POLITICS
By George Miller
*(warning: contains sarcasm, hyperbole and a dash of snark)
Because the Never Trumper-Dominated Presidential Debate Commission unilaterally altered the format of the debate scheduled for October 15 to a Zoom-style event, Trump refused to abide by their arbitrary change. He said it wasn’t even a debate any more. The excuse given was that Trump was dangerous, having recently been hospitalized for COVID-19. Networks quickly picked up the slack and scheduled two separate, competing townhalls at 8 PM ET for President Donald Trump and former VP and Senator Joe Biden respectively. Yet, NBC allowed the dangerous Trump into the townhall venue, sans mask (gasp!) and Biden. It is questionable if he was even tested. He looked healthier than anyone else in the room, although it was difficult to tell with all the masks and the questioner’s heavy makeup.
Our local NBC station evidently chose not to run the event and instead decided to do the regular news program. I finally found the broadcast on MSNBC.
The Townhall was run by NBC Trump-hater and self-appointed inquisitor Savannah Guthrie. Although an intelligent, competent person, she did a terrible job of being objective. She was also disrespectful, rude, preemptive, obviously hostile and talked over him constantly. She was a much tougher opponent than Joe Biden or even Chris Wallace. Most of her questions were attempts to trap Trump or make him look foolish. Trump at first went along with it, but later just kept on talking to make his points, which must have been amazingly difficult (and driven her crazy), given how distracting her behavior was.
Questions, which seemed to take the form of accusations were nearly spit out at him by Guthrie were (my impressions*):
1._You are a cad and unscientific for not wearing a mask, wanting to reopen the nation and setting a bad, bad example.
Trump mentioned that experts have flipped flopped on masking, 85% of of cases wore masks according to a recent study, people can wear masks if they wish, he does sometimes, he’s cool with it. Country needs to be reopened- “cure” is far worse than the disease. Guthrie wouldn’t let him explain why.
2. You are a “White Supremacist” and refuse to denounce it.
He is no white supremacist, has denounced it multiple times, but does not subscribe to their absurd definition of what one is. He objects to them asking the same stupid question repeatedly and twisting or even inventing his words.
3. You haven’t agreed to a peaceful transfer of power if you lose the election, leaving it to the 82nd Airborne and Secret service to pry or bomb you out of the White House.
He said and has said repeatedly that he will go through the legal system, would leave peacefully if legitimately defeated and will contest it legally if there are election problems, some of which have already become quite evident.
4. You are spreading “conspiracy theories” about the murder of Seal Team 6 and other “QAnon” delusions.
Denied any knowledge of any of this. Said he doesn’t know anything about QAnon. (No one does because it’s just a hack web site). God forbid anyone should retweet a posting- Guthrie scolded him for being “like someone’s crazy uncle” for daring to do this.
5. You killed 200,000+ with your criminally inept handling of the COVID-19 crisis.
He pointed out that he was the first one to advocate and took huge heat for shutting down foreign travel from the most dangerous areas. (He did much more including getting equipment, supplies, hospital ships, Manhattan project style effort to do multiple crash projects to develop vaccines, test therapies, etc.). He said “experts” predicted 2 million+ deaths and it has been much lower. Guthrie then implied that most of those deaths were his fault. So the China virus would have caused no deaths but for his inept leadership? Pull-eeze.
6. You have no plan for health care and want to take away Obamacare and preexisting condition coverage.
He says he has a better, cheaper plan and never threatened to take away preexisting condition coverage, which has had bipartisan support. He said removing the individual mandate crippled Obamacare and that next they will kill and replace it.
7. You are depriving people of badly needed stimulus trillion$$$.
Actually, he explained, Pelosi is blocking a very good stimulus plan , for political purposes, which Trump will sign. (She doesn’t want any improvement before the election and has stuffed her bill with Progressive pork for her favored constituencies. The USA is spending more for the COVID-19 emergency than the all the debt amassed in the first 200 years of U.S. history.)
8. You are withholding your tax returns, only paid $750 in taxes and are $420 million in debt, most of it owed to Russia and other enemies.
He said, as he has said all along, he will not release tax returns until IRS audits are resolved, that the returns were illegally obtained and someone should go to jail. While not confirming any amounts, he said his debt is a small percentage of his total assets and in fact, he is under-leveraged. He said he has no debt owed to Russia. (Corporate real estate profit is highly variable, since taxes are only due for taxable sale/distribution events, after expenses and legally entitled write-offs.)
9. You are wrongfully trying to appoint a far right lunatic sex criminal bigot judge to SCOTUS in an election year.
SCOTUS justices have been nominated 29 times in election years and usually confirmed, he reminded Guthrie (and the nation). His term is for four years not three. Barrett is an excellent, highly qualified legal mind who has acted in an exemplary fashion. The allegations of recent days against Barrett weren’t covered tonight ,but hung over the proceedings like an noxious cloud.
10. You want to end Roe v Wade and send desperate pregnant girls to back alleys with coat hangers.
Trump said not his decision, cases would be litigated and decided on their constitutional merits. He said if a decision went against Roe, that it would likely be left up to the states. (Even state laws would still be subject to SCOTUS review). Later a member of the public asked what if the life of a pregnant mother is in danger? Trump’s answer was pretty much the same. (Re: the coat hangers- my wife was looking over my shoulder and asked if tearing a unborn human baby apart on the operating table is somehow more “humane”?)
11. You want to end DACA and cruelly send “Dreamers” back home.
He does want to end DACA, but is willing to go for a compromise solution on those already here and meeting the original conditions. (Compromises have been attempted, but Democrats have held firm on total amnesty and open borders- a non-starter.) He talked about tightening up control over illegal immigration and the improved results shown.
12. What will you do in your second term, in the extremely unlikely event you are again illegally elected?
I’m doing a great job and will continue- economy, jobs (recovering from COVID lockdowns now). It is the Democrats who illegally tried to overcome my duly elected presidency with three years of the phony RussiaGate investigation- they were the ones actually guilty of that- impeachment, etc. If election laws are broken, he will certainly fight it, but said he will go with the legal process, even if he loses.
Sadly Missing from This Event
What was most obvious to me was what was missing from this event. Important questions were ignored- foreign policy, the economy, budget, jobs creation, national security, protection of rights, the Marxist-driven BLM/ANTIFA “protests,” education, streamlining regulations, rebuilding the military, trade deals, the Biden/Obama/Clinton scandals/crimes, Biden’s obvious unfitness for the Presidency and Harris for the Vice Presidency, etc.
Trump was considerably better prepared tonight than at the Biden debate, where he seemed to be winging it. He was right on his game, would not be baited or tricked and walked into none of Guthrie’s absurd traps. I won’t waste my time giving you a blow by blow account (watch the video below), but our President did quite well this time.
Event Video:
When is Trump gonna do an event with sympathetic– I’d even settle for neutral– questioners/moderators? The hostility is unseemly, unsettling, unprecedented.
Aftermath
After the event, several NBC/MSNBC muppets came on to do their impressions of the event and try to spin it as negatively as possible. But, when Rachel Madcow came on and said Trump dropped out of the debate and she didn’t even explain why, I had had enough and walked away from the idiot box and started writing this. I watch very little TV, except for movies and some dramas, and almost never the “News.” Just occasional youtube clips. The TV news is so incredibly biased and poorly done that it is a waste of time, except to learn what the NWO Globalists are thinking.
The one good thing about this event was the audience questions. They seemed sincere, not so much “gotcha” and were even from about half “Trump-leaning” people as NBC described them. The set and audience were a caricature of the politically correct “new normal.” There were just a few seats, scattered around the cavernous set, with mute, masked, unknown people perched on uncomfortable stools. Trump who was on oxygen and heavy drug therapy only a week ago, was also forced into this rigor, but seemed none the worse for wear.
*Literal-minded critics will say that these weren’t her words. True, but those were my inferred conclusions about her motives.
George Miller is Publisher/Co-Founder of CitizensJournal.us and a “retired” operations management consultant residing in Oxnard.
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