Clinton v Trump round three

Donald Trump's refusal to commit to accepting the election result if he loses is making headlines.

He told debate moderator Chris Wallace: "I will tell you at the time."

After the debate, the BBC's Nuala McGovern spoke to one of Trump's advisers, General Joseph Keith Kellogg, who told her it was just an example of his "wonderful sense of humour".

After asking a question at the second presidential debate earlier this month, Ken Bone found himself stealing many of the headlines the candidates might have been hoping for. He became an overnight social media sensation, with some Americans calling for him to be the next president.

The BBC's Nuala McGovern spoke to him after the final presidential debate and asked how his life has changed.

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Many are in agreement that the headline-grabbing moment of the debate was when Donald Trump said he would not commit to accepting the result of the election.

The right-leaning Fox News says it had been Mr Trump's "strongest debate performance" so far and felt he was "evenly matched" with Clinton. "But Trump may have undone whatever progress he made with a single answer," about the result, which will "undoubtedly be the big headline coming out of the debate and will dog Trump between now and Election Day".

Even readers of Breitbart News, a strong supporter of Mr Trump, thought he had failed to turn things around for himself. In a readers' poll, of 172,550 people who voted, 58% said Mrs Clinton won the debate compared with 41% for Mr Trump.

The Washington Post agreed with Fox that Mr Trump started well, but "by the end, it was the story of Trump in Campaign 2016 in microcosm, a series of angry exchanges, interruptions, insults that served to undercut the good he might have accomplished earlier".

The New York Times was full of praise for Mrs Clinton's performance, saying she "outmanoeuvred Mr Trump with a surprising new approach - his. Flipping the script, she turned herself into his relentless tormentor, condescending to him repeatedly and deploying some of his own trademark tactics against him".

One of the most retweeted debate tweets was from Harry Potter author JK Rowling - who made it clear who she was supporting.

Imagining the bathrooms in Trump Tower - journalism professor Andrew Lih's tweet is the latest in a flood of memes that followed Donald Trump's use of the phrases "nasty woman" and "bad hombres" during the debate.

Read more: Trump's 'Bad Hombres' quip inspires mucho mocking memes

And yet more: 'Nasty woman' insult embraced by Clinton's female fans

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After the debate ended, the Republican candidate was joined by his family before exiting the stage.

During the debate Hillary Clinton asked viewers to get online and search for the terms "Donald Trump Iraq".

This was to highlight the Republican candidate's past statements that appear to show him supporting the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, something he now says he was against. 

And, as the New York Times puts it, people actually listened.

Searches for the phrase spiked shortly afterwards, Google Trends data cited by the newspaper shows.

Factcheck.org has examined the issue and says there is no evidence Mr Trump spoke against the war before it started but did offer vague support for it in an interview with radio host Howard Stern.

The personal character of Donald Trump has been a dominant theme of the election battle. 

But the prominent conservative commentator Ann Coulter says people won't be voting for Donald Trump because of his personality and rather "it's all about his issues".  

Hillary Clinton is happy to go down memory lane with Donald Trump.

On her website you can view a timeline that compares what each candidate was doing at a different moment over the past 30 years.

CNN's Andrew Kaczynski has taken a scroll through Trump's Twitter account, and found what he was saying on election night 2012, when Obama defeated Romney.

Republicans are pointing to the fact that Al Gore did not concede immediately in the 2000 election as evidence that Trump was correct to not agree to preemptively accept the results of this election.

Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway argued: "Al Gore did not accept the results of the elections and he said he would. He actually conceded to George W Bush on election night in 2000 and then called and retracted his concession."

Gore withdrew his concession when Florida results were too close to call, triggering an automatic recount.

When the Supreme Court halted the recount, giving George W Bush the state, Gore did concede.

That guy who asked a convoluted question about energy policy in the second debate has just been speaking to the BBC, wearing his trademark red jumper, of course...

Asked by the BBC's Nuala McGovern what he thought of the debate, he said: "Tonight's debate was much more productive than the last one. There was some back and forth, some negativity, but we got a lot more information about the issues."

Like every model voter, he said he'd made three pages of notes that "I need to fact check before I can come to any decision". 

On the task ahead for whoever becomes the next president, he added: "It's going to be the greatest challenge in the last 20 years for any president to reunite a country after this very divisive cycle." 

And on why he's proved to be such a popular figure, he said: "Largely, I'm just a friendly guy. You know, I'm a little goofy looking, I have a too-tight red sweater and a strange moustache that makes people feel like I'm very approachable and friendly and generally I try to be."

Well Ken, we love you. 

Trump's refusal to commit to accept the election results if he loses will launch a thousand headlines and dominate discussion in the days ahead. It was also just the start of a full-spectrum debate tirade by Trump against a media that "poisoned the minds of voters" and Clinton, who he said should have been prohibited from even running for the presidency.

Clinton’s response was that the Republican’s remarks were "horrifying". She then deftly expanded her response to paint Trump as a man who cries "rigged" whenever he faces a situation he doesn’t like - whether it’s the FBI decision not to prosecute her for her email server, his loss in the Iowa caucuses earlier this year, the lawsuit against his eponymous for-profit university, or even his reality TV show’s defeat at the Emmy Awards. ("Should have gotten it," Trump piped in.)

"He's talking down our democracy," she concluded. "And I, for one, am appalled that somebody who is the nominee of one of our two major parties would take that kind of position."

Talking to Republican officeholders in the media spin room after the debate, their discomfort with Trump’s statement was palpable. Some explained it away as a tongue-in-cheek joke. Others said it was simply Trump not wanting to consider defeat before election day.

The reality, however, is Republican politicians owe their positions - past, current and future - to the people’s vote, and they rely on the legitimacy granted by opponents who concede when defeated.

Trump has called American democracy into question - and when he shakes that particular tree, it’s impossible to determine who might get crushed by falling branches. 

Read Anthony's full verdict on the third debate.

Antonio French, a mayoral candidate in St Louis, Missouri, sent this tweet below, which has spawned the viral hashtag #TrumpBookReport. 

You'll never think of those literary classics in quite the same way again... 

Speculation has been rife recently that the Republican candidate is preparing to launch his own media organisation if he loses the election. Indeed some are saying that Trump TV, as it’s already been dubbed, may have had its soft launch tonight with a Facebook Live half an hour before the debate began. Trump teasingly billed the broadcast on the social network: "If you’re tired of biased, mainstream media reporting (otherwise known as Crooked Hillary’s super PAC), tune into my Facebook Live broadcast." Pundits included retired Lt Gen Michael Flynn and former Arizona Gov Jan Brewer, with an Ivanka Trump message and anti-Clinton ads running as "commercials".  

Not sure if Fox News is quaking in its boots just yet, though.

Here's that Facebook Live again...

Here's the amazingly gracious hand-over letter that former President George HW Bush left in 1993 for Bill Clinton, who had just ousted him from the White House in a humiliating defeat after only one term in office. 

Our BBC World Service colleagues were getting reaction on the debate from users of Yik Yak, a messaging app that is popular with students in university campuses across the US.

Here's a selection of their feedback: 

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Lydie Denier, the former partner of Ambassador Christopher Stevens who was killed in Benghazi, Libya, spoke to the BBC's Rajini Vaidyanathan about why she attended tonight.

"Hillary Clinton doesn't take any responsibility," Denier said about the former secretary of state, who was Stevens' boss when he was killed in a raid on the US diplomatic mission.

She says she missed the first 40 minutes of the debate, along with "Benghazi mom" Patricia Smith, because they had trouble getting through security. 

Watch Rajini's full interview below, near minute 25.