2016 Debate: Race, “law and order” and gun violence

Lester Holt, moderator of the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, asked the candidates to shift to talking about race, saying one of them would be grappling with difficult problems when they take office.

Clinton spoke first, saying, “Race remains a significant challenge for our country,” and race “determines too much,” including how people are treated in the criminal justice system.

Clinton added, “We have to tackle the plague of gun violence.”

Trump said Clinton refused to use the words “law and order.”

He added, “African-Americans and Hispanics are living in hell,” citing “thousands of shootings.

“We have to stop the violence, we have to bring back law and order,” Trump said, repeating his suggestion that Chicago police implement “stop and frisk” policing.

Holt noted that “stop and frisk” was ruled unconstitutional in New York.

Background on the candidates’ statements on race:

Both presidential candidates are courting minority voters.

Trump, in particular, has struggled to balance a message that appeals to his white, working-class base with one that improves his standing with minorities. He was slow to disavow former KKK leader David Duke earlier in the year and has repeatedly promoted tweets by white supremacists during his White House bid. The Republican nominee also recently admitted for the first time publicly that President Barack Obama was born in the United States.

Clinton has made curbing gun violence and police brutality central to her candidacy. In remarking on recent shootings of black men by police officers in North Carolina and Tulsa, Oklahoma, Clinton said the two names were added to “a long list of African-Americans killed by police officers. It’s unbearable and it needs to become intolerable.”

Trump accused Clinton of supporting – “with a nod” – “the narrative of cops as a racist force in our society.”

Trump’s call for a nation united in “the spirit of togetherness” was undercut by his suggestion that drugs are a “very, very big factor” in violent protests in North Carolina, and his call for Chicago to adopt “stop and frisk” policing tactics that have been condemned as racial profiling.

Clinton has faced criticism of her own for saying half of Trump’s supporters belong in a “basket of deplorables” because they are racist, sexist, homophobic or xenophobic.

The Associated Press and The Washington Post contributed to this report.