This is Trump’s last chance to make a serious attempt before a broad audience to redeem his ugly, absurd, corrupt, and malignant Presidency. The only advantage that I can think of that Trump has going into tonight’s Debate is the fact that his microphone will cut out when he isn’t supposed to be talking.
10:36 pm: Trump claims with his usual vagueness that if Joe Biden becomes President, we will have the worst depression we have ever seen, or something. I’m sick of the Trump Presidency for a great many reasons, but I’m particularly tired of hearing Trump say that he has been “the greatest President in history for (whatever)” and that whoever he is currently confronting has been “the worst when it comes to (something)” and that a President Biden would bring us to “(some bad, bad thing) like you’ve never seen.” I look forward to our now-inevitable deliverance from the vague and histrionic extremes in rhetoric.
10:32 pm: Vice President Biden speaks with more passion, intensity, and concreteness of focus than either candidate has talked about anything else this evening when referring to his expensive living in a “fence line community” in Delaware near to many refining plants, and the long-term effects of aerosolized pollutants on the residents of those communities.
10:31 pm: Trump brags about working with the governments of Russia and Saudi Arabia to keep the price of oil high, as if that serves the bottom line of Americans.
10:26 pm: Trump claims that Vice President Biden’s climate change mitigation plan was written by “the Squad” of 4 Progressive freshmen Congresswomen. Vice President Biden’s climate change mitigation plan was produced through a compromise between the Biden Campaign and the Progressives, including the Squad as well as 2-time Progressive Presidential prospect Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
10:18 pm: Trump claims, with great drama, that he has done more for Black Americans than any President since Abraham Lincoln. So, move over, Ulysses S. Grant, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Barack Obama; the best friend of the Black Community is the man who has encouraged police to rough-up their suspects and demanded that athletes who silently and peacefully protest racial injustice be summarily fired.
10:14 pm: Trump claims, twice, that President Obama (and by implication, Vice President Biden) failed to pass criminal justice reform in President Obama’s 2nd term. It’s as frustrating as when Trump claimed in Debate 1 that President Obama failed to fill a lot of Federal Court vacancies. In both instances, a wholly Republican Congress refused to give President Obama a political win.
10:07 pm: Trump, retorting to Vice President Biden’s claim that migrants who don’t fear incarceration or arbitrary deportation keep their court dates because they want to remain in the United States legally, says that migrants who keep their court-dates–who follow the law–are “low IQ.”
10:06 pm: Vice President Biden commits to getting a law passed by Congress that will create a path to citizenship for 11 million immigrants not currently in the country legally, without costly and traumatizing detentions and deportations.
10:02 pm: Vice President Biden calls Trump’s detention and separation of migrant families at the United States-Mexico border a violation of what Americans are about as a country.
9:56 pm: Trump is back to arguing with the moderator again. He was doing well for the better part of an hour.
9:46 pm: Trump gets a question about the Amy Coney Barrett nomination to the Supreme Court and the impending California v. Texas case that could rule the 2010 Affordable Care Act unconstitutional and deprive 22 million Americans of their existing health insurance. Trump claims that removing the individual mandate penalty from the Affordable Care Act somehow improved health care, claims that he will provide statutory protections for preexisting conditions although he is currently asking the Supreme Court to strike that down, and accuses Vice President Biden of trying to socialize the United States health care system even though Biden explicitly opposed “Medicare for All”. Unsettlingly, Trump also claims that we shouldn’t be concerned about the loss of the Affordable Care Act because 80 million “successful” Americans have employer-provided health insurance.
Vice President Biden reminds viewers that 10 million Americans just lost their employer-provided health insurance because of how badly the Trump Administration has flubbed the handling of the COVID pandemic and the economic recovery.
9:29 pm: Trump goes for broke: He claims, repetitively, that Vice President Biden “took money from Russia.” No particulars and no context are provided, other than that Trump claims that Joe Biden was Vice President when he supposedly received all this unspecified money from Russia.
Vice President Biden counters that he has never taken a cent of foreign money. He refers to the bombshell New York Times story of Trump’s previously undisclosed bank account in China and the $200,000 in taxes paid to China–in sum, apparently far more than he has paid to the Federal Government after expensing post-2008 real estate losses.
9:40 pm: Trump tries to bring up “a very strong email” alleging Vice President Biden trying to solicit bribes from foreign governments. It’s vague, characteristically Trump, and it feels contrived and desperate even by his recent standard.
9:25 pm: Trump loses his cool for the first time when Vice President Biden’s far superior fundraising take–now more than twice Trump’s–comes to the fore.
9:21 pm: Vice President Biden admonishes Trump for throwing schoolchildren, teachers, and retail workers and retail customers to the wolves in encouraging everyone to return to normal business during a 3rd wave outbreak of a pandemic virus this fall and winter.
9:11 pm: Vice President Biden warns Americans that “we’re going to have a dark winter” with COVID; Trump insists that we are not going to have a dark winter with COVID. Is anyone actually reassured by Trump’s optimism?
9:08 pm: Vice President Biden reminds the audience that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has projected that almost 200,000 more Americans will die of COVID by the end of the year–but that that death toll could be halved if all Americans would wear face masks over that time period–and reminds viewers that Trump and his Administration and Campaign flout not wearing masks.
9:07 pm: Trump acknowledges that the SARS-CoV-2 virus “is a worldwide problem.” It would really be great if Trump hadn’t withdrawn the United States from the World Health Organization as a means of casting blame.
9:05 pm: Trump gets the first question, which is about how he will handle the COVID pandemic if reelected. We might as well just put a fork in his Presidency.
9:04 pm: Trump walks out, not wearing a mask to begin with. Vice President Biden walks out and takes his mask off after moving away from others.
The Liberal Ironist 