It was the first debate I have watched from start to finish in many years. I felt I had to, so I did. That was one-and-a-half hours of my life that I can never get back. By the end, I felt shaky and nauseous, but more than anything I felt disgusted by some 40% of this nation who could actually watch that clown and still think he should be chosen to run this country.
Moderator Chris Wallace, to his credit, attempted to shut Donald Trump’s mouth more than a few times, but it proved to be impossible. Donald Trump interrupted not only his challenger, Joe Biden, but also Chris Wallace just about every time one of them attempted to speak. So wrapped up in himself was Trump that I actually got the feeling Joe Biden and Chris Wallace could have left and Trump would have continued his blah-blah-blah-ing. He reminded me of a battery-operated toy on steroids, only not nearly as cute as the Energizer Bunny.
If the other two debates actually happen, I think provisions should be made to enable the moderator to simply switch off Trump’s microphone when it isn’t his turn to speak. Conversely, they could hire large men with rolls of duct tape to place across his mouth every time he opens it. Frankly, I don’t see anything to be gained by having any additional debates, for nothing … NOTHING was accomplished with this one. It was not a debate, but a show … a show put on by Trump for the benefit of his rabid base who, no doubt, thought he did great.
I will spare you a blow-by-blow reporting of the debate, but if you’d like a written transcript, you can find one here . I will, however, give you a few of the more … salient moments.
- … 🤔
- …… 🤔
- …….. 🤔
Well, okay then … I guess there were no ‘salient’ moments. There were a couple of good lines, though, the best one being at the 18:18 mark when, after yet another of Trump’s juvenile repeated interruptions, Joe Biden said, “Will you shut up, man?” The moment immediately lit up my Twitter feed and continues to be the source of humour and kudos today. As several have noted, he voiced what we were all saying here at home!
Toward the end of the debate, Trump did what he had been saying he planned to do, attacking Joe Biden’s son. Personally, I think that no man with a shred of human decency would attack another man’s family for political gain. Period. But, we’re talking about Trump, so it was not unexpected. But, in my view it backfired on Trump, ‘bigly’. Here was Biden’s very heartfelt response …
“And speaking of my son, the way you talk about the military, the way you talk about them being losers and being and just being suckers. My son was in Iraq. He spent a year there. He got the Brown Star. He got the Conspicuous Service Medal. He was not a loser. He was a Patriot and the people left behind there were heroes.”
And a minute later, when Trump kept rambling …
“My son like a lot of people at home had a drug problem. He’s overtaking it. He’s fixed it. He’s worked on it. And I’m proud of him, I’m proud of my son.”
The Hunter Biden conspiracy theory, for the record, has been investigated and debunked enough times that it should have been put to bed years ago, but Trump seems not to have gotten that memo.
The best part of the entire debate was at the end when Joe Biden looked straight into the camera, looked us right in the eye and said …
“Show up and vote. You will determine the outcome of this election. Vote, vote, vote. If you’re able to vote early in your state, vote early. If you’re able to vote in person, vote in person. Vote whatever way is the best way for you, because you will… He cannot stop you from being able to determine the outcome of this election. And in terms of whether or not… When the votes are counted and they’re all counted, that will be accepted. If I win, that will be accepted. If I lose, that’ll be accepted.”
As a tool for learning more about the candidates and their platforms, the debate was worthless … a waste of time. As a means of learning something about the candidates’ personalities … it only reinforced what we already knew: Donald J. Trump is a rude & crude asshole and Joe Biden is a man of conscience, intellect, and compassion. I have no doubt that if the other two debates, scheduled for October 15th and October 22nd proceed as planned, they will also be naught but a circus act for the benefit of energizing Trump’s base. Personally, I will not waste my time watching another, though I may consider watching the vice-presidential debate between Mike Pence and Kamala Harris next week.
I largely ignore Ms. Sanders, for she is naught but a mouthpiece, says what she is told to say, and I cannot stand to look at her facial contortions nor hear her whiny voice. However, this past weekend she was on a tear, and dear friend Ellen fed me just enough tidbits to pique my curiosity, so I had to go see for myself. Sigh. Where is that blood pressure medicine???
“I don’t think Congress — particularly not this group of congressmen and women — are smart enough to look through the thousands of pages that I would assume that President Trump’s taxes will be. My guess is that most of them don’t do their own taxes, and I certainly don’t trust them to look through the decades of success that the president has and determine anything.”
On This Week with George Stephanopoulos …
I’m certain that if I wished to dig deeper, I could find even more, but already I had to take a break from writing this post to de-stress by washing a sink full of dishes … don’t worry, I only broke a couple. The job of a White House press secretary is to serve as a liaison between the president and the press. Ms. Sanders is, rather, a puppet … a mouthpiece, who is so pre-programmed that when she is asked a question, the best she can do is condemn the reporter who asked it. I suppose that if one lacks intelligence, the best defense is a good offense, and Ms. Sanders has that one down pat – she is very offensive.
I don’t know why it is, but I always seem to have an overload of snark in my head these days. It’s gotten so bad that when I cut a corner too close the other day and bumped my shoulder, I yelled that whatever idiot built this house must have been a republican! And when one of the kitties turned over the dish of kibble and it went all over the floor, I gave her a 10-minute lecture about the importance of neatness and told her that if she didn’t mend her ways I would give her to a republican family. So, it must be time for me to open that release valve and share my angst with you, my friends!
I’ve generally considered Chris a solid journalist, a cut above the usual Fox ‘News’ fare, and I’ve wondered why he was at Fox when I thought he would likely be welcomed with open arms by any of the legitimate news networks. Perhaps Chris is also beginning to wonder what he’s doing at Fox. As I noted in 
And speaking of Fox, one of their former executives, Bill Shines, who joined the Trump administration eight months ago as a “assistant to the president and deputy chief of staff for communications”, whatever the heck that means, has already resigned. Why? Not because he’s fed up with Trump and his ways, but because he wants even more … he is planning to work on Trump’s campaign for 2020. (Why is there even a Trump campaign for 2020? He needs to be gone long before then!)
The man is slimier than any snake or eel, creepier than any circus clown, more disgusting than anything my cat has ever thrown up, and yet he is being given legitimacy by some half of this nation. The “man”, of course, is none other than he-who-blows-his-own-horn, Don Trump, aka da trumpeter. “What now,” you ask. Now he has decided that he does not want a moderator for the debate scheduled next Monday (9/26), and specifically, does not want Anderson Cooper as a moderator, claiming he is “unfair”.
Why does Trump want a moderator-less debate? To answer that question, we need to look at the role and purpose of the moderator. The moderator introduces the candidates, asks the questions, but most importantly, holds the candidates to the set time limits and attempts to keep them from straying off topic. In other words, he/she keeps the debate civil and informative, at least in theory. Given that, one can easily see why Mr. Trump would prefer a debate sans moderator.
In recent years, I have found the presidential debates to be of little or no value to the viewing public. I do not watch debates, but instead read the transcript the next day, which enables me to concentrate on what was said, rather than be distracted by the ranting, facial contortions, and rudeness that has become the mainstay of all political debates. But the vast majority of people do watch them, and their “take-away” is much affected by the personalities of the candidates rather than the substance. If, in fact, there is any substance.
Filosofa's Word 