Donald Trump embarrassed himself in the first debate with Hillary Clinton. He wasn’t prepared!
Here was Trump, he wanted the most difficult and the most important job in the world and he didn’t think it was worthy of his time to prepare for it. Then he criticized Hillary for preparing for the debate!
A disclaimer
As a disclaimer, let me state my biases.
Progressives (especially the Progressive newscasters pretending to be neutral) trashing Trump have driven me over the cliff. I simply can’t stand any more of their moral self-righteousness and their closed mindedness: “Hillary is good, and Trump is evil. He is also stupid, ignorant, racist, sexist……..and whatever other name you want to call him.”
To protest this intolerance of free speech – that is, speech that opposes your own beliefs – I’ve been wearing a Trump “Make American Great Again” hat in New York City.
I have to admit, I was scared to wear it at first: 90% of New Yorkers are hostile to anything but liberal thought. But everyone was civil. But I noticed that I was the only one in the whole city wearing such a hat. Did the Progressive inquisition win the battle against free speech in New York City?
I have to be critical too
However, I must join the crowd and speak out against Trump letting himself down, as well as letting down all of his supporters and the whole country. Trump has a some good policies in his platform, including policies on immigration, bad trade deals, national debt, and the practice of putting American interests second when making international deals (especially with China and Mexico).
Even if he loses the election, he could have still clearly enunciated those policies and strongly advocated for them with strong, reasonable arguments. And in this way, he could have helped the country.
But Trump didn’t want to do the work for the debate; instead he wanted to have enjoyable and ego-boosting rallies. He was applying for a job for the American public and he didn’t prepare for the interview.
RG could have done much better – stating this with much humility. I would have gathered top policy and debates experts and explored every possible attack Hillary could have posited, and then created the best responses. Then I would have reviewed and reviewed these responses until they were on the tip of my tongue. Here’s some examples:
When Hillary stated that often I don’t pay any Federal taxes, I could have responded this way:
That is true, sometimes I don’t. I’m a big businessman. Some years I make a profit – when I pay taxes, and some years I don’t make a profit, when I don’t pay taxes. That’s the nature of business, which of course you don’t know anything about, since you’ve never operated a business. You and your husband just have made $100 million since 2000 on such things as “pay-to-play” schemes.
Also, although I didn’t pay any personal federal taxes, I paid millions and millions of dollars of taxes through my businesses. All of my thousands of employees – who I pay – paid federal, state, and Social Security tax. I paid half of their Social Security taxes. Also all the goods and services my businesses produce pay sales taxes.
How many employees do you pay?
When Hillary brought up my denigrating comments to Miss Universe, I could have replied:
That was 20 years ago. I don’t remember any denigrating comments. All I remember is that she had an obligation as Miss Universe to keep her body in shape. Other organizations have the same duties for some employees. For instance, both in the military and in organizations like Weight Watchers, you get kicked out if you put on too much weight. And I never fired Miss Universe.
If you’re accusing me of not respecting women, I’d like to refer to you my daughter, my wife, my daughter-in-law, and the thousands of women who work for me.
But, nooooooo! Unprepared Trump had to respond with irrational and thoughtless comments. And then in the days after the debate, he went into a dysfunctional and senseless arguments against Miss Universe, often tweeting insults in the middle of the night!
“Prepare, Donald, prepare.” If you want to make American great again, do a little work.
I agree with Leo. Trump won the debate. As a mother of 2 here in Florida, I care more about being pragmatic instead of the rehearsed propaganda that Hillary puts out. Sure, its time for a woman to be President. But, I’d rather wait to have someone who tells it (Trump) as it is as compared to someone who have done nothing for America (Hillary). Married women will carry Florida for Trump.
I basically agree with both you and Leo (above). However, I don’t think Trump won the debate. Hillary’s points went up and the majority of the viewers thought he lost. (Lyndon Johnson once said that politics is the art of counting numbers.)
Even though you might be right that Trump has better policies, my argument is that when he is having the most important debate of the campaign — which has cost millions of dollars and millions of hours of work by supporters — he had the obligation to do the work needed to defeat Hillary in the debate.
And thanks for your thoughtful comment.
Eddie
Nonsense Eddie. You cannot point to a difference of 1.9 in the real clear politics average to say that Hillary won as RCP clearly tells us that anything +/-3 is within the margin of error.
You may be right. But what do I know? One thing is a unique phenomena with Trump which no one understands. Regardless of what he does, the numbers seem to always climb!
It’s a mystery. Thus you have as much chance of being right as the top experts. And I hope that I have as good of a chance as well. I guess this is the joy of democracy!
Eddie.
And I basically agree with you! As I discuss with Maria (below), he could have made a better case for all his policies — a case that would have convinced some undecided voters. If he wants to make America great he has the obligation to work a little harder — and leave Miss Universe alone!
Thanks very much for your thoughtful comment.
Eddie
Thanks for your well reasoned comment. However, I disagree with the importance of “speaking from the heart.” What’s the purpose of running for President if you don’t want to win? And certain statements, even though they come from the heart, can cost a candidate invaluable votes. Some of these dysfunctional statements are not really necessary to advocate for his policies. For example, calling Mexicans rapists and murderers, although possibly coming from the heart, didn’t win him any votes, and was an unnecessary statement.
Hillary did the same thing when she called 40% of the country “deplorable people.” Mitt Romney did the same thing four years ago, when he said 47% of the voters didn’t contribute anything to the economy and just wanted a hand out. This statement of Romney’s was perceived as “coming from his heart” — that is, expressing his authentic beliefs — and may have cost him the election.
The average person can say what he wants, but the President has to watch every word he says. His words can have serious consequences, and consequences he may not want.
Thanks again for reading my article and I hope to hear from you again.
Eddie
I think there is a method to the madness of Trump. After all he did outdo 16 other well polished fellow Republicans. Eddie suggests that words do matter. Indeed our society doctrinates us to believe that words lead to actions and hence they do matter. I however, have come to realize that with politicians especially one has to look at actions first not words. Take Hillary for example, for the last 30 years she has given us great words of wisdom; “change we can believe in” in 2008; “stronger together” in 2016. Going along with “Hope and change” as in Obamas case. But during the highest office she held in the country: Secretary of State, if I were to ask you to name 5 things (“action”) she did that has made America better; I doubt anyone could name even 2. You see, her actions don’t match up to her words! One could even argue that America is less safe since she had originally taken office. Trump on the other hand, built a billion dollar company from 1 million given to him by his father. If one were to look at the Trump enterprise, he was one of the pioneers to elevate women to executive level positions. I have yet to see a full time employee of the Trump organization come out and speak against Mr. Trump. Anyone in business knows that the type of thinking needed to make $10,000 is very different from the thinking needed to make $100,000 vs 1 million vs 1 billion. You simply cannot be a billionaire without going though the process. The actions that Trump took to become a billionaire are tangible in terms of systems, teams built, partnerships held so on and so forth. He is a Success period. Clintons actions though demonstrate just the opposite. Every thing she has touched as Secretary of State has gone up in flames. Bernie was right, a whole lot of experience with poor judgement leads to an unsuccessful outcome!
In conclusion, I’d like to tell folks like Eddie not to pay much attention to words as in current day politics, not much is realized. However, pay attention to what was indeed accomplished. When doing so, it is clear that Trump represents success while Hillary represents the same old “all talk but no action”. I’ll be voting Trump here in Iowa.
Thanks for your well reasoned response. I agree with much of what you have to say. However, I have the belief that a successful businessman doesn’t necessarily make a successful politician. They have two different set of skills. Not that a successful businessman can’t make a successful politician.
For instance, a good businessman like Trump may have to be single focused. He doesn’t care what others think; he just wants to get the building up. On the other hand, a politician must be very concerned with other people’s point of view — otherwise he might be defeated in an election. Then, once he is elected, say to the Presidency, it is his job description to represent all the people in the country.
As far a words are concerned, I agree with what you said. However, words DO matter to other people and other countries. For example, Trump saying that he would blow an Iranian ship out of the water if one of their sailors threw the finger at American sailors, this statement has effects on countries throughout the world, whether or not Trump really meant what he said.
I appreciate you well thought out response, and I feel that other readers may benefit from it as well as myself.
Thanks for your time.
Eddie
I do agree with you Eddie in that a successful Businessman does not make a successful Politician. However, a successful businessman does make a successful leader. America at this point needs a successful leader, not a successful politician. For, we can see what all the successful politician and really done for us – a whole bunch of NOTHING!
Thanks for your comment. I agree with you. There is a bizzare phenomenon that all these guys who were essential draft dodgers — including Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush II (who avoided front line service and joined the reserves), and Trump — are now the biggest hawks. They consider themselves “tough” and “strong.”
This is why I support going back to universal service. (See http://exedforpresident.com/a-universal-draft/). We could have a lottery. Everyone should share in the responsibility. Perhaps then we will be more responsible before engaging in combat.
Tx again,
Eddie
Presidential mode Trump keeps on making exceptionally charged allegations in view of theoretical supposition and talk factory. No big surprise such a large number of congressional Republicans and GOP national security specialists have voiced solid resistance to his application I contend that Trump is categorically incapable of embarrassing himself.