華盛頓郵報社評少見的認為川普贏得了第三次總統大選辯論。評論員認為：

川普這次沒有脾氣爆發，也沒有胡扯；沒有怎麼打斷希拉里，甚至也沒有“嗅來嗅去”。他的反擊和one-liner是最好的。希拉里則整夜使用空洞重複的語言。凸顯她缺少誠實和加深她典型職業政客的不誠實形象。

川普“首次顯示出他是個值得重視的對手”。

這次大選關乎變革。而希拉里不是個變革候選人。“人們不想投她的票，今晚她也沒有給人們多少理由投她的票”。

川普在辯論中一改近來媒體呈現的各種負面形象，基本上控制了自己的舌頭和脾氣。他表現得很有信心且專注討論國家經濟。他也顯示出更多對世界的了解 （“he even showed a much better understanding of geopolitics than I would have thought. He sounded like a Republican on most issues. For Trump, it’s too bad there aren’t more debates.”）

可惜，對川普來說，沒有第4次辯論了。

另一方面，希拉里顯得過度準備，過度排練了。在川普最有效的講論的時候，她強迫自己顯出笑臉。這也許是她唯一能做的。只是和場合非常不配...

網友也有相同觀點。一位網友說：“

Trump的智商和反應都上好。。但是可悲的是，大多數民眾並不能跟上他的反應。

希拉里特別擅長的一招，是車軲轆話來回說。。對於多數民眾，更奏效。

比如希拉里說普京用入侵電腦來主持trump，這是荒謬絕倫的。trump邏輯上跳了兩步，說希拉里是因為內心懼怕痛恨普京才那麼說。但是一般人搞不明白裡面的關係反而覺得不明就裡。

Trump最簡潔的反駁，就是要希拉里賭咒發誓，她有證據，trump與普京有幕後關係。希拉里絕對不敢多胡說，trump然後可以從“證據”二字展開：希拉里的腐敗和妄為，確實在大量泄露出來的郵件中清楚無誤地公之於世了。”

華油的文章最後說：

The totality of the campaign isn’t about this debate. There’s a lot of water under the bridge. Trump’s performance tonight can’t fully rehabilitate him, but it’s clear that the media — including me — expected a much worse performance. In fact, the post-debate analysts seem as rattled as Clinton. The press is going to panic over the fact that Trump helped himself, as shown by the immediate obsessing over Trump’s “non-commitment” to accepting the election results in November. But for voters watching the debate, that wasn’t really much of a focal point. The media wants to bore into it, but in doing so, reporters and commentators are ignoring many of the issues that were actually discussed in a rational fashion thanks to the steady hand of moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News.

In politics, good gets better and bad gets worse. Given Trump’s performance, I expect to see some stories about panic in the Clinton universe by the time the Sunday shows roll around. Before tonight’s debate, the conventional wisdom was that Trump was collapsing — and when conventional wisdom is set this far ahead of election day, the conventional wisdom is often wrong. So, was tonight a game changer? Probably not. But it might shift momentum and keep the race interesting.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/10/19/trump-won-tonights-debate/?utm_term=.6494f8006b45