While we didn't watch sociopath and mentally unstable liar Donald "Mango Mussolini" Trump's town hall so as not to reward NBC for it's cynical decision to run it parallel with VP Biden's on ABC, commentary and clips indicate that Trump self-immolated once again. The Washington Post has their take aways, including a list of the evasions, lies and boneheaded statements from Trump:
"When Trump claimed that a study showed 85 percent of people who wear masks still get the coronavirus, [NBC moderator Savannah] Guthrie noted he falsely characterized the study.
When Trump defended his pandemic response by citing another study that showed 2 million people could have died of the coronavirus, Guthrie rightly noted that model predicted that only if the government did precisely zero mitigation.
When Trump responded to questions about his mask usage by setting up a false choice between wearing a mask and staying out of public altogether, Guthrie noted, 'But there’s no one that says you can’t be out there, but it’s just about wearing masks and having -- for example, your rallies.'
When Trump set up another false choice between his repeated downplaying of the coronavirus threat and telling the country “everybody’s going to die,” Guthrie asked, 'Isn’t there a middle ground? You don’t have to mislead.' Trump responded: 'No, no. No, there’s not a middle ground.'
When Trump declined to denounce QAnon because he said he didn’t know what it was about, Guthrie provided details about what it was about and invited him to do it, noting Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) has flatly denounced it as 'nuts.' Trump instead offered that he liked that QAnon was against pedophilia.
When Guthrie pressed Trump on his retweets this week of a bizarre conspiracy theory about Osama bin Laden’s death, Trump explained by saying he was just passing along information. ('That was a retweet. I’ll put it out there. People can decide for themselves.') Guthrie then provided the retort those tweets have long demanded: that he’s the president, not someone’s 'crazy uncle' spouting off on Twitter, and that the information he promotes matters."
Another damaging question was whether Trump supported overturning Roe v. Wade, which his right-wing evangelical base has as their number one issue. He refused to say, claiming it was in order not to damage nominee Amy Coney "Coathanger" Barrett's chances, despite her almost certain confirmation to the Supreme Court. That should sit well with the "pro-birth but not pro-life" anti-choice radicals.
Former VP Biden on the other hand was calm and reassuring, answering questions from the audience and interjections from moderator George "Flag Pin" Stephanopoulos (luckily Biden wore a flag pin, so no questions about his patriotism). He parried the Beltway media's latest "but her emails" question about "packing the court" -- like Moscow Mitch McConnell's been doing for 4 years, but never mind that -- by adopting a wait-and-see position.
Some Twitter reactions:
I wasn’t pleased about this event, but it turns out that this whole @NBCNews town hall is proving to be a long commercial for Biden, not Trump.
— Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) October 16, 2020
“Court-packing.” @GStephanopoulos keeps carrying Trump’s and McConnell’s water. More false equivalence and even worse. Journalistic malpractice.
— Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) October 16, 2020
the reason this town hall is a disaster for Trump is he treats every questioner as if they are attacking him, and spends his time shouting at them
— b-boy boooo-eebaisse (@jbouie) October 16, 2020
Trump on whether he owes money to foreign banks: "Not that I know of....I mean probably"
— Tommy Vietor (@TVietor08) October 16, 2020
That is the worst-possible answer.
Joe Biden seems to not want the town hall to ever end. It concluded nearly 30 minutes ago, and he’s still fielding questions as voters take out notecards and ask the questions they didn’t get to during the televised broadcast. And Biden shows no signs of letting up.
— Matt Viser (@mviser) October 16, 2020
I'm sure the next time Trump gets network airtime, after another 10 million or more people have voted he's really going to turn this thing around.
— Schooley (@Rschooley) October 16, 2020
BONUS: In the post-town hall clips, we noticed the strange image of a woman seated behind Trump continually nodding affirmatively at everything he said. The Miami Herald as identified her not as an "undecided voter" as the audience members supposed to be, but as a politically-involved Trump cultist, and ironically an immigrant from the Dominican Republic. Of course, they're used to dictators in the DR.
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