Trump and Biden on stage at 56:45.
Maybe Thursday night was something like the Kennedy-Nixon debates, where John Kennedy was tanned and Richard Nixon, pallid after a stay in the hospital. Reportedly, radio listeners had a different view of that first televised debate than the TV audience.
I say that because after READING the transcript [1], I don’t understand any pundit who is calling for Joe Biden to withdraw from the race. Bravado and bullying over empathy and substance.
As historian Heather Cox Richardson so aptly noted:
[A]side from the fact that the only time a presidential candidate has ever done that—in 1968—it threw the race into utter confusion and the president’s party lost, Biden needed to demonstrate that his mental capacity is strong in order to push back on the Republicans’ insistence that he is incapable of being president. That, he did, thoroughly.
Biden answered the questions directed to him and did so coherently.
However, at 33 minutes into the event, Donald Trump ignored question four [2] and began a rambling free for all of lies and deceptions. The moderators lost control and never regained it.
Trump said that some Democratic states allow people to execute babies after they’re born and that every legal scholar wanted Roe v. Wade overturned—both fantastical lies. He said that the deficit is at its highest level ever and that the U.S. trade deficit is at its highest ever: both of those things happened during his administration. He lied that there were no terrorist attacks during his presidency; there were many. He said that Biden wants to quadruple people’s taxes—this is “pure fiction,” according to Dale—and lied that his tax cuts paid for themselves; they have, in fact, added trillions of dollars to the national debt.
CNN did the nation – and democracy – a disservice by refusing to fact check Trump.
Trump dodged a mild question about taking action on climate change, and though moderator Dana Bash brought him back to the subject he then just boasted about how under his reign we had “the cleanest” air and water, on the very day that the US supreme court justices he appointed savaged yet another piece of environmental protection. The highly-paid pundits could have asked him about his recent promise to leaders of the oil and gas industry that he’d serve their interests if they donated $1bn to his campaign.
Of the 15 questions (by my count), Trump had at least one lie in every answer and, after question four, simply riffed on whatever caught his fancy. In other words, he did not answer direct questions. Sometimes, he equivocated.
Trump reminded us tonight that he is uniquely unfit for office and hostile to our democracy. The fact that those qualities have lost their ability to shock underscores just how much the man has bent our politics to his will.
Donald Trump should NEVER be given a hot mic. Any television news appearance must be recorded and fact-checked.
News organizations have learned nothing since 2015. One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. By that definition, America’s political news class is insane.
You cannot win a debate with a shameless liar, because what you’re supposed to be debating are facts and positions. A lie is a kind of poison; once it’s in the room it makes an impression that is hard to undo, and trying to undo it only amplifies it.
CNN consciously committed journalistic malpractice Thursday. But hey, like they said in 2017: Trump is good for business.
Observations from Twitter
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[1] I had a conflict, which I now considered fortuitous. Here’s a copy of the full transcript (DropBox) that includes a section for each candidate’s answers.
[2] The first question that Trump ignored:
Q4b: President Trump staying on the topic of immigration, you’ve said that you’re going to carry out, quote, the largest domestic deportation operation in American history, end quote. Does that mean that you will deport every undocumented immigrant in America, including those who have jobs, including those whose spouses are citizens, and including those who have lived here for decades? And if so, how will you do it?
