This was a most remarkable debate, it was vicious, it was nasty. It’s likely to go down in the history books for all the wrong reasons.
Americans regularly refer to the need to preserve the dignity of the office. There was little evidence of that tonight as much of the debate was spent discussing sexual assault, bragging about groping women, marital infidelities, name-calling and a threat to jail an opponent.
These are clearly two people who have very little time for each other.
Given the release of the tape detailing Donald Trump's bragging in 2005 about groping women, the stakes were very high. Donald Trump's candidacy could have ended last night - either by his own hand or Hillary Clinton could have chosen to turn the screw on him … neither of those scenarios happened.
Mr Trump improved as time went on, but he had a very weak start to the debate, giving a poor response to questions about "that tape"; questions that he should have had better answers prepared for.
If voters tuned out after the first half an hour or so, they won't have thought much about his performance.
Mrs Clinton was polished and prepared, but faltered a little under some sustained attacks from Mr Trump on her deleted emails and handling of Benghazi.
Many of the attacks were so low, and at times based on falsehoods, that she struggled to keep above the fray, whereas Mr Trump appeared fiesty and strong.
She quoted her "friend" Michelle Obama's rally catch call "When they go low, we go high", to which Mr Trump retorted that the First Lady was not really a friend of Mrs Clinton's considering what she had said about her during the 2008 campaign.
There was no clear winner, effectively it was a draw. Donald Trump was better than he had been in the first debate, Hillary Clinton was not as good.
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Donald Trump at one point referred to Mrs Clinton as the "devil" and later said she had "hate in her heart".
But of course the main point of interest was the discussion on the 2005 Access Hollywood tape … here’s how Donald Trump explained it: "This was locker room talk. I'm not proud of it. I apologise to my family. I apologise to the American people. Certainly I'm not proud of it. But this is locker room talk."
He then deflected and turned to say he would "knock the hell out of ISIS", showing a level of discipline not to get dragged down into an issue, a discipline that was not evident in the first debate.
Mrs Clinton responded that she had been saying since June that he was "not fit to be President" and now Republicans and Independents were saying the same thing.
She said that he said "the video doesn't represent who he is. But I think it's clear to anyone who heard it that it represents exactly who he is".
She could have chosen to hammer home the disgust that has been expressed across the US to these remarks, and made more of it, but she chose not to.
Perhaps because it is very much in her interest to ensure that Donald Trump remains at the top of the Republican ticket.
With the release of this tape she is on a stronger footing than she has been throughout the campaign. She does not want to face a new opponent at this stage. One who could actually beat her.
Donald Trump reverted back to his reality TV showmanship last night too. An hour before the debate began he called a press conference in a nearby hotel and presented four women to the media - three who had made sexual assault allegations against Bill Clinton in the 1990s, and a fourth who had been raped as a child and whose attacker Hillary Clinton had defended when she was practising law in the 1970s.
Donald Trump then invited the women to attend the debate and they were given prominent seats.
He then mentioned them during the debate, raising the issues around Bill Clinton that he had pledged not to in the first debate.
Of the former president he said: "There’s never been anybody in the history of politics in this nation that's been so abusive to women", adding that Hillary Clinton had "attacked those same women and attacked them viciously".
But while both of those subject matters had been well flagged in advance, what happened next was quite unexpected. In a discussion about Mrs Clinton's deleted emails and the investigation into her handling of confidential material, which the FBI found had been reckless but did not merit criminal charges, Donald Trump pledged to jail Mrs Clinton.
First saying he would appoint a special prosecutor to look into her "situation" and later when she retorted that it was "awfully good" that Donald Trump was not in charge of law in the US, he snapped "because you’d be in jail".
Mr Trump had clearly practiced more for this debate than he had the first time, and it showed. He did not rise to provocation as he had then, and maintained a calm voice through most of the later stages of the debate.
He returned to Mrs Clinton's emails time and again, landing a few blows there, equally on the issue of her handling of Benghazi, and the recent Wikileaks revelations that she had told Wall Street bankers about having private and public opinions on certain matters.
This debate was a town hall style, where both candidates had high stools in the middle of an almost round stage, with undecided voters seated around them asking questions.
Hillary Clinton connected better with those individuals walking over to them to answer them directly.
Donald Trump had some peculiar body language though at times. When she was speaking he would pace around the stage, at times coming very close to her, standing maybe just two feet behind her which, given his size on certain camera angles, made it look like he was lurking over her shoulder. For a man struggling to win back, or just win, female voters, it may have come across to some as a domineering effort.
Hillary Clinton went after Donald Trump again on the issue of his tax returns, but given the bigger focus of the night, it was almost lost that he admitted he had used legal tax loopholes to write-off almost $1bn in debt and avoid paying income tax.
Donald Trump had a lot to prove in this debate, and there was no one more who needed convincing than his running mate Mike Pence who had said he was deeply offended by Trump’s comments in the 2005 tape.
But Donald Trump left his running mate swinging at one stage when one of the moderators put it to him that Governor Pence had suggested a policy for Syria that was different to his.
Donald Trump said he hadn’t spoken to his running mate about what to do in Syria, and that he disagreed with him. Nevertheless Pence tweeted after the debate that he was "proud to stand" with him.
Donald Trump’s debate performance will keep him in the race and keep the calls for his removal at bay for now. Predictably both sides declared themselves victorious but it was more of a draw.
The final debate takes place in Las Vegas on 19 October. They say a week is a long time in politics, there are four weeks and a day left in this campaign in this most unpredictable of election cycles, so anything could happen.
