Gennifer Flowers, the former model who had an extramarital affair with Bill Clinton in the 1980s, says she'll accept an invitation from Donald Trump to sit in the front row of Monday's presidential debate, according to an assistant. 
 
 
 
 The prospect of Flowers attending the debate was raised on Saturday when Trump tweeted that he would put her in the audience, if billionaire and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban sat in the front row. 
 
 "If dopey Mark Cuban of failed Benefactor fame wants to sit in the front row, perhaps I will put Jennifer Flowers right alongside of him!" Trump tweeted Saturday afternoon. 
 
 
 
 An assistant to Flowers told BuzzFeed News in the past she had declined such invitations, not wanting to be a "sideshow," but said she would forward the invite to Flowers. 
 
 In an email to BuzzFeed News, Judy Stell, her personal assistant then confirmed she would be attending. 
 
 "Ms. Flowers has agreed to join Donald at the debate," she said. 
 
 A Trump campaign spokesman did not immediately respond to a BuzzFeed News if the invite was official. 
 
 Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri commented, "Hillary Clinton plans on using the debate to discuss the issues that make a difference in people's lives. It’s not surprising that Donald Trump has chosen a different path." 
 
 A Clinton official speaking with BuzzFeed News said Trump's reaction showed he was easily provoked which would undermine attempts to show he was presidential at the debate. 
 
 The co-chair of the nonpartisan commission that operates the debates said on Saturday that Cuban will not actually be sitting in the front row. But he will attend the debate, continuing his ongoing feud, which dates back about a decade, with Trump. Just this summer, Cuban questioned whether Trump is really a billionaire and criticized Trump as a liar. 
 
 Flowers confirmed the news in on her public Facebook linked from her website. 
 
 "Hi Donald Trump... I'm in your corner. Of course I will see u at the debate !!," Flowers wrote on Facebook. ||||| Washington (CNN) Donald Trump threatened Saturday to bring Gennifer Flowers, with whom Bill Clinton admitted to having a sexual relationship decades ago, to Monday's presidential debate. 
 
 The taunt is a response to prominent Trump critic Mark Cuban's plans to sit in the front row of the debate at the invitation of Hillary Clinton's campaign. It's the Republican nominee's latest public reference to the 42nd president's infidelity, which he has occasionally cited in his campaign to criticize his Democratic challenger. 
 
 "If dopey Mark Cuban of failed Benefactor fame wants to sit in the front row, perhaps I will put Jennifer Flowers right alongside of him!" Trump tweeted Saturday afternoon. 
 
 He soon deleted the original message and tweeted again with the correct spelling of Flowers' first name. 
 
 Cuban quickly shot back via Twitter, mocking Trump for allegedly referring to the two of them as the "Bobbsey Twins," a term referencing the long-running children's book series about wholesome siblings. 
 
 "Donald. Remember when you told me on the phone we were "Bobbsie Twins" and I laughed ? #truestory," wrote Cuban. 
 
 Flowers has said she is planning to come to the Monday debate, but it is unclear if the Trump campaign is planning on inviting her. 
 
 While representatives of Flowers have not responded to CNN's inquiries, a tweet from her account had earlier said: "Hi Donald. You know I'm in your corner and will definitely be at the debate‎" and she has now told some other media she is planning on attending. 
 
 Representatives of the campaign did not respond to CNN's inquiries about whether Flowers would be invited following Trump's message saying "perhaps I will put Gennifer Flowers right alongside" Mark Cuban. 
 
 Clinton's running mate, Tim Kaine, declined to comment when asked about the tweet in Providence Forge, Virginia. 
 
 Trump on Monday had told Fox News' Bill O'Reilly that if Clinton "treats me with respect, I will treat her with respect." His tweet Saturday came roughly an hour after The New York Times endorsed Clinton for president. 
 
 Flowers, a former Arkansas state employee, said she had a 12-year sexual relationship with Bill Clinton during his 1992 presidential run. He later admitted under oath in 1998 to a sexual encounter with her. 
 
 Cuban has tried to publicly shame Trump throughout the 2016 campaign, regularly slamming the Republican nominee for not releasing his taxes. The attacks have been particularly effective, given Cuban's status as a fellow billionaire and his public persona as a similarly brash businessman. 
 
 He cheered his invitation by the Clinton campaign to attend Monday's showdown. 
 
 "Just got a front row seat to watch @HillaryClinton overwhelm @realDonaldTrump at the "Humbling at Hofstra" on Monday. It Is On!" Cuban tweeted on Thursday. 
 
 Just got a front row seat to watch @HillaryClinton overwhelm @realDonaldTrump at the "Humbling at Hofstra" on Monday. It Is On ! — Mark Cuban (@mcuban) September 23, 2016 
 
 Why does Cuban get a front row seat? 
 
 Each candidate gets several tickets to Monday's debate, which will be held at Hofstra University in New York. Debate commission co-chair Frank Fahrenkopf explained that each candidate gets to decide who sits where. 
 
 Fahrenkopf told CNN's Michael Smerconish that attempts to "impact the debate" using the candidates' guests will not be tolerated. 
 
 "We are going to frown upon -- I will tell you this right now -- whether or not a Republican or Democrat or anyone else attempts by use of tickets in placing people in a front row or not to try to impact the debate. It is wrong," Fahrenkopf said. "We would frown upon Mr. Cuban being in the front row if his purpose is to somehow disrupt the debate; likewise, if Mr. Trump was going to put someone in the front row to try and impact things." 
 
 The interview aired several hours before Trump's threat to bring Flowers. 
 
 'A penchant for sexism' 
 
 He brought the former president's sex scandals into the campaign late last year around the time Hillary Clinton announced her husband would join her on the campaign trail. At the time, she had recently accused Trump of having a "penchant for sexism" over his charge that she had been "schlonged" in the 2008 primary. 
 
 "Hillary Clinton has announced that she is letting her husband out to campaign but HE'S DEMONSTRATED A PENCHANT FOR SEXISM, so inappropriate!" Trump tweeted in December ||||| Everyone but Donald Trump and his most ardent supporters recognize that Donald Trump lost Monday night’s debate. And because of the candidate’s stubborn disbelief in his ability to do anything but win, Trump lost the post-debate period too. 
 
 Now he’s doubling down. 
 
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 Despite warnings from fellow Republicans against insulting a beauty queen he disparaged for gaining weight and launching an attack on Hillary Clinton for her husband’s well-known infidelities, Trump is now directing his surrogates to do just that. 
 
 “Mr. Trump has never treated women the way Hillary Clinton and her husband did when they worked to destroy Bill Clinton’s accusers,” reads one of the talking points the campaign sent to surrogates on Thursday as the controversy surrounding the story of former Miss Universe Alicia Machado continued to dominate headlines of the race. 
 
 And during a rally Thursday afternoon in Bedford, N.H., Trump himself referenced the scandals of the 1990s that he’s been congratulating himself for not talking about all week. “The Clintons are the sordid past,” he said. “We will be the very bright and clean future.” 
 
 For three days since Clinton’s dominant debate performance, Trump and his team have been flailing wildly to change the meta-narrative coming out of the showdown. And they have yet to alight on anything to effectively spin the result, challenge the conventional wisdom that Clinton won or to change the subject to anything less damaging for the GOP nominee. 
 
 Inside Trump Tower, his inner circle of advisers has been in turmoil: while some have attempted to reach to the hard-headed candidate by suggesting to reporters that he must prepare more thoroughly for the second debate, others have spit-balled ideas aimed at changing the subject, including a last-minute trip to Israel that might replicate the more presidential optics and media saturation coverage they achieved with last month’s surprise summit with the Mexican president. 
 
 Trump himself has reportedly chided aides who have privately acknowledged to reporters that Clinton bested him on the debate stage. 
 
 But that private uncertainty and unease about what was so clearly a disappointing performance has oozed into public view. Since the debate Monday night, surrogates and Trump himself have both praised and criticized the moderator, Lester Holt. One of Trump’s closest confidants at the moment, Rudy Giuliani, said immediately after the debate that he’d advise Trump to skip the next two and on Wednesday indulged a conspiracy, propagated by a Russian state-controlled news site, that Clinton might have gotten the questions in advance. And on Thursday, campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said she had indeed told her candidate not to call women “fat pigs” but quickly tried to dismiss his insults as “beside the point” because he in fact supports women. 
 
 “With Trump, it’s always the tyranny of the urgent and right now it is he has to have people believe he won, or that if he didn't it was rigged and unfair,” said Rick Tyler, a GOP operative who worked on Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign. “The purpose of having 84 million people watch is to get more people on his campaign; that's winning. In his mind, it's just about winning the debate. The objective is actually winning the election.” 
 
 Trump’s backers have been more consistent in their adherence to another fatuous talking point, stating that Trump deserved credit for being “gentlemanly” and even “courageous” for not bringing up the subject of Bill Clinton’s infidelities that they are themselves bringing up, increasingly in less uncertain, veiled terms. 
 
 And the candidate has compounded the damage by failing or refusing to recognize the damage done by his assertion that avoiding paying income taxes “makes me smart” and his repetition of comments about how a former Miss Universe “gained a massive amount of weight” after he awarded her crown was “a real problem.” 
 
 In reality, both Trump’s tacit references to the Lewinsky scandal and his explicit references to the Miss Universe story—something Clinton’s campaign used knowingly to bait Trump and has since pushed into the news cycle—are likely to prevent him from expanding support among undecided women voters, a bloc that may tip the balance of the election more than any other. 
 
 “What has been relatively true in the general [election] is that when the news is about Trump, his numbers stagnate and drop. And it’s been the same pattern with her. Right now the story is all about him,” said Sarah Isgur Flores, whose former boss, Carly Fiorina, was also criticized by Trump for her appearance. “After the Megyn Kelly thing, after Carly’s thing, his voters know him. That doesn't mean they approve of it. They just think country has reached a point where they need big change. But holding his supporters is not enough heading into November. He had to build and this doesn't help building.” 
 
 Tyler put it bluntly: “He needs more women supporters, and reminding people he called someone Miss Piggy or Miss Housekeeper is not helpful.” 
 
 Desperate to put any sort of positive gloss on a disappointing debate performance, Trump’s campaign claimed to have seen an $18 million windfall in small-dollar online donations in the 24 hours after the debate.However, it’s not yet clear if that money is all from online contributions or how much of it will be available to Trump, as POLITICO reported Thursday. 
 
 
 
 Clinton’s campaign, meanwhile, is starting to put the pedal down. Even before the candidate mentioned Machado, her communications and rapid response operations had laid the groundwork. Machado had already done a photo shoot and interview with Cosmopolitan that popped online less than 24 hours after the debate. The campaign quickly organized a press call with Machado. They cut a video encapsulating the debate exchange and Machado’s story, which has been a staple of cable news coverage for 48 hours now. In swing states, women surrogates have been amplifying Clinton’s argument. 
 
 And Democrats have said they would love to see Trump try to tar Clinton for her husband’s cheating past, something veteran Republican operatives and GOP lawmakers desperately want their candidate to avoid. 
 
 “What you’ve seen in the last 48 hours is that Clinton actually has a campaign,” said Stuart Stevens, the GOP strategist behind Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign. “What you see is the Clinton campaign has an extra gear they can go into, and the Trump campaign really doesn’t.” 
 
 The biggest impediment to the campaign's ability to change gears quickly is the candidate, a person who resists change, struggles to accept constructive criticism and has reportedly lashed out at advisers who have been more critical in anonymous statements to the press. 
 
 Thursday afternoon, Trump's senior communications adviser Jason Miller refused to accept the premise that his boss had anything but an "excellent" debate, pointing to unscientific online polls--broadly dismissed by political professionals--that declared Trump the winner. 
 
 "The one dynamic driving this is that it's not about trying to win an election, it’s about trying to please Donald Trump," Stevens said. "Your ability to rise and fall in that organization is predicated on your willingness to say something that will please the boss." ||||| Internet phenomenon Ken Bone: Debate 'got very uncomfortable from up close' 
 
 From where he sat in his now Internet-famous red sweater, undecided voter and debate attendee Ken Bone said Sunday night’s matchup “almost felt like watching mom and dad fight.” 
 
 Bone, who asked the candidates a question about energy policy toward the end of Sunday night’s debate in St. Louis, lamented the “bickering and name calling” that occupied much of the event’s 90 minutes. He praised moderators Martha Raddatz and Anderson Cooper for their “great job moving us through under difficult circumstances.” 
 
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 “It got very uncomfortable from up close. But if you can dig through some of the rhetoric and some of the name calling that went on, I think there really were some substantive answers,” he said in an interview on CNN, still wearing his red sweater. “It's just unfortunate that we have to wade through so much to get to them.” 
 
 The mustachioed debate attendee rocketed to Internet fame in the closing moments of Sunday night’s debate, launching a flurry of social media posts about his attire and facial hair. Video showing him photographing the emptying debate hall with what appeared to be a disposable camera only further endeared him to the masses. 
 
 Bone joked that his Twitter account had gained hundreds of followers and that he felt he had to reprise his red sweater on the morning after the debate because “it's more famous than me. I just had to bring myself along.” 
 
 He also said that he did not know during the debate that Donald Trump had invited an array of women who claimed to have been wronged by the Clintons to sit in the audience on Sunday night, including three who allege that Bill Clinton had either raped or made unwanted sexual advances toward them. The former president has denied all three allegations. 
 
 Bone said the move likely would not affect his decision on whom to vote for in November, but he added that inviting the women to attend “was uncalled for.” 
 
 “I don’t think that will factor into my decision because I really try to stick to the issues. But if I’m being honest, that was, I feel like that was uncalled for,” he said. “It has very little to do with Hillary Clinton’s ability to be president, her husband’s bad behavior from 20 years ago. And if Mr. Trump wants us to forget his past behaviors, he needs to quit dredging up those of his political opponents.” 
 
 Asked whether Sunday night’s debate had given him any clarity on whom he might vote for, Bone said it had done just the opposite. He told CNN that he had been leaning toward voting for Trump but that Clinton’s composure and answers had impressed him. 
 
 And asked how he arrived at his now-famous wardrobe choice for the evening, Bone said the sweater was actually a backup plan. 
 
 “I had a really nice olive suit that I love a great deal and my mother would have been very proud to see me wearing on television, but apparently I have gained about 30 pounds and when I went to get in my car the morning of the debate I split the seat of my pants all the way open,” he said. “So the red sweater is plan B. I’m glad it worked out. “ 
 
 Authors:
– For the moment it appears the woman who had an affair with Bill Clinton will be front-and-center during Monday's debate at Donald Trump's invitation, BuzzFeed reports. It started with the Clinton campaign inviting Bizarro-Trump Mark Cuban to the presidential debate at Hoffstra University. TPM quotes a Clinton aide as saying Cuban "has the best seat we have access to." CNN explains that each candidate gets a few tickets for the debate and can decide who sits where. "Just got a front row seat to watch Hillary Clinton overwhelm Donald Trump at the 'Humbling at Hofstra' on Monday," Cuban, an increasingly vocal critic of Trump, tweeted Thursday. "It is on!" "If dopey Mark Cuban of failed Benefactor fame wants to sit in the front row, perhaps I will put Gennifer Flowers right alongside of him!" Trump tweeted Saturday. In 1998, Bill Clinton admitted to having a sexual relationship with Flowers in the 1980s. The former model quickly accepted the invitation, tweeting, "Hi Donald. You know I'm in your corner and will definitely be at the debate!" and adding a kiss emoji. Flowers' assistant confirms to BuzzFeed that Flowers has accepted the invitation despite turning similar ones down in the past to avoid being a "sideshow." The Trump campaign hasn't said whether Trump's tweet constitutes an official invite. The co-chair of the debate commission tells CNN they "would frown upon" any attempt to use guests to "impact the debate."