It may seem that Trump trounced Biden in their first, and only, debate. But a cursory reading of the transcript shows that Biden self-destructed. Trump had very little to do with it. Not only that, Trump’s answers sometimes wandered aimlessly. He sounded like a loser.
In a debate with Harris, he will have to be a lot more disciplined and smarter if he hopes to do her in. For some watchers, it doesn’t seem likely that someone as undisciplined as Trump can win against a media favorite. And it wasn’t just during the debate that his answers failed to inspire confidence.
Here’s how he responded to questions asked by Maria Bartiromo, a friend, on a recent Sunday morning television show.
BARTIROMO: “Tell us about your policy plans and how they will impact the lives of American citizens.”
TRUMP: “So we’re going to have more jobs than we’ve ever had—look, we had that. Nobody ever had an economy pre-COVID. And then after COVID, we did a phenomenal job. We handed over a stock market—we would have had a depression, I believe, if I wasn’t president. A couple people are saying this very strongly—we would have had a depression like in 1929.
That was a bad thing. COVID came in, nobody knew what it was, nobody knew how to handle it. We closed it down to China. Governors then made decisions whether they wanted to keep it—actually the Republican governors made the right decisions. The Democrat governors closed everything down. It was up to them; it wasn’t up to the president as I said.”
What?!
Kamala Harris isn’t the only candidate who can toss a word salad.
Bartiromo, frustrated with Trump, gave him a second chance.
BARTIROMO: “But you focused on lower taxes and deregulation. Tell us how that leads to job creation.”
TRUMP: “So I cut taxes more than any other president in history, more so than Ronald Reagan. We had the biggest tax cut in history. All of a– And we had business incentive cuts. And they hired people at levels that they’ve never hired before.”
Maybe, but why did businesses hire people after he cut taxes? Does Trump know? Can he explain why? If he can’t explain why, listeners can be bamboozled by Harris into thinking . . . anything. That higher taxes are good because they provide funds for government to . . . hire people and reduce unemployment.
And please, enough with the boasting that he did a better job than President Reagan. That won’t endear him to Reagan enthusiasts, who may be on the fence about voting for Trump. We Reaganauts knew Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan was a friend of ours. And Donald Trump is no Ronald Reagan.
TRUMP continued: “As an example, Apple and other countr–companies. They had big money, billions and billions of dollars, offshore, outside of this country. You couldn’t bring it back. There was no mechanism to bring it back. And then the tax was too high. They had to pay like 50 percent tax. Who’s going to do that?”
Slow down, fella. Like, what does “You couldn’t bring it back” mean? Who couldn’t bring what back? And what does “There was no mechanism to bring it back” mean?
He finally got to the point, more or less: “And I made it so they could bring the money back. I made it much simpler, and I also reduced the tax [finally!]. And the billions of dollars came pouring back into our country. And they were spending the money.”
Okay (for those still paying attention), he finally got to the point. But look at the wasted time—and all that salad.
And how about giving the congressional Republicans some credit—he’ll need them if he’s going to get anything done . . . if he gets reelected.
He went on (but remember that the question was how lowering taxes and deregulation would lead to jobs):
TRUMP: “So, here’s what we’re doing: we’re going to get the first thing—we’re going to get energy way down. Drill, baby, drill. All right? We’re going to get energy way down. That’s going to lead to uh, the inflation.”
Wait, what?
Does he mean he’s going to reduce regulations that hamper drilling, and that that will lead to more employment in the oil business? If so, why didn’t he say that? But what about employment in other parts of the economy?
Then, “What’s killed this country more than anything in the last three and a half years is inflation, inflicted upon this country by Sleepy Joe Biden. The inflation has been a disaster in this country, and it’s killed the middle class. It’s killing the working class, and we’re going to get inflation brought down. We have to bring prices down.”
Maybe—but that wasn’t the question, Yes, inflation has to be brought down, but what sent it up? If Trump can’t describe how Biden’s policies drove inflation up, why should anyone in the undecided camp think he knows how to get inflation down?
BARTIROMO: “How do you do that? How do you get inflation down?” Softball question!
TRUMP: “If we bring energy down, other things are going to follow.”
Well, that simply isn’t right. Does Trump know what causes inflation? If not, he should be tutored.
That was a not-to-be-missed opportunity to slam Biden and Harris for their gargantuan spending spree, and most especially the $740 billion Biden-Harris “Inflation Reduction Act,” for which Harris cast the tie-breaking vote. She herself, as Vice President, Kamala Harris, she caused the inflation! Say it out loud! Say it twice!
One of the events that is likely to follow this sentence, “If we bring energy down, other things are going to follow” is Trump’s loss to Harris.
Trump is undisciplined and perhaps too old to change.
On the other hand, he’s not stupid. The question is, can he be made to see what needs to be done? And then do it? Or will he self-destruct, like Biden?
We’ll find out.
***
Daniel Oliver is Chairman of the Board of the Education and Research Institute and a Director of Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy in San Francisco. In addition to serving as Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission under President Reagan, he was Executive Editor and subsequently Chairman of the Board of William F. Buckley Jr.’s National Review.
Email Daniel Oliver at Daniel.Oliver@TheCandidAmerican.com.
There are several other issues that D. Trump did not handle correctly when it came to his debate with Biden. He did not answer two questions which were asked of him. One question had to do with women in the work force needing child care. He evaded answering several times. I don’t know if he thought it was better to talk about other issues he deemed to be more important and decided to take any opportunity to get his point across, as Democrats do with their talking points, or he lacked an answer he would have been comfortable with but it was unnerving for many who were wondering about his strategy and focus.
Considering that Harris will have already been told the questions prior to the debate we can expect that she will have memorized canned answers. That means she has to do very little to look good.
We know D. Trump is an effective leader and is good at extemporaneously speaking but for some reason he sometimes goes where he should not go and then elaborates which makes his response more worrisome.
Trump is good when it comes to boasting and fortunately his record as President has a lot to boast about. Harris, on the other hand, is good at straight faced lying. She has a lot to lie about to defend her Administration’s dismal record. Expect the media to consider her lying to be truthful and Trump’s exaggerations and boasting to be lying.
Donald Trump often performs better than he had in 2016 and what he did on the night of the debate with Joe Biden surprised a lot of people. Fortunately he did what he did with the already doomed Biden and is now aware of what he cannot afford to do with a well prepared K. Harris.
I am, as most here know, not excessively fond of Trump. However, he is the nominee, and in his defense he is not a public speaker, nor has he ever excelled at public speaking. His self-congratulatory demeanor turns off Independent voters and he desperately needs them this election. He has a tendency to ramble, and it takes practice to conquer that flaw.
Donald Trump is a businessman. He became famous as the host of a show called “The Apprentice”, but he does not seem to understand that debates are a kind of job interview. He needs coaching for that interview. One of his acolytes needs to smack him upside the head and tell him to list three specific accomplishments, not engage in extemporaneous, endless, self-congratulatory, non-specific nonsense! Debates do nothing to switch voters’ minds. They are not meant to be informative, only to provide an opportunity to size up how well people hold up under pressure.
The goal in this debate ought to be to maneuver Cackles into a corner from which she cannot emerge, then make her cry or lose her temper. Expound on her failures and her campaign’s plagiarism. Explain that the unrest fomented by Harris and Biden will become widespread should Democrats manage to install her. She is without merit, use or interest. We already know she’s mean, incompetent and stupid. He should go for the jugular in a way that Reagan never could or would. He needs to hammer home that Democrats have wrecked the country. Believe me, the public does not need much convincing at this point.
Color me hopelessly cynical, but if the voting American public needs to be persuaded of the vast difference between the vapid, neo-Marxist harpy, and PDJT, then we’re in more trouble than even I believe.
That said, Trump will need to sharpen his game considerably prior to the first debate. As the author notes, since we KNOW Harris will have the questions prior to the debate, then all she needs to focus on is delivering a sharp answer and not extrapolating. And of course, her answers will be flat out lies that the MODs will let sail by, so Trump will have to call her out, and draw a sharp contrast between his record and her lies and record as VP.
But again, the American people should not need to be reminded of the dismal failure of the current administration, and the wonderful three and a half years of Trump’s term.
I believe it was Churchill who quipped that the best argument against democracy was a conversation with the average voter. Woe unto us…
The problem - the REALLY BIG PROBLEM - with canned answers and the useless idiots programmed to spout them is that?
Is that when faced with someone who actually does know how to respond - as does Trump or Vivek - they are left defenseless and their incompetence and villainy of their motivations is laid naked for God and all to see.
I agree with Maximum Cassius - if people actually after four years of the utterly insufferable - Red Light District denizen who slept her way to the top servicing Willy Brown’s willy?
Don’t already know she is the DEI stand-in for the Grim Reaper? Then, perhaps it is time to realize that “The American People” are too stupid, callow, craven hearted - wanting to be taking the easy way out and deserve the horrors that are coming to them and town near them soon?
And for the rest of us - well, smart people have always known what to do when the time came to do it and, did quite well - thank you very much - despite the general wayward tenors and tendencies wrought by woe begotten, Dark Ages times.
“We will survive” (Channel Gloria - now) and live to fight another day - hidden away no doubt in our prepared in advance redoubts whilst the world without consumes itself in paroxysms of violence and malevolence.
Not, to put too fine a point on it! LOL
Good morning. Please see my response to Task, which concurs with yours - because, well - don’t great minds always think alike - or is it more that small minds seldom differ? As my sainted, British mother-in-law - who could NEVER let a definite, unequivocal statement go unmolested and had to always qualify it - by a rejoinder like the one above!
But that is why Britannia came to rule the waves. The British even more so than the Chinese I think - certainly more so than the Russians who were and are still frightfully good at it - masters of duplicity and betrayals and never accepted at face value anything anyone posited nor promised in terms of terms of an agreement between nations or individuals - always drilling down at least 3 likely 8 or 10 permutations of variations of the potential motivations and malevolent leanings of their opposites - so that they then could?
Could discern pretty much any hidden agendas and traps that the other side had lain - maybe unseen but now discovered and then - lay their own - likely a fatal one - trap for them.
Actually, it’s quite fun work - if you can get it and life puts you in the position to do it - for God, Country and apple pie only, of course!