THERE WERE NO WINNERS IN THE 2nd 2016 PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE

 

 

The dirtiest and most disgusting presidential debate in US history.

 

With all the pro & con noise being made regarding the 2^nd presidential debate, I’m going to take a different approach at looking at the event.

 

Donald Trump, after what could only be described as having an horrific couple of campaign weeks, he obviously decided not to be on the defensive, but to go on offence.

 

I must say I was amazed when just before the debate, he brought on for the press, four women that had some kind of former relationship with former president Clinton, before he was the president.  Whatever happened between Bill Clinton and these women, it had nothing to do with this presidential campaign, so no one knows the point of their attendance except for distracting from the lewd Trump video.

 

 

In trying to designate one event from the debate that describes the event in a nut shell, it was when Trump said that if he was in charge of the law in America, Hillary would be in jail.  In other words, he would jail his opponent, despite the fact that an impartial federal investigation had concluded that no fair prosecutor would have charged Ms. Clinton in the matter of her emails.

 

Obviously, Mr. Trump does not understand the meaning of “rule of law in America”, as opposed to the arbitrary rule of a dictator.  Basically he was trying to act like his idol, Vladimir Putin, and he thinks he could use the federal government in a vindictive, self-serving and corrupt manner.  Mr. Trump has no real concept of how an American president would or should act.

 

What was really unfortunate is that in the 90 minute debate, there was no discussion or debate on climate change, nothing on dealing with ISIS, and they only touched on Syria and Aleppo and dealing w/ Russia and their cyber hacking.

 

Instead, we had what was is being described as the dirtiest and most disgusting presidential debate in US history.

 

After he doubled down on his false claim that he was against the invasion of Iraq, he called the Syrian refugees “the great Trojan horse of all time.”  But as usual, he provided no evidence or foundation for that claim.

 

Once again Trump defended the Russian dictator Putin, suggesting that, contrary to a finding by the US intelligence community, Moscow is not attempting to intervene in the election through computer hacking.  And again, he offered no evidence as to how he knows that Moscow is not trying to mess with the election….?

 

Mr. Trump even said he disagreed with his own running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, that the United States should act to stop the bombing by Russian and Syrian forces because, Mr. Trump said, “those forces are going after the ISIS”.

 

But the fact is, both Ms. Clinton and Governor Pence do understand, that the primary victims of the Russian and Syrian attacks are Syrian civilians, especially doctors and other health-care workers.

 

When Hillary was questioned about her emails showing that she had both “public” and “private” views on issues, Hillary pointed out that those comments came from her discussing Abraham Lincoln’s efforts to pass the 13th Amendment.  She then proceeded to duck the question of whether she holds one view on trade agreements in private, and another in public.  Trump wasn’t bright enough to consider jumping on that omission by Hillary.

 

The reality of the whole debate was that after such a bad couple of weeks for Trump, with his campaign sinking, there were many Republican office holders that had removed their support and were urging him to withdraw from the campaign,.  But Trump had obviously decided that his best response was to sniff and snarl and just double down on old false issues.

 

The way Trump loomed over Hillary during the 90 minutes, it was clear that he was trying, but failing, to intimidate Ms. Clinton.

 

Trump also tried and failed, to dismiss his boasting in the video of his sexually predatory behavior as only being “locker room talk.”   But when that did not work, he went back to his accusations of Bill Clinton’s past actions. It was a totally desperate and ineffective counterpunch.

 

Hillary did point out that the comments that came out of the old Access Hollywood tape were totally in character for Donald Trump.  They were right in line with the insults that he has made against many people and groups during his many months of campaigning.

 

This was once again made crystal clear when a Muslim American woman asked Trump about “Islamophobia”.  Trump didn’t hesitate to virtually accuse American Muslims of hiding vital information about terrorists in this country.  He made that claim by saying that there were all those Muslims he says saw the San Bernardino terrorist's bombs in their apartment.  This bomb sighting only occurred inside Trump’s vivid imagination.

 

 

By contrast, Ms. Clinton did what she said she would do as suggested by Michelle Obama in, “going high when Trump goes low”.  Hillary then said, “My vision of America is one where everyone has a place. That is not Mr. Trump’s vision”.

 

Hillary made it clear, and the Fact Checkers agreed that ISIS was using these comments by Trump as serious recruiting tools.

 

The Fact Checkers also said that Trump saying during the debate that he did not say that Alicia Machado was in a sex video, that was a “Pants-on-Fire, Four Pinocchio” lie.  His Tweet saying there was a sex tape with Machado went to millions of Trump followers.

 

So, after all that, who won the debate?

 

For the 2^nd presidential debate, it was so disgusting that from my point-of-view, there were no winners.  Everyone, including the American public, we were all at a major loss.

 

November 8^th…….please get here soon.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016