There seems to be no bar low enough for Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, to slither under as he seeks to become the next president of the United States. In the past weeks, we have heard the political discourse reduced to locker-room banter and the Republican nominee lay the preparation for the outcome of the November 8 election to be the stuff for conspiracy theorists by his unfounded and unsupported claims that the election is “rigged”.

Now, as a result of the third and final presidential debate early yesterday, between Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state, Trump has unabashedly said that he would not state in advance that he would accept the outcome of the vote and would prefer to keep the US — and the rest of the world who are all too eagerly awaiting this result — “in suspense”.

Trump’s claims are unheard of in modern American history and are a serious and unprecedented challenge to the fundamental workings of the US political and democratic process. One cannot help but compare Trump’s bombast to the grace and decorum offered in the 2000 race from the Democrat nominee and former vice-president, Al Gore, when the race for the White House was decided on the basis of dimpled and hanging chads and a court ruling on the results from Florida. He gracefully accepted defeat, congratulated George W. Bush and ensured that the electoral process wasn’t undermined.

Now, on the basis of bombast and Tweets, Trump is laying the groundwork for a core of his supporters, and a key element of the Republican Party, to be angered and working to undermine a Clinton administration, should she win.

Should he win, Americans will have an impulsive leader who will change their nation into an arm of the Trump corporation — a reality of gambling, entertainment and where constitutional law is set from the Oval Office.

The third presidential debate underscored the deep divisions and intense personal dislike between the two candidates, where personal insults were traded in setting out their views on women’s rights, gun laws, the US national debt and some foreign policy issues.

With polling now less than three weeks away, there is a deep chasm between those who see optimism and hope, and trouble and strife. They are competing visions that have little chance of reconciliation when we wake up on the morning of November 9.