I kept checking the time to see how much longer this thing was going to last. My husband ducked out about halfway through, but my son and I stuck it out to the bitter end.
My prediction? Trump will try to weasel out of the remaining two debates. He has to know that his performance last night was an unmitigated disaster. He was unprepared and floundering, spouting various bits and pieces that sometimes hit his target (as in his remarks about Clinton’s support of the TPP or his challenge about her e-mails) but which he then utterly failed to follow up. You can disagree with every single one of Clinton’s policies and positions and still say, “We can’t have this childish, pouting, rude, ignorant man sitting in the White House.”
I thought the scene after the debate ended was very telling. Trump stayed up on stage and his family came up to join him. They were all pretty quiet; there was no back-slapping or hugging that I could see. Meanwhile, Hillary and Bill were down in the audience, shaking hands and schmoozing. I realized after only a few minutes that the Trump camp had decamped. I don’t know where they went, but they sure didn’t hang around. Meanwhile the Clinton gabfest went on.
Let me explore Trump’s e-mail comment in a little more detail, because it’s very telling. He was being pressed and pressed on why he wouldn’t release his tax returns and finally said, “I’ll release my tax returns when you release your 30,000 deleted e-mails.” This retort elicited some cheers from the audience (who had been told to stay quiet). Okay. Now I realize, because my husband made his living for many years as a software engineer, that “deleted” doesn’t necessarily mean “gone.” So some of those thousands of messages may still be around, if they weren’t taken care of by BleachBit or a hammer. But note how Trump wiggles out of the question at hand. (Along with saying that “you don’t learn much from tax returns anyway.” Oh?) Why couldn’t he say, “You know what? The tax returns will be put on my website tomorrow. And, Secretary Clinton, maybe you could dig up a few of your e-mails that escaped destruction and put them up on yours.” Something like that. But he won’t say that because he won’t release the tax returns. They’re obviously too damaging to him. So the wiggling and wriggling goes on.
Well, better stop, because there’s a ton of excellent material out there about the debates that you should be reading. My pick is every single one of the pieces on RedState, but I’ll give the link for the one that sums it up the best. Then, if you’re interested in reading more good stuff, you can get more articles from the sidebar.
Takeaway line from this one: “If he’s lucky, Kellyanne Conway will get a hold of him and say, “That was awful. It’s time to prepare for the next debate.” (But see my recent post: “Kellyanne Conway, Please Resign Now!”)
“For Donald Trump, the Debate was a Total Disaster”
