CNN’s Jake Tapper reacted to tonight’s debate by expressing some shock that Donald Trump was so easily baited by Hillary Clinton into going off-message.

He gave Trump credit for having a strong first half hour talking about trade and jobs, when Clinton seemed to be defending the status quo.

But as far as Tapper’s concerned, it all went downhill from there. He said Trump “went into the weeds” on his Iraq policy, Clinton had a better ‘mastery” of the issues,” and said he responded without much hesitation to things Clinton would say to “dangle out like a piece of meat with a rabid wolf.”

Tapper went down the line of how Trump relitigated his position on Iraq AGAIN and asked, “Why are you doing this?”

Watch above, via CNN.

[image via screengrab]

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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac