20 Quick Thoughts on the Debate.

Published by John White at September 26, 2016

Fourth of all, would Hillary be worse for the country? Almost certainly yes. In fact, I say yes, period. Nothing about the debate should have convinced anyone otherwise.

Hillary spent her time using her horrible predictable voice to say horrible predictable things. She is a bad person. Every word out of her mouth is a calculated lie. She craves power and has no conscience.

She was also just boring. My ears glazed over. Yes, they did. Ears can glaze over.

As my wife put it, you wanted to hear Trump talk, but you didn’t want to hear Hillary talk. But that was near the beginning. By the end she didn’t want to hear Trump talk either.

Trump did much better on the split screen that Mitt Romney did in 2012. I’m sure some people hated his scowl, but it was better than Romney giving that sickly half smile whenever Obama was talking.

Yet for all that, when it came to speaking, Trump spent more time agreeing with Hillary than disagreeing. It was unbelievable. He seemed to start every response with “First of all, I agree with Secretary Clinton…”

Speaking of that, why was he calling her Secretary Clinton? That had the whiff of coaching behind it (“call her ‘Secretary Clinton’ or else they’ll say you’re sexist”). He shouldn’t have listened. She called him Donald the entire time. He should have called her Hillary. It’s a perfectly good derogatory term and he should have used it.

My six year old has more restraint than Trump. When the four year old pesters him, he ignores it. Hillary was right about one thing – she prepared for the debate. And she learned an important truth about Donald Trump: he will ignore the bigger issues, even those in which he has the clear advantage, to quibble over the tiniest affronts to his ego. Trump was stupid to keep rising to the bait on things like the architect he didn’t pay or the lawsuit from 1973. Nobody cares about that stuff. He should have ignored it. Instead he sounded like an idiot. He got played.

Clinton had Trump so much on the defensive that he would spend his entire allotted time on a fresh question playing “no I didn’t but you did” instead of taking the opportunity to hammer her.

The number of things Trump just left on the table was staggering. Clinton Foundation…Goldman Sachs…public fainting…the list goes on. He completely failed to maintain focus under pressure and to press the attack where he needed to. Inexcusable error.

It’s 2016 and Hillary is blaming George W. Bush for the rise of ISIS. Pathetic. There’s no other word.

Lester Holt was completely in the tank for Hillary. Big surprise. His most notable Candy Crowley moments were the birther issue and support for the Iraq War. “The record suggests otherwise…” Shut up, Lester.

At every debate, each candidate has thirty seconds or so to close out with their canned pitch to the American voter. Which is what Hillary did, as wooden and phony and patronizing as it sounded.

How did Donald close the debate? What did he say when he was given the last word, to which Hillary had no chance to respond? What words did he leave echoing in the ears of Americans? “I will absolutely support her.”