Read the debate transcript. You’ll reach a different conclusion than instant pundits.
Maybe Thursday night was something like the Kennedy-Nixon debates, where John Kennedy was tanned and Richard Nixon, pallid after a stay in the hospital. Reportedly, radio listeners had a different view of that first televised debate than the TV audience.
I say that because after READING the transcript [1], I don’t understand any pundit who is calling for Joe Biden to withdraw from the race. As historian Heather Cox Richardson so aptly noted:
[A]side from the fact that the only time a presidential candidate has ever done that—in 1968—it threw the race into utter confusion and the president’s party lost, Biden needed to demonstrate that his mental capacity is strong in order to push back on the Republicans’ insistence that he is incapable of being president. That, he did, thoroughly.
Biden answered the questions directed to him and did so coherently.
However, at 33 minutes into the event, Donald Trump ignored question four [2] and began a rambling free for all of lies and deceptions. The moderators lost control and never regained it.
Trump said that some Democratic states allow people to execute babies after they’re born and that every legal scholar wanted Roe v. Wade overturned—both fantastical lies. He said that the deficit is at its highest level ever and that the U.S. trade deficit is at its highest ever: both of those things happened during his administration. He lied that there were no terrorist attacks during his presidency; there were many. He said that Biden wants to quadruple people’s taxes—this is “pure fiction,” according to Dale—and lied that his tax cuts paid for themselves; they have, in fact, added trillions of dollars to the national debt.
CNN did the nation – and democracy – a disservice by refusing to fact check Trump. Of the 15 questions (by my count), Trump had at least one lie in every answer and, after question four, simply riffed on whatever caught his fancy. In other words, he did not answer direct questions. Sometimes, he equivocated.
Trump reminded us tonight that he is uniquely unfit for office and hostile to our democracy. The fact that those qualities have lost their ability to shock underscores just how much the man has bent our politics to his will.
Donald Trump should NEVER be given a hot mic. Any television news appearance must be recorded and fact-checked.
News organizations have learned nothing since 2015. One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome. By that definition, America’s political news class is insane.
CNN consciously committed journalistic malpractice Thursday. But hey, like they said in 2017: Trump is good for business.
Observations from Twitter
This is looking like your A student's exam versus the one from the student who did no reading, never came to class, and smoked his breakfast.
— Heather Cox Richardson (TDPR) (@HC_Richardson) June 28, 2024
So if Trump can literally just say anything during the debate including that babies can be “aborted” at 9 months after they are born and are then killed, and no one fact-checks it, what is the point of this debate? #PresidentialDebate #Debate2024
— Sharyn Lewis (@RestaurantMaven) June 28, 2024
This #Debate is a master-class in what’s wrong with our media-saturated, horse-race obsessed politics
Trump is just lying and making stuff up. But he says it ‘vigorously’ and doesn’t get fact-checked. Therefore he’s winning. And so we’ll spend the next month debating Biden’s age…
— Robert E Kelly (@Robert_E_Kelly) June 28, 2024
it’s making me depressed how totally incoherent Trump is being and how little people seem to care. like this is not a man who I would trust to run a Dairy Queen
— Armand Domalewski (@ArmandDoma) June 28, 2024
Be very clear…Trump refuses to answer the question if he will accept the results of the election. He will not. He has not denounced political violence.
— Fred Wellman (@FPWellman) June 28, 2024
~~~~
[1] I had a conflict, which I now considered fortuitous. Here’s a copy of the full transcript (DropBox) that includes a section for each candidate’s answers.
[2] The first question that Trump ignored:
Q4b: President Trump staying on the topic of immigration, you’ve said that you’re going to carry out, quote, the largest domestic deportation operation in American history, end quote. Does that mean that you will deport every undocumented immigrant in America, including those who have jobs, including those whose spouses are citizens, and including those who have lived here for decades? And if so, how will you do it?
Talk to me: BlueSky | Facebook | Mastodon | Twitter
The post Read the debate transcript. You’ll reach a different conclusion than instant pundits. appeared first on The Moderate Voice.