At the first debate, on Sept. 26, Trump was repeatedly put on the defensive by Clinton.

US presidential nominees Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump went head to head in the second debate where the Syrian refugee crisis and Muslim-American issues were the focus of the town hall discussions that has been dubbed “the worst televised debate Americans have seen in recent history.”

The debate on Sunday event at a campus in St Louis, Missouri, followed a town-hall format where the audience – all undecided voters chosen by the Gallup Organization – will ask half of the questions on “topics of public interest”.

Trump, facing a party rebellion over his obscene comments about groping women without consent, came out strong against Clinton by promising to investigate and prosecute Clinton if election president.

Audience members could not hold back reactions of applause and shock as the debate lost moments of traditional decorum that is usually expected of US presidential candidates.

One of the early questions of the night was asked by a Muslim-American undecided voter who pressed Trump on his rhetoric regarding Islamophobia and his plans to ban Muslims from entering the US.

“Islamophobia is a shame but there is a problem, and we have to sure that Muslims report terror suspects when they see something,” Trump said.

He cited the Orlando, San Bernadino shootings and the World Trade Center attack as examples of “radical Islamic terror” and that both Clinton and US President Barack Obama “won’t say or call it the same”.

Clinton responded by saying it was “very short sighted and dangerous to engage in rhetoric about Muslims like Trump is doing”.

Foreign policy on Syria

Clinton backed the establishment of safe zones in Syria, along with efforts to investigate Russia for war crimes committed in support of President Bashar al-Assad.

She said she supported efforts to probe “war crimes committed by the Syrians and the Russians and try to hold them accountable.”

“I hope by the time that I’m president that ISIS will be pushed out of Iraq. But I believe that US ground forces in Syria would be a serious mistake,” she added.

“We were expecting Trump to really disappoint in his performance tonight based on their first debate. But he was hard and aggressive on Clinton for the get-go. He went after Clinton’s emails and promised to prosecute her and that she’d be heading to jail should he be elected president,” Al Arabiya’s Washington DC Bureau Chief Nadia Billbassy said.

Hisham Melhem, a columnist for Al Arabiya News Channel in Washington, DC and correspondent for the Lebanese daily Annahar, said the second debate was “the worst televised US presidential debate the country has seen in recent history,”

“Total decorum was abandoned. Trump called Clinton a devil and that she deserved to go to jail. These are rhetoric the Americans have never seen from a presidential candidate,” Melhem told Al Arabiya News Channel.

Trump, facing a party rebellion over his obscene comments about groping women without consent, came out strong against Clinton.

Clinton said during the debate that sending US ground troops to Syria would be a severe mistake.

[vuukle]