At the debate’s end, CNN’s Washington, D.C., correspondent, John King, spoke of “a deep, wide panic in the Democratic Party.” Their presumptive nominee, Joe Biden, 81, had lost his train of thought near the debate’s start, mumbling, “uh, look…,” fumbling for words. Later, after Biden ended a segment on another mumble, Trump jabbed back, “I really don’t know what he said …and I don’t think he knows what he said, either.”
“I took two cognitive tests and I aced them,” Trump said, gloating. He didn’t say what tests they were. At 78, Trump is also too old to be president for four more years, but give him credit: He had a better stage presence than Biden did.
If Trump lied more egregiously than Biden, and he did, Biden piled up his share of political fibs. It is not true, as Biden said, that Trump “decimated the economy” and that under Trump, “there were no jobs.” Biden said Trump wants to end Social Security, an old Democratic chestnut that has about as much chance of coming true as ending gun violence.
If Trump was nasty to Biden, and he was, Biden was nasty back. He tried to smear Trump with Hitler — another Democratic chestnut. He said Trump had “the morals of an alley cat.” Each called the other a liar. Each said the other was the worst president in American history.
And I thought, “Maybe they’re both right, and this is the worst choice in American history.” Now that the Republicans crow and the Democrats quake, the thought comes to mind: Could the D’s dump their nominee for a younger man? Or woman? If the Democrats don’t, the Republicans should.
I wish we would stop letting politicians off the hook by calling the things they say “fibs”. They are lies and they know it. Only the truth sounds like the truth.
There was no equivalency in “each called the other.” Trump’s lies towered over the event as the CNN moderators were more muzzled than the candidates. The format worked just fine for Trump, spewing a now-familiar stream of lies about everything from America’s economic failure (What? Where? How?) to images of psycho, killer immigrants. Sadly, as performance art, a very bad night for Joe.