The final presidential debate didn’t go quite as expected until its midpoint, when Donald Trump reverted to form and kept interrupting, avoided the subject and made nonsensical and/or patently false claims. But at least for a time, Trump--knowing that if he went off the rails again he could kiss any chance of reelection goodbye, attempted to display a modicum of decorum, for fear someone might actually turn his mike off, which would have been quite embarrassing for him. But eventually he did get tired of that decorum thing, and it was here-we-go-again with this nut.
Joe Biden, on the other hand, kept to his tried and true script of wanting to be president of all Americans, rather than just the “base.” On occasion Biden looked a little emotional, although who wouldn’t be when Trump keeps telling lie and lie, especially about his son, when Jared and Ivanka have “earned” over $200 million since daddy has been president, some of which by ethically dubious means. At one point Biden narrowed his eyes as if he was trying to shoot laser darts out of them. Trump, on the other hand, often looked and acted either like a petulant child or a smart-ass kid being scolded by a teacher for throwing spitballs in class.
I’m sure that it was a “relief” for Trump supporters that he toned down his embarrassing and shameful behavior from the previous debate with Biden, and some actually think that because of that, he “won” the debate in their eyes. But for the rest of us, it was just more of the same lies, conspiracy theories, malinformation and laughable exaggerations and braggadocio. Trump once again made false and misleading comparisons between his non-actions during the current pandemic and a British medical journal’s prediction of the number of deaths if “herd immunity” was the plan, and that of the swine flu epidemic during the early years of the Obama administration. There is no way to get around it: there is nothing “great” about 220,000 deaths, for which Trump has never once expressed any form of regret.
Trump seemed to pick numbers out of thin air that made no sense. He claimed that the COVID mortality rate is down 85 percent. Whatever “excess mortality rate” means, the U.S. death rate is not “way down” and “much lower than almost any other country”; in fact the U.S. ranks number 10 in world (according to Worldometer) in the number of deaths per million of the population. “And we’re fighting it and we’re fighting it hard.” What a crock. Maybe some blue states are, in the absence of guidance from the White House. The “spike” in Florida is not gone, and COVID deaths in that state will soon pass New Jersey for fourth place in the total number of deaths, as if that is something to be “proud” of. Neither is the spike “gone” in Texas; it is now number one in the total number of cases, and slowly but surely catching up to New York in the total number of deaths. Tennessee, meanwhile, sees daily records in the number of positive cases and deaths. Only a dangerous buffoon like Trump would think that any of this is something to brag about.
As if that wasn’t enough, after lying to us since February about the danger of the virus, he poo-pooed the notion of a winter spike in cases, and announced that “we’re opening up the country.” Why in the world would anyone with any sense trust this fool with their lives? Trump went on to say he took “full responsibility” for his non-actions during the pandemic, but then turned it right around by saying it wasn’t his “fault,” but China’s. And then this idiot claimed he was only “joking” about drinking bleach to kill the virus. He wasn’t “joking” when he turned to a befuddled Deborah Birx and asked her in all seriousness if that was something that people could do.
Biden, on the other hand, simply told us what most of us--save for Trump Nazis--know is common sense. “If you’re going to open a business, have social distancing within the business. You need to have, if you have a restaurant, you need to have plexiglass dividers so people cannot infect one another. You need to be in a position where you can take testing rapidly and know whether the person is in fact infected. You need to be able to trace. You need to be able to provide all the resources that are needed to do this. And that is not inconsistent with saying that we’re going to make sure that we’re going to open safely. And by the way, all you teachers out there, not that many of you are going to die, so don’t worry about it. So don’t worry about it. Come on.”
Trump got body-slammed on the COVID-19 issue, and he didn’t do at all better when it came to the subject of his failure to justify his nomination for a Nobel peace prize. In fact this is where Trump started to go off the rails again:
Kristen Welker:
All right. Let’s talk about North Korea.
Donald Trump:
No, no, no.
Kristen Welker:
Let…
Donald Trump:
Excuse me. No, I have to…
Joe Biden:
… and Vice President.
Kristen Welker:
All right, let’s talk about North Korea-
Donald Trump:
Excuse me. No, I have to respond to that.
Kristen Welker:
Okay. Very quickly, and then we’re going to move on to North Korea.
Donald Trump:
His son walked out with a billion and a half dollars from China to …
Joe Biden:
Not true.
Donald Trump:
… after spending 10 minutes in office and being in Air Force Two. Number one. Number two, there’s a very strong email talking about your family wanting to make $10 million a year for introductions.
Kristen Welker:
President Trump, on China policy-
Joe Biden:
That’s not true.
Kristen Welker:
… though, what specifically-
Donald Trump:
No, but wait a minute.
Kristen Welker:
What are you going to do, what specifically are you going to do to make China pay? You’ve said you’re going to make them pay.
Donald Trump:
First of all, China is paying. They’re paying billions and billions of dollars. I just gave $28 billion.
Kristen Welker:
New sanctions?
Donald Trump:
I just gave $28 billion to our farmers.
Joe Biden:
Tax payer’s money.
Donald Trump:
It’s what?
Joe Biden:
Taxpayer’s money. Didn’t come from China.
Donald Trump:
No, no. You know who the taxpayer is? It’s called China.
Joe Biden:
Not true.
Donald Trump:
China pays 28 billion, and you know what they did to pay it, Joe? They devalued their currency and they also paid up, and you know got the money? Our farmers, our great farmers, because they were targeted. You never charged them anything. Also, I charged them 25% on dumped steel, because they were killing our steel industry. We were not going to have a steel industry.
Kristen Welker:
Okay.
Donald Trump:
And now we have a steel industry.
Kristen Welker:
Okay. Vice President Biden, your response, please.
Remember that the original question was about U.S. policy in regard to North Korea. After Biden mentions how Trump’s fixation on his son is a way to avoid talking about substantive issues, Trump continues:
Donald Trump:
That is a typical statement.
Joe Biden:
I want to talk about North Korea.
Donald Trump:
Excuse me. Just for one second, please.
Kristen Welker:
10 seconds, Mr. President. 10 seconds.
Donald Trump:
That’s a typical political statement. Let’s get off this China thing, and then he looks, “The family around the table, everything.” Just a typical politician when I see that. I’m not a typical politician.
Kristen Welker:
Let’s talk about North Korea now.
Donald Trump:
That’s why I got elected. Let’s get off the subject of China. Let’s talk about sitting around the table. Come on, Joe. You could do better.
Kristen Welker:
We’re going to talk about North Korea now. President Trump, you’ve met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un three times. You’ve talked about your beautiful letters with him. You’ve touted the fact that there hasn’t been a war or a long range missile test, and yet North Korea recently rolled out its biggest ever intercontinental ballistic missile and continues to develop its nuclear arsenal. Do you see that as a betrayal of the relationship you forged.
Donald Trump:
No.
Kristen Welker:
Just 30 seconds here because we need to get onto the next topic.
Trump of course spends the next minute bragging about how he has such a great relationship with North Korea’s dictator, and how “millions of people” would be dead if he wasn’t such great pals with Kim Jong-un, only more dumbfounding than the fact that these two lovebirds are still nowhere near close to a denuclearization deal.
Trump then talked about what a “mess” Obamacare allegedly is, while continuing to trumpet his own “great” nonexistent plan. Let’s remember that if the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down the ACA in its entirety, there is no “plan” yet as a back-up. You can’t just manufacture one out of thin-air. Biden made the point for those still confused:
“There’s no way he can protect pre-existing conditions. None, zero. You can’t do it in the ether. He’s been talking about this for a long time. He’s never come up with a plan. I guess we’re going to get the pre-existing condition plan the same time we got the infrastructure plan that we waited for since ’17, ’18, ’19, and 20. I still have a few more minutes. I know you’re getting anxious. The fact is that he’s already cost the American people, because of his terrible handling of the COVID virus and economic spillover. 10 million people have lost their private insurance, and he wants to take away 22 million more people who have it under Obamacare and over 110 million people with pre-existing conditions. And all the people from COVID are going to have pre-existing conditions, what are they going to do?”
Then of course came the issue of immigration and the 500 children still in cages because the Trump’s ICE lost track of where their parents were, probably most already deported. Trump’s change-the-subject response was predictably demonizing and dehumanizing--and a lie: “Children are brought here by coyotes and lots of bad people, cartels and they’re brought here and they used to use them to get into our country. We now have as strong a border as we’ve ever had. We’re over 400 miles of brand new wall. You see the numbers.” He went on with the anti-Hispanic racist dog whistles about “murderers” and “rapists,” and showed what he really thinks about Hispanics with this statement: “I hate to say this, but those with the lowest IQ, they might come back, but there are very, very few” in regard to the asylum seekers who actually come to immigration court hearings. WTF?
Trump, of course, bragged about how he is the least “racist” person in the room, comparing himself to Abraham Lincoln, and how much he has done to uplift blacks and Hispanics economically. That flies in the face of a recent study by Columbia University, which found that because of Trump’s failure to institute a national strategy to fight the COVID-19, “By September, the monthly poverty rate for Black and Hispanic individuals was 25.2 percent and 25.8 percent, respectively, compared to 12 percent for white individuals.” Remember, Trump is president right now, not Biden.
Trump then accused the Obama/Biden administration of not passing certain legislation in eight years. Well of course he forgot about the ACA, financial reform and the economic stimulus package. And as Biden pointed out, once the Republicans regained control of Congress, their one and only goal was to prevent the administration any legislative “victories”--and much like the Trump administration has done, it could only go forward by executive order. Trump then went on to lie about all the wonderful things he has done for the environment, all perfectly transparent in their otherworldly nature.
I had to laugh when Republicans like Chris Christie had to struggle to cherry-pick a phrase or two that Biden made that they thought would alter the course of history, especially in the face of lie after lie that Trump told. What we saw last night was one candidate who spoke to a future of hope free of hate and division, and the other too desperate to deny responsibility for his failures to have time to even bother with a “plan” for the future--save one designed to stoke more hate and division. The choice on November 3 should only have become clearer in Biden’s favor.
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