What a Debate That Was!
6 takeaways, only one of them surprising, but disturbingly so
Let’s talk about that presidential debate from Thursday night.
I came away with 6 lessons:
The debate was pointless because Trump lives in an alternative reality and, as Biden put it succinctly after the “debate”: “It’s hard to debate a liar.” An easy one, but I did nail it
Biden confirmed the suspicions about his age being a factor
The national Democratic Party is run by fools and, if their decision to stand by Biden leads to Trump’s election, they are not blameless for what comes next
The media is still, still completely incapable of handling Trump
It should change no one’s decision to vote for Biden
Trump’s disturbing performance
1. It Was Pointless
In the very first installment of Cancelling Reality, I said, “Say whatever you want about the mental capacities of either candidate; a debate is impossible because it relies on the sides living in the same factual reality. These sides don’t.”
Trump lied repeatedly and incessantly. According to him:
The January 6th insurrectionists were ushered into Capitol Hill by police
He offered Nancy Pelosi National Guard troops on January 6th but she turned him down
Biden wants to raise taxes on everyone
He had “the best environmental numbers” (whatever that means) and “immaculate” water and air during his term, when he actually rolled back the Clean Water Act and pulled out of the Paris Accord
Democrats are still doing “post birth abortions”
Migrant crime is an existential problem in the U.S.
The economy was at its best ever under his term, and is terrible now under Biden because of inflation
On numerous occasions, when Trump finished talking, all that Biden could start with was, “Everything he just said was a lie.”
This wasn’t a debate. It was a Gish gallop – a rhetorical technique where a debater tries to overwhelm their opponent with falsehoods, lies, misdirection, and as many lines of argument as possible to confuse them and make a full response impossible, let alone advance their own argument.
The only thing that makes me hesitate to call Trump’s performance a Gish gallop is that I think that Trump actually believes everything he said during the debate. He lives in the Right Wing Alternative Reality. What is real is whatever he just said.
In the end, though, we’re left with nothing but competing claims by intellectual cavemen going “me best, you worst!”
2. Biden Doesn’t Have It
From the debate’s first seconds, it was clear that all of the suspicions about Biden being too old were true.
He had no energy. He looked pale. He sounded hoarse. He has a stutter, but it seemed worse than it used to be. He lost his train of thought. He swallowed words. His voice trailed off. He got confused.
And he stood there listening to Trump’s lies with a jaw so loose it caught flies.
Did he forget that Trump is a serial liar? He looked stunned by the news.
It shook his supporters. It shook his donors. The New York Times’ editorial board called for him to drop out.
Maybe if Biden had appeared more often during his term, it would be more obvious that this just wasn’t his night. But he hasn’t. He’s kept behind closed doors for 3 years. We’re left with just his good State of the Union address, this disaster of a debate, and the suspicion that his administration deliberately kept him out of the light in order to cover this up.
It plays perfectly into the right wing’s smear campaign about Biden’s mental acuity, which gives credence to its other smear campaigns.
3. The Democratic Party Has, Once Again, Made a Mess of Things
Where we are is completely predictable. The party establishment hushed and shushed Dean Phillips, attacked anyone who said anything about Biden’s age, even as it was clearly a concern for voters, and did everything it could to get everybody to join in lockstep behind Biden, even as his popularity dropped.
Now they’re wondering if it’s too late to replace him. As if there are any good options.
As usual, the insiders at the Democratic National Committee have bungled everything. Just like in 2016, the DNC picked their candidate early on and threw their support behind them. Unlike in 2016, the DNC stopped at nothing to undermine a potential inner-party challenge. And now they find themselves fighting a strong right-wing with the establishment, centrist, uncharismatic, unpopular career politician of their choosing.
The DNC has learned nothing, yet again, and will not be blameless if voters don’t bail them out.
4. The Media Has Learned Nothing
Speaking of learning nothing, the media is still stumped over how to handle Trump’s lying.
CNN apparently thought that just having his mic muted when Biden was speaking would be enough. By sitting idle and silent while Trump repeatedly ripped through the fabric of reality for 90 seconds straight, the moderators put Biden in a position where he’d have to make quick decisions about how much time to allocate to fact-checking his opponent and how much to advance his own case.
A position we now know is too much for the sitting president’s capacities.
Fact-checking Trump is nearly impossible.
But it’s also getting easier.
Trump kept returning to the same four or five talking points throughout the debate:
The economy was the best under me
The economy is the worst now because of inflation
Crime is through the roof
Migrant crime is destroying everything
There really wasn’t much else that he said. He dodged all the other questions or made them about one of these talking points.
The media just needs to be ready for the falsehoods related to these claims. Crime is actually down. Unemployment is low, the stock market is high, and wage growth has outpaced inflation.
Calling Trump out on his lies, in real time, will bog down the debate. It will be awkward. Trump will lie, moderators will stop him and explain the facts, and then Trump will blow it away with “fake news” and go right on lying. But moderators have to stick with it and show that Trump is living in an alternative reality and that he is not entitled to forcing it on the rest of us.
Because insisting on a shared reality is fundamental to having a debate. If moderators don’t do this, there is no point to another one.
5. Voting for the Left or Against the Right is the Same
Anyone who dreads a win by Trump should not change their voting strategy by Biden’s poor performance.
The Democrats could nominate a wet towel and it would be the better option, because…
6. Trump’s Rhetoric Has Become Genocidal
Yes. Genocidal. Trump’s attacks on immigrants have taken on a genocidal tone.
During the debate, he blamed everything on immigration, from crime to job loss among minorities to problems with Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid:
TRUMP: He did beat Medicaid. He beat it to death. And he’s destroying Medicare, because all of these people are coming in, they’re putting them on Medicare, they’re putting them on Social Security. They’re going to destroy Social Security. This man is going to single-handedly destroy Social Security. These millions and millions of people coming in, they’re trying to put them on Social Security. He will wipe out Social Security. He will wipe out Medicare.
During the debate, Trump continued to demonize and dehumanize the immigrants themselves:
TRUMP: And I’d love to ask [Biden], and will, why he allowed millions of people to come in here from prisons, jails and mental institutions to come into our country and destroy our country.
…
TRUMP: There have been many young women murdered by the same people he allows to come across our border. We have a border that’s the most dangerous place anywhere in the world – considered the most dangerous place anywhere in the world. And he opened it up, and these killers are coming into our country, and they are raping and killing women. And it’s a terrible thing.
…
TRUMP: Look, we had the safest border in the history of our country. The border – all he had to do was leave it. All he had to do was leave it. He decided to open up our border, open up our country to people that are from prisons, people that are from mental institutions, insane asylum, terrorists. We have the largest number of terrorists coming into our country right now. All terrorists, all over the world – not just in South America, all over the world. They come from the Middle East, everywhere. All over the world, they’re pouring in. And this guy just left it open.
…
TRUMP: He’s the one that killed people with the bad border, including hundreds of thousands of people dying, and also killing our citizens when they come in. We – we are living right now in a rat’s nest. They’re killing our people in New York, in California, in every state in the union, because we don’t have borders anymore. Every state is now a border. And because of his ridiculous, insane and very stupid policies, people are coming in and they’re killing our citizens at a level that we’ve never seen. We call it migrant crime. I call it Biden migrant crime. They’re killing our citizens at a level that we’ve never seen before. And you’re reading it like these three incredible young girls over the last few days…And we have to get a lot of these people out and we have to get them out fast, because they’re going to destroy our country. Just take a look at where they’re living. They’re living in luxury hotels in New York City and other places. Our veterans are on the street, they’re dying, because he doesn’t care about our veterans.
The rhetoric is designed to inflame. The attacks are against women and young girls. We are defenseless. They are killers. They’re living in hotels rather than our veterans.
During the debate, Trump was obsessed with immigration, tilting into it from completely different topics, though also likely in an attempt to dodge them:
TAPPER: Let’s turn to the issue of democracy. Former President Trump, I want to ask you about January 6, 2021. After you rallied your supporters that day, some of them stormed the Capitol to stop the constitutionally mandated counting of electoral votes. As president, you swore an oath to, quote, “preserve, protect and defend,” unquote, the Constitution. What do you say to voters who believe that you violated that oath through your actions and inaction on January 6th and worry that you’ll do it again?
TRUMP: Well, I don’t think too many believe that. And let me tell you about January 6th, on January 6th, we had a great border, nobody coming through, very few.
…
TAPPER: So every day millions of Americans struggle just to make ends meet. For many older Americans, Social Security provides a critical lifeline. President Biden, if nothing is done to Social Security, seniors will see their benefits cut in just over 10 years. Will you name tonight one specific step that you’re willing to take to keep Social Security solvent?
[Biden’s response]
TAPPER: President Trump?
TRUMP: So I’ve dealt with politicians all my life. I’ve been on this side of the equation for the last eight years. I’ve never seen anybody lie like this guy. He lies – I’ve never seen it. He could look you in the face. So – and about so many other things, too. And we mentioned the laptop, we mentioned “Russia, Russia, Russia,” “Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine.” And everything he does is a lie. It’s misinformation and disinformation. The “losers and suckers” story that he made up is a total lie on the military. It’s a disgrace. But Social Security, he’s destroying it. Because millions of people are pouring into our country, and they’re putting them on to Social Security; they’re putting them on to Medicare, Medicaid. They’re putting them in our hospitals. They’re taking the place of our citizens. They’re – what they’re doing to the V.A., to our veterans, is unbelievable. Our veterans are living in the street and these people are living in luxury hotels. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.
Immigration, after all, is the topic Trump wanted to run on so badly he got a bipartisan border deal killed.
But how centrally immigration was to Trump in the debate surprised even me. What also surprised me was how closely his words adhered to the Great Replacement Theory – the evidence-free idea that Democrats are bringing in migrants to get them to vote for Democrats and replace white people. This Theory used to be far-right, but has now been adopted by mainstream Republicans and Trump himself. Trump literally said, “They’re taking the place of our citizens.”
It’s not just bluster, either. Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for Trump’s next presidency, calls for mass deportations of migrants. They would be rounded up in military raids, brought to large deportation camps, and then deported. Advocacy groups are worried, and have already reported seeing hate groups attacking hotels that house migrants.
But given how the Great Replacement Theory sees migrants as invaders, and seeing how Trump, the leader of the right wing, thinks that migrants are barely people, and seeing how costly it could be to actually bring migrants back to their country of origin, and seeing how badly migrants don’t want to go back to the country from which they fled, and seeing how fraught the legal process might be to force the origin country to take them back, doing something other than deporting them would not be such an unjustifiable escalation, would it?
In the Right Wing Alternative Reality, if someone in Trump’s administration proposed an alternative ending to the deportation process, they might be seen as just cutting costs. After all, in the Right Wing Alternative Reality, the migrants caused all these problems in America.
The dominoes are in line.
The MAGA base is primed to clamor for it.
Trump cannot be given the army again.
This article is cross-posted to Substack (for free), on Medium (free for members but paywalled for others), and on Cancelling Reality’s website. Please consider subscribing there to support the author. It’s only $1/month. If you want to contribute more, you can make a monthly subscription on Patreon.