It only took a few moments for Hillary Clinton to bring up her contentious encounter with Donald Trump the night before.
“Did anyone see that debate last night?” the Democratic presidential nominee asked a crowd gathered at Wayne State University in Detroit on Monday. “Well, you never saw anything like that before!”
The 3,500 people who had packed into a gymnasium cheered in approval, only to erupt into boos at the first mention of Trump’s name. Clinton, in her first appearance since an ugly showdown with Trump that saw the Republican nominee threaten to jail her if elected president, sought to pacify the crowd.
“Donald Trump spent his time attacking when he should have been apologizing,” she said, referring to his response the night before to a leaked 2005 video showing him bragging about sexual assault.
“On Friday, the whole world heard him talking about the terrible way he treats women,” Clinton said of the tape, before rejecting Trump’s dismissal of its contents as “locker room talk”.
“Well, I’ll tell you what,” Clinton said. “Women and men across America know that is just a really weak excuse for behaving badly and mistreating people.”
The event marked Clinton’s first outing on the campaign trail since the leaked Access Hollywood video of Trump’s lewd comments sent his campaign into freefall. Dozens of Republicans withdrew their endorsements of Trump over the weekend, while the House speaker, Paul Ryan, took the unprecedented step on Monday of advising lawmakers that they should do what was best to hold on to their seats in November – even if that meant renouncing their own nominee.
Clinton, meanwhile, told voters that she was excited to be receiving “more and more support not just from Democrats but from independents and Republicans”.
It was a tale of two dramatically different campaigns with just 28 days remaining before election day.
Trump held his own rally in Pennsylvania, reiterating his intention to imprison Clinton over her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. And after weeks of reading from a teleprompter as part of an attempt to project a more disciplined demeanor to attract more independents or quell concerns among suburban women, Trump on Monday left little doubt he was now appealing strictly to his base.
It was perhaps all the Republican nominee had left.
Members of Trump’s party were left reeling from the political fallout, prompting leaders to shift their attention toward the impact on down-ballot races.
Ryan, in his conference call with members on Monday morning, said he would no longer defend Trump, nor would he campaign with him. And while a spokesman for the speaker denied Ryan had all but conceded the race to Clinton, descriptions of the conversation painted a portrait of a party resigned to salvaging its majorities in Congress.
Reince Priebus, the embattled chair of the Republican National Committee, also held a call with his staff on Monday. But Priebus, unlike Ryan, reaffirmed his support for Trump, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“I want to make it very clear that the RNC is in full coordination with the Trump campaign and we have a great relationship with them,” Priebus said. “Nothing has changed in regards to our relationship.”
But despite Priebus’s effort to project unity, the cracks had been laid bare for all to see.
A growing list of Republicans in Congress were calling on Trump to step aside, suggesting his running mate, Governor Mike Pence of Indiana, assume the role of standard-bearer instead.
Priebus told RNC members such a move was not only “impractical” but that there were no mechanisms in place to remove Trump from the ballot at this stage.
All the while, polling released on Monday showed Clinton gaining a double-digit lead over Trump.
Although her campaign downplayed just how much the race might have changed over the past week, saying they still expected a close contest, the sense of an opportunity was palpable.
“It’s pretty stunning that right after the debate the speaker of the House has to come and say he’s no longer going to defend Donald Trump and that each Republican member of Congress has to decide for themselves whether they’re going to support the nominee,” spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri told reporters aboard Clinton’s campaign plane on Monday.
But they did not deserve credit, she pointed out, for dumping Trump only after the political tides had turned against them.
“Paul Ryan and leaders of the Republican party, there was a time when they could have stopped Donald Trump. There was a time where they could’ve spoken out against him,” she said. “That time was the summer, and obviously it’s too late now.”
Clinton, at her rally in Detroit, did not wade into the meltdown within the opposing party.
As she laid into Trump for refusing to release his tax returns and campaigning on a message of divisiveness, Clinton took a moment to assuage voters left dismayed by one of the darker election cycles in recent memory – but with a tacit rebuke of the Republicans who despite fleeing Trump insisted she was just as unacceptable a choice.
“I know there has been a lot of negativity and it is easy to get cynical about politics,” she said, “but I will tell you, that is what the other side wants you to do.”
“They want you to just say, well I am not going to vote because you know it is so nasty. That is the main reason to vote, to make it clear that we are not putting up with that.”
