Believe it or not, this is probably the highlight of this sorry debate so far: Trump interrupting Hillary repeatedly to call her a puppet. (Putin’s puppet.) It comes at the end of this clip:

I think it’s starting to sink in for Trump that he’s going to lose.

Sad!

[Cross-posted at RedState.]

[guest post by Dana]

The third and final presidential debate is tonight at 9:00 p.m. Eastern. The topics include Debt & Entitlement, Immigration, Economy, Supreme Court, Foreign Hot Spots, and *Fitness to be President. Notice that sexual assault is not listed.

With Trump’s numbers plummeting, I am expecting a no-holds-barred-take-no-prisoners eruption of gargantuan proportion from the Republican contender. After all, what better way to stimulate interest in a possible post-election venture, Trump TV? Tonight’s reality show is just a dress rehearsal! Obviously he is vulnerable in any number of areas tonight.

For her part, Hillary is going to have to contend with the untimely release of former television news reporter Leslie Milwee’s claim that Bill Clinton sexually assaulted her while governor of Arkansas. Her video testimony is riveting and believable. However, given Hillary’s almost non-reaction to the presence of three of her husband’s victims at the previous debate, I suspect she won’t be too deterred by this latest revelation. Perhaps more damning to her will be the Wikileak revelations of the past two weeks and her obvious lies about her handling of classified email, as well as her comfy and financially beneficial relationship with Goldman-Sachs, in spite of her demonization of Wall Street.

No matter how it goes, one thing remains certain, nobody with a sound mind is fooled by these two awful candidates. Not really. Because as their recent appearances on the streets of New York City made clear, there is absolutely no doubt that these wanna-be emperors are wearing no clothes. And America is the poorer for it. In so many ways.

(*If the issue of character comes up tonight, I anticipate both candidates to be struck by lightening. Which reminds me, the little-known candidate, Evan McMullin, is now leading in the latest Utah presidential poll.)

A new poll is out from PRRI, and it is a shocker, showing Hillary Clinton with a national lead of — wait for it — FIFTEEN points, 51%-36%:

With only three weeks remaining in the 2016 campaign, Hillary Clinton maintains a double-digit lead over Donald Trump among likely voters (51% vs. 36%, respectively).1 Support for Clinton among likely voters has increased significantly over the past few weeks. In late September, Clinton was tied with Trump among likely voters (43% vs. 43%, respectively).

Democratic voters are more likely to support Hillary Clinton than Republican voters are to support Donald Trump. Ninety-five percent of Democratic likely voters say they are supporting Clinton while roughly nine in ten (87%) Republican likely voters report they are supporting their party’s nominee. Clinton has opened up a substantial lead with independent voters, who are supporting her by a 16-point margin (46% vs. 30%, respectively). Notably, roughly one in four independent voters say they will be casting a ballot for a third-party candidate (17%) or report no candidate preference at all (7%).

Clinton continues to benefit from her overwhelming lead among female likely voters, who favor Clinton over Trump by a margin of nearly two to one (57% vs. 31%, respectively). Male likely voters are nearly evenly divided in their candidate preferences, with roughly four in ten supporting Clinton (44%) and Trump (40%). This represents a stark reversal from last week, when Trump held a considerable advantage over Clinton among male voters (48% vs. 37%, respectively).

This is the same poll that had Clinton up by 11 a week ago, and had the candidates tied 43% to 43% less than a month ago. This chart from Kyle Griffin shows the trend:

Now for the caveat: last week’s poll had Trump down by 33 points among women voters — a gap that Allahpundit said was “enormous to the point of implausibility.” That gap has lowered to 26 points — but, as Larry David might say, that’s still pret-ty, pret-ty big. Outlier-ish, one might even say. And the 15-point national lead is obviously larger than most polls have shown in recent days. But the trend is not good for Trump heading into tonight’s debate.

Not good at all.

P.S. The PRRI servers appear to be melting this morning, and the link to the poll has not been working since I first read about it around 9:15 Eastern this morning. Feel free to use this Google cache link, which is how I accessed the poll.

[Cross-posted at RedState.]