I am quoting this extensively simply because it is the best summation of the debate I watched last night that I have read:
Trump bullied and lied. He once again dismissed his hot mic boasts about sexual assault as “locker-room” talk. He denied sending an early morning tweet telling Americans to check out the (nonexistent) sex tape of a former Miss Universe, when the tweet, less than two weeks old, is on the internet for all to see. Given a chance to hit Clinton on potentially damaging revelations from WikiLeaks, he spun off on a tangent about his redevelopment of Washington’s Old Post Office, now a Trump International Hotel. He blamed Clinton for failing to act after Syria violated President Obama’s “red line” on the use of chemical weapons, allowing Clinton to point out that at the time she’d already stepped down as secretary of state. He said, “Russia is new, in terms of nuclear,” when in fact Russia first tested nuclear weapons in 1949. His threat to have a Trump Justice Department prosecute Clinton was a desecration of American civic norms. From any other candidate, such behavior would be judged a meltdown.It was weird listening to Trump. It was like listening to a living, breathing Lewis Carroll character who is not Alice. That whole digression about the Old Post Office was so odd no one is mentioning it this morning, but it sounded like your crazy uncle at Thanksgiving whose had too many trips to the bottle in the paper bag in the car outside. It was so completely incoherent (supposedly it proved his financial bona fides, don't ask me why) that, in any other year, it would have ended a campaign immediately.
Instead, this morning, Cokie Roberts (and, to be fair, everyone on PBS last night) were insisting Trump had "stopped" his "free fall." Jonah Goldberg (!) put it best: in a crashing plane, last night they got the coffee maker to work.
The sad thing is, it took Jonah Goldberg to say it. Even Alice could declare they were nothing but a pack of cards. Despite the heroic efforts of Anderson Cooper and Martha Raddatz to push back against Trump's spew (another story entirely), the media this morning continues to pretend "objective" means "both sides still do it," and that somehow this is still a serious process.
When they so clearly, clearly don't and it so clearly, clearly isn't.
NPR has no reason to exist, that's what we've got cabloid TV and hate talk radio for. It is so bad that I won't even turn it on anymore.
ReplyDeleteIf I'd known how bad it was going to get I'd never have sent them a donation during the time Frank Mankiewicz drove it into the ground in the early 80s. It's gone from a fraud on its contributors to an irrelevant fraud on its contributors. It is one of a number of phony supposed public goods that should be ended.
Win, lose, or tie? I don't even know how to answer that. That Hillary Clinton had to appear on the stage with the orange buffoon who made every effort to publicly humiliate her is a disgrace. Of course, Clinton had no choice but to endure the verbal abuse far beyond usual campaign rhetoric, along with Trump's predatory stalking and invasion of her space was shocking and disturbing to watch. That Clinton carried on and engaged with the people who asked questions, as she tried to appear calm in the face of the horror that had to have put her under great stress, is to her credit. The truest words Trump said was that Clinton is a fighter, and she doesn't give up.
ReplyDeleteYup.
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