Originally Posted by
Dan Druff
The moderator was terrible and was clearly biased against Trump, but he also screwed this one up badly.
Among other things:
- Trump did not hammer Hillary at all on the e-mail scandal, aside from that one quip where he said he would release his tax return if Hillary released her deleted 33,000 e-mails. When Hillary dismissed the e-mail situation as "a mistake" and offered some lame admission of regret, Trump just let it go. He did not follow up with the obvious questions: "Why did you delete those 33,000 e-mails? What were you hiding? Why did you wipe them off the server beyond recovery? How could a Secretary of State be so incompetent as to use a private e-mail server for classified government business?" Instead, he just let her off the hook on what should have been an easy slam dunk against her. Amazingly, during the protracted debate topic on cybersecurity, Trump rambled but never once brought up the Hillary e-mail scandal. He was underhanded a pitch down the middle and chose not to swing. Terrible.
- When the moderator asked Trump the loaded question of why he felt Hillary didn't "look" fit for the Presidency, it was a prime opportunity to bring up the questions regarding her health, including her refusal to release her personal health records. He could also have hammered her for keeping the American public in the dark regarding her pneumonia, where they lied and blamed her earlier coughing on allergies. Instead, he rambled some mostly incoherent answer as to why she didn't look the part as President.
- When Hillary accused him of rooting for a meltdown of our economy in 2008 so he could profit from the financial carnage, he uttered, "That's called business!", essentially admitting that her accusation was true. The man who wants to be President in 2017 admitted to rooting for the financial failure of this country in 2008, to enrich himself. Even if this was true, he should have either denied it, ignored it, or found a way to answer it. (A reasonable answer would be, "I wasn't happy at all to see the crash of the housing market and the terrible effect on the American people. However, as a businessman, I knew it was the right time to invest more, as I knew our great country would recover." Instead, he came off as a greedy asshole who danced the happy dance when the country was in financial dire straits.
- When Hillary and the moderator blamed him for the birther thing, he attempted to get out that Hillary's 2008 campaign manager was actually doing the birther stuff before he was. However, he was all over the place rambling about it, and most of the public watching was likely unable to understand what he was talking about when he kept saying "Blumenthal" without providing context.
- While attempting to take Hillary to task for allowing ISIS to rise, Trump made an unconvincing case in his claim that removing too many troops from Iraq caused it. He missed a golden opportunity to state the most compelling indictment of the Obama Administration's handling of ISIS, by quoting Obama's infamous statement comparing the rapidly-rising ISIS to a "JV team" which he claimed was inferior to al Qaeda and nothing to worry about. This occurred while Hillary was Secretary of State. Not one mention of this during the debate.
- When Hillary accused Trump of not paying some of his workers (presumably referring to the fact that he declared bankruptcy several times with some of his companies), Trump responded by admitting that this was true, but that he "took advantage" of existing bankruptcy laws to do so. So he was admitting that he was an asshole who ripped people off, but did so via existing flawed bankruptcy statutes. Ugh. He should have simply avoided this question or denied it. You never use the word "took advantage" in a Presidential debate when referring to yourself.
- When discussing the "Iran deal", where Trump didn't explain well enough why it was bad for America (even though I believe it was), he failed to bring up the more current topic of the Obama Administration paying a $400 million ransom for hostages, and Iranian leaders subsequently humiliating American leadership for it in the media. He rambled something about $400 million but did not expand, to where most had no clue what he was talking about.
- When Hillary said that Trump was sued in 1973 by the federal government for racial discrimination in housing, his only response was, "We settled it without admission of guilt." Yeah... that doesn't fly with people. "Settled without admission of guilt" is basically a legal term meaning that you settled because you're guilty, but don't want the PR or legal issues of formally admitting such guilt. It's the civil equivalent of a criminal "no contest" plea. Instead, he should have reminded viewers that Hillary is dredging up non-stories from 43 years ago, and that he only settled because a large number of landlords were targets of such suits in those days, and he was afraid of a protracted, expensive legal battle. He could have even pointed out that in 1973 he was in his mid-20s and did not have anywhere near the resources he does now to fight bogus lawsuits against him.
- Trump strangely did not attack Hillary at all during the debate regarding her numerous scandals and decades of (correctly) perceived dishonesty. This is surprising from a man who constantly refers to her as "Crooked Hillary". He could have attacked her integrity in a more mature fashion without sounding childish or bullying, but instead avoided the topic completely.
- He couldn't keep his composure and kept interrupting Hillary, while she kept it well and responded at the proper time.
Basically he didn't know what the fuck he was doing up there. He was much better in the Republican debates where he stuck more to his persona that he developed for his reality shows. In those debates, he mercilessly attacked his opponents in a simple and direct fashion based upon their perceived shortcomings ("Little Marco", "Lyin' Ted", "low energy Bush"), and pretty much owned heads. I was impressed, even if it was taking the party in the wrong direction.
Here he attempted a higher road and just failed on all fronts.
Honestly, it went pretty badly.
Hillary's only real mistake tonight was the smiling, grinning, and laughing. It came off as dismissive, condescending, and bitchy, and I know a number of people who were neutral on both candidates who were really put off by this. It was evocative of Al Gore's sighing during his debates with Bush -- an action which probably cost him the election.
