Trump spits out more lies and deflections during last night's debate
In his masterful work, 'The Art of War', the ancient Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu wrote:
"Every battle is won or lost before it's ever fought."
To the extent last night's Town Hall presidential debate at Washington University was yet another battle in the "war" for the presidency - between Democrats and Republicans- Donald Trump blew it for his side. It may be difficult for many voters to process, but Donald J. Trump actually lost last night's debate before it began. He did so by virtue of the Friday release of the disgusting video where Trump bantered like a drunken jock with Bozo BiIly Bush about how to assault women. He's heard at one point to assert: "You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything."". Even advertising reprehensible modes of assaulting married women against their volition, as when he admits: ""Yeah, I moved on her like a b*** but couldn't get there. and she was married. I tried to f*ck her but she was married."
In the words of Major Garrett reporting this morning on last night's spectacle that hit new lows for any debate, even online in trolldom:
"Donald Trump took the stage with the weight of his sexist comments dragging his campaign down"
As soon as that 2005 tape was made public it went viral and elicited 100 times more outrage than the claims of one Reepo lawmaker for "legalized rape" during the 2012 election. It essentially jumped the memetic shark and became a point for judgment and exercise of citizen moral capacity, as well as civility. It then became obvious even to the most uninformed political dunderhead that Trump had only one way out: Like a clawed Razorback hog fighting a wildcat he had to drag his opponent into his own shit pit and try to cover her with so much of it that it would stick to both and he'd at least look like he gave as good as he got. But in the case last night, he didn't. All "Troll Trump" showed is that he really he is the deranged swine that emerged in that tape. (Confirmed in another audio tape released by CNN of a segment on the Howard Stern radio show where he's heard to agree with Stern that his daughter Ivanka is "a piece of ass". His daughter for god's sake!)
Since most morally aware and civility minded citizens -- even among the 'undecided voters" (an incredible assumption as it is)- judged Trump from his barbarous words in those released tapes, he had already lost in the public court of opinion before the debate began. Worse, he understood that he lost in the optics realm, and so knew he had to emerge as a smearing, deflecting, defensive, paranoid, to even make it appear to be debating.
Anyone with a grain of moral sense and an investment in facts saw through this, and it follows close on the heels of his 3:20 a.m tweets the weekend before asking Americans to "check out a sex tape" on Alicia Machado. As former Bush security czar Michael Chertoff put it on 'Morning Joe' four days ago, "there is no way a person with such manifestly poor judgment should be in the oval office."
And judgment is the key. Trump then, trapped by the horrific optics of that tape, had no chance to even try to appear normal by smearing his opponent, trying to reduce her to his level. This was especially in terms of his responses to the questions of Anderson Cooper. Indeed, after Cooper's question to Trump on his behavior to women after the release of the WaPo tape, all Trump could do is rant, disgustingly deflect and try to make Hillary the "bad guy". As today's Denver Post Editorial bluntly put it:
"Only in a mind as unprincipled and undisciplined as Trump's does such an argument make sense".
Alas, there are evidently as many of those as there of the same genus that deny the reality of global warming via arguments that it is really a "climate alarmist conspiracy by the government".
Trump's indiscriminate deflections, ad hominem, non sequiturs and red herrings grew so exponentially onerous and predictable I had to leave the TV room after only fifteen minutes, though I could still hear the answers from my office.
Richard Wolffe of the UK Guardian offered perhaps the best summary take on what transpired last night for those who missed it:
"That banging sound you heard were the last nails being hammered to the coffin of the Trump campaign. Or it might have been the thumping of Donald Trump as he stalked the debate stage.
Either way, the Republican nominee treated the notion of a contrite, humble performance with all the subtlety of a subway train. Not for him was the usual shame we associate with someone caught in a moment of sleaze."
Wolffe went on:
"He prowled around Hillary Clinton, looming behind her when she approached the undecided voters in the audience. He hugged himself and hooked his hands in his belt. He inhaled so sharply through his nose that he sounded like he was snorting his own insults."
Snorting his insults is right. I pondered how much crack he took before his appearance, maybe mixed with opioids and Gin. But then I understood he'd likely be declared the "winner" by his gratuitously ignorant zombie followers just for showing up and acting half way sane, and not trying to grope Hillary. I mean the bar for Trump was set so low that all he had to do was show up, not scream in that tinny voice every second - or dance on top of his chair while throwing paper planes at Hillary. He met that hurdle to his delirious Trumpie followers. (At least two polls in battleground states show that at least 90 percent are with Trump despite the tape.)
Especially after one read the TIME article 'The Truth Is Out There' (Oct. 17, p. 18) on how the whole notion of truth has been distorted in this country and ended up being whatever anyone wants to believe. As the TIME article puts it:
"In dozens of interviews voters made arguments based on claims unsupported by facts, often peddling debunked conspiracy theory as plausible truth"
Such as global warming being a planned "hoax", invented by "scientists paid off by the government" to spread alarm and "bring down Western financial systems and civilization". And that is the crap believed by the "intelligent" sector of voters, as reside in Mensa and Intertel.
In such an atmosphere, replete with PR and BS, anyone might believe Trump "stopped the bleeding last night". But don't be fooled or deceived. To quote Richard Wolffe again:
"Wounded animals behave in strange ways, and Donald Trump was nothing if not strange at the second presidential debate. He went far beyond barking his usual interruptions and conspiracies from the darkest corners of the internet: he answered a question from a Muslim voter by saying it was “a shame” there was Islamophobia. Then, two feet away from his questioner, he stoked Islamophobia as much as he possibly could: “We could be very politically correct, but whether we like it or not there is a problem"
But Trump's derangement - again prompted by the release of the tape didn't stop there, He blamed both Clintons for raising the issue of sexual assault, as if he was just a hapless victim. The mark of a total psychotic. He actually said:
“I think it’s disgraceful and I think she should be ashamed of herself, if you want to know the truth,”
But this is akin to a serial rapist blaming the prosecutor when informed of his foul deeds in the latter's opening trial statements. The trouble is, in the current atmosphere of inverse truth - where lies become truth and facts are negotiable, Trump's performance and verbiage might be accepted as sincere. And in dismissing the 2005 tape exposing his sexual assault references many Trumpies - including women - may well believe "it's only words" - as if words don't matter. But to scotch that meme, let us recall that during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, one misinterpretation of a few words in one Russian cable could have unleashed a nuclear war.
The most vile tactic - again revealing this pig's lack of temperament and judgment for the job- was convening a clique of women accusing Bill Clinton of sexual transgressions. He seems not to have realized that for those with more than the memory of a gnat this was already prosecuted (by Kenneth Starr) in the late 1990s and Clinton was impeached. Even Trump at the time - in recently released videos- was heard to proclaim Clinton "was a victim". Even Starr's 'Whitewater' investigation found that Juanita Broderick's charge of "rape" - back in 1978 - could not be proven.
So why bring this up now? Well to deflect attention from his own disgusting behavior! A tactic as ancient as those used by Roman Senators caught with their hands in the till, or after raping one too many of their slaves.
But the perceptual moral abyss remains vast. It is as if the country is divided into two camps: the realist, fact-based citizenry , and the unhinged irrational deplorables who couldn't recognize civic standards and decorum if it bit them in the collective ass. This is the segment who'd believe anything if Trump or one of his surrogates said it. If there really existed a gullibility quotient this lot would produce the highest scores.
To sum up this debate Richard Wolffe puts it best:
"The nicest thing you could say about Trump’s performance was that it was bonkers. A Red Bull display of sheer madness all the way to the end".
See also Robert De Niro's blasting of Trump in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFpFDyKeqyA
And:
http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/p-m-carpenter/69294/the-gops-gutter-with-trump-its-distance-or-death
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