Originally posted on Sunday, Oct. 09, 2016, 10:50 p.m.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump could not escape the recent scandals in Sunday's debate in St. Louis.

The town hall-style debate featured questions from moderators Anderson Cooper and Martha Raddatz, an audience of undecided voters and online.

Clinton and Trump refused to shake hands at the beginning of the debate, a break from debate tradition.

Hours before Trump held a news conference with four women, three of whom have accused former President Bill Clinton of unwanted sexual contact, even rape.

Almost immediately the questions veered to character and whether the candidates consider themselves role models.

The question was a prelude into a probing discussion about Trump's treatment of women, Clinton's husband and her emails.

On Friday, a tape came out from 2005 that involves Trump, on a hot mic, making vulgar remarks about women and making unwanted sexual advances with women.

Several Republicans leaders have publicly announced they were no longer supporting Trump as a result of the remarks, including NH Sen. Kelly Ayotte, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, AZ Sen. John McCain, Utah Sen. Mike Lee and former New York Gov. George Pataki, among others.

Trump issued a video Friday apologizing for the remarks, saying they were more than a decade old and a mere distraction.

Trump reiterated that during the debate Sunday. But when pressed by Cooper about whether he realized it was sexual assault, Trump said it wasn't assault, just locker room talk. He also said he never did the things he was heard saying on the tape.

Trump then said turned to the sex scandals involving former President Bill Clinton, accusing him of rape and Hillary Clinton of being an enabler.

Clinton said she had said all along that he was unfit to be president. Regarding his attacks on her husband, Clinton quoted First Lady Michelle Obama: When they go low, you go high.

Trump attacked Clinton repeatedly on the email issue and the recent Wikileaks reveals. He also said that if he won, he would instruct his attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor to look into her "situation."

They were some of the jaw-dropping statements made over the course of the 90-minute debate, which covered topics including Syria, energy policy, the Affordable Care Act, refugees, Muslims in America and taxes.

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On Sunday, Trump upped the ante by holding a pre-debate news conference with three women -- Paula Jones, Juanita Broadderick and Kathleen Willey, who have all accused Clinton of either unwanted sexual advances or outright rape.

Jones told the media that she thought Trump is a good person.

"He is not what other people are saying he's being," Jones said.

Both Willey and Broadderick have also said Hillary Clinton either threatened or tried to discredit them.

Also at the news conference is Kathy Shelton. Shelton was raped as a 12-year-old. Clinton was appointed to be the public defender for her suspected rapist.

All four women were invited to attend the debate by Trump, presumably hoping to rattle Clinton. The Clinton campaign issued this statement before the debate:

“We’re not surprised to see Donald Trump continue his destructive race to the bottom. Hillary Clinton understands the opportunity in this town hall is to talk to voters on stage and in the audience about the issues that matter to them, and this stunt doesn’t change that. If Donald Trump doesn’t see that, that’s his loss. As always, she’s prepared to handle whatever Donald Trump throws her way.”

Clinton herself will have non-personal problems to deal with. On Friday Wikileaks released a new cache of emails, hacked from the account of her campaign chairman John Podesta. Among them, and most frustrating for those former Bernie Sanders supporters now begrudgingly supporting Clinton, appear to be excerpts of speeches she made to major company and business groups, and banks.

Sanders repeatedly tried to get Clinton to release those speeches, for which she made hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In one speech with investors from Goldman Sachs and BlackRock, Clinton admitted to being far removed from her middle class upbringing because of the success her family had.

"Part of the problem with the political situation, too, is that there is such a bias against people who have led successful and/or complicated lives," she said, according to an excerpt from an October 2013 discussion with Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein.

She said it was important to have a public and private position in politics because politics was like making sausage, and if the public saw the process they might get nervous.

Clinton also spoke to a group in Brazil in 2014 about a desire to see open borders and open trade in the hemisphere.

During the campaign she has said she supports smart and fair trade.  

Podesta tweeted the following Friday:

NATURE OF THE DEBATE

The debate will be a town hall-style format, and half the questions will come from undecided voters.

Off-beat questions can throw off a candidate who's not prepared for anything and everything. In 1992, President George H.W. Bush struggled when a woman asked him how the national debt had affected him personally. "I'm not sure I get it," he told her. The exchange left an impression that Bush was out of touch with ordinary Americans.

The candidates will also be allowed to move around stage.

That adds a new dynamic, especially given the size differential between the 6-foot-3 Trump and Clinton, who's closer to 5-foot-5. It also means Trump will have to watch how he approaches Clinton physically, so he does not appear physicall pushy.

Anderson Cooper of CNN and Martha Raddatz of ABC will moderate the debate.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.