Choke artist.
Byron York: For Trump, a solid debate performance disappears in an instant
LAS VEGAS — Standing in a garish hotel lobby, casino music pounding, a Republican who has worked hard to help Donald Trump couldn’t quite believe how the final presidential debate had ended just a couple of hours earlier.
“He had a home run going — a home run — and then he pissed it away in ten seconds,” the person said. “Could he just try to win? Just f—-king try to win?”
Edited.
99.99% of any other debaters could have used the theme of
You need a public stance and a private stance[sic]
And hung lie after corrupt fact upon it, in a dispassionate way, and looked like a king.
However, …
Trump can’t deliver the goods. This goes back to all that discussion about Trump the Negotiator and how well he would fare in the job of presidency - he can’t help himself, he’s destined to wreck important matters because he is undisciplined and simply not that bright or savvy.
How easy of a question - a softball, and a way to look the part of gracious statesman if for but a second - and he sputters out this nonsense. In addition to its electoral impact (in this week’s news cycle and beyond), imagine a President Trump trying to negotiate a sensitive deal with foreign leaders and blowing the whole damn thing up by saying something idiotic at the podium for ten seconds - it isn’t a possibility, it’s a certainty. Last night proved it.
Great job, GOP.
The worst part about horribly missing the answer to whether he will accept the election results or not was that his daughter and running mate provided CLEAR answers before. Literally just repeat what they said. Don’t think, don’t be Trump, don’t “keep us in suspence” whatever the hell that means, just say the answer that is so obvious to anybody who would ever dream of being in politics.
I don’t blame the media for grabbing that moment and focusing on it. He gave it to them. What a joke.
Besides that moment I thought the debate was good, surprisingly a lot about policy and Chris Wallace did an awesome job. It was comical how Trump just couldn’t help himself at the end, started interupting more and making weird faces when Hillary made a good point. How has he not learned to not react when Hillary is talking? Put on a poker face so its not so obvious when she lands a good blow.
Edit: After Trump will the dictionary have to include the word “bigly”?
It will be funny in the coming days to watch him continue this self-fulfilling prophecy of blaming the media for rigging the election against him when he himself creates such easy and obvious source material.
One of my favorite WTF moments from the election cycle was watching an assortment of Trump’s staff and supporters on various media outlets complain about how mean Hilary’s attack ads are. This was often met with an appropriately incredulous “They’re literally just his own words.”
He seems utterly incapable of (or unwilling to) understanding that his own boorish behavior is precisely why “the media” is “rigging” the election against him. He hands it over on a silver platter.
And yet here is my problem
You elect a pathological liar for President, Congress does not stand up to her in its Constitutional role (imo) of Primus inter pares - what do you have?
Augustus birthed out of the previous 3 Julius presidents, or perhaps even Diocletian?
Arghhhhh. Truly frightening.
Did you say this when Gore moaned about initially losing Florida in 2000 ?
I know the point you’re trying to make here, and if it’s a double digit blowout then yes he should accept it. But if we have a situation like Bush v Gore 2.0, then no I don’t he should concede initially. I would also add that, with these new videos surfacing with Democratic operatives admitting to voter fraud, I don’t actually blame Trump. These aren’t low level basement dwellers either, one of them met with President Obama privately at the White House over 40 times, according to White House visitor records.
Trump is also battling a biased media, who sat on that Billy Bush/Access Hollywood tape for God knows how long. Did you think NBC got that video on that day, or did they sit on it for months waiting to release it ? I’m not talking about the DNC, but a major news network. Can we agree that news should be released in real time, and not months after the fact ?
It was a stupid comment for Trump to make about possibly not accepting the final results, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have good reason for saying it.
Not trying to stir up shit here, but as a genuine discussion point:
I’m always a little miffed by this. There are both right-leaning and left-leaning media outlets alike. For every “biased” John Oliver hit piece on Donald Trump’s lunacy, there’s a Sean Hannity on Fox News hosting some nut-job that came out of the woodwork as they both pontificate on shocking allegations of Clinton dishonesty.
Is there really a systematic bias, or are there people blowing both ways that pretty much cancel each other out at the end of the day?
I know that the alt-right wants to believe that there’s an overall “bias” against Trump, but they create plenty of their own “biased” content, too.
I don’t know that you can equate the level of impact from a comedian who has a show on HBO with a major network like NBC News. I think both sides have their own respective editorial or opinion journalists like a Hannity or a Rachel Maddow, but your average down the middle kind of news network should not have held that tape for as long as they did, unless they were told to or wanted the specific outcome of wanting Trump to win the nomination.
Bush v. Gore is a separate situation - if it’s a close vote and there is a legal challenge to the votes cast, different story. That isn’t what is at issue, and it doesn’t provide cover for your alt-right hero.
As for the rest of your post, I said months ago - the time by which the GOP voters blame “the media” for virtually all of the problems of Trump could be clocked with an egg timer. It’s a weak excuse - the media was biased against Trump before the election, and everyone knew it. If you can’t bake that into your campaign to account for it, you’re an idiot.
And idiot Trump is - knowing full well that the media would come at him tooth and claw, he still forbade his own team from doing basic due diligence on him to try and get ahead of these issues. His own team. Comically incompetent.
Don’t whine to me about the media. Trump had never been vetted before - anyone with any sense knew he would be intense scrutinized by a media establishment that wanted to expose him.
The problem is not the media, it’s the candidate.
I bet Hillary got the debate questions ahead of time as well for these ones against Trump . Also isn’t it interesting she was out of the public eye for 8 straight days prior to the debate? She must be completely fucked up to need that much rest for a 90 min debate
My disagreement with this blanket statement is that the hidden dealings of HRC haven’t been vetted, neither in the past nor currently. She should never have been a serious candidate nor appointee of anything in the public trust.
She has less character than LBJ.
There, as a native Texan - I said it
It’s called debate prep. If Donald did the same maybe he wouldn’t miss such an easy question as “will you accept the election results?”. Or turn his word salad responses into clear targetted attacks. You know, act like he actually wanted to win.
Trump is not my alt-right hero, he is the “flush the system” hero that I think many people are looking for.
Do you think it’s ok for a huge aspect of our society (the media) to be so blatantly biased against a particular candidate ? That’s like watching the SuperBowl or the World Series with sports broadcasters who are openly rooting for a certain team to win rather than calling the game fair.
Reports are supposed to report, not support. Those are supporters.
The one thing that really makes me wince when Trump says it is about how stupid we look. He has reiterated it in each debate and it never comes out right.
I don’t know what button he’s trying to push with that, but I can’t imagine that anybody watching appreciates that statement, regardless of context.
Is anything you’re griping about the media right now not true before Trump became the nominee?
We had a “liberal, unfair” media in 2008, and in 2012 - and you and everyone else who holds this opinipn knew it well before Trump became the nominee for 2016.
So, it’s a known aspect of the playing field. Can’t change it. Deal with it.
But instead of dealing with it, the GOP’s chances for the White House are circling the drain, and instead of rightly blaming the worst major party candidate in history, it’s all the media’s fault for running true stories about him.
Ridiculous.
You think Chris Wallace of Fox News gave Hillary the debate questions in advance?
It’s this thing called preparation. Perhaps if the Republican nomiee tried it he would be able to beat the worst candidate the democratic party has ever nominated.
Did the media collude with a political party to upend a candidate before this election ? Probably not to this degree. No, I don’t think we had news people who donated to certain foundations be appointed to moderate debates in a supposed unbiased way.
Exposing media bias is how you deal with it, and with an approval rating being close to that of std’s, I think he does have a point to at least bring it up. When Obamacare was being debated by the Supreme Court, and Obama cried about activist judges, I doubt you suggested he was being ridiculous. They are not the sole reason Trump is struggling, but never have I seen such a disgusting biased coverage of an election. It stinks to holy hell.
Honestly, if we had a candidate worth a damn the whole news cycle these past 3onths would have been email email email, corruption corruption corruption. HRC is a headline maker…except if Donald Trump is opposite her.
I really feel that 2008 and 2012 were way way worse in coverage bias. How do you not take the headline when Trump is literally spitting out viewership goldmines?
I was also really diasspointed in both candidates discussions regarding entitlements and debt. Trump pivoted and re-stated his trade positions… not sure how that correlates. Clinton at least acknnowledged the issues, but I though Chris Wallace did a good job of asking if it is just the same approach Obama has used (and not worked).
Not surpised, but re-iterates that those issues aren’t going away in the next four years.