The First Presidential Debate

Much has already been said here, but just adding my two cents…

I was surprised at how (my perception of) the momentum shifted as the debate went on. Early, I thought it was pretty even or even favoring Trump; for the first 15-20 minutes, Hilary sounded really stiff and awkward (I cringed hard at her delivery of the weak “Trumped up trickle down” zinger - really? That was an awful attempt at a catchy phrase, and it fell totally flat…if she wanted to go after him on that, she could have tried it without the awkwardly forced joke) and Donald landed some blows early.

But as the night went on, Donald became progressively more unhinged and kept giving more and more rambly answers that made no sense, while Hilary at least managed to sound like a relatively coherent person preparing to be a head of state (again - whether you agree with her proposed policies or not, at least she didn’t sound like a raving lunatic). Trump’s answer about “cyber” was laugh-out-loud funny, and the contrast in their answers to that question probably gave the microcosm of the entire night: Clinton was able to deliver a more-or-less logical and informed response to an obvious question, while Trump couldn’t. All he could do was keep going back to the well with comments about how Clinton has been “doing this for 30 years” and basically trying to blame her for, like, everything that’s happened ever (his comment that Hilary had been fighting ISIS for her “entire adult life” goes into the ranks with saying that Obama was the literal founder of ISIS on the “Dude, can you ever turn off the act for one second and act like a normal person?” scale).

Whenever he was asked a direct, pointed question he either gave complete psycho-babble or deflected into something else, and he made a number of oddly timed references to his own success, like casually dropping into the middle of a reply that he made $694 million last year, or by mentioning that not paying any federal income taxes “made him smart” - and his hilarious “Call Sean Hannity, he’ll tell you that I was against the Iraq war” train of thought was another woefully unprepared answer to a fairly obvious debate question.

I’ve only commented a few places on Presidential threads, but I think anyone who has read my comments will know that I’m basically in the camp of “Hilary is pretty bad, but Trump would be an unprecedented disaster” so feel free to take that into context as you read the above. That’s not really based on “party lines” as I don’t identify strongly as either Democrat or Republican; that’s just my perception of these two candidates in particular.

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Why stop there?

You know His grandfather ran brothels during the gold rush. I bet according to you this is also “ripe to use as ammunition” as it relates to how his family treats women.

This is a part of the point many of us have tried to make over the last 6 months. A seasoned politician could have destroyed Hillary during the debate. She left herself open several times and she’s an incredibly weak politician, but Trump didn’t and doesn’t have the skillset to do it.

Couple that with the opinion, mine anyway, that he doesn’t have the skillset to lead the nation or really a general understanding of almost anything outside of real estate and showbiz and we’ve got a real problem.

If Hillary can talk about information security without taking a hit from Trump how do you (general you) think he’ll best guys like Putin or Li Keqiang?

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So Trump is going to stop talking about Bill Clinton’s infidelities then, right?

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His grandfather isn’t running for president and none of those actions involved Trump himself since he was, er, not alive during the Gold Rush.

Again, you’re quite clueless about American politics, aren’t you?

Infidelity is funny way of describing rapes

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Yeah I wish I was as prescient as you’ve been this election

Bill Clinton was convicted of rape?

No he was accused several times by multiple women. Every woman Trump has dated has basically endorsed him

You seem to have a problem with the whole Due Process thing:

If the standard is simply an accusation then Trump’s got a whole lot of problems too.

I’m not naive enough to believe people in their position of power aren’t able to circumvent the nation’s laws. Based on everything we know about the Clintons I’m inclined to believe it.

The son of a black prostitute has also come out claiming bill is his father

You are accusing a man of raping several people. That is a serious allegation. No one is saying that it could not have happened or even that it did not happen. However, in this country you are afforded Due Process under the law and you are innocent until proven guilty.

That doesn’t surprise me in the slightest and per usual it is incredibly hypocritical. Try applying the same standard to Donald Trump.

For example, his ex-wife accused him of violating her. He’s a powerful man that has the ability to circumvent the nation’s laws. He must have just paid her off to change her story.

Conjecture is fun…

At any rate, all of this is beside the point. You’re mad about a lawsuit being brought up 50 or so years ago and then flippantly offered the example regarding Trump’s grandfather; yet, I’m pretty confident you’re more than happy to hear Trump bring up Bill’s issues as if Hillary should be judged by the actions of her husband.

You should be judged based on your actions not the actions of others around you.

Super.

You do realize that there is somebody charging trump with raping a 13 year old, right?

By your logic allegations = guilty, therefore Trump is a child rapist. Feel free to backtrack now.

I mean, obviously, the Clintons are behind this.

You mean this?

"We came in with the Internet, we came up with the Internet, and I think Secretary Clinton and myself would agree very much, when you look at what [the Islamic State] is doing with the Internet, they’re beating us at our own game. ISIS.

So we have to get very, very tough on cyber and cyber warfare. It is — it is a huge problem. I have a son. He’s 10 years old. He has computers. He is so good with these computers, it’s unbelievable. The security aspect of cyber is very, very tough. And maybe it’s hardly doable."

I think we should let Trump’s 10 year old son be the cyber security advisor, apparently he’s unbelievably good with computers.

Also remember that he said this word salad of nothingness instead of attacking Clinton for not having a secure server after she said cyber security is one of the biggest threats the next president will face. That’s like striking out in t-ball.

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This is easily my favorite sound bite of this election cycle.

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What we’re talking about has nothing to do with prescience, but in any event, I’ll gladly admit that I didn’t think the GOP would nominate the least qualified and least conservative of all the candidates in the field. That’s what I get for assuming the GOP is even moderately competent to field a decent candidate in an election that, were a decent candidate chosen, would be a cakewalk for Republicans.

I won’t make that mistake again.

This was very well said.

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The problem with this back and forth between Hillary and Trump is that neither one has a leg to stand on when it comes to the truth or ethics. Add the fact that both are engaging in low blows that apply as much to themselves as they do to each other (Hillary attacking Trump on honesty and attacking Trump on the treatment of women when she has the emails and Bill in her closet, or Trump attacking Hillary on looking presidential when he looks like a damned aging Oompa Loompa and can’t string together a coherent sentence) and I still can’t believe anyone is actually supporting one of these fools. Our parties haven’t put up the best and brightest, instead they’ve picked their lowest common denominators. I’m more ashamed of both parties than anything.

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[quote=“anon50325502, post:96, topic:221940, full:true”]

You are accusing a man of raping several people. That is a serious allegation. No one is saying that it could not have happened or even that it did not happen. However, in this country you are afforded Due Process under the law and you are innocent until proven guilty. [/quote]

Not accusing him, several women are and based on his history of sexual deviance, I’m inclined to believe them.

There was never a trial so stop with mentioning due process. All you’re doing is making yourself look like a robot who thinks the world is binary.

[quote=“anon50325502, post:96, topic:221940, full:true”]

That doesn’t surprise me in the slightest and per usual it is incredibly hypocritical. Try applying the same standard to Donald Trump.

For example, his ex-wife accused him of violating her. He’s a powerful man that has the ability to circumvent the nation’s laws. He must have just paid her off to change her story.

Conjecture is fun… [/quote]

Ivana Trump has endorsed Trump and clarified it wasn’t in a criminal sense.