Peggy Noonan Uses "Godfather Pt. II" Script To Claim Trump's Insult Of the Fallen Was Merely A Case Of "Family Loyalty"

As I noted in previous posts,  WSJ columnist Peggy Noonan can no longer be trusted to provide a rational or halfway objective take on Trump.  Noonan, in a misfire last month ('The Democrats Miss The Meaning' Aug. 22-23, p. A13):
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-democrats-miss-the-meaning-11597980333

claimed that the Dems at their convention "beat the crap out of the country" -   which was a gross misinterpretation.   As I had to point out in my Aug. 27 post, they in fact,  beat the crap out of what TRUMP has let the country become. As Tim O'Brien  aptly pointed out (Bloomberg News):

"Trumpism has fostered a cult of personality around Trump, allowing him to posture as the final arbiter of truth and guardian of the downtrodden. But division, chaos an disrepair - and the corruption of the American experiment - are the long term consequences."

Hence, no good thing can really be said of our nation until and unless the Trump pestilence  is totally eliminated. Only then can we rebuild the nation to what it was,  what it could be.  Even now as I write this Trump is soiling more of the office of the presidency with his lies and flouting of norms, including saying (yesterday at an ABC Town Hall) "I didn't downplay the virus, I upgraded it!"  in answer to an undecided voter's question.  WTF?  Does this walking turd think voters are stupid?  They already heard him admit to downplaying it on tape!  (Thanks to Bob Woodward, author of 'RAGE' - which I am now reading.)

A day earlier, at a California forum in the midst of the state's wild fires, the little orange fucktard actually said: it "will get cooler, wait and see"  and also that the fires were from poor forest management.   Then having his deranged mutt and henchman Michael Caputo troll about "left wing hit squads"  threatening Trump's zombies near the election.  Oh yeah, and CDC scientists committing "sedition" against Trump.

 Then you also have the spectacle of a notorious criminal like Roger Stone (whose sentence was commuted by Trump, i.e.  for Stone's nefarious involvement in the Russia conspiracy). No surprise Stone is now  demanding Trump declare martial law for the election and lock up Dems.  And let's not forget a toady like Bill Barr fouling the DOJ and about to let another lackey - John Durham- release a twisted and bogus "report" on the Russia probe.  By 'twisted' I mean going after the investigators (FBI, Mueller, etc.) when in fact the Trump campaign's cooperation with the Russians was masterfully exposed in the  recently released  966 page final instalment of the Senate Intelligence Committee report, entitled :  “Volume 5: Counterintelligence Threats and Vulnerabilities,”

But all that isn't enough for the hare-brained Noonan (who temporarily mustered enough brain power  6 weeks ago to say Trump ought to resign) reverting to blind Trump love in her latest twaddle

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-loyalty-and-the-godfather-11599779600

 Therein seeking to defend Trump's mocking of the fallen by appeal to the "family" script for The Godfather Pt. II.  Before that, Peggy trots out friends of hers who confide in her they still plan to vote for Trump despite acknowledging - as one did that:

"Donald Trump is a boorish, narcissistic, self aggrandizing, petulant child who has sown significant discord among my fellow citizens.  He has little knowledge of his current job description or limitations.”

No, you can't make this shit up.  But one supposes Peggy is happy to expose friends even dumber and less insightful than she is.   It's all relative in Trump World, after all. This turkey she quotes then has the absolute temerity to assert one reason for his misgivings about Biden is that he "does exhibit a degree of obvious cognitive impairment".   Which is choice given Trump - aka the Dotard- can barely pass a basic test for  early Alzheimer's patients.  And who, in the real realm we live in, actually believes the California wildfires  aren't from climate change,  adding, "Yes it will get cooler you'll see."    For which any thinking citizen would instantly award an IQ of ....10.  Biden, the supposed mental slacker, at least had the insight, awareness and gumption to refer to Trump as a "climate arsonist" which is what he is.  Give him four more years and watch the remainder of the country either burn up or be flooded out - as he trashes even more environmental regulations and puts more toadies into agencies - like he just  did at the NOAA.   See  e.g.

As The West Burns, Trump Appoints a Climate Science Denier to NOAA

But Noonan outdoes herself for pure stupidity, nonsense and gullibility when she devotes an entire fourth of her  WSJ column to the Godfather  II script to provide fictional support for Dotard denigrating troops.  I reproduce the relevant section below for readers directly from the paper.   I do this because it has more impact than reading the words from the link above.   Again she is using this as counterpoint to the Atlantic piece by Michael Goldberg, e.g.

Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are 'Losers ... - The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/trump-americans-who-died-at-war-are-losers-and-suckers/615997/

She is resorting to this pathetic ploy to try to make the specious case that - like Sonny's family loyalty emphasis in the Godfather II movie-   Trump is also about family loyalty which trumps any military service, or higher respect for the military. 

Read her words carefully, and you will see she takes this fictional script seriously and as a worthwhile template to defend (or at least justify)  Trump's deplorable words in referring to active military (and fallen military) as "suckers" and "losers".   Indeed, Noonan ends her idiocy writing this:

"Mr. Trump would know that scene well. Perhaps it gave him a higher rationale for claiming bone spurs in his deferment during Vietnam. It wasn’t selfishness, disagreement with the war, cowardice. It was loyalty to family."

Again, this is verbatim from this WSJ harpy's loopy piece.  Oh no, it wasn't cowardice, despite the fact that Trump got his "bonespurs"  I-Y exemption from a note written by a quack. Not from actually having to undergo a full  4 ½   hour draft physical as I did in March, 1965 (sent the notice to report -to the shock of Biever Hall dorm mates -  while in the middle of my 2nd semester as a Loyola University freshman.)

And lordy be, it wasn't selfishness that led to his calling the fallen at Belleau Wood "losers" and "suckers" - it was merely "loyalty" to his family.  If Noonan really believes this she ought to resign her columnist position instantly.  Oh wait, she is in the op-ed pages of the WSJ -  which editorial board Joe Scarborough unleashed a classic rant against barely a week ago.

The country is going to hell in a proverbial hand basket thanks to Trump and his gangsters, and Peggy Noonan prefers we worry more about Joe Biden and the Dems being "socialists".   While giving cover to Trump's abominable dismissing of military war dead,  using  a fictional Mafia movie script.

Pardon me while I barf.

See Also:

Cody Fenwick

7 Ridiculous Moments from Trump’s Town Hall Train Wreck

by Cody Fenwick | September 16, 2020 - 8:01am | permalink

— from Alternet


AND:

Trump's Big Lies Reveal a Truth: Right-wing Science Denial Was Never about Ignorance, Just Cruelty

by Amanda Marcotte | September 16, 2020 - 7:39am | permalink

— from Salon

Coming This Week: The Biggest RNC Clown Show In 28 Years

"It's always worth it to get the best seats in the center and enjoy our master's best melt downs!"


The  RNC begins this week, which elicits the question: Why would anyone with anything between the ears pay attention to what these screwballs claim, or their over the top displays of Trump love?   As most sensible citizens can agree it will most likely be the biggest clown show on Earth.  I have no intention of watching that 4-ring (4-day) circus, but predict the following "highlights" over the week:

1) Trump will resort to more  lies  about the alleged "great economy".  Like Adolf Hitler, his hero, Trump believes the more you tell a lie the greater chance it will be believed.  This may be one reason he keeps repeating the "strongest economy" ever which is bollocks.

Fact:  He has claimed more than 360 times that the economy on his watch was the “strongest ever.” Not even close.  No way and no how. Annualized growth under Trump ranked seventh among his 11 predecessors. And growth actually slowed during each of Trump’s three years.   Lastly, his terrible handling of the pandemic directly translated into the enormous problems we now face: an economy in its worst crisis since the Great Depression.

How Trump keeps an edge in polls (over Biden) concerning the economy and its performance is a question for the political cognoscenti to address.  All I know is he doesn't deserve any edge at all.   People who signal in polls they prefer Trump for the economy are either blind, brain dead,  fact-free ignoramuses  or inbred fools and morons.  There's no other explanation.

2) "Freedom" dog whistles to be sounded - on guns and masks

First, by Missourian Mark McCloskey who  - with his wife Patricia - will live on in infamy for the stunt they pulled back in May - pointing weapons at racial justice  protesters.



Expect Mark to wax  long and hard on "liberty" and how owning a gun - preferably an AR-15- helps to define it  Especially if you can point a loaded weapon at black protesters under the pretense they might raid your  property.  McCloskey's bunkum will be especially important given how the NRA has recently fallen from grace after reports of their financial shenanigans and misdirected funds.

Second, expect a known anti-Masker to claim - likely in a prerecorded session- how masks are an infringement on personal liberty and after all, shouldn't one be permitted to do with one's own body what he will? No thought that masks protect others from your germs.  

 3) Fear mongering on steroids:

- Expect to hear this canard (with some minor variations)  endlessly repeated: 

"If Biden wins expect Antifa goons to ransack cities, beat innocents and wreck businesses."   

Trump will also bellow: "If you like socialists and carnage then elect Biden!"   Of course, the truth is we've already seen all the carnage compliments of Trump, including infants separated from mothers and locked in cages, and innocent protesters being shot by impact weapons, tear gassed and beaten with truncheons.   Trump said it was done in the interest of "law and order.".  What's truly choice here is the most defiantly criminal resident ever invoking the "law and order soap box to dog whistle to whiteys, white racists, that he is their only protection against the "socialist, radical" hordes.  No one ever said the RNC lacked a sense of irony!

4) Making excuses and specious justifications for inaction on the HEROES Act.

For not putting another cent into a new stimulus program, and continuing to assert (without any viable data) that if a $600 bonus unemployment had been approved, people would have just sat on their bums all day eating Twinkies.  This inaction now as it is estimated 40 million Americans could face eviction by year's end, and 17 million will need food stamps - which Trump now plans to reduce access to by adding a new stipulation, i.e. that the person be able to produce pay slips to show s/he has been working.

The Repukes will also continue to have Trump's back (butt?) by insisting mail voting is a pathway to perdition, and will lead to massive fraud or even - god forbid  - unfairly taking the election.  All of which is nonsense given that-  as I showed in my August 21st post -  mail ballots are basically fool proof, hack proof, and Trump proof. Which is why Trump hates them.

5)  When the 4 days are concluded the foul air lingering in the location - and over the airwaves and "Twitterverse" - will surpass that left behind in 1992 when Pat Buchanan bloviated about the "great culture war."  See:

https://www.c-span.org/video/?31255-1/pat-buchanan-1992-republican-convention-address

The bottom line is don't expect anything constructive to come from this four day liar and traitor extravaganza.   It will be the same ol' lies and distractions we've been subjected to for 3 1/2 years, mainly how the country will go to hell in a handbasket if the Dems are given control. (Especially if they take the Senate too).  Oh, and how great leader Trump has been, as if the ongoing debacle people have beheld with their own eyes and ears doesn't count.

Wifey and I have concluded we will get more out of binge -watching the Game of Thrones, which is what we plan to do.

See Also:
Republicans’ ‘uplifting’ convention becomes a festival of fear

And:

Get Ready for TrumpFest, America — There's No Republican Party Anymore

And:
Republican Convention Takes on the Weighty Task of Boosting Trump’s Bruised Ego

Will Young, Immature Voters Give Us 4 More Years Of Trump? A Sobering Take From The FT

Colorado College students yell 'Obamanos!' on their way to the polls in November, 2008.  Twelve years later too many 18-29 years old see no difference between Trump and Joe Biden -according to an FT article.

Ah well!  Just when one garnered some hope - from watching the Dem convention - we'd finally be on our way to ousting Trump, there appears a disturbing Financial Times piece by Patti Waldmeir ('Youngest American Voters Dislike The Choice In Front Of Them').  To which my initial response was: 'Huh? What choice? There is no choice!'    If you are given the choice of four more years of Hitler Jr. and a normal Democratic administration - what friggin' choice is there?  If you have to pick between a Nazi -loving, white nationalist loving swine and a decent human - albeit 78 years of age-   how hard can that be?

Evidently, pretty damned hard for the youngsters who think a national election is the same as a beauty contest or election for Prom King.   According to Ms. Waldmeir:

"America's youngest voters could hold the key to whether the U.S. elects its  oldest president in history in November. But, as Democrats convene online for a pandemic-plagued conventionthis week, they must face the fact that Generation Z (loosely defined as those born between 1995 and 2015)   are far from thrilled with the choices before them. 

That could translate into  fewer of the youngest Americans bothering to vote at all. A recent Pew Research Center showed that among 18 to 29-year-olds, strong support for their presidential   candidate was almost the same whether that person was the Republican president"

  WTF!?  Are you kidding me?  "Strong support"  for a petty, authoritarian racist wannabe Hitler?  What? Are these kids on an opiate and MJ high?   Any assclown with  an I.Q. over 10 can see there ought to be ZERO support among the young for Trump!  He is the one who will ensure their student debts keep piling up as his GOP enablers increase loan interest rates if he gets re-elected. Further, the ACA will be totally dismantled so they will have NO health care, period.  Plus, by the end of a 2nd Trump term we can fully expect 670,000 plus dead from Covid -19, the same number killed during the Civil War.  These imps really want to go there? Really? Or are they too fucking drugged and dumb to care? (Like the lowbrow college kid caught yelping "It's just a hoax!" on the NBC News last night- when challenged on his partying.)

 In the real world where normal brains and intelligence operates the young voter ought to be pro -Biden by 99-1. At least!  Oh, and they literally ought to be dragging their scrawny asses over "broken glass" to get Trump voted out. To use the metaphor from the 2018 midterms.

Ms. Waldmeir then cites a Pew Research poll of these young sprats, which at least found a 1-point advantage of Biden over Trump:  11%  to 10%.  Be still my heart!  I can scarcely believe it! A whopping 1 point margin..  Maybe these kids at least have a measurable I.Q. - even if not Mensa level.

She goes on (ibid.):

"And in the Pew survey, 67 per cent of 18 to 29-year-olds do indeed put  themselves in the Biden camp. But a surprisingly high 30 per cent said they would either surely or possibly vote for Mr Trump, defying the  conventional wisdom that most Trump voters are older."

Again, one expects the younger vote would have more sense than aged Trumpie dotards, but evidently not.  I can only conclude from this that these Gen Z and Millennial voters are too low information to grasp the full dimension of the horrors Trump has already unleashed - and what he will if given a 2nd term to wreak havoc. 

"Even worse news for the Democrats: a Harris Poll conducted days before the convention found that 59 per cent of 18 to 39-year-olds said they would rather live in a socialist country  than a capitalist one, up 9 percentage points since last year. That could mean  only tepid support for the centrist Mr Biden, who ousted Bernie Sanders, the  favoured Democratic candidate among youthful socialists, in the primaries.

Speaking to Gen Zs from both ends of the political spectrum to find out how keen they are to vote, I learnt that some supporters of Mr Trump and the Democratic Socialists of America  have serious doubts.  Olivia Litzenberg, a 23-year-old DSA member from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where the Democratic convention is nominally being held, said the presumptive nominee most definitely will demotivate young voters.  You're not going to see us knocking doors for Biden!"

Uh, okay.  But can you at least get off your butts and bestir yourselves to vote for him?  As a long time DSA member myself, I also would have loved to have seen Bernie in the running, but also know the commie card would have been played against him big time by the Trump rats.  So the moderate voters we need to win in the general election would likely have themselves been demotivated to vote for a socialist.   But now, with Joe Biden the nominee, there is no luxury to pick and choose.  We have got to get rid of the embryonic Hitler in the White House, e.g.

Waldmeir quoting Lutzenberg again:

"She added, I am transgender, and living another four years under Trump will be directly deleterious to my standard of living. "

Standard of living?  How about being forced into a gender re-education camp guarded by QAnon recruits?    Think this is a joke?  Look at the history of how Nazi Germany came to be when the Reich laws replaced the normal ones.  And hey, anyone with even a normal I.Q. will grasp if he wins re-election Trump will be totally unfettered with no more elections to face.    

Even more degraded by 'stupid' (ibid.):

"Biden is the back to normal, and the normal sucked!"

Sucked more than the concentration camps you will get with Trump?  The slop you will have to eat in those camps, and the horrific treatment the QAnon guards will mete out to "make this trans kid cry"?

And of course there's the usual purist bellyaching - again disclosing radical immaturity and only rudimentary frontal lobes:

"Ms Litzenberg's partner, Pamela Westphal, 21, says the fact that Mr Sanders did not become the candidate was a wake-up call for a lot of young people, who felt that the system is failing us. She thinks Democratic turnout will be  suppressed. adding, 'I haven't met too many young people who are too gung-ho for Biden."

Awwww....poor widdo, disappointed kiddies.  You didn't get your guy picked in the primaries (never mind more voted for Biden, especially African Americans) and now you want to throw your sippy cups on the floor.  Or have another four years of Trump's horrors and Covid deaths.

As I wrote  in my June 16 post;

 "Here's what few of these idealist voters (and not- yet voters) don't get:  Not voting, going only the protest route instead, leaves the door open for much WORSE actors and outcomes. Exhibit A: Donald J. Trump.  In the words of a recent TIME essay (June 15, p. 30):

"If the George Floyd video was the match and the coronavirus the kindling, Donald Trump provided the gasoline. Since the start of his term Trump has turned the Oval Office into an instrument of racial, ethnic and cultural division. A man who both -sided a white supremacist march, went to war with NFL players protesting police brutality, called African nations 'shithole countries' and told American congresswomen to 'go back' to where they came from, was never going to appeal to harmony now."

Adding:

"I return to my theme that voting isn't just about getting "the ideal" candidate into office or having him or her perform to a preternatural, ideal standard of righting all wrongs, or sealing a "green New Deal". No, it also means,  even more importantly  - preventing the bad guys remaining in office or grabbing more power - like Trump, William Barr, Lindsey Graham etc.  Hence, the uber objective is stopping these vermin from completing their destruction of this democratic experiment.  In other words, voting is as much or more about limiting damage and eliminating toxic leaders as it is putting in the best."

The best thing these young, picky, undecided youth voters can do right now is get hold of   Masha Gessen's 'Surviving Autocracy', which sheds light on the destabilizing demagogue, Trump. As she writes: 

"No powerful political actor had set out to destroy the American political system itself - until that is, Trump won the Republican nomination. He was probably the first major party nominee to run not for president but for autocrat. "

  The past three and a half years, of course, have revealed not only his penchant for authoritarianism  - and worshipping autocrats like Rodrigo Duterte - but also for side -action destruction of the state and its protections via dismantling of regulations, blowing off congressional subpoenas,  and attacking everything from health care to women's  procreative rights and the environment. Oh, and sending storm troopers to attack protesters as in Portland.  It doesn't take a Mensa level IQ to see that all the above are set to be magnified in another Trump term. 

The youths covered in the FT piece notably display the same dismay at the "system" and their "powerlessness" to change it they always have.  But they seem disconnected to the fact they could wield the necessary power if they just voted in the same proportions  (65-70%)  every year as seniors do.   Waldmeir again:

"Those who feel ignored should vote to change that but they often don't. America's youngest voters could hold the balance of power in this election, but  that power matters little unless they choose to wield it. "

So why don't they? Who knows? But my best bet is political immaturity, especially those who express any indecision, or lean to Trump by even a minuscule degree.  Put simply, they have their heads screwed on backwards, or "up their asses" to use Janice's parlance.

Hopefully, the Young Turks will come to their senses in this pivotal election and before it's too late.  The WWII Germans who grew up in the Hitler era regret they never took the chance to keep Hitler out of power when they had it. None of them took him seriously, or his pronouncements and warnings.  They've had over 80 years to rue that lack of wise choice and remain one of the most hated peoples in Europe.  Let us hope our people are smarter,  or at least smart enough this time around to deny Trump another 4 years  in which his excesses will rival Hitler's first two years.

See Also:

Donald Trump

‘They like Me Very Much’: Trump Gives a Horrifying Answer When Pressed on QAnon

And:

Trump’s backing of far-right conspiracy theorist frames the stakes for 2020

Excerpt:

"No one should refer to what Trump is doing as “culture war politics” or “stoking divisions” or even “crazy Trump being crazy Trump.” It’s extreme radicalization. And we need to get the language right this time."


And:

Mission Imperative: Come November, Trump Must Go

by Michael Winship | May 13, 2020 - 5:50am | permalink

Excerpt:

"There must be one mission above all, one goal supreme: Vote this monster out of the White House. And along with him, tow to the nearest dump the clown car of malefactors who gave him license to cripple our republic.

Biden Should Skip Debates: Why Would Any Sane Candidate Debate A Deranged Toddler?

"Donald today is much as he was at three years old: incapable of growing, learning or evolving, unable to regulate his emotions, moderate his responses - or take in and synthesize information."  -  Mary L. Trump, in 'Too Much And Never Enough',   p. 197.

"the fact that we have to make truth-telling an explicit condition is an incredibly sad statement about our time; normally such things are unspoken and understood. But if the past teaches us anything, Trump might very well lie and mislead for the entire debate, forcing Biden to have to spend a majority of his time correcting Trump before making his own points."   - Thomas Friedman,  NY Times, 'Biden Should Not Debate Trump Unless..."

"It's still just unbelievable this man is president of the United States.  It's just incompetence  across the board. He's an idiot. Some people try to create this idea that well, 'it's fourth dimensional chess, it's fifth dimensional chess' but they still haven't come to grips with the fact he's just a blithering idiot.  You can't even carry on a conversation about current events, and god forbid he is at the center of those events.   I don't honestly see how, if you are an American, you can say this country is in good hands with this person as president of the United States."  -  Stuart Stevens, long time Republican political consultant and author of 'It Was All A Lie- How The Republican Party Became Donald Trump'. on 'All In' last night,  regarding the (Jonathan Swan) Axios interview with Trump

The question of the moment in serious political circles is whether it makes sense for Democratic candidate Joe Biden to debate a 74 -year old deranged toddler named Trump.   So far a first debate is tentatively scheduled for September 29th but there is no reason why - given Trump's evident unhinged behavior- that Biden can't cancel.  I am forthwith for this option though with the provisos noted by NY Times Thomas Friedman:

1-  Trump must fully release all his tax files now being willfully concealed (Mainly 2016-2019).

2-  Presence of a real time fact checking team to hold Trump's dozens of expected lies to account.

3-No more federal agents to be dispatched to 'blue' state cities to cause more violent reactions

4-  NO more assaults on mail voting or mail ballots, including vile tweets, and no attempted lawsuits or executive orders. Oh, and no more attacks on the DACA kids.

5-  Immediate resumption of the 2020 census! (Trump ordered it shut down with a full month to spare, which would deliver more representation to Repukes than actually earned.)

The last three are my own additions.  Extreme? Off the wall? Hell no, not when you consider the Dotard  display of pettiness, ignorance, lies and bombast in that trainwreck of an Axios interview!  E.g.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/04/politics/fact-check-jonathan-swan-axios-hbo-interview-trump-coronavirus/index.html

So given Trump's Axios interview, from asserting the Covid plague that's already killed 158,000 Americans "is what it is", to not recalling the significance of  Rep. John Lewis, to earlier  taking the WH podium to claim an "attack" on Beirut (with NO evidence, period), any moron can see this asswipe is beneath debating.   As Janice said, "it would be like a grown man trying to debate a mentally disturbed 5 year old."

 But we give Trump an outside chance of having a debate by meeting the conditions set forth above. But if the Dotard cannot meet these conditions, then no debates.  Joe Biden is totally justified in saying 'Hell no!'  This despite the WSJ editorial ('Will Joe Biden Duck The Debate?', p. A13, Aug. 4) today, squawking:

"Mr. Biden portrays Mr. Trump as a bumbling incompetent, a racist and a liar. If he believes that he should be willing to repeat his accusations face to face."

Why?  Just because you demand it?  The fact is there would be no upside for Joe in facing a deranged baboon.  He's ahead in the polls now, and so why would anyone with a decided advantage willingly risk having a nice lead torpedoed by facing what former Emily's List strategist Jess McIntosh once called "a mad monkey with a gun."

In an appearance on 'All In' in 2016, Ms. McIntosh analogized what Hillary would face in a debate with Trump:

"It would kind of be like facing a mad monkey with a gun. And you just don't know what that monkey might do so there's no way to really prepare."

I see no reason that assessment would change now.  Indeed, given Trump's mental condition has further deteriorated, i.e.  he can't even distinguish reality from fantasy (as in embracing the daft 'cures' of a demon believing pediatrician)  there is nothing at all to be gained by citizens from witnessing such an event.  We know all that Trump will deliver is lies, and those mixed with bombast and name -calling, so what's the point? There is no educational aspect whatsoever.  As journalist Elizabeth Drew - a panelist in one 1976 debate- put it:

"The debates have never made sense as a test for presidential leadership."

This is because most have been decided by "snappy one liners" (zingers).   But there is no assurance we will get even those now with the likes of Trump ready to try to toss verbal fecal matter any which way he can.   SO no, it isn't so much a case of Biden "ducking" a debate, but rather avoiding stepping into a huge,stinking pile of horse manure.

Besides, we've already seen Trump fail the essential test for presidential leadership in his woeful and incompetent response to the pandemic. We don't need any more staged, artificial tests.  This is now Joe's election to lose, and if  he were daft enough to face the 'mad monkey with a gun', he might. Without at least imposing the conditions noted earlier!

Again, if you must have more proof this asshole is unqualified as a president, far less to engage in debate, check out the Jonathan Swan Axios interview link above.  It tells you all you need to know regarding why Biden shouldn't dignify this "mad monkey with a gun" via formal debate. The "gun" being his feral piehole,  from which he "spitballs" anything that pops into his empty, derelict head.  Biden doesn't need this and neither do Americans!

See Also:

Cody Fenwick

Donald Trump

‘You Can’t Do That!’: The Worst Part of Trump’s Disastrous Axios Interview

And:

Donald Trump

Trump's Base Loved That He Was a Liar and a Cheat — but Now It's Coming Back to Bite Them

by Amanda Marcotte | August 5, 2020 - 7:10am | permalink

— from Salon

And:

• Confused Trump can't understand how many Americans are dying of coronavirus in shocking interview 

And:

Donald Trump

Trump Is Getting Truly Desperate — and That Means He's Increasingly Dangerous

by Amanda Marcotte | August 4, 2020 - 7:57am | permalink

— from Salon

And:

Donald Trump

President Chaos

by Ted Glick | August 3, 2020 - 6:26am | permalink