Not fit to be president
Debate confirms Trump is a carnival barker
The i mpact of Monday’s first U. S. presidential debate may depend on how many voters have actually seen Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in action before.
Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton did her best to make clear what sort of person Trump supporters would be voting for.
She called him a racist and a liar. She pointed out that he was once sued for refusing to rent apartments to black people. She reminded the audience that he had called women “pigs, dogs and slobs.”
She suggested that the reason he refuses to release his tax records is because he could be lying about his wealth, his charitable activities or the amount of tax he pays. “He’s hiding something,” she said, surmising that he may not pay taxes at all, and thus contributes nothing to maintaining the armed forces, education system or medical programs Americans value.
At times she let him blabber on semi- coherently, as did moderator Lester Holt. Questioned on why he continued to claim President Barack Obama wasn’t born in the U. S., even years after his birth certificate had been made public, Trump launched on a long circuitous monologue that seemed to suggest he felt it was important to keep the issue alive even after it had been comprehensively disproven, so he could somehow claim credit for whatever it had achieved.
Probed on why he refuses to acknowledge his stated support for the Iraq war, he insisted that if only someone would get Fox News’ Sean Hannity on the phone, Hannity would vouch for the fact that Trump had expressed doubts about the war.
In short, Trump was his usual self. Contradictions flowed like wine at an expensive wedding. While trumpeting U. S. power and how he would use it to bring foreign foes to heel, he declared it was China’s job to solve the problem of North Korean nuclear weapons, because China is next door to North Korea and has influence.
He would never be the first to use nuclear weapons, he said, but immediately asserted that he also wouldn’t t ake it off t he t able. “I haven’ t given a lot of thought to NATO,” he confessed, but then proclaimed he’d press the alliance “to go into the Middle East with us and knock the Hell out of ISIS.”
It was illogical, inconsistent, undisciplined and often incomprehensible. In any rational world, this per- formance would have disqualified Trump from high office.
But it is not at all certain it will do that, because Trump was simply being Trump, the same ill- prepared, shallow blow hard he’s been since he declared his improbable run for the presidency. And, so far, it hasn’t hurt him. After a dip in the polls in August, when t he Republican convention apparently put a lot of people off the notion of a Trump presidency, he has been gaining ground. All the issues Clinton raised — his bigotry, his treatment of women, his obsession with his own wealth — are public knowledge, and have been throughout his campaign.
Though he protested at times, he often didn’t bother to deny her accusations. When she accused him of stiffing contractors, refusing to pay employees and exploiting bankruptcy laws to leave workers and investors in the lurch, he responded that it was just “business,” adding: “I take advantage of the laws of the nation. I’m running a company.”
Then he made a plug for the new hotel he’s building just down the road from the White House.
It was vintage Trump, the huckster, the self- promoter, the rich kid who claims he can “make America great again” by cutting taxes for people like himself. At one point, he paused to brag about his income — US$694 million last year, he claimed — while asserting, “and that’s the kind of thinking that our country needs.”
How that endears him to Americans who are livi ng f r om paycheque to paycheque is a mystery. A swollen- headed billionaire who takes pride in skimping on taxes and cheating workers wouldn’t normally be the sort of hero you would expect to appeal to the embattled middle class. A more cutthroat politician than Clinton would have skewered him a dozen times and left him for dead, but Clinton is not good at delivering a knockout punch. Even when cataloguing his worst flaws she looks so cool and impersonal the words somehow lose their bite.
It may be that Clinton can’t defeat Trump. Only Trump can do that, and he did his best Monday night to demonstrate why he is so utterly ill- suited to be president.
His acolytes no doubt loved it. They’re immune to his defects. All Clinton can do is ignore them and try to reach the rest of the country; to connect with people who hadn’t seen Trump in action before and hope there are still enough of them out there who appreciate that the presidency is a serious business, not something to be handed to a carnival barker with a thin skin.
VINTAGE TRUMP, THE HUCKSTER, THE SELFPROMOTER.