapse American companies. In fact he'd tweeted something to that effect, just like he'd given interviews supporting the 2003 invasion of Iraq but denied he'd supported it during the debate.

Well, in fairness, he did start questioning the value of the war when it started going bad for the Americans.

Donald Trump has a compassionate side though, shown after the nasty former First Lady reminded him he'd referred to women as pigs, slobs and dogs and refreshed his memory of his support for beauty pageants and how he liked hanging around them, referring to one contestant as Miss Piggy and then Miss Housekeeping because she was a Latino. Clinton said the woman has a name and has become an American citizen and will be voting in November's election.

His response: He was going to say something extremely rough about Hillary and her family, but he said to himself he wouldn't do it because it's inappropriate and not nice.

With two more debates to go though, Bill's not off the hook yet!

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Early polls put Hillary Clinton as the easy winner. But in reality it was really a debate between Trump as brittle chalk and Clinton as cheesy, mentioning up front that it was her granddaughter's second birthday.

And again there was no invitation for Donald.