"....like punching Chuck Wepner in the face...."
I promised myself I wouldn’t write about the debate. I didn’t see it in real time for one thing. I was watching the Phillies blow a 4-1 lead….in a game that ended with Bryce Harper pulling a hamstring as he made the final out, which could possibly put him out of action for the rest of the summer. So I was in no mood to listen to Trump spew gibberish about sharks and motorboats, or to watch Biden try not to get swamped in a blizzard of lies by crying “that’s a load of malarkey” over and over. I did notice that my Facebook feed was twitching, however. Biden’s main goal was to prove to the nation that his age wasn’t gonna be an issue. Mission not accomplished, as he looked ancient up there, at times confused and sputtering, but mostly just exhausted. Not everybody at 80 years old is Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger, bubba.
Trump, on the other hand, faced once again with moderators who refused to fact-check even some of his most insane ramblings, such as when he said that Democrats are killing babies after they are born, seemed to be having a grand old time. When asked specific questions, he refused to answer them, instead offering up his usual potpourri of drivel, sounding like the drunk uncle at Thanksgiving dinner. His word salad schtick is so ingrained by now that nobody really pays attention to what he’s actually saying. For whatever reason moderators suddenly morph into Sinatra in The Manchurian Candidate. CNN co-hosts were on the same level as Pat McAfee interviewing Aaron Rogers. They were an absolute journalistic abomination and should be clubbed over the head like baby seals.
When the two men started arguing over their golf handicaps, an entire nation froze in absolute horror. A nation of over 300 million people are left with THIS?
Trump has a lizard brain. It’s filled with crayon drawings and childish insults. He speaks at a 4th grade level. Biden tried to counter this with byzantine facts and figures, which he clearly did not have a handle on. Facts and figures do not register with Donald Trump. The man credited George Washington with taking over the airports during the Revolutionary War, and once suggested that Frederick Douglass was still alive. He redraws state borders with a sharpie. Throwing numbers at him is like punching Chuck Wepner in the face.
Biden somehow turned the abortion issue, which should be low hanging fruit (Trump minutes earlier called the decimation of Roe v Wade a “great thing”, a statement some 70% of Americans disagree with), into a rambling monologue that ended, bizarrely, with something about illegal immigrants committing rape. Even Trump seemed confused. Moments like these are what move Vegas odds. Democrat power brokers were seen diving for their cell phones….or reaching for the communal bottle in the middle of the war room. Biden appeared lost. “Confused and stunned, like duck hit on the head” is how Abraham Lincoln described one of his recently whipped Generals during the Civil War. This was that. There’s no way to sugarcoat this son. Biden looked and sounded awful.
“I didn’t have sex with a porn star”. Surely that statement has never been uttered in a Presidential debate until last night. Such is the level of discourse we’re stuck at. And pretty brazen considering the man uttering it is a 34 time convicted felon waiting to be sentenced for…..among other things, paying hush money to a porn star that he had sex with. A man who called war dead “losers and suckers”, and refused to honor their valor because it was raining and the ferret on his head would be disturbed, gets to stand on a debate stage and lie with no pushback from a news organization, like all news organization, has one single solitary job. To search out the truth. A man who tried to overthrow the government now wants the reigns to that government for the second time, and all CNN can do is say “ok, let’s move on….” All Biden could do in the face of a blizzard of lies is to look slack-jawed on the split screen, like it’s 2am and he’s staring into a medicine cabinet. If Rome is gonna eventually burn, last night might have been the casually tossed match into the dried brush.
But then again…meh. This could be a 3 day story. It’ll certainly be long gone by the time Trump gets sentenced to possible house arrest, which could lead to the second debate (scheduled for September) including a guy wearing an ankle bracelet. That is if there is a second debate. The way democrats were acting last night they might all chug Hemlock and lay down to sleep on the DC mall.
Biden is a thoroughly decent man who is simply well past his prime. Trump is an ignorant asshole with the morals of a diseased toad. Neither is fit to be President of the United States.
‘Murica, bitches! This is our penance. Do better next time.
In a bit…
—tf