RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2020/09/30/trump-wins-round-one-barely/

There was no clear winner in Tuesday’s presidential debate and the country was the loser. 

President Trump could have won decisively if he had just followed Napoleon’s famous advice not to “interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” The moderator, Fox News Channel’s Chris Wallace, did an excellent professional job largely without bias, and undoubtedly more fairly than those who will conduct the next two debates, but he didn’t come down hard enough on the interruptions. If Trump had just allowed Wallace to follow up on his questions of Biden, the former vice president would have stumbled badly. Trump’s irritating interruptions created an incoherent cacophony that enabled Biden to escape severe embarrassment. 

On balance, Trump almost certainly won, but a very few viewers would have had the perseverance to listen carefully enough to note that Trump defended his own record quite capably, and Biden was very shaky and imprecise both in criticism of his opponent and in explaining why he should be president. As was expected, the fact that he got through 90 minutes in the ring with Trump without becoming incomprehensibly muddled, empowered his supporters to claim that in limping out intact, he had won.

For those who followed it carefully or replay it, it will be clear not only that Trump is a much more forceful and articulate man than Joe Biden, but that he also clearly won the argument, insofar as it could be perceived within the tumult of interruptions.

The Democrats can claim the partial victory of their candidate having survived to fight another day, but the Democratic campaign—which has consisted exclusively of nonstop defamation of the president with a new false allegation every week—was discredited by Biden’s failure to make any of his accusations stick, or even sound like he believed them himself. 

https://pjmedia.com/election/megan-fox/2020/09/30/fact-check-did-hunter-biden-get-kicked-out-of-the-military-for-drugs-spoiler-yes-n986866

During the first presidential debate Joe Biden denied President Trump’s charge that his son, Hunter Biden, was dishonorably discharged from the military for drug use. It is unknown what kind of discharge it was, as it is only listed as “administrative discharge” which can also include dishonorable discharge. But whether the actual dismissal was listed as honorable or not, what Hunter Biden did in the military is not what anyone would categorize as exemplary service.

USA Today reported in 2014 on the Biden boy’s embarrassing dismissal from a very sought-after Navy Reserve commission that only six other Americans received.

The younger son of Vice President Joe Biden failed a drug test for cocaine, a month after his commissioning last year into the Navy Reserve and was discharged.

Hunter Biden, an ensign, had been selected for commission as a reserve officer through the Direct Commission Officer program in 2012, according to Cmdr. Ryan Perry, a Navy spokesman. He was commissioned into the Navy Reserve unit for Navy Public Affairs Support Element East in Norfolk, Va. Biden, who had no prior military experience, was one of six officers commissioned nationally into the Navy Reserve public affairs division.

“It was the honor of my life to serve in the U.S. Navy, and I deeply regret and am embarrassed that my actions led to my administrative discharge,” Biden said in statement issued through his lawyer. “I respect the Navy’s decision. With the love and support of my family, I’m moving forward.”

The incident was first reported late Thursday in The Wall Street Journal. Citing “people familiar with the matter,” it reported that Biden was given a drug test in June 2013 that tested positive for cocaine.

Biden, 44, was discharged from the Navy Reserve in February. He has worked as a lawyer, lobbyist and managing partner at the investment firm Rosemont Seneca Partners in Washington. He was hired in May to join the board of Burisma Holdings, Ukraine’s largest private oil and gas producer, and be in charge of its legal department.

There should be major questions as to how Hunter got that commission in the first place. How was he chosen one of the six people to get such a highly sought-after position? And once he had it he cared so little about it that he screwed it up in one month. Talk about privilege! The military refused to disclose if the discharge was other than honorable, leaving us guessing. But I can’t be the only one who would be very disappointed in our military if they didn’t penalize someone who squandered such an amazing opportunity the way Hunter did.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/biden-says-antifa-is-an-idea-not-an-organization-during-presidential-debate/

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden defended far-left anarchist movement Antifa as “an idea, not an organization” and said white supremacists pose a greater danger to the country during the first presidential debate on Tuesday night.

The comments came after President Trump said someone should “do something” about the anti-fascist movement, saying far-left anarchists are more dangerous than white supremacists in response to a question by moderator Chris Wallace about whether the president would condemn white supremacists and militia groups.

“You have repeatedly criticized the vice president for not specifically calling out Antifa and other left-wing extremist groups, but are you willing tonight to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of these cities as we saw in Kenosha and as we’ve seen in Portland,” Fox News’ Wallace said, referencing violent rioting in a number of Democratic cities in recent months. 

“Sure, I’m prepared to do that,” the president said. “I would say almost everything I see is from the left-wing not from the right-wing. I’m willing to do anything. I want to see peace.”

Biden and Wallace pressed the president to specifically condemn white supremacists and the far-right group the Proud Boys to which Trump said, “Proud Boys stand back and stand by, but I’ll tell you why, somebody’s gotta do something about Antifa and the Left because this is not a right-wing problem.”

The former vice president countered in saying that Trump’s “own FBI director said the threat comes from white supremacists — Antifa is an idea, not an organization, not militias, that’s what his FBI director said.”

https://www.foxnews.com/media/debate-goes-off-the-rails-as-trump-interrupts-biden-bickers-in-shoutfest

It was the presidential debate as barroom brawl, as television shoutfest, as exhausting insult derby.

To the frustration of moderator Chris Wallace, and perhaps much of the television audience, much of the Cleveland faceoff–and there’s no other way to put it–went off the rails.

Given the polarized nature of the country, few minds were likely changed unless the candidates were being graded on politeness.

Substance occasionally broke through, but by and large it was a night of sound and fury and, from start to finish, great frustration.

The first pivot point came after a mild exchange on the Supreme Court nominee, when Joe Biden said President Trump is in court to get rid of ObamaCare and Amy Coney Barrett has said the law is unconstitutional.

Biden’s jab that 20 million people would lose their health insurance brought the debate onto his turf, clearly part of his game plan.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-depressing-debate-spectacle-11601439976?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

No one expected a Lincoln-Douglas debate, but did it have to be a World Wrestling Entertainment bout? Which may be unfair to the wrestlers, who are more presidential than either Donald Trump or Joe Biden sounded in their first debate Tuesday night.

The event was a spectacle of insults, interruptions, endless cross-talk, exaggerations and flat-out lies even by the lying standards of current U.S. politics. Our guess is that millions of Americans turned away after 30 minutes, and we would have turned away too if we didn’t do this for a living.

Mr. Trump no doubt wanted to project strength and rattle Mr. Biden, but he did so by interrupting him so much that he wouldn’t let Mr. Biden talk long enough even to make a mistake. The President bounced from subject to subject so frequently that it was hard to figure out what he hoped to say beyond that Joe Biden is controlled by the Democratic left. Even when moderator Chris Wallace asked a question that played to the strengths of his record—such as on the economy—Mr. Trump couldn’t stick to the theme without leaping to attack Mr. Biden.

The former Vice President wasn’t much better, interrupting nearly as much. And for the candidate who says he wants to bring people together, he was ready with his own name-calling. He called Mr. Trump a “racist,” a “clown,” and told him to “shut up, man.” He spun out falsehoods as fast as the President, notably in asserting that 100 million people would be vulnerable to losing their health insurance due to pre-existing conditions. The Obama Administration set up a special fund for pre-existing conditions in the transition to ObamaCare, and the takers were only in the thousands. Mr. Trump didn’t know enough to be able to rebut him.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/joe-biden-campaign-strangest-in-history/

Joe Biden may be running for president — and then again, maybe he’s not.

M any argue that 2020 will be the most important election in history, given the wide divergence between the Trump administration’s view and those of Democratic Party’s hard Left, which seems to have captured the Joe Biden candidacy.

Perhaps. But most will at least agree that the 2020 campaign is certainly the strangest, craziest and most absurd in the last 120 years.Joe Biden may at 77 be the oldest major candidate of either major party ever to have run for president. But in this eerie 2020 landscape of pandemic, lockdown, recession, and riot, far stranger than Biden’s frailty is his campaign routine — or lack of same.

Until mid August, Biden more or less stayed ensconced in his basement, campaigning by electronic projection. Not since James Garfield and William McKinley ran their 19th-century presidential campaigns from their front porches has an American presidential candidate simply abdicated from the campaign trail and remained inactive and almost mute.

Biden certainly does not weigh in on many issues. We have no idea whether as president he would join the Jacobin pack to pack the Supreme Court, push to end the Electoral College, enact the full Green New Deal, or seek statehood for Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.

Does he unequivocally condemn the national rioting and looting? Would he reopen the border, stop deportations of illegal aliens, take down the new wall? Would Biden end fracking as part of his stated vow to phase out fossil fuels, as he has inferred in the past? Is China really a mere rival rather than an enemy? And if so, would he revoke Trump’s China-rollback policy? He has bragged of his role in the Iran Deal — would he bring that back? Biden’s silence only highlights the mystery, and magnifies the importance, of the first Biden–Trump debate — given that millions of voters are curious to meet for the first time the nominee of the Democratic Party and thereby will learn at last why, these past months, he either should have, or should not have, gone into hibernation.