If anyone’s Debate Drinking Game card included the phrase “Look folks,” I imagine you’re feeling a mite hung over this morning.
I think Joe said “Look folks” more often than his trademark phrases “here’s the deal” and “c’mon man.”
In my post about the first debate, I said Trump is a learning debater. He uses his time in the first match-up to figure out how best to target his opponent. And from last night’s debate, it’s clear Trump learned exactly what he needed to do in order to clean Joe Biden’s clock.
And no amount of down-home “look folks” homilies about sitting at your kitchen table could pull old Joe’s ass out of the fire.
Trump’s answers were grounded in reality. He spoke about facts on the ground. And after nearly four years in office, President Trump is able to point to real-life results – whether on unemployment, economic growth, foreign policy, energy independence, and, yes, even the COVID pandemic.
While Trump described results, Biden gave us more pie-in-sky promises cloaked in faux concern.
Maybe someone should tell Joe that repeatedly saying “Look folks” doesn’t make you relatable. And talking about people around the kitchen table doesn’t make your tax-raising, job-killing, health insurance-destroying policy promises successful “kitchen table issues.”
But because President Trump used the first debate to suss his opponent, he knew precisely how to peel back Joe’s façade of folksy homilies and faux concern. As the debate wore on, Trump exposed the real Joe Biden – the angry, combative typical politician who talks a good game, makes untenable promises, but after 47 years in office has nothing to show for it by way of results.
I told my Dad yesterday that instead of bringing a howitzer, Trump needed to bring a scalpel. And, boy did he. His careful evisceration of Joe’s life-long political career and the little he has to show for it got Joe so flustered, he repeatedly stepped on massive land mines.
For example when President Trump called him out on Joe and Kamala’s repeatedly assertions that they were going to end fossil fuel and fracking.
Joe lied so emphatically, he handed the Trump campaign a beautiful gift — which President Trump wasted no time unwrapping.
Joe made it even worse for himself when, after being pushed by Trump, he admitted that he would end the oil industry.
Look folks. Joe is going to destroy America’s energy independence over the magical belief that windmills, solar panels and charging stations will save us.
All those millions of great jobs created over the last four years due to our energy boom will evaporate.
Which means under a “President” Biden, you folks who used to work in the energy sector will be sitting around your kitchen table staring at your unpaid bills, your skyrocketing energy costs and the rising cost of groceries wondering if you’ll be able to afford to pay your mortgage or keep your kid in community college. And you’ll be cursing the day Joe Biden got elected President.
President Trump’s responses to the COVID questions were probably the best I’ve ever heard from him. He was calm, measured, and knew his facts. He showed genuine passion for getting the country back to work and school while learning to live with this virus.
By contrast, Joe demagogued and delivered the most dark, dystopian message of fear.
Yeah, that was it in a nutshell.
I’ve mentioned this before, but remember after he left Walter Reed, President Trump said “Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life,” and the media went into apoplectic rage?
The Democrats are banking on you being too terrified to live your life. They want you afraid – too afraid to go back to work or send your kids back to school. Joe’s COVID responses last night were dripping with this kind of dark fearmongering.
After all that fearmongering, Joe’s later claim that he would offer hope not fear was all the more laughable.
And, of course as we all predicted, Trump was able to drop LaptopGate – that five hundred pound gorilla – right smack onto the stage.
And Biden’s answers were all over the map.
He tried deflection – look folks, this isn’t about his family, it’s about your families.
He tried flat-out denial – claiming his son did not make money in China. Which the Washington Free Beacon quickly fact-checked and debunked.
He also tried the “Well oh yeah?!” tactic – claiming it is Trump that makes money from Russia, Ukraine and China.
And, of course, he went with the Russian Disinformation canard.
And Trump’s response was great.
Clearly LaptopGate is a sensitive subject for old Joe, and even after a four-day “lid,”he still has no idea how to deal with this damaging scandal.
I also thought President Trump’s responses regarding race were outstanding. Not only did he outline everything his administration has done to improve the lives of black Americans, we also got to see a genuine, heartfelt response to the endless vicious accusations that he is a racist.
Joe’s decision to follow that up by calling President Trump the most racist president in modern history didn’t make Trump look bad; it made Biden look like the race-baiting bastard he’s always been.
This Trump is a racist canard is the stuff of fiction. It’s like I say, there’s the real Donald Trump, and then there’s the media-created, fictional Monster Trump. And, just like he did in the first debate, Biden wasn’t debating the real Trump, but the fictional, frothing-at-the-mouth racist Monster Trump.
The real Donald Trump isn’t the guy Biden wants you to think he is.
And at this point, outside of the Trump-deranged ResistanceLOL, I’m not sure the fictional Monster racist Trump is working anymore.
The closing question – pretend it’s Inauguration day, what is your message to those who didn’t vote for you – was also revealing.
Trump outlined the things he already accomplished in his first term that strengthened the country and our economy. And Joe prattled on, regurgitating his campaign promises and asserting that he’s going to end “systemic racism” – whatever the hell that means.
In the end, Trump acquitted himself well. And by remaining calm and measured while eviscerating his opponent with scalpel-like precision, the President gave Biden just enough rope to hang himself.
As the night progressed, Biden grew angry, impatient and repeatedly burped out the most outlandish lies – like claiming nobody lost their insurance because of Obamacare.
For all the claims by the media over the years that Trump is a big, fat liar, last night it was Joe who just kept delivering one over-the-top lie after the other. And it was beautiful how President Trump was able to lead him down the primrose path directly into each and every lie.
Will this debate change any minds? I doubt it.
Though it might sway some undecided voters (if there are any remaining).
But what it will absolutely do is bolster Trump’s already outmatched voter enthusiasm.
At the end of the day, President Trump succeeded in making the case for himself.
But with his promises of “Bidencare,” Amnesty for “eleven million undocumented,” his magical Climate Change job-killing agenda, and his four-plus decades of inaction, Biden only succeeded in reminding voters why Donald Trump won in the first place.
And no amount of “look folks” homilies and Joe’s claims of “character” and “integrity” are going to change that.