I did not watch the debate last night, as my mind was made up years ago. However, two pundits did. First, Steve Benen:
… in Trump Land, the [pandemic] that’s intensifying is simply “going away.”
The entire debate continued along these lines. In Trump Land, the Republican administration’s child-separation policy should be blamed on Barack Obama and Joe Biden. In Trump Land, Special Counsel Robert Mueller went through the president’s finances and exonerated him. In Trump Land, China is paying the United States billions of dollars in tariffs. In Trump Land, the president isn’t racist.
In Trump Land, Biden isn’t from Scranton. In Trump Land, testing is to blame for coronavirus cases. In Trump Land, the president is “tough” on Russia. In Trump Land, Biden’s the one taking foreign money. In Trump Land, the president was “kidding” when he suggested treating COVID-19 patients by injecting them with disinfectants.
The problem, of course, is that Trump Land bears no resemblance to our reality. These presidential claims weren’t just exaggerations or misleading spins; they were ridiculous falsehoods, peddled by an incumbent who should’ve been able to point to real-world successes.
And then, Erick Erickson (email):
President Trump and his team should be proud of his final lifetime presidential debate performance. That is, actually, pretty incredible when you think about it. We won’t see Donald Trump on a debate stage again.
The President made a targeted play to young black men and he remembered Pennsylvania and the swing states, going so far as to point out Joe Biden didn’t really grow up in Scranton.
He did what he had to do.
This may be part of what turns off many folks to politics – competing viewpoints in which one, or even both, is lying through their teeth. And that’s, perhaps, a reason to avoid them.
I try to be fair, but not transactional – that is, past behaviors have a part in my analysis. That’s why I’m anti-Trump: 20,000 lies are a signpost of incompetency and dangerous lack of leadership. That has played out time and time again over the last four years, from the lack of strategic thinking to his selections for Cabinet posts. His entire behavior pattern is to disregard reality.
And, as we’ve seen to our sorrow or denial, that hasn’t worked out very well.
Erickson should know this, but he continues to support Trump. There’s no real puzzle: President Trump has delivered in the judicial arena, following up on Senator Mitch “No” McConnell’s (R-KY) continual denial of seats in the judiciary to President Obama. In order to maintain his credibility with his audience, he can’t walk away from Trump, despite his clear inadequacies, lack of morality, and apparent imminent loss in the upcoming elections. To make up for this, he regards anyone who is not a conservative as evil, with the keys being abortion and socialism.
Of course, for anyone outside the right wing epistemic bubble, he looks like a babbling idiot – with about as much credibility as President Trump himself.
