The last presidential debate between That Guy and Biden was a more subdued affair.
It became obvious early on That Guy was coached to tone down his prior inflammatory horseshit he displayed in the first debate. Perhaps the threat of the mute button instituted by the debate commission was an adequate deterrent. The fact it was a needed implement only further embarrassed our state of the state at the time. How sad was it, that pundits on either side were forced to rate the success of a president’s debate performance based on how well he behaved himself, rather than how his policies come across?
Yet his downgraded aggression was only a matter of degrees. As the debate progressed, he fell into old habits, interrupting both Biden and the moderator, rolling his eyes, becoming more visibly agitated anytime he was pressed to answer for his decisions. The questions of moderator Kristin Welker (That Guy’s favorite kind of adversary – journalist, Black, female) were concise and pointed, querying each candidate on their views concerning the pandemic and their mutual projections for addressing the problem in a more productive fashion.
That Guy turned to his repository of back paddling tropes, and touted his success by citing an early estimate out of the U.K that 2.5 million American fatalities would’ve occurred without any of his administration’s interventions.
Then he again hyped up a phantom vaccine that was coming down the pipe ‘in a matter of weeks,’ when it had been roundly affirmed by epidemiological experts that no widespread distribution of a viable vaccine would be available until December or early 2021. “We’re fighting it, and fighting it hard…there’s some spikes and surges in places, but they’ll soon be gone…we’re rounding the turn on the pandemic, we’re learning to live with it, we have no choice, we can’t lock ourselves up in a basement like Joe does.”
Biden replied: “He says we’re learning to live with it. People are learning to die with it.” Zing! Good one, old timer.
The rest of the debate was as expected, a couple of elderly whiteboys ping-ponging about foreign policy, the economy, That Guy’s constant attempts painting the Biden family as corrupt, Biden’s calm demeanor trying to ride out the clock and not upset the apple cart of his commanding lead in the polls.
When prodded by Welker about the discovery that parents of 545 children separated at the border by ICE agents couldn’t be located, That Guy avoided offering a reasonable explanation for how his administration planned to find those parents and reunite the children with their families. “Children are brought here by coyotes and lots of bad people, cartels, and they’re brought here and they used them to get into our country.”
Welker pressed on, asking again how he was planning to reunite the kids with their parents. He said they’re working very hard on it and left it at that, desperately circling around to try and shift focus onto Biden. “They built cages, they used to say I built cages, that was him,” he said, referring to Biden and Obama’s decision during their tenure of building temporary enclosures to house immigrants caught crossing the border, yet omitting the fact Obama had no policies in place that separated children from their families once groups of incoming migrants were detained.
Welker doubled down, repeating herself, and That Guy replied: “They come without the parents, they come over through the cartels and through coyotes and through gangs.”
Yep, that wasn’t racist at all. All Mexicans seeking asylum in the United States through outside channels…because inside channels are so easy to access, don’tcha know…must have been utilizing dastardly means to do so, via crime movement and illicit desert odd jobbing and plain old barrio gangbanging. Because that’s what all non-naturalized Hispanic folks do, obviously.
He just liked using the word coyote. It was a nice buzzword he could remember and sounded jazzy for Twitter. Limited minds enjoy using fear-bait jargon to punch up their otherwise simplistic rhetoric.
He went on: “Kristin, I will say this…they’re so well taken care of, they’re in facilities that are so clean.” Wow, that was a relief! Most credible reports coming out of border detention facilities described them as dismal situations, with kids on concrete floors wrapped in emergency mylar blankets, privatized security agents looking on from watchtowers, captives residing within a series of interconnected chain link cages inside warehouses normally slotted for confiscated border goods. The American Academy of Pediatrics called it state-sanctioned child abuse. The advocacy organization Physicians for Human Rights called it torture.
It was a crime against humanity.
Yet another notch on That Guy’s bedpost.
*Compiled from October 22, 2020