Ruminations on Tuesday"s Trump-Biden Debate: A Missed Opportunity for President Trump

Yes, I know the President and Melania have tested positive for Covid. That’s for another post. The initial reaction to the debate: What da! What did we witness? It’s not a debate. America watched an old fashioned Midwest smash mouth football game. Two contenders, fueled by ambition, are the finalists for the most powerful position in the world in a contest fueled with opprobrium, hatred, lies and dirty tricks. President Trump has been castigated by the media for his bullying behavior. Yet a close reading of the transcript shows Vice President Biden was the first to interrupt the speaker. The second interrupter was moderator Chris Wallace, a Fox News Never-Trumper. Chris Wallace was pushing Trump but not Biden. President Trump quickly realized that he was debating both Vice President Biden and Moderator Wallace’s hostile questioning. He then went into his defensive mode, which is to attack. He is a New York City streetfighter. That he did! Losing the first debate is not fatal. Let us remember that on October 7, 1984 President Reagan lost the first debate to Vice President Mondale. The President was underprepared. The73 year old president seemed old and out of it. He came back strongly to convincingly win the next debate. Let us further remember that Governor Mitt Romney decisively bested the underprepared President Obama in their first debate on October 3,2012. President Obama looked like he was on the ropes. The President was a clear winner in the two following debates. President Trump missed several opportunities to pin the Vice President to the ropes. All he had to do was let Joe Biden talk longer, tire out, and ramble on. The President will be better prepared in the next debate. He could clearly state I believe in America and the independence of the American people. I believe in their freedom to decide for themselves. You believe the government should make the decisions for them. Joe Biden said he rejects the Green New Deal, but then he detailed the “Biden Plan,” which is simply a rebranded Green New Deal. Biden should have been asked to explain the difference. The response to Biden’s claims of spectacular green employment is to remind Americans of the Obama-Biden non-existent “shovel ready” jobs. The response to Biden’s government medical care, which was garbled, was “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” and “If you like your insurance company, you can keep your insurance company.” Why should we trust you now? He said the President shut the economy down: “This is his economy he shut down,” but then said he would be willing to do so himself. The Vice President supposedly won the debate on style. Yet he twice called the President a clown, a liar, racist, Putin’s pawn, and the worst president America ever had. He said there was “nothing smart” about President Trump, this from the student initially kicked out of law school for plagiarism and then graduated in the top half of the bottom 10% of his class (76/85). He claimed to attend Syracuse Law School on a non-existent full scholarship. He once told a questioner: “I think I probably have a much higher IQ than you.” The Vice President has a long history of self-embellishment. President Trump responded “There’s nothing smart about you Joe.” What’s offensive about a truthful statement? Vice President Biden told a number of lies during the debate, but the “factcheckers” never called him to account. He was never pushed by the moderator on his refusal to answer the questions about ending the filibuster, stacking the Supreme Court, or why he didn’t contact the governors and mayors about the violence in their cities. He didn’t answer the filibuster and Supreme Court questions because his handlers told him not to and because he will. He was never called out on why Antifa is not an organization but a movement. Antifa and the Woke mobs are the major rioters, looters and arsonists. President Trump though was grilled by Chris Wallace on non-denouncing white supremacists. The mainstream media has been hammering him on white supremacy. The Vice President repeated the canard about white Supremacists and Charlottesville. The President should have called the Vice President out and remind America of what he said two days on August 14, 2017 after a white supremacist plowed into a crowd, killing a woman two days earlier: “Racism is evil. And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant in everything we hold dead as Americans.” President Trump has spoken out several times on violence on both sides. The former non-University of Pennsylvania Professor said “Roe v. Wade” is on the ballot. The two ways to assess the debate are form and substance. The Vice President failed the substance, but was not called to account by Chris Wallace. President Trump tried to push the issues, but was often stopped by Chris Wallace. The debate was a missed opportunity for President Trump. He should have jumped on the classic Bidenism: “KEEP THE POLLS OPEN UNTIL ALL THE VOTES ARE COUNTED.” What an opportunity for voter fraud!