Debates 2020

Then again, remember these are Mexican & Central American kids, whose parents are Catholic, so they probably have a dozen siblings.  The parents might not have even noticed yet that the kids are missing or figured it is easier just to pop out another one to replace them..

Plus they aren't of much value until they are strong enough to work in the fields.  The parents may not claim them until their quinceanera.

I am interested in your opinion of the debate. How did you see it?

SK, I believe that Trump easily won the debate as you do. I get it that there are those who don’t like Trump. What I do not understand is overlooking that Joe Biden is not a nice guy or has ever been an honest representative of American citizens. He is a nasty liar and an angry man who is infatuated with little girls and arrogantly used his son and his position to enrich himself and his family. He is a criminal, racist and a traitor.

Trump is all about making this country a better place and life better for Americans.

OK, here goes:

First, Joe Biden.  He stumbled for words and mispronounced others, as always.  More importantly, I thought he looked very old and very tired.  My overriding impression of him was that there's no way he is up to the demands  of being president.  Sure, his handlers can jack him up on Adderall and make him semi-coherent for a couple of hours, but the presidency is a 24/7 job, and both his performance and his campaign schedule are evidence that he lacks the energy and the stamina required for the job.

Second, I thought Kristen Welker, despite some slips, was the best moderator of a presidential debate I've seen in a long time.  Until she lost control of the affair in the second half, she asked tough and specific questions of both candidates.  I'm sure Joe Biden was taken aback by some of the in-your-face things he was asked.

Which brings us to Donald Trump.  Rather than watching one debate last night, I felt like I watched three.  For the first 29 minutes (yes, I actually set a running clock), I couldn't believe I was watching Donald Trump.  He was polite, deferential, respectful of both Welker and Biden, and stopped talking when his time was up.  I'm almost ashamed to say I was shocked.  However, in the second half hour, he began to slip.  Like a five-year-old who is told to sit on the couch and behave himself for 90 minutes, he couldn't do it.  He began to insist on having the last word on every topic, even when he had already had his rebuttal opportunity, and when Welker reluctantly gave him ten seconds, he always went 20 or 30.  In the final 30 minutes, he completely fell off the wagon and reverted to the Donald Trump we've come to know.  He began interrupting and speaking over Biden, he started up the childish personal insults, and he became the playground bully that he really is.  It was in that last half hour that Welker totally lost control of the proceedings.

What did it all mean?  Not much, if anything.  I don't think either candidate did anything significant enough to move the needle or change the minds of many voters.

And now, a personal note.  My dislike and distaste for Trump has nothing to do with policy.  I recognize that it is almost entirely personal.  I came to this country with my parents and my brother when I was five.  I didn't know a word of English, and when I started kindergarten a month later, I was five years behind the other kids in speaking clearly and expressing myself.  But, like Donald Trump and probably many on this forum, I had the good fortune to attend public schools at a time when they still taught proper grammar and proper sentence structure, rather than transgender appreciation, climate terror and white guilt.  I learned how to express myself with efficiency and specificity, and I've always admired those who could do so better than I can.  That's one reason I dislike Donald Trump.  Despite all his financial advantages, he is the least articulate president in our history, and he continually expresses himself like a ten- or 12-year-old.  Couple that with his constant name-calling and bullying, and you have a guy I can never like, even if he walked on water.  Here are three examples of how he blew it in the debate:

(1) On the issue of his "secret bank account" in China, he mumbled and fumbled and repeated himself and stepped on his dick, never really explaining away the charge.  Why couldn't he just have said: "Look, before I became president, I was an international commercial developer with projects in many countries.  All such developers open bank accounts in their project countries, because it is the fastest and most efficient way to transact business and pay employees, contractors and suppliers.  I had such an account in China when I did a project there, and I closed it when the project was completed.  I opened another one when it appeared I would do another project, and closed it when I decided not to proceed.  And all those accounts occurred years before I was president."

(2) On the issue of his paying only $750 in income taxes one year, he again mumbled and fumbled and repeated himself and stepped on his dick.  Why couldn't he just have said, "Look, like tens of millions of other Americans who don't receive a weekly payroll check and have their income tax withheld, I make estimated tax payments four times a year.  In the year in question, I made such payments in the millions of dollars.  It turns out my estimated payments were short by $750.  That is what I paid with my tax returns, and that is the number the media is throwing around as though that was ALL the income tax I paid."

(3) Biden made the statement that 220,000 Americans have died of COVID, and that another 200,000 would die of it before the end of the year.  That is a number he pulled out of his ass, and Trump had the opportunity to shove it right back up where it came from.  But he blew it.  Apparently he's as bad at math as he is at English.  He could have said, "Joe, the daily death rate from COVID has averaged around 700 for the last two or three months.  If you know for a fact that rate will more than quadruple to almost 2,900 a day for the rest of the year, where is the evidence of that fact?  If it's derived from models, please remember that those models have been wrong every step of the way during this pandemic, and please don't present their projections as fact just to frighten American voters."

He had three chances to change the damaging stories surrounding him, and he blew them all, mainly because he can't explain himself worth a shit.

Comments?

Nice post but you got a few things wrong...

Trump never attended public schools a day in his life.

1. He could have said that but he'd have been lying. The problem isn't that trump had a bank account years ago when he was developing projects there, it's that he HAS a bank account in China NOW.

2. Again, to say what you recommended he'd have to lie...not that that's stopped him in the past  but perhaps he was hesitant to state such an easily debunked falsehood.