The Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump threatened to put his rival Hillary Clinton in jail for executive misconduct if he won. The comment came during the second US presidential debate, which was bitter, low, and dark, going where no presidential candidates have ever gone before.

Trump accused Clinton's husband of raping a woman. Hillary charged him with serial abuse of women as revealed in his interviews, actions that even the moderator said was tantamount to sexual assault, but which Trump dismissed as ''locker room talk.''

''Mine are words, and his (Bill Clinton's) was action. His was what he's done to women. There's never been anybody in the history politics in this nation that's been so abusive to women,'' Trump shot back furiously.

"When Hillary brings up a point like that and she talks about words that I said 11 years ago, I think it's disgraceful, and I think she should be ashamed of herself," he said. He later compared her to the devil and said she has "hate in her heart" because she had called his followers "deplorable".

On the occasions when they discussed policy, they stuck to familiar positions. Questioned about his remarks about Muslims, Trump spoke of threats to America and advised them to report any suspicious activity to show they are loyal to the US. A tweet followed shortly after: I am a Muslim, and I would like to report a crazy man threatening a woman on state in Missouri debate.''

"In Seond Debate, Donald Trump Showcases His Dark Soul,'' was the headline in Mother Jones, with a strap that read, ''He really is that asshole who boasted of grabbing women 'by the pussy'." On Twitter, a Clinton aide asked Trump to ''Go f—k yourself,'' before the campaign disowned the remark and he apologized for the outburst.

Nandini