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Trumpdates: The Contrast Could Not Be Any More Stark

October 16, 2020

There were dueling town halls on ABC and NBC last night, and while it was a horrible, terrible idea for Democracy for NBC to give Donald Trump airtime opposite Biden, it actually ended up ... working out for Joe Biden. Interestingly, the reason Trump wanted to hold his town hall at the same time was that he knew he could brag about better ratings, and while linear ratings are not yet in, Trump didn't fare nearly as well as Biden on YouTube (I suspect that KPop fans helped out here, too).

There's a reason Trump didn't do as well, too, for anyone who decided to switch back and forth, because the dueling town halls offered a clear contrast, showing exactly who should be leading the country, and it isn't the "crazy uncle" who refuses to denounce QAnon.

Meanwhile, if you switched over to Biden, you'd get someone calmly talking about environmental policy.

A Trump supporter described Biden's town hall thusly:

First of all, Ms. Slap [sic], it's spelled Mr. Rogers, and second of all, that's not the insult that you think it is. I saw numerous people describe the contrast between the two thusly:

Screen Shot 2020-10-16 at 8.28.20 AM.png

For Trump, the debate was a disaster. For Biden, it was a chance for a lot of people to see him speak calmly in a format in which he thrives, offering the starkest contrast imaginable.

Meanwhile, if the debate did not offer enough contrast, I woke up this morning to "The Onion" trending on Twitter, because Trump had cited a story from the right-wing Christian version of The Onion:

What's that about Savanah Guthrie saying that Trump is not "someone's crazy uncle"?

Speaking of Guthrie: Shame on NBC for that programming decision. But also: Savanah Guthrie was great, and at the end of another debate that left Trump looking like a damn fool, here's how Sean Hannity characterized it:

I know that Trump supporters haven't got tired of "the winning" yet, but have they gotten tired of all the complaining? Jesus. No wonder "political exhaustion" is weighing into the decision of so many people going to the polls right now.

Speaking of winning: Republican Senator Ben Sasse doesn't believe there's going to be a lot of it for the Republicans or Trump in November, according to a telephone town hall with constituents on Wednesday night. From the Times:

In a dire, nine-minute indictment of Mr. Trump's foreign policy and what Mr. Sasse called his "deficient" values, the senator said the president had mistreated women and alienated important allies around the globe, been a profligate spender, ignored human rights and treated the pandemic like a "P.R. crisis." He predicted that a loss by Mr. Trump on Election Day, less than three weeks away, "looks likely," and said that Republicans would face steep repercussions for having backed him so staunchly over four tumultuous years.

"The debate is not going to be, 'Ben Sasse, why were you so mean to Donald Trump?'" Mr. Sasse said, according to audio obtained by The Washington Examiner and authenticated by The New York Times. "It's going to be, 'What the heck were any of us thinking, that selling a TV-obsessed, narcissistic individual to the American people was a good idea?'"

"We are staring down the barrel of a blue tsunami," he added.

I certainly hope so, Senator Sasse. I certainly do.

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