Thursday, October 20, 2016

Final Debate: Clinton versus Trump

By Douglas V. Gibbs
Author, Speaker, Instructor, Radio Host

The final of three debates which aired on October 19, 2016 for the general election that is merely weeks away was more issue-oriented than the previous two, no thanks to the participants. Chris Wallace did an exceptional job keeping the debate essentially issue-based, though the segments did take a few very wide turns. Immigration, for example, somehow morphed into a discussion about Putin.

Trump won and lost simultaneously. It depends upon how gullible you are. As with the other debates, he had many openings to rip her from end to end, but instead said things like, "It's gonna be great." I was in a theater for the debate with a mixture of ideological opinions surrounding me as we watched the event on the big-screen, and the Hillary supporter sitting near me kept saying, "But how?"

Yeah, "How, Donald?  How are you going to accomplish the things you say you'll be doing to make America great again?"

When talking about taxation, and being accused of increasing the debt by cutting taxes, why didn't Trump explain that historically when taxes are reduced it places more money back into people's pockets, and that means they invest more in investments or growing their businesses, which creates greater prosperity, and greater income, and more jobs which in the long run creates greater tax revenue because everyone's profit goes up and more people have jobs and are making money?

When talking about taxing the rich, as Hillary kept hammering on, how was it not pointed out that the rich are the job producers? How can you create jobs by seizing funds away from the very people who create jobs in the first place? Have you ever been hired by a poor person?

Hillary Clinton, when she first marched out on stage at the beginning of the evening, with her creepy grin, one that Batman's Joker would be jealous of, on her face looked fake.  Frightening.  I almost would have preferred a creepy clown on stage.  During the debate I also noticed a few times that she appeared to be taking notes while Trump spoke. . . is her short-term memory that bad?

As for what was going on behind the scenes as the pens of the journalists were igniting fires on their writing pads, Jesse Watters of Fox News tweeted something very interesting, revealing how in the tank for Clinton the press truly is:

Watching debate in enormous room of media in Vegas. Press laughs and cheers for Hillary and groans and gasps when Trump speaks. #inthetank

— Jesse Watters (@jessebwatters) (source)


Well, I suppose there is no surprise there.

When Clinton kept talking about the government being the provider of all education from pre-K to college, two things came to mind. First, how are you going to pay for that? The "tax the rich piggy bank" does have a limit. . . and the rich do not have enough money to pay for all of the liberal left's wet dream programs. Eventually, as Margaret Thatcher so eloquently put it, "You run out of other people's money." So, while Hillary kept hammering about how government can create jobs and should be paying for everyone's cradle to grave education, Trump should have simply said that jobs come from the private sector, and the very people who Hillary wants to hammer with more regulation, and more taxes won't be able to create jobs because under Hillary the government will be so busy pushing the job creators towards poverty that the idea of job creation will be the least of their worries.  The rich won't have enough money left to pay for any education.  What then, Hillary?

The second thing that came to mind when Hillary talked about education was how it is her intention to make sure leftist indoctrination starts as early as possible, and last as long as possible. How is that not horrifying?

I would have loved for Trump to say to Clinton every time she called the United States a democracy, "Dammit, idiot, the United States is not a democracy, it is a republic." You don't salute to the democracy for which the flag stands in the pledge, right?

Actually, that might have also opened up an opportunity to show Hillary's disdain for the American Flag.

When asked about the Supreme Court the candidates talked about how the justices should be taking sides.  Hillary wants to appoint liberal judges, and Trump wants conservative judges.  Granted, Trump did say he wants to select judges who believe in the Constitution from the founder's point of view, though he didn't explain what that means. I was happy to hear him, when it came to abortion, give his answer in a very constitution-esque manner, hammering that it should go back to the States.  His "late-term abortion" accusations against Hillary, I think, were good, as well.

I kind of wish, though, Trump had gotten a little deeper into the abortion issue from a moral standpoint.  While Republicans claim that the social issues should be avoided, I think they are winning issues.  Trump needs to bone up on that, may listen to my good friend Josh over at Founding Word:
"Christianity has become very passive in recent years ... as we've seen with a Supreme Court ruling in favor of killing unborn kids, which by the way, folks, Luciferians and Satanists love to find employment and volunteer work at abortion clinics. When this church of Lucifer first opened up one of the things the Luciferians wanted to make perfectly clear in an interview, 'we don't do animal sacrifices.' Of course you don't. Human sacrifices are much more efficient. You know, folks, every Passover Cecil B. DeMille's the Ten Commandments film with Charlton Heston finds its way on television somewhere every year. And, one of the most memorable scenes besides the miracles of the Red Sea and the pillar of fire and all that, is the very opening of the film when you see the slaughter of the first born of Israel. It's still a pretty shocking scene, even by today's standards - even though it came out in the fifties. You don't actually see the baby get killed, but you do see the Egyptian soldiers go into the mother's home against their will and drive a sword into the cradle and pull it out with blood on the sword; and the mother just sitting there with a horrific, dumbfounded look on her face just totally in shock. And, some time ago, the last time I saw the film, when I was with someone and they said 'could you imagine seeing that? Can you imagine living in a society where the government did that?' And, when I heard them say that, I just couldn't resist. I said, 'No, I can't imagine that. We're so much more civilized, today. Instead of the government ordering the death of babies, and sending government paid soldiers to break down the mother's homes to kill the baby against the mother's will, we live in a civilized society where the government confiscates the necessary funding from everyone's paycheck to fund employees and facilities where mothers can volunteer to go privately, and have their babies killed before even leaving the womb. That way, the public can't see the blood, and no one can hear them scream, and nothing is wasted. The cut up body parts are then sold on the black market. We are so much more civilized, today.' And, what is truly amazing to me, are the Christians who will openly defend that."
While Trump did well on the abortion segment, if he would have said something along the lines of Josh's commentary, he would have hit the ball out of the ballpark.

While I enjoyed Chris Wallace as moderator, and was happy to see that it wasn't a team-up against Trump as with the previous debates, (as Trump commented during the last debate, it was three against one) I did notice he (Chris Wallace) let Hillary off the hook without fully answering the questions regarding Bill Clinton's women, or the Clinton Foundation's (and Hillary's) pay to play corruption.

I was also disappointed that Trump didn't hammer Clinton about Benghazi, painting her as a murderer.

The Putin exchange was fascinating. Trump was trying to be as agnostic about Putin as possible, while Clinton tried to paint Trump as a Putin favorite and that Russia was interfering with our election. I wanted Trump so bad to say, "You mean like how Obama and the Democratic Party tried to interfere with Netanyahu's election in Israel?"

Chris Wallace, after the "Trump thinks the election is rigged" segment asked Trump if he'd accept the results of the election, and Mr. Trump avoided the "yes or no" answer. He basically said that it depended upon if he believed the election was decided by fraud and corruption, or not. While I totally understand Trump's response, and I, too, think there has been massive election fraud in past elections and that this one will be no different, he is supposed to be trying to appeal to the average voter out there who does not buy into that idea. So, it puts Trump into a very tough situation when it comes to his answer regarding accepting the election results.  If Trump rejects the election results he either looks like a guy who will declare himself president despite the results, essentially trying to stage a coup, or he makes himself look like a bad loser, which is not only a reflection on him, but on the Republican Party.  To not concede runs counter to a salutary custom that enjoys a long history.  There is no requirement that losing candidates concede, but by not conceding because he thinks the results were fixed creates a whole new basket full of deplorable things for the Democrats to attack the "right-wingers" about.

While Trump is correct that the media is biased, and in the tank for Clinton, and in this election a massive number of dead people and illegal aliens will surely be voting, he did not really hit the root of the problem when it comes to the garbage the Democrats pull to win elections (I will say that mentioning the Project Veritas videos was great, but not explained well enough), and that the real problem is not so much their election corruption as it is their destructive policies.  What Americans were looking for was not how crooked Hillary is.  We know she's crooked. Or, how crooked the Democrat Party is when it comes to election fraud.  We know they are doing it.  What Americans were looking for in this debate was simply, how is Mr. Trump a better candidate? I don't believe he fully convinced many people that he is the better candidate.

Trump missed a lot of opportunities to separate himself, to use policy as an argument, rather than "she would suck as President".  Because of that, the debate didn't change many minds.  It may have pulled a few undecideds in the direction of Trump, but anyone who thinks Hillary is wonderful and Trump is a sexist, racist, corporation-loving wealthy guy who doesn't pay taxes. . . well, those people will still be voting for Hillary Clinton... and the Never Trump people will still be refusing to vote for either.

Trump did show a more stable side during this debate than in the other two debates, but I think that reality is more thanks to Wallace than to Trump, since Wallace did a decent job of keeping the debate issue-oriented. However, Trump did not dispel, as well as I would have liked him to, Hillary's accusations that he lacks a certain amount of decency.

He needed a home-run, and he hit a ground-rule double.  In other words, he did good, but not well enough to score the much needed points to pull further ahead of Hillary Clinton.

That said, I don't think the election is as dire as the media makes it out to be.  In fact, the way the Democrats are scrambling, it tells me there is a certain amount of worry.  I think their internal polling shows Trump doing much better than the media is letting out... but that's for a later article.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary

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