Hillary Clinton just dropped the other p-word on Donald Trump

The gloves are entirely off.
 By 
Jason Abbruzzese
 on 
Original image replaced with Mashable logo

The gloves are entirely off.

Hillary Clinton leveled a serious accusation at Donald Trump during Wednesday's night's debate.

In the midst of discussing the Wikileaks email situation, Clinton accused Trump of using intelligence acquired by Russia-backed hackers and leaked with the purpose of affecting the U.S. election.

"Look, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, from everything I see has no respect for this person," Trump said when discussing the email leak.

"Well, that’s because he'd rather have a puppet for president than the United States and it's pretty clear," Clinton fired back.

"No puppet. You’re the puppet," Trump immediately said.

Trump and Clinton then had a heated exchange over whether Russia had been behind the hacks that ended up with a massive trove of emails from the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Clinton claimed that 17 U.S. security agencies had agreed that Russia was behind the hacks.

It's unclear which agencies Clinton is referencing, but the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security did recently accuse Russia of being behind the hacks.

Trump disagreed.

"She has no idea whether it's Russia, China or anything else. She has no idea," Trump said.

The exchange immediately set off Twitter. Facebook also announced that it was the top moment of the first half of the debate.


And now, because we probably all need it, another puppet that called someone else a puppet.

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Jason Abbruzzese

Jason Abbruzzese is a Business Reporter at Mashable. He covers the media and telecom industries with a particular focus on how the Internet is changing these markets and impacting consumers. Prior to working at Mashable, Jason served as Markets Reporter and Web Producer at the Financial Times. Jason holds a B.S. in Journalism from Boston University and an M.A. in International Affairs from Australian National University.

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