Posted On: Saturday - June 29th 2024 9:12AM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '24 Trump Zhou Bai Dien
There are 37 comments (far shy of a record, mind you) under our quick Presidential Debate post of Thursday night. Though I didn't watch it, there WILL be more posts, as this kind of humor and stupidity is not something a site like ours can afford to pass up.
Between that and the encouraging and engrossing Tucker Carlson interview of Steve Sailer, we'll be busy through Tuesday. Other stupidity will have to wait in the queue. For now, let me paste in 2 summaries of the debate, first a short one from Old Soldier, and then a longer one, with much on the Lyin' Press handling and reaction, from E.H. Hail follows.
From commenter Old Soldier:
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The things that were apparent to me during the debate: (a) Biden definitely knew the questions in advance and had carefully prepared responses programmed into his mind...but couldn't possibly speak the responses clearly because his over-drugged brain was too drugged for him to say anything clearly (b) Biden looked like death warmed over (c) Biden was slurring most words to the point where his words were incomprehensible and his sentences were just garbled sounds that even he did not understand (d) Biden seemed totally lost and confused throughout the debate. I could go on and on, but there's no point.
After the debate, the liberal commentators worked diligently to put a positive spin on Biden's responses and they're now fact checking everything Trump said while fact checking NOTHING that Biden said (but maybe the fact checkers couldn't understand Biden any better than I did???).
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From commenter E.H. Hail:
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I'm glad I watched the debate, or most of it, in its full form -- by which I mean not clips curated by partisans or social-media addicts, but the debate as aired. I also watched without following any rolling commentary on social-media or elsewhere during. Afterwards I saw reactions from the various sides, including CNN, MSNBC, Fox, Univision, and the interesting network NewsNation. I'll give here all that I can remember.
Newsnation seems to hire anchors fired from elsewhere (Chris Cuomo a host; Bill O'Reilly, an analyst; Geraldo, same) and aim for a happy-go-lucky big-tent centrism. The tone is definitely different and happier feeling that the big players.
NewsNation brought on Robert Kennedy Jr., who, it was explained, had "held his own debate" on Youtube. RFK Jr. answered all the same questions asked by the CNN moderators, for a Youtube audience of his fans. I didn't see any of that. He is not excelling in the polls.
Chris Cuomo suggested to RFK Jr., on the air, that he (RFK) ought to make some calls to the DNC. He could now find receptive audience for an arrangement for the DNC to ditch Biden and nominate him, RFK Jr., as the Democratic nominee for president after Biden's terrible performance. Chris Cuomo said it's because "you have such solid Democratic credentials," because he's already in the field and has an enthusiastic following, and because Biden had failed so shockingly at the debate, the stars had aligned. RFK seemed to say that would never happen. The DNC hates him and is inundating his campaign with legal harassment to try to keep him off ballots or otherwise harm him. He seemed really resentful against the DNC.
Biden's constant rifting off, trailing off, staring into space, mumbling, speaking too softly, all looked bad, of course. But I was, I think, more taken by the 'canned' nature of all his responses, a point Old Soldier brings up. I don't know if I agree that Biden "definitely" had the questions fed to him before the debate (although Hillary Clinton did have that advantage in her CNN debates, it was later revealed). But what is for sure is these were rehearsed lines. The problem is, Biden couldn't remember his own rehearsed lines and constantly bumbled them. A good thinker, who is also a extemporaneous speaker, doesn't need to memorize set-piece lines like that. There were also times I wondered whether Biden had a secret ear-piece in which someone was correcting his missteps live, because he often corrected himself after misspeaking. But maybe that just happens with someone trying hard to recall memorized lines.
Biden's points were the "same-old, same-old" ones he always uses. This always happens with "old" people, of course; some people are still sharp in the early eighties (Biden turns 82 later in this year), but almost all people, by that age, find it hard to truly live in the time they are in. Instead, they are always re-living some time of the past and applying it to the present. There were moments when this also came through from Biden, ranging from re-living the talking-points of the 2010s, including some proven to be false; but also dropping in the word "segregation" when the topic of Blacks came up, a word from the 1960s when Biden was in his twenties.
Another observation: Biden's facial reactions, body-language reactions to Trump were mostly muted. He sometimes condemned him as an evil person or a liar, but when Trump was making points he just stared blankly, like he was confused.
Someone produced this 'meme' during the debate, which hits the points I am making there:
MSNBC strangely brought on the California governor, Newsom, for a strangely long and strangely toned soft-ball interview. It was supposed to be a reaction to the debate, but it turned out to be, in my opinion, a long Gavin Newsom For President infomercial. All grins by the mixed-race anchor for interviewed him, the four-night-a-week successor to Rachel Maddow.
I did see some of the MSNBC reaction. Rachel Maddow, their star, was on hand and in the driver's seat of their large panel of experts. Her anti-Trump hysteria about Russia-Russia-Russia, and all the rest of what she traded in for so long, was absent tonight. She looked shell-shocked and said frankly that Biden gave the worst possible debate performance short of falling off the stage and begging for help on live TV (she didn't say any of this, this is my interpreting her mood). She looked like a general who had just received intelligence that the enemy had him surrounded, supplies would be cut off, and there was no easy way out. A restrained panic. That would characterize the mood of most of the anti-Trump commentators.
However, MSNBC tried to focus on the anti-Trump line (playing to their audience) and tried to go neutral on Biden. CNN, meanwhile, which had a panel of its own experts that looked to be about twelve people, was really anti-Biden, and kept putting things on the air like "Influential Dem: Biden as nominee is problematic" and more. CNN brought on Kamala Harris who attacked and mocked her interviewer, but some on the panel of experts praised her for it, which was also strange.
On Fox, the response was as would be expected. The smart-alec Jesse Watters, who is Tucker Carlson's replacement, said he was shocked tonight, not at anything from the debate stage but from within his own chest. He said he felt repeated pangs of sympathy for Biden, he felt bad for Biden. The performance, supposedly, was SO bad (for Biden) that it induced sympathy, "someone help this old man" feeling in him, a well-known Biden-hater.
I think CNN had the old anti-Trump hack Chris Wallace, the Jewish son of longtime journalist Mike Wallace. Chris Wallace was long of Fox, so I'm not sure why he was on CNN. (It turns out he went from Fox to CNN in early 2022; who knew?). Chris Wallace was on the warpath against Biden, saying it was a deep national shame that a man with clear signs of dementia was running for president, and there was no defense for this. Biden had a job to do, and he failed to do it. One or two co-panelists tried to contradict him, but he slammed them and morally attacked them for trying to defend Biden here. This is a Jewish debating tactic that I've often seen used, and is a large part of what's behind the crassness of political commentary now, especially its cable-TV form. It's take-no-prisoners moral-shaming.
Chris Wallace, who is a Democrat and hates Trump, was clearly trying to use his considerable influence to get Biden replaced. Although millions were watching all this chattering, a lot of it was, I think, aimed at the donors and the DNC bigwigs. The DNC has enough "superdelegates" that they might be able to maneuver a way to defeat Biden at the convention and replaced him with someone else. No one knew who that might be. A few names came up, one (I can't remember from whom) was: Josh Shapiro. He was elected governor of Pennsylvania in 2022.
Bill O'Reilly, on NewsNation, said he guaranteed that Biden would not be the nominee. He wasn't certain of that position before the debate, but now he is certian, he says. From the signals CNN was sending, it's no longer implausible that an anti-Biden palace-coup will occur within the DNC, before their convention in mid-August of this year, at Chicago. Geraldo and Bill O'Reilly laughed at both being old guys who remember the 1968 DNC convention in Chicago and its legendary chaos (I recall Pat Buchanan narrated himself witnessing the chaos from atop a high building). The 2024 DNC convention is also in Chicago. Bill O'Reilly then added that the role of left-wing violent protestors from 1968 would now be played by "pro-Hamas people."
There was also a live-translation Spanish simulcast on Univision. It's a remarkable skill to be able to do live-translation in that way. It must've been especially tough to do it for Biden when he was at his least-coherent.
The Univision commentary, which I also saw some of, was neutral and lacked the alarmist tone of CNN and MSNBC, and the gloating from Fox. From what I've seen of Univision's news coverage, they strive to be several things: (1.) pro-Hispanic, always (in which news is given from a "things happening with Hispanics always lead); (2.) serious news and not overt propaganda; (3.) not too serious, a lightness of touch, in the way you get from local news or from English newscasts of many decades past now.
Univision had two commentators on, one Republican, one Democrat, both White men with thick glasses who spoke reasonably and politely and were completely without histrionics and urged caution at jumping to any conclusions. But as I've already said, histrionics ruled the day for the agenda-setting talkers of the Left.
What's disappointing to me about all this drama, which is easy to get swept up into, as a sports mega-fan can be swept up by some big tournament. (Univision chose to air the debate and follow-on commentary instead of the latest "Copa America" soccer match, which it's been airing since the Western Hemisphere's biggest soccer-tournament began last week.) But in the debate itself and in the avalanche of reactions, of which I've given what I remember here, I heard little about actual policies.
Will Trump debate illegals or not? He dodged the question (which was asked to him twice), and instead he just used his usual talking-points. He bashed Biden for letting them in and focused on the dubious idea that most are directly exported from prisons in other countries, or insane asylums. He still wouldn't say if he'd deport them or not. What's his policy? Who knows? It all becomes a personality-game and a gotcha-game.
Trump is a clinical narcissist and, like all such people, is good at charming audiences. He won't even say for sure what his policies are, though. And given his record, we have no way to rely on him even keeping what promises he does make. So you're not voting for a set of policies but just kind of a vague apparition, a tendency, a mood, a gust of wind.
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I like that meme, but still, I'm attached to the line at the bottom of a small poster the secretary had in her office: Dumb looks are still free!
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