It was a long and messy debate Tuesday night. It has taken two rather long posts for me to debrief. Here is Part I. It covered attacks and lies. Today we’re covering a couple more lies, and then some of the better responses.
I’m hoping there are things we can learn from looking at the
words that were said, apart from the emotions of the event.
A Couple
More of the Lies
Biden Family Corruption
 |
| Hunter Biden travels with VP Joe Biden image found here |
One of the most contentious parts of the evening was related
to President Trump’s disclosures about Biden family corruption.
DONALD TRUMP: China ate your lunch, Joe. And no wonder. Your
son goes in and he takes out billions of dollars. He takes out billions of
dollars to manage. He makes millions of dollars. And also, while we're at it,
why is it, just out of curiosity, the mayor of Moscow's wife gave your son
three and a half million dollars?
JOE BIDEN: That is not true.
DONALD TRUMP: What did he do to deserve it? What did he do
with—
JOE BIDEN: None of that is true.
DONALD TRUMP: … to deserve $183,000?
CHRIS WALLACE: Sir, you've asked him a question, let him
answer it.
Note that this interruption is unnecessary; Biden has answered.
He repeats continually that none of it is true—but it does happen to be
true.
DONALD TRUMP: Oh really, he didn't get three and a half
million?
CHRIS WALLACE: Mr. President, it's an open discussion. Please—
[crosstalk]
If a journalist were doing his due diligence, he would know the facts. Reports are coming out pretty regularly now. It shouldn’t be Trump bringing it up; it should be Chris Wallace. [If you need a review, try The Blaze and The Epoch Times.]
 |
| Glenn Beck: Ukraine Scandal Explained screenshot from here |
DONALD TRUMP: Did Burisma pay him $183,000 a month, with no
experience in energy?
CHRIS WALLACE: Mr. President—
JOE BIDEN: My son did nothing wrong at Barisma—
DONALD TRUMP: I think he did.
CHRIS WALLACE: Mr. President, let him answer. [crosstalk]
JOE BIDEN: He doesn't want to let me answer, because he knows
I have the truth. His position has been totally thoroughly discredited—
Chris Wallace tries to end the segment. Donald Trump isn’t
finished.
DONALD TRUMP: He stood up-…and he threatened Ukraine—
CHRIS WALLACE: Sir—
DONALD TRUMP: … with a billion dollars—
JOE BIDEN: That is absolutely not true.
That is true. The video has been circulating for years, of Joe Biden bragging that he threatened loss of funding unless they fired the investigator into his son’s company.
This isn’t over. Biden starts it up
again, when he accuses—yet again—about the whole scam the President was
impeached on, about Russian collusion. Talk about discredited.
DONALD TRUMP: Your son got three and a half million dollars—
JOE BIDEN: By the way, my son…. [Some back and forth,
before coming back to this.] And speaking of my son, the way you talk about
the military, the way you talk about them being losers and being and just being
suckers. [This references an additional lie about Trump, from anonymous
sources, discredited by those who were present, both friend and foe.] My
son was in Iraq. He spent a year there. He got the Brown Star. He got the
Conspicuous Service Medal. He was not a loser. He was a Patriot and the people
left behind there were heroes.
DONALD TRUMP: Really?
JOE BIDEN: And I resent—
DONALD TRUMP: Are you talking Hunter? Are you talking about
Hunter?
JOE BIDEN: I'm talking about my son, Beau Biden. You're
talking about Hunter?
There isn’t a chance in the world Biden thought Trump was
talking about Beau, when Trump was bringing up the $3.5 million from Russia.
This was an attempt to both confuse and to get sympathy, because his son Beau
died of cancer while Biden was Vice President.
DONALD TRUMP: I don't know Beau. I know Hunter. Hunter got
thrown out of the military. He was thrown out, dishonorably discharged.
JOE BIDEN: That's not true; he was not dishonorably
discharged.
DONALD TRUMP: For cocaine use. And he didn't have a job until
you became Vice President.
JOE BIDEN: None of that is true.
It’s true. There’s this contemporaneous report. Also fact checking by PJ Media this week.
People who haven’t been paying attention can’t see the
connection between Biden’s son’s business dealings and Biden’s run for the
presidency, so let me spell that out clearly. Joe Biden’s business has always
been about using his government position to profit his family—his brother, his
son, multiple other family members. Government graft is the family
business. If his son was making deals in China, Ukraine, and Russia—with nothing
to offer but his family connection to VP Joe Biden—that is corruption fed by
Joe Biden personally. [Some of it is in this documentary.]
Green New
Deal
I had only planned on that one additional segment on the
lies, but there’s this other one I want to cover. It has to do with the
Green New Deal. President Trump points out how expensive the Green New Deal is
going to be; Biden responds with a confusing and obfuscating lie.
DONALD TRUMP: He's talking about the Green New Deal. And it's
not 2 billion [crosstalk] or 20 billion, as you said [crosstalk].
It's $100 trillion.
JOE BIDEN: I'm talking about the Biden plan [crosstalk]—
There’s some back and forth about rebuilding all the
buildings, outlawing cars, outlawing cows, and other things we have read for
ourselves in the Green New Deal, listed by Trump, denied by Biden. Chris
Wallace is actually useful as a moderator at this point:
CHRIS WALLACE: Wait a minute, sir. I actually have studied
your plan, and it includes upgrading 4 million buildings, weatherizing 2 million
homes over four years, building one and a half million energy efficient homes.
So the question becomes, the president is saying, I think some people who
support the president would say, that sounds like it's going to cost a lot of
money and hurt the economy.
JOE BIDEN: What it's going to do, it's going to create
thousands and millions of jobs. Good paying jobs [crosstalk]….
Trump points out that other
countries put out pollutants and nobody says a word. But we need to pay $100
trillion to hurt our economy, for things that wouldn’t even make a measurable
difference to the climate in a century?
JOE BIDEN: That is not my plan [crosstalk]. The Green
New Deal [crosstalk] is not my plan. [crosstalk]
And then a minute later, Chris
Wallace returns the discussion to the economy and the costs of his plans, and
Joe Biden refers to his plan:
JOE BIDEN: The Green New Deal will pay for itself as we move
forward. We're not going to build plants that, in fact, are great polluting
plants—
CHRIS WALLACE: So, do you support the Green New Deal?
JOE BIDEN: Pardon me?
CHRIS WALLACE: Do you support the—
JOE BIDEN: No, I don't support the Green New Deal.
DONALD TRUMP: Oh, you don't? Oh, well, that's a big
statement.
JOE BIDEN: I support— [crosstalk]
DONALD TRUMP: You just lost the radical left.
JOE BIDEN: I support [crosstalk] the Biden plan that I
put forward.
CHRIS WALLACE: Okay.
JOE BIDEN: The Biden plan, which is different than what he
calls the radical Green New Deal.
Except that he still calls it the Green New Deal and doesn’t
identify any differences, and the question referred to what Chris Wallace had
read in Biden’s version on his website. Plus there’s the fact that he has
brought in Green New Deal “author” Ocasio-Cortez to advise him, and Senator Harris,
supporter of the original Green New Deal, as his running mate. So let's count that as a Biden lie.
Good and
Better Answers
Transition of Power
My favorite response by President Trump was about the transition following an election. The question was designed to put Trump on the defense: will he leave office? The answer is, it depends on whether it’s a free and fair election result—because the Democrats have been going out of their way to cause election chaos. For a good review of this issue, check out The Blaze’s Wednesday night special.
 |
| Glenn Beck special Election War Game screenshot from here |
Anyway, Trump discards the defense and goes on offense—with
what we have actually all observed:
DONALD TRUMP: So, when I listen to Joe talking about a
transition, there has been no transition from when I won. I won that election.
And if you look at crooked Hillary Clinton, if you look at all of the different
people, there was no transition, because they came after me trying to do a
coup. They came after me spying on my campaign. They started from the day I
won, and even before I won. From the day I came down the escalator with our
first lady, they were a disaster. They were a disgrace to our country, and
we've caught them. We've caught them all. We've got it all on tape. We've
caught them all.
DONALD TRUMP: And by the way, you gave the idea for the Logan
Act against General Flynn. You better take a look at that, because we caught
you in a sense, and President Obama was sitting in the office. He knew about it
too. So don't tell me about a free transition.
Denouncing
Racism
There’s the “racist” lie, which ought to be disposed of by now.
Nothing will work against this enemy, of course. But I’m going to suggest a way
the Spherical Model can help.
CHRIS WALLACE: You have repeatedly criticized the Vice President
for not specifically calling out Antifa and other left-wing extremist groups.
But are you willing tonight to condemn white supremacists and militia groups
and to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number
of these cities, as we saw in Kenosha and as we've seen in Portland?
DONALD TRUMP: Sure, I'm willing to do that.
That’s just the first time this night that he disavows
racist groups.
CHRIS WALLACE: Are you prepared specifically to do it?
He just did. Why are you asking again?
DONALD TRUMP: I would say almost everything I see is from the
left wing, not from the right wing.
CHRIS WALLACE: But what are you saying?
He’s saying “asked and answered,”
so let’s go on to something actually relevant to the rioting. Yet it continues.
DONALD TRUMP: I'm willing to do anything. I want to see
peace.
CHRIS WALLACE: Well, do it, sir.
He already did. Not just here,
this night, multiple times; dozens of times on record. People are making
compilations. Including the day they claim he said “good people on both sides”
OF THE DEBATE ABOUT CIVIL WAR MONUMENTS! At which time he made it very clear he
was not saying there were good people among white supremacists and any other
racists, whom he soundly and clearly denounced. Who are, incidentally, a minor
hiccup on the American landscape, not a movement.
JOE BIDEN: Say it! Do it! Say it!
DONALD TRUMP: What do you want to call them? Give me a name,
give me a name. Go ahead. Who do you want me to condemn?
CHRIS WALLACE: White supremacists and white militia. [crosstalk,
I believe from Biden, mentions others, including Proud Boys, which are a group,
though not often at any rallies or riots, and not white-supremacist or racist]
DONALD TRUMP: Okay, boys, stand back and stand by. [He may
have said Proud Boys, although this transcription didn’t catch it.]
This is their takeaway from the
entire debate: “Trump is a white supremacist; he’s calling for them to stand
and await his orders.” Or, he was just, yet again, saying he had nothing to do
with whomever they listed—that he hasn’t been calling on them to do any
violence.
But there has been
violence. So he goes on to make a point about that:
DONALD TRUMP: But I'll tell you what, somebody's got to do
something about Antifa and the left, because this is not a right-wing problem;
this is a left wing.
Here’s where I’d like to step in and help with the Spherical
Model. There’s no such thing as a right-wing extremist; also, there’s no such thing as a
left-wing extremist. Because the right and left wing model doesn’t show the
picture. Anybody who uses terrorist tactics, inciting riots and violence, is by
definition tyrannical and savage. Maybe they have different ideas about who
should rule over everybody, but they don’t have anything to do with our
constitutional republic or civilization. Saying “They’re not our flavor/color
of tyrant” doesn’t win the hearts of people who love freedom and
civilization. So how about saying, “I’m against anyone who uses terrorist
tactics, like inciting riots and violence. Those people all want tyranny. I’m
here to protect America from that.” I can see Trump saying that. Not Biden.
Experts
I’ll offer help on two other types of attacks, which could
use similar responses, because they both have to do with experts. One is on
global warming. One is on COVID-19 response. Trump actually handles both pretty
well. But both really just need this: “Of course I listen to the experts. But
experts are, by definition, specialized in a narrow field. And it’s not the
field of public policy. So I listen to experts in their fields, and then I
listen to experts in economics, and in other areas required for human thriving,
and I weigh the options and use my judgment to come up with policy, within the
limits of the Constitution, that will be best for the American people.”
Trump has been listening to Dr. Atlas lately, on pandemic
response. He was on Uncommon Knowledge this week. Worth hearing.
Now, here’s the President’s exchange on climate:
CHRIS WALLACE: Mr. President, you said, “I don't think the
science knows.” Over your four years, you have pulled the US out of the Paris
Climate Accord. You have rolled back a number of Obama Environmental records. What
do you believe about the science of climate change, and what will you do in the
next four years to confront it?
DONALD TRUMP: I want crystal clean water and air. I want
beautiful clean air. We have now the lowest carbon— If you look at our numbers right now, we are
doing phenomenally. But I haven't destroyed our businesses. Our businesses
aren't put out of commission. If you look at the Paris Accord, it was a
disaster from our standpoint. And people are actually very happy about what's
going on, because our businesses are doing well. As far as the fires are
concerned, you need forest management.
But that’s not good enough, apparently:
CHRIS WALLACE: What do you believe about the science of climate
change, sir?
DONALD TRUMP: I believe that we have to do everything we can
to have immaculate air, immaculate water, and do whatever else we can that's
good. We're planting a billion trees, the Billion Tree Project, and it's very
exciting for a lot of people.
CHRIS WALLACE: Do you believe that human pollution, gas,
greenhouse gas emissions contributes to the global warming of this planet?
DONALD TRUMP: I think a lot of things do, but I think to an
extent, yes. I think to an extent, yes. But I also think we have to do better
management of our forest.
Asked and answered. Asked and answered. But what Wallace is
aiming for is a way to promote the “science denier” lie. Hence my suggestion
about how to respond on experts.
Summary
There’s one memorable line, which I expect will show up in
memes and on T-shirts, that sums up any Trump/Biden debate:
DONALD TRUMP: In 47 months, I've done more than you've done
in 47 years, Joe.
Have we learned anything by viewing and reviewing that messy
debate? Yes. That our brawling President is a lot more civilized than his opponents,
who all want to rule over us. I’m glad he’s willing to fight for us.
Will this debate have changed anyone’s minds? I don’t know.
I don’t think like the average, uninvolved American. However, I’m heartened to
learn that, following the broadcast of the debate on Telemundo, they did
a survey, and a whopping 66% said President Trump won the debate.
Incidentally, after news last night that the President and
First Lady have tested positive for COVID-19, after an aide came down with it,
we are praying for their quick and full recovery, and that their doctors will
be wise and use the best treatments. And I pray we have the opportunity to
support him for an additional four years.
No comments:
Post a Comment