Tag Archives: Presidential debate

Dog Food for Thought

Trump and Trumpism get their sustenance at the intersection of blind ambition and intellectual vapidity, as demonstrated most recently by the former President’s racist remarks about immigrants eating the pets of people who live in Springfield, Ohio.

More telling than the remark itself was Trump’s justification for making it on the debate stage in front of 67 million viewers:

“I saw a guy say it on TV.”

Nothing exemplifies the festering rot of politics in America more than that statement by former president Trump, which dovetails beautifully into the Murdochian decline of American news media and its host of shit shovelers like Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and Laura Ingram.

Donald Trump is the embodiment of Nazi Joeseph Goebbels’s “Big Lie” messaging strategy:

If you repeat a lie or falsehood loudly and frequently enough with conviction, your audience will come to believe it, even when the facts do not support it.

  • America is a failing nation
  • Crime rates are through the roof
  • Inflation is the worst it’s been in the history of our country
  • Democrats stole the 2020 election
  • Haitian immigrants are eating the pets of the people who live in Springfield, Ohio

All of these statements are blatant lies that Donald Trump continues to promote and lean into.

The President’s willingness to repeat and share what he hears (regardless of validity) is strategic. When coupled with our natural inclination to glom onto stories that support preconceptions and voters’ zeal to dismiss evidence and facts they don’t like, the President’s words have a rippling and corrosive effect on social cohesion in our country.

So, when President Trump heard the unsubstantiated rumor on TV about Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs, that was all the evidence he needed – A responsible candidate for President of the United States would have done their due diligence on the veracity of the rumor because sharing false stories about Haitians eating their neighbor’s pets puts the Haitian community in danger.

Donald Trump is not a responsible candidate.

President Trump shared the lie about Haitians eating cats and dogs because promoting hate of immigrants serves his interests and ambition, the same way refusing to condemn insurrectionists who stormed the capital and violently attacked police officers serves his interests and ambitions.

It’s why we can’t allow this sociopath near the white house again.

“Good God, that was Awful”

Those were my sentiments after watching President Biden mumble through the first (and possibly only) presidential debate.

It was the worst debate performance I’ve ever seen.

Trump was Trump.  A firehose of lies and misinformation. A verbosity atrocity.

Even though on substance, you can argue that Biden was better (or at the very least, more honest) – presentation and optics matter, and Biden looked old, confused, and unprepared.

The candidates running for President are both unqualified but for radically different reasons.

Biden is unqualified because age has diminished his ability to be an effective leader who instills confidence. Old age and its consequences have caught up to Joe Biden, and those undeniable consequences were on display for all to see in the Presidential debate. Biden’s family, closest friends, and political confidantes should be imploring him to drop out of the race.

Trump is unqualified because of fundamental ineptitude and a dangerous malevolence towards truth, integrity, democracy, and the United States Constitution. He has no redeemable qualities as a politician or person. He is a knife at the throat of our republic.

I often criticize Trump supporters for turning a blind eye to Trump’s ineptitude and utter lack of character—I’d be a hypocrite if I turned a blind eye to Biden’s age issues.

President Biden should ask himself how he wants to be remembered – as the humble public servant who derailed Trump’s naked aggression and assault on truth and integrity in 2020 or as the feeble, discombobulated, old fogey blinded by ego and deaf to public opinion who opened the door and handed the keys of our republic to a convicted felon, traitor, and rapist in 2024?

If Biden digs in his heels and refuses to step aside (which is what he appears to be doing), Americans need to ask themselves which candidate will do more harm as President. What is worse for America (Biden’s age-related degeneration or Trump’s malevolence toward democracy)?

America deserves better.