Sunday night’s presidential debate, the second scheduled, came under the shadow of the eleven year old tape of Republican candidate Donald Trump’s discussing how he used his celebrity frame to grope, fondle and kiss women. In an onslaught of pushback from the media, not to mention, those of his own party, Trump came in looking, and sounding, exhausted as he came out swinging, and prepared to say and do, just about anything, in his defense.
The result was less than a debate, than a professional wrestling smackdown, as he groped his way through questions that he seemed not to know the answers to, especially those on foreign policy, and after a half-hearted apology, regarding those remarks, dismissing them as locker room talk, went on stalking the stage at Washington University in St. Louis, glaring at his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, who on more than one occasion, stood her ground, as he insulted, and baited her, with lines such as “she’s lying,” and [if I were president] “you’d be in jail,” which brought cheers from his supporters.
At times he retreated from previous statements, such as his brutish treatment of the Khans and their son, who he now hails as a hero, and then reading from his own, and the combined Republican playbook, trashing Obamacare, as a disaster, the Iranian deal, blaming Hillary Clinton and Sidney Blumenthal for this “birther” attack (which has been proven false), blamed her for ISIS, and on and on.
The lack of a nuanced issue driven debate was the greatest casualty of the evening, and lent nothing to the very real issues that the country faces. Lost in hyperbole, and distortion, Trump’s wisecracks and rages revealed a candidate who is running scared, with the latest revelations of unacceptable behavior.
As he scattered and tossed inaccuracies, hither and yon, his desperation increased, even extending his own fears to project onto former president Bill Clinton, “what he’s done to women.” Perhaps the kicker was the old chestnut that Hillary defended a rapist, in the Kathy Shelton case, a story long discredited by the facts: she was appointed to represent a rapist, who wanted a female attorney, and she did so, with great reluctance, but he received a just sentence for his crime.
Clinton, in a response, noted that “he has never apologized to the Khan family,” the Mexican judge, “who he mimicked and mocked, and the racist lie that the president was not born in the United States.”
In a diversionary move, Trump, when asked about these charges began ranting about the “39,000 emails that she washed and the missing records,” which after being vetted by the FBI were found to be duplicates of emails, most truly personal in nature; while Clinton may have downplayed the nature of some of them, in her initial public remarks, Trump’s assertions were false.
For anyone used to presidential debates of yesteryear - including the famous 1960 debate between Vice-President Richard Nixon and Senator, John F. Kennedy, the evening was a real lesson in how American presidential politics has sunk to a new low, with the advent of a reality television figure as a candidate.
With bread and butter issues Trump seemed to lean in the misdirection of partisan politics -- and was perhaps nowhere more off base than he was criticizing the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare.
As CNN noted, “Trump cited Obamacare as one of the top problems he wants to address if he is elected president."When I watch the deals being made and watch what's happening with horrible things like Obamacare, where your health insurance and healthcare are going up by numbers that are astronomical. By 68%, 59% and 71%," Trump said.”
The fact checkers said, “It's true that some insurers are raising some of their plans' premiums by that much, but that's not the typical increase. Insurers have requested a rate hike of 9%, on average, for the benchmark silver plan for 2017, up from 2% for this year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The vast majority of Obamacare enrollees, however, don't see those massive hikes. Some 85% of them receive federal subsidies that can lower their premium to less than 10% of their income.” So, if misleading the American public is a sin of Clinton, then Trump had better stand in line for the confessional.
Post debate discussions have centered largely on the spoken, and not the unspoken, which has shown that Trump’s hectoring of women has turned off women on all sides of the political divide, and if they stay home on election day, the die may be cast for a Clinton victory.
Threatening to put Clinton in jail if he was elected takes the collective breath of democracy away from most viewers and listeners, and shows that the mentality of the man, is that of a dictator, not someone to be trusted to head a republic, like the United States. With that line alone, there may be more pause given, at the voting booth, than any other cause.
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