Viewers of Sunday’s presidential debate were quick to note Donald Trump seemed to loom behind Hillary Clinton on the stage as she responded to questions from the moderators.
{mosads}Clinton noticed, too, she told talk show host Ellen DeGeneres.
“It was so odd,” the Democratic nominee said in an interview posted online Friday morning.
“I could just feel his presence behind me. I thought, whoa, this is really weird. I was just trying to stay focused, trying to keep my composure.”
Clinton guessed Trump’s anger came from having to defend a tape released last week in which he bragged in 2005 about groping and kissing women without their consent.
“Because of the revelation of the public video, and everything that came out on ‘Access Hollywood,’ you know, he was really all wrought up, and you could just sense how much anger he had,” she said.
“And so he was really trying to dominate and then literally stalk me around the stage.”
Trump drew widespread criticism for his body language during the debate.
Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon told reporters after that the GOP nominee had been “menacingly stalking” Clinton at the St. Louis event.
Nicolle Wallace, a former Republican strategist, said “if a man did that to me on the street… I’d call 911.”
Trump later described the events a little differently.
“So, I’m standing at my podium by my chair. She walks across the room. She’s standing in front of me, right next to me. And the next day I said what did the paper say? They said, ‘He invaded her space,'” Trump said at a rally the next day.
“Believe me,” he said, “The last space that I want to invade is her space. Believe me. I don’t want to invade her space.”