Week In The News: Final Debate, Battle For Mosul, More WikiLeaks

The last debate. The move on Mosul. Obama tells Trump: stop whining.  Our weekly news round table goes behind the headlines.

The last debate, this week. And the unprecedented Donald Trump vow to keep us in suspense about whether he’ll accept the election results. In Washington, President Obama tells Trump to “stop whining.” In New York, Trump and Hillary Clinton trade weak, dark jokes in a hard campaign. Trump is booed. We’ve got the attack on ISIS in Mosul this week. Julian Assange without internet. A firebomb in North Carolina. This hour On Point, our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines. — Tom Ashbrook

Margaret Talev, senior White House correspondent for Bloomberg News, covering the 2016 presidential campaign. (@margarettalev)

Aaron Blake, senior reporter for The Fix at the Washington’s Post. (@AaronBlake)

Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst. (@JackBeattyNPR)

Bloomberg Politics: Trump Vows Election-Day Suspense Without Seeking Voters He Needs to Win — "As the debate wrapped, several of Trump’s closest advisers rushed to contradict him to reporters in the spin room, a recognition of the potential damage of Trump’s words. Meanwhile, his Facebook page offered its own live newscast pitched as an alternative to 'biased, mainstream media reporting.' The dual scenes—taking place in the same room at the University of Las Vegas Wednesday night—mirrored the profoundly ambiguous signals sent by the GOP nominee: Is he trying to beat Clinton or prolong his political power in defeat?"

Washington Post: Donald Trump’s pledge to ‘accept a clear election result’ is meaningless -- "There's plenty of reason to believe that Trump thinks even a lopsided popular and electoral college loss wouldn't be a 'clear' result. He has made it abundantly clear that he thinks the conspiracy against him is vast and that his loss could very well be due to a 'rigged' election. Given that backdrop, Trump's pledge Thursday means basically nothing. And the question of whether Donald Trump can ever achieve electoral clarity has just become one of 2016's central questions."

Foreign Policy: First U.S. Combat Death in Fight for Mosul -- "A U.S. service member was killed in northern Iraq on Thursday when an improvised explosive device detonated as American troops accompanied local forces as they pushed toward Mosul, U.S. Central Command announced. It was the second combat death suffered by American forces battling the Islamic State this month. On Oct. 6, U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Adam Thomas was killed after another improvised bomb went off while his unit was on a foot patrol in Nangarhar, Afghanistan, where U.S. Special Operations forces are fighting ISIS alongside Afghan troops."