NEW YORK — Bitter presidential rivals Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have one more face-to-face showdown before Election Day. And they're supposed to make it funny.
The venue Thursday night just 24 hours after their third and final debate is the annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in New York, a white-tie gala that every four years becomes a showcase for presidential politics. Tradition dictates that the candidates deliver humorous remarks poking fun at each other and themselves, a jovial custom that seems hard to envision amid such an ugly campaign.
Trump regularly calls Clinton, "Crooked Hillary," says he'd put her in jail if he wins the presidency, and declared during Wednesday's debate that she was "a nasty woman." Clinton says Trump lives in his own reality, is running a "hateful, divisive campaign" and lacks the temperament to be president.
They will sit just one seat apart for the evening, with New York's Cardinal Timothy Dolan acting as the only buffer.
"I certainly expect that the dinner will be what it's always been: an opportunity for two candidates to put aside partisan politics for the evening," said Joseph Zwilling, the spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York, which hosts the dinner. "I anticipate that we will have good humor and civility that this dinner has been always been known for."
The bitter campaign between Clinton and Trump could threaten the ecumenical goodwill that has defined previous roasts. Since 1960, at least one of the major party nominees has appeared at nearly every election year dinner, which is traditionally the last time the nominees share a stage before voters go to the polls.
Four years ago, President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney set aside their differences to trade (mostly) warm jokes. Romney, scanning the well-heeled crowd in the gilded Waldorf-Astoria ballroom, joked that the event's white-tie attire finally gave him a chance to publicly don what "Ann and I wear around the house." Obama, meanwhile, used his speech that year to look ahead to an upcoming debate on foreign policy, previewing his argument by saying "Spoiler alert: we got Bin Laden."
Trump will speak first Thursday night, then Clinton. Neither campaign opted to preview their candidate's remarks and aides for both declined comment on the evening other than to confirm that each nominee will be there.
Read Friday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.