All Over But The Whining?
Trump loses a debate, and is already constantly complaining
Well that was fun! At least it was if you’re the sort of person who is into watching Donald Trump get humiliated — a club of which I am a proud member. And why not be? If you weren’t enamored with either candidate in the first place (though Momala is growing on me as a capable knife-fighter, who is at least temporarily doing a passable impression of a moderate Democrat), but you regard Trump as a metastatic case of ass cancer in the body politic, well then watching him get poleaxed on a debate stage might be one of your few remaining political pleasures.
Here was one of my quick’n’dirty impressions — chipped in immediately following the debate — over at the New York Times:
Trump’s nondefense of his behavior on Jan. 6 was so ridiculous — he tried to change the subject to illegal immigration at one point, as if disgruntled Mexicans had invaded the Capitol at his behest — that even if Harris had stumbled out drunk and dribbled down her blouse, Trump still might have lost the debate for himself.
But now that my Kentucky-distilled anesthetic has worn off, now that I’ve had a chance to put on my MAGA jammies, now that I’ve had an opportunity to say my bedtime prayers (“God, please let this long national nightmare be over”) and to get a good night’s sleep, I have some additional thoughts.
Combing over the transcript more carefully this morning, what becomes clear is that Trump was beaten like the village piñata. And that’s not my anti-Trump bias talking. (For the record, I had Trump trouncing Biden in their debate, mentioning in the Times back in June that Biden “sounded like a dying humidifier or my great grandfather giving his last will and testament.”) The polls seem to back me up on last night’s results. As The Washington Post noted, a YouGov poll showed that Kombucha (which Trump has not yet called Harris, but probably will) won 54-31 percent among registered voters who watched at least some of the debate. While CNN had her winning 63-37 percent. In an evenly-divided electorate, those are true bloodbath numbers — a bigger margin than 20 other post-debate polls CNN has done going back to 1984. And as the Post added, it gets worse for Trump, in that even 31 percent of Trump supporters said he lost.
Harris started off shaky, but found her ring legs as the slugfest wore on. Trump started off 100 percent self-assured, which is generally the resting state of a sociopathic narcissist, even when he was lying, which he did a lot of, and which is a craft that he has perfected. Yet the deeper into the night we got, the shakier Trump grew, becoming visibly rattled, peevish, and perhaps even scared of his much shorter opponent (her stature being something he remarked upon pre-debate). While proving, yet again, that he’s the much smaller man, refusing even to make eye contact with Harris throughout the debate, much as he’s never looked into the abyss of his own black hole of a soul.
Don’t worry, I’m not going to give you some comprehensive blow-by-blow. If you saw it, living through it once was more than enough. And if you didn’t, it’s probably because you’ve already had your fill of this election cycle. (For which I can’t blame you.)
Donald Trump used to be pretty funny, in an insult-your-mother, discount-Don-Rickles sort of way. Once, when profiling him in the nineties, I followed Trump to a VIP tent at a Tony Robbins seminar, where he had the press corps in stitches by calling on audience members during a Q&A by identifying them according to their salient physical characteristics: “the bald guy in the suit” or “the beautiful woman in the semi-blouse.” When one woman asked how she could create capital when all she had was “my knowledge and my training,” Trump thought for a beat, then said, “Meet a wealthy guy.” I admit it. I laughed hard.
These days, however, nearly all of the yuks are unintentional, an outgrowth of his own lack of self-awareness, his blatant dishonesty, and his super-sized ego. Here are some of the most unintentionally hilarious moments from last night’s debate:
· On how imposing 20 percent tariffs on goods coming into our country won’t see costs passed on to the consumer: “They aren’t gonna have higher prices….who’s gonna have higher prices is China and all of the countries that have been ripping us off for years.” Yeah, rotsa ruck with that, as racists claim they say in China. (Not me.)
· On how Harris has so ripped off his philosophy, that “I was going to send her a MAGA hat,” but that if she is elected, “It will be the end of our country. She’s a Marxist. Everybody knows she’s a Marxist. Her father’s a Marxist professor in economics. And he taught her well.” (I don’t know if they make Marxist MAGA hats, but they do make Marxist MAGA hat pins.)
· I’m pro-life personally, but Trump doesn’t seem to have a very firm grasp of abortion-wars history. On getting Roe overturned: “Every legal scholar, every Democrat, every Republican, liberal, conservative, they all wanted this issue to be brought back to the states where the people could vote.” (No, they didn’t. Not even in the Land of Make Believe, where Donald Trump has had permanent residency even well before he became Florida Man.)
· Trump derided Harris’s boss for spending “all his time on the beach.” But the Washington Post’s Philip Bump once reported that Trump likely played 261 rounds of golf as president — or a round every 5.6 days. And that Trump spent well over an entire year of his four-year-term visiting his Trump Organization properties (428 days, actually), which came out to a visit every 3.4 days.
· When Harris mocked Trump for his nutjob pronouncements at rallies on everything from Hannibal Lecter to windmills causing cancer, then noted attendees often leave early “out of exhaustion and boredom,” Trump acted as though she’d insulted the size of his Little Donald: “She said people start leaving. People don’t go to her rallies. There’s no reason to go. And the people that do go, she’s busing them in and paying them to be there. And then showing them in a different light. So she can’t talk about that. People don’t leave my rallies. We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics.”
· Trump repeated the much-debunked recent story of migrants’ bizarre dietary habits, even adding some new twists: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs…..They’re eating the cats. They’re eating – they’re eating the pets of the people who live there.” (Perhaps he was trying to win back the “childless cat ladies,” alienated by his vice presidential pick?)
· Trump had the distinction of being the first presidential candidate in history (that I’m aware of) who accused his opponent of trying to have him killed. “I probably took a bullet to the head because of the things that they say about me. They talk about democracy. I’m a threat to democracy. They’re the threat to democracy — with the fake ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’ investigation that went nowhere.” (An investigation that was initiated by Trump’s own Deputy Attorney General appointee.)
· “So my values have not changed.” Sorry, that LOL’er was from Kamala Harris, still trying to pretend that she wasn’t against fracking in her first run for president. Which most definitely does not pass the laugh test.
· Trump on his January 6 involvement, and whether he had any regrets about that day: “I had nothing to do with that other than they asked me to make a speech.” (That one nearly disabled my laptop keyboard, when I snorted Maker’s Mark through my nose.)
· When Harris mentioned that Trump has already been fired by 81 million people, that world leaders laugh at Trump, and that military leaders who worked with him thought he was a disgrace…..what was Trump’s counter?: “Viktor Orbán, one of the most respected men — they call him a ‘strong man.’ He’s a tough person. Smart. Prime Minister of Hungary. They said, ‘Why is the whole world blowing up?’…….He said, ‘Because you need Trump back as president.’” Allow me to just put on my political consultant hat for a second. But the most effective way to refute that you’re a wannabe strongman is generally not to brag about praise from a sitting strongman.
I could go on. (And on and on.) But you get the idea. Not for nothing did the Drudge Report’s screaming red-print headline call his performance, “Trump’s 911.” But unlike the first 9/11, which we’re supposed to “never forget,” there’s still a high probability that about half the country will forget this Trump belly-flop off the high dive, just as they managed to forget him trying to steal an election that he lost, or playing field marshal for the Capitol invasion, or getting indicted in four felony cases, or getting found civilly liable in a sex-abuse case, or humping one nutty conspiracy theory after another. If Trump hasn’t yet gotten around to shooting someone on Fifth Avenue — an action he once boasted (correctly) that his followers would forgive him for — it’s probably due to the fact that there just hasn’t been enough time, what with all the court dates and golf rounds.
Though Trump’s first and possibly only debate with Harris is over, the whining is just getting started. And if the usual pattern holds, it will likely continue on for months or years. Just as he still prattles on about winning the 2020 election, in which he was actually smoked.
Why, in just the past 24 hours, Trump showed up in his own post-debate spin room to pretend he won the debate, citing North-Korean-style lopsided poll numbers. He threatened that Taylor Swift will “pay a price” for endorsing his opponent. He called for ABC News to be shut down for its moderators daring to fact-check him during the debate. Though at least he hasn’t (yet) called for ABC’s moderators to be criminally charged, as have some of Trump’s media handmaidens. Though Trump’s strongman hero, Orbán, would probably consider it a pretty strong move if he did call for it.
Meanwhile, Trump will keep on citing his authoritative sources — a Newsmax snap poll said he won 93-6 percent! No word yet on whether Melania thinks he won, too, since she didn’t bother showing up to the debate. (Shocker!)
Some, like my old friend/colleague Bill Kristol, have suggested last night’s disaster is the beginning of the end for Trump. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Color me skeptical that any one event matters overly much these days. (And in the Real Clear battleground-state poll averages — which would not yet reflect last night’s happenings — it’s basically a dead heat: Harris is slightly ahead in three states, Trump is slightly ahead in three others, with Pennsylvania being a virtual tie.) But all good things come to an end. Bad things, too. And however and whenever the Trump Era ends, of one thing we can be certain: it likely won’t end with a bang, but it will most definitely end with lots of whining. Whining is what Trump does best, and constantly.
Bonus Track: Over the years, all kinds of musical acts have requested that the Trump campaign not use their songs, from Aerosmith to The Village People. But maybe — after last night’s debate setback —with a little luck and if Trump asks nicely, the band UFO might be generous enough to let Trump borrow their 1976 anthem, “I’m a loser.”
Admit it — you thought I was going to go with Beck’s “Loser,” didn’t you? But that would be in bad taste after the near-miss assassination attempt. (Lyric: “I’m a loser baby/So why don’t you kill me.”) I have some standards, even if Mr. Trump doesn’t.