US President Barack Obama, who watched the fiery first presidential debate at White House, believes Hillary Clinton "performed quite strongly" and made a "very powerful case" on economy against rival Donald Trump.
"As predicted, the president did have the debate on television last night in the Indian Treaty Room of the residence while he was reviewing his nightly to-do list... His main takeaway is that the candidate that he strongly supports is the candidate that performed quite strongly in the debate last night," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said.
"(Clinton) made a very powerful case, particularly at the beginning, for building on the economic progress that this country has made in digging out of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression," he told reporters.
"She laid out a strategy that's focused on cutting taxes for middle-class families, asking those at the top of the income scale to pay a little bit more, closing tax loopholes that only benefit the wealthy and the well-connected, focusing on investments in early childhood education and college education, growing our economy from the middle out," he said.
That is precisely the economic strategy Obama has pursued and that is the "strategy that has yielded the longest streak of consecutive monthly job growth numbers in US history."
Earnest cautioned people against complacency. "The president believes that people all across the country not be complacent when the stakes are so high." he said.
Democrat Clinton and Republican Trump battled it out in front of millions of undecided American voters over racism, terror and temperament in their first presidential debate. After the 90-minute-long clash, the US media declared Clinton winner of the contest.
The debate, first of the three planned ahead of the November 8 elections, was watched by an expected television audience of up to 100 million.
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