CNN's Jake Tapper and Dana Bash acted as moderators for the debate between US President Joe Biden and morbidly obese Convicted Felon Donald Trump held tonight at a CNN studio in Atlanta, Georgia.
Why?
Because you have to be crazy to support Donald Trump.
He's a liar who just makes s**t up. He opens his loud mouth and his fantasies whirl round and round but never land on Terra Firma -- they just float along on the fumes of hot air pouring out of his own mouth.
Crazies love it.
Glynneth Greenwald, for example, has been scared senseless since the Ed Snowden days and that's why he hides out in Brazil. We're not really sure that we need to hear thoughts from cowards who don't even live in this country.
They're crazy.
Michael Hastings died.
Some of us think, "Oh, how awful." That's what those of us who are sane think.
The crazies? They go off and form The Proud Boys.
Why has no one talked about that? How these crazies against Joe Biden and for Donald Trump were raised on the most extreme conspiracies. And a lot of them got air time from crazy Megyn Kelly (including Sgt Joe who was one of her big go-tos). Or they're the other disgraced reporter that no one will hire who Tweeted today about a "children's book" that is destroying the country!!! Hey, crazy, go back to South Africa, we don't want you here and that book is not in any children's library because it's not a children's book and before the disgraced reported posted about it on Twitter, SNOPES had already fact-checked the lie two days prior.
These psychos vested themselves in Trump to take on the death of Michael Hastings and Pizzagate and the decision to leave the gold standard and the murder of Seth Rich and . . .
Grasp that that's what we're dealing with.
You're kidding yourself if you can't accept that.
These crazies, these Glenn Greewalds and Sgt Joe Biggses and Alex Joneses need a daddy because they're scared and Donald and his big MOOBS came along to nurse them.
Now Seth Rich may have been murdered by the DNC. We have no idea. Who knows what'll emerge ten years from now? But while we can say we don't know, these other people claiming the DNC murdered him don't know anything either. They're adamant that these things happened and since they see Barack Obama's era as the one in which it all took place, they've turned on the Democrats.
That is what fuels the crazy of MAGA. That and their hatred for women, African-Americans (on Elon Musk's Twitter, MAGA just uses the n-word over and over) and LGBTQ+ people.
They have taken all of these crazy conspiracies -- Barack and the CIA killed Michael, Hillary Clinton was picking off children to screw via Pizzagate, the DNC murdered Seth Rich -- and they add to it. Jews are in charge of space lasers? Marjorie Taylor Greene is not just their spokesperson, she's their patron saint.
Donald Trump came along promising to clean the swamp -- the undefined swamp -- and all the crazies were on board with that.
He didn't do it.
But they're crazy and they don't care.
We all remember, right, Glynneth Greenwald making excuses for why Donald couldn't pardon Julian? They told themselves that Julian Assange would be free thanks to Donald Trump. Then Donald left office and Julian remained imprisoned and sought by the US government. So liars like Glynneth had to spin and whore.
That's what they do.
They can't deal with reality. When we encounter someone like that, we write them off, regardless of what political side they are on. The Katie Halpers, for example, will bring on John Nichols so he can do his crazy ass b.s. We don't care that he's 'left,' we care that he lied that Hillary was going to seize the nomination at the 2004 Democratic Party convention and Wesley Clark was only in the race to allow that to happen. We care that when AP reported Barack Obama's team was telling Canada not to worry about his NAFTA critiques, that he didn't mean it and wouldn't, if elected, stand by it -- we care that John Nichols then went around saying that it was really Hillary's team talking to Canada, not Barack's, and that he had the facts and he'd be publishing it shortly. Naturally, no such article ever emerged. (See our "TV: Goodman and Rose 'honoring' bad TV past" from March 2008 if you're new to this.) He made both of those claims on DEMOCRACY NOW!, by the way, and should never, ever be invited on any show again. We could go on with more crazy from John Nichols but we'll stop it there.
We don't have time for crazy. As two who dedicated significant time to calling out the Iraq War and going all over the country to do so, we were too rooted in reality to have the luxury of crazy.
But for those who are feeling life is somehow off and they're personally being persecuted so they need someone to blame and someone to hate, well that's the gift MAGA provides them with.
That's why the fight at this point is over basic terms and facts. Those of us who are not paranoid and deluded -- convinced that only the killing of women wanting abortions and gays wanting rights and immigrants wanting jobs will save the country -- have to be ready to speak to the truth.
Again, it may turn out that Seth Rich was murdered by the DNC. It may not. But the facts we should all be able to agree on right now is that there's no proof to that claim.
There are basic ground rules and when we're not establishing them, we're giving Donald the go-ahead to lie and lie bigger, to lie and lie more.
Donald pursed his lips repeatedly while tilting his head this way and that as though he thought he were a super model. Instead, he just emphasized wrinkles and looked odd -- odder than usual in fact.
The make up was a little better. It's only taken him, what, eight years to make it look nearly human. So if you're ready to give him eight years, he can almost adapt. Almost but not quite.
And there's still the issue of the curling iron. That's right, children, Donald Trump uses a curling iron.
He's a bottle blond, we should all know that. 78-year-old men are not naturally sassy blonds (a point we've made for over a decade with regards to Robert Redford). But, watching the debate and his modified hair do, we had to make some calls. Yes, our 78-year-old Donald had his curled for the debate. They curled the hair under on top and then brushed it out and they curled it back on the sides. That's what America needs in the White House: An elderly man obsessed with his hair.
He was also someone suddenly interested in "legal scholars."
Every "legal scholar" -- he repeatedly insisted -- wanted ROE V WADE overturned.
No, that's not true.
But more to the point, legal scholars aren't the group largely effected by abortion. Women, some of whom are legal scholars, are effected. It has a direct impact on our lives and we -- the majority of us -- did not want ROE V WADE overturned.
If people listened -- the ones not so far gone that they can't truly hear -- they would have grasped that fact and grasped that, in a 90 minute debate, Donald couldn't address women.
He just lies and, yes, women grasp it.
We grasp that abortion is a medical procedure. We grasp that Donald bragging about this state doing this and this state doing that is not something to brag about. Our healthcare options and resources should not be dictated by the state we live in. Supposedly, we're all Americans and all Americans should have the right to determine their own health care.
Asked how he was going to address the addiction crisis in the US, Donald ignored reality to run again to the border.
"The drugs pouring across the border," Donald whined at one point.
What was he talking about?
The biggest drug problem in the US in the last 20 years has been the opioid epidemic -- the drugs being pimped by the Sackler family. OxyContin. That drug put $10 billion dollars into their pockets. They made it, they pimped it, they hooked people on it. They didn't make it to number one on FORBES 2015 richest families list by making the world a better place,
Joe started off slow but grew stronger as the debate went along and he found himself in the strange position of being the only one onstage that believed in America.
"We're the most admired country of the world," he countered at one point and added, "No one thinks we're a wimp. No one wants to screw around with us."
He made comments like, "It's because of the American people, they're capable of anything."
And there was Donald trashing the country, saying we were this and we were that and blah blah blah.
"This idea that we're some failing country. I never heard a president talk like this before," Joe declared sounding shocked -- as well he should have been.
It was 90 minutes of Grumpy Trumpy versus Joe who had a better vision of the country and the people in it. It was the uplift of Biden versus the crankiness of Trump -- "because you're such a whiner," as Joe told him.
But Joe really won the exchange in the last minutes of the debate when Dana Bash noted the concern of some Americans that Donald would not accept the outcome of the 2024 election. She asked him to pledge tonight that he would accept the results of the election "regardless of who wins?" After he spoke for a bit, she reminded, "The question was will you accept the results of this election regardless of who wins?" A third time she put the same question to him, "The question was: Will you accept the results of this election regardless of who wins?" A fourth time Dana Bash pressed for a response, "President Trump, the question was will you accept the results of the election -- yes or no please?"
And it was a "yes" or a "no" question.
Yet in approximately five minutes -- twelve seconds shy of five minutes, Donald Trump could not answer the question. Would not answer the question. And, in the end, that actually did answer the question.
(Don't be surprised if this appears word for word in tomorrow's snapshot -- we had to write this, we had to roundtable the topic for the gina & krista round-robin and we're going to focus on the war aspect for our round-robin column -- that a lot for a Thursday night.)
