Analysis: Clinton takes a new approach in presidential debate -- Trump's

She mansplained him. "Let me translate that if I can," Hillary Clinton said dryly after Donald Trump talked up his tax plan.

She interrupted him. When Trump boasted of the gilded Las Vegas hotel that bears his name, Clinton leaned into her microphone. "Made with Chinese steel," she quipped with a smile.

She mocked him. After Trump said President Vladimir Putin of Russia had "no respect" for her, Clinton slyly posited why Putin seemingly preferred Trump: "He'd rather have a puppet as president of the United States," she said.

In the third and final presidential debate, Clinton outmaneuvered Trump with a surprising new approach: his.

[At debate, Trump won't say if he'd accept an electoral loss]

Flipping the script, she turned herself into his relentless tormentor, condescending to him repeatedly and deploying some of his own trademark tactics against him.

The relatively subdued and largely defanged Republican nominee who showed up onstage in Las Vegas was a different figure from the candidate America has watched for the past 16 months.

Trump was, for much of the night, oddly calm and composed. He minimized his name-calling. His interruptions were relatively rare.

In a debate that his allies and aides had predicted would represent 90 minutes of scorched-earth verbal warfare, Trump seemed deserted by his most bellicose instincts.

He repeatedly gave up chances to respond to pointed taunts from Clinton, who dominated the confrontation from its opening moments, needling and baiting him over and over.

During a back-and-forth about immigration, Clinton landed a hard jab, asserting that Trump had used undocumented workers to build Trump Tower — even threatening such workers, she said, with deportation.

Trump, who until Wednesday had seldom let a critique go by unanswered, did not respond.

In the night's biggest surprise, he allowed Clinton to avoid entirely a question from the moderator, Chris Wallace of Fox News, about allegations of sexual misconduct against former President Bill Clinton and what role she might have played in trying to discredit the women who came forward to accuse her husband.

[Clinton struggles under debate scrutiny]

At times, Trump was inexplicably polite. As he replied to a question about the Second Amendment, Trump observed that his rival might have paid him a backhanded compliment by mentioning his endorsement from the National Rifle Association.

"I don't know if Hillary was saying it in a sarcastic manner," he said, with uncharacteristic mildness.

At the moments when Trump did revert to his old, familiar self, he seemed unsteady and defensive.

When Clinton called Trump a puppet of Putin, Trump offered a limp interruption.

"No puppet. No puppet," he said. "You're the puppet," he added, emptily. He never explained what he might have meant.

After two historically acrid debates, Clinton finally got the policy discussion she has craved. But in between expounding on her proposals to make college affordable and raise the minimum wage, she savaged Trump's career, his finances and his sensitivities, portraying him as a lightweight with the temperament of a spoiled child.

On his experience: "On the day when I was in the Situation Room monitoring the raid that brought Osama bin Laden to justice, he was hosting 'The Celebrity Apprentice,'" Clinton said.

On his charitable giving, compared with the work of the Clinton Foundation: "I'd be happy to compare what we do with the Trump Foundation, which took money from other people and bought a 6-foot portrait of Donald," Clinton said witheringly.

"I mean, who does that?" she added.

On Trump's famed negotiating skills: "He went to Mexico. He had a meeting with the Mexican president," Clinton said, bitingly. "He choked and then he got into a Twitter war because the Mexican president said we're not paying for that wall."

Trump struggled to keep pace. "Excuse me," he complained. "My turn," he stomped.

"The one thing you have over me is experience," Trump said at one point.

And yet it seemed clear through this last confrontation that there was a gap in knowledge, or at least in command of the material that candidates seeking to be president are expected to master.

"Take a look at the Start-Up," Trump said at one point, apparently referring to the START nuclear arms reduction treaty.

[Fact Check: Sticking to the truth and sometimes departing from it in the 3rd presidential debate]

Pressed on immigration, Clinton detailed her plan to overhaul the current system, identifying a daughter of undocumented parents who feared they would be deported. Trump's response seemed far less certain: After reiterating his plan to build a wall on the Mexican border, he summoned a line straight out of a Hollywood Western.

"We have some bad hombres here, and we're going to get them out," he said.

Asked about a 2008 Supreme Court decision on gun control, District of Columbia vs. Heller, Trump displayed a loose command of the subject, focusing his answer on Clinton's emotions after the ruling.

"Hillary was extremely upset, extremely angry," he said.

As the debate wore on, Clinton kept finding opportunities to make Trump seem smaller and smaller, or at least more puerile.

She noted that after a stretch without an Emmy for his reality TV show, Trump had claimed that the awards show was rigged against him — just as he now says about the election.

Trump did not disappoint. "Should have gotten it," he said bitterly.

And it became clear that the candidate who relishes his role as a bully had little patience for being bullied.

Clinton implied that Trump would find a way to weasel out of paying his fair share of taxes for Social Security.

"My Social Security payroll contribution will go up, as will Donald's — assuming he can't figure out how to get out of it," Clinton said, fully aware she was provoking him.

And provoked he was.

"Such a nasty woman," Trump grumbled.