NEW YORK, October 10. /TASS/. The latest round of presidential debates in St. Louis on Sunday showed that Donald Trump is not planning to surrender any ground to Hillary Clinton and can mount an effective counterattack, according to a US-based expert interviewed by TASS.

The Republican presidential nominee clinched an unexpected victory during the debate, said Andrei Korobkov, professor of Political Science at Middle Tennessee State University.

"To my surprise, it looks like Trump won," the expert said. "Both candidates were focused and none of them faltered. As usual, Hillary was more spectacular with figures and programs, but Trump showed his sense of humor and was much more self-collected and disciplined than usual, he shed light on Hillary’s two chief problems rather spectacularly."

"First, there are the numerous mistakes that she made during her stint as the Secretary of State and in her previous political activity. Second, he brilliantly portrayed her as part of the elite and that she has very serious problems with the law," the political scientist elaborated.

"In general, as always Hillary was more telling in regard to real problems and specifics. Trump outplayed her at an emotional level and in what concerns highlighting the sides of her personality and her previous work," he said.

Trumping scandals

The expert said Trump has managed to evade an unpleasant issue linked to a recently released tape in which he made derogatory comments about women. "I think he managed to gloss over this moment rather effectively what was very important for him." "This issue had led to a serious drop in his rating over the past days."

Now there is "an unprecedented situation in the US history when almost the entire political elite from both parties and the absolute majority of media sources are working against one of the candidates - namely Trump," he added.

"And the issue of Russia has probably never sounded that often since the peak of the Cold War in the 1950s," Korobkov said, adding that this is likely due to Clinton’s personal views.