It’s been a while since I watched the town hall debate. Does it have the same restriction as the first debate, where the audience is supposed to stay silent (aside from questions)? Granted, the first debate’s audience repeatedly ignored that rule. Still, Trump’s advantage comes when he can throw red meat to a howling crowd. If the town hall is supposed to restrain themselves, he can’t whip them up into a lather like one of his rallies. Also, if the audience truly is made up of undecided voters, I don’t think he could rile them up like that even if there isn’t a “keep quiet” rule.
I think Clinton will have the advantage here, and as the night goes on, it gets more likely that Trump will slip up and say something damaging. At the very least, we should see him clumsily dodge a pointed question about race relations delivered by a minority. I also expect the $914M tax loss to come up, and I don’t expect Trump to have a good answer for it.
Trump look exhausted at the end of Debate 1. For all the talk of Clinton’s health, he was pretty obviously flagging. She looked fine.
The town hall format will be more exhausting still. It’s more physically demanding, and it’s going to be tough on both candidates, but if Trump struggled at the end of a 90-minute standard format he’s going to be wiped by a town hall format. In such a circumstance, were I Trump’s advisors, I’d be much more concerned not by the possibility of a gorilla-panic shitfit moment, but by an even worse rendition of the last act of Debate 1; Trump tired, rambling, and boring. He’ll stop moving and looking animated and will retreat to his chair or stool or whatever they have, which will cede the ground of the performance area to Clinton.
The first debate, they stood at their podiums the whole time, right? This sounds like it’ll be just as long, and he can spend just as much time talking – only he can then sit on his chair or stool or whatever when she spends just as much time talking.
I’m waiting for the question, “If you’re such a great businessman, how did you manage to lose over $900,000,000 in one year?” If that doesn’t drive him out of his skin, nothing will.
One, he has to know that’s coming; and, two, they hit him in previous debates with how many bankruptcies he’s had, and he always came back with, yeah, most of the time my undertakings net me yuge profits; but some small percentage of those don’t pan out, and on those rare occasions I’ve used the laws to limit my losses.
So he’ll presumably just say, hey, after years when I made billions, I had one bad year when I lost a billion; and then I had more years where I made billions, and I’d totally prove it if only I weren’t under audit and could release my returns from other years. How many years have you made billions? How many jobs have you created?
Well, he knew the questions were coming Monday night and he flubbed them, and they were easy shit like “What would you do to help America’s economy?” and “Tell me about your plan to fight ISIS?”… even if he knows what to say, when to say it, he just can’t do it on a consistent basis.
Anyway, he’s got 14 days to provide years of audited financials or reimburse millions, tens of millions, going back to 2008. He also has a rape case coming up 4 days after the debate. His business empire is facing a massive slowdown due to the bad publicity and that needs to be dealt with. He is facing millions of enthused people digging into his records in dozens of jurisdictions - the US, the various states and cities, China, Russia, Europe, wherever he borrowed or sold something, somebody is looking for it… and he now realizes this, yet another distraction. He is overweight, 70yo, surrounded by yes-men and con-persons (can’t say “con men” with Kelly Anne Conway on the payroll!) who he knows are using him for purposes of their own, and he can’t get out from their thumb.
I’m thinking debate practice will be… minimal. He’s going to do what he has always done, like he did for the deposition, and wing it. And the results will be commiserate.
There were plenty of questions in the first debate that Trump should have known were coming, but he still managed to fumble them. He had no good answer for the birther question, he voluntarily shot himself in the foot over the unreleased tax returns and his stiffing his contractors. He perhaps couldn’t have known about Machado specifically, but he managed to screw that up spectacularly.
My theory is that this is partially because Trump never prepares, instead preferring to shoot from the hip in all situations. On top of that, I think Trump believes that his terrible responses to those debate topics are good answers. If someone grills him on his shady dealings during the town hall, his first and only instinct will be to deny, attack, and/or celebrate.
I think you may be right. In the Republican debates he wasn’t that active. By the end of each one he would mostly stay in the background but he had enough zingers in to make the news. There were enough other candidates that it didn’t look bad for him to be quiet for a while. With just the two of them he can’t afford to do that.
But as per the OP I don’t think Trump has a Code Red moment in him. That’s just not his style. Maybe if he was ever capable of believing he is losing he would lose his cool. Instead he will bluster and think he’s winning the entire time. He’s an old unmedicated version of Charlie Sheen.
Well, granted, I guess – but like I said, when he repeatedly got hit with stuff about the bankruptcies, he was 100% ready; and I’m not just mentioning that as evidence that, every once in a while, he’s ready; I’m mentioning it because it seems like a significantly similar answer to a significantly similar question (right down to the whole hey, if you supposedly know so much about making money, then how do you explain this fiasco of a setback, which should embarrass you, eh? aspect).
If you watch tapes of the 2012 town hall, both Romney and Obama move around. They move forward to engage with questioners. They pace the stage. They generally stand when answering questions, getting closer or further from the audience as merited by the nature of their response. They sometimes turn and address each other, walking and positioning themselves appropriately. The speaker is almost always on his feet. They generally only retreat to their chairs when the other man is speaking. The clear expectation is that the person actively engaged is supposed to stand up. Both men seem to make an effort to not only stand up and approach the audience but to do so in the center shot of a primary camera.
If Trump remained stationary it would look profoundly weird.
In my experience, walking around for 2 hours is much easier than standing still for 2 hours. And I say that even after months of using a standup desk at work - I still have to pace around the building every hour or so.
I think the tax question is best handled by an ordinary person asking something like this: “My spouse and I both hold down jobs and work long hours. We’ve got two kids and we’re putting them through school, and saving as much as we can for college. Last year, we paid X thousands of dollars in taxes. How much did you pay: zero?”
Doesn’t really matter what his answer is to that question. It’s being asked it by an ordinary person with no major tax-write offs that does it.
Well, yeah. I can’t tell if we’re talking past each other?
You say they generally only retreated to their chairs when the other candidate was talking, and so I figure Trump – can retreat to his chair when Hillary Clinton is talking. And I figure that’s better for him than their first debate – when he got to retreat to a chair zero times, and instead spent the whole 90 minutes on his feet.
It may indeed be easier on Trump if he’s expected to move around. Look at how fidgety he was during the first debate while Hillary was talking. Only time will tell whether he can channel that restlessness into showmanship and engagement with the audience, or if he will instead look like a disinterested child in a waiting room.
Keep in mind that, even if Trump can go sit down and catch his breath, he’ll still be in the camera shot. He didn’t come across too well in the split-screen shots on the last debate.
To be fair Trump has an army of lawyers and staffers who can deal with all that, and besides he is incapable of believing he has done anything wrong so it’s probably not even worrying him much. I think Trump is far more likely to be taken down by his own foot in his mouth after being baited than by any of the above.
Make sure they specify FEDERAL tax, otherwise Trump can go off on a tangent about all those “other taxes” he pays.
Followup with “Do you think it would be smart if Everyone did not pay a cent in federal tax? How do you think our country would be kept safe if we had no armed forces? Why do you think it’s “smart” to not pay for our countries defence?”
Point well taken, but it might be harder to interrupt her and loudly try to talk over her when he’s sitting down.
Then again, I’m just grateful that Temperament is his single greatest asset. I’d hate to think that he’d try to swing on her just for keeping the Debate focused on the issues…