Republican debate and Trump

Politics & Elections
41

There’s a lot of late night hosts sitting at home going nuts that they can’t be on the air tomorrow (or later tonight).

PS to be clear, they (the ones I see) are happy, if not proud, to support the writers, the timing just sucks with so much stupid going on lately in all these cases.

42

Actually, Vivek used that line about himself and Christie was pointing out that he had stolen it from Obama (who said it in 2008).

43

I haven’t watched anything other than some clips and the recap on MSNBC so I guess this could be taken with a grain of salt but to me it seems the ones who came off the best were Nikki Haley, Pence and Ramaswamy.

DeSantis was basically ignored by the others and appeared to come off poorly. You would have expected some attacks aimed at him but all the canned attack lines used were aimed at Ramaswamy. It seems to suggest the others saw him as the one to take down rather than Ron.

44

I didn’t watch the debate, but in one of the post-mortems someone said that Nikki Haley accused Trump of running up large budget deficits during his administration.

Republican hypocrisy on the deficit has been obvious to me for decades, but I’ve never heard any Republican mention it. Does anyone have more details on that exchange?

45

Did most of them call Donald “Mr. Trump” or “President Trump”?

My favorite line from CNN’s review of the debate: “DeSantis even failed the most basic debate strategy for a candidate: flashing a genuine smile. At one point, he looked as though he was in physical pain as he attempted a strained smile while saying, “I will not let you down.”

46

Difficult to subceed our shallow expectations.

Dan

47

That really should be his campaign slogan now.

48

Are you saying Vivek said it and I’m misremembering (which I don’t think was the case) or that Vivek said it earlier and the part I saw was Christie throwing it back at him?

49

We only made it about 10-15 minutes before shutting it down. Good god, is this the best they can do? That grinning fool with the blinding bleached teeth? DeSantis has the cheesiest, most insincere smile of any politician, and if he had a gap in his teeth he’d look like Alfred E. Neuman.

I’m guessing that Nikki Haley didn’t win any fans after blaming the Pubbies and Trump for the huge increase in the debt. At least she was brave enough to say it.

When the audience started in with the booing and catcalls, we called it quits.

50

Damnit, once again my low tolerance for watching Republican Shitshows has cost me the chance to see the best part! What were they booing?

51

I didn’t watch it either. I’ve seen a few clips and the cheering and booing was odd. They seemed to cheer something they had just previously booed.

Nikki really chewed that Vivek fella a new one and I loved it. He is an asshole of the first order.

52

I heard that Christie got booed when he ruled out voting for Trump.

53

Pretty much anything perceived as anti-trump, and pretty much anything that Christie had to say. Rude and obnoxious, as expected.

54

Republicans “debating” on FOX “News” ?

Ummm… my dish was lost in a tragic boating accident.

I know all I need to know about these morons.

55

I struggled to even get through the highlights. So much disinformation on real problems like climate change and then manufactured outrage on nonsense like woke and the Bidens.
Of course FOX got in on this a bit too, showing clips of people complaining about the economy and the price of gas, without mentioning how the American economy, and comparatively low inflation, is the envy of the world right now.

A few more specific notes:

  • I think more people are aware of how extreme Vivek is now. Whether that hurts him though, we’ll see. Trumpists will have liked it, but then Trumpists will vote for Trump.
  • A poor performance from Christie, who perhaps had hoped Trump would show up. His comparison of Vivek to Obama didn’t land at all.
  • On climate change…did Vivek get booed for saying climate change is a myth? Or were the crowd booing the “bought and paid for” people who say climate change is real?
  • A good evening for Haley. She had a good couple of points on the national debt and Ukraine, which actually go against MAGA orthodoxy. It’s not much, but I’ll take it.
  • On the “raise your hands” on climate change thing, actually I think at least one person (Asa?) was starting to raise his hand, and maybe others were thinking about it, when DeeSantis chipped in.
    I think they are all happy to repeat the talking points and deflect on climate change but they don’t normally get asked that bluntly and they aren’t prepared for it.
56

I’ve seen zero mention, good bad or indifferent, about the whole trump interview with Tucker. Nothing in the Washington Post this morning, nothing here, nothing on my news feed…

Did it happen? Is it just being ignored to deprive the crybaby of the sweet, sweet be craves? Am i just missing the conversation?

I don’t really care what he had to say, just hoping to hear that he incriminated himself a few more times or violated his conditions of bond. You know, the important stuff.

57

I read one story about it on my phone, can’t remember the source. Sounded like it was the usual “Give Trump a blowjob” thing, mixed with some extra-sauce crazy. Apparently at one point, Fucker asked Trump why THEY haven’t just killed him yet.

58

I think it happened, and yes, I think it’s being ignored. Fox News is not interested in Trump anymore, and having their fired ex-employee do the interview did not help. Fox is practiced at ignoring certain news (see for example, fires on Maui). CNN and others were never going to cover it - I think they may have learned about giving oxygen to his campaign.

59

I read earlier today that Trump called Pence’s claim that Trump asked Pence to put him (Trump) before the Constitution ‘A FAKE STORY!’

I didn’t watch the debate, but Chris Christie claimed Trump wanted to ‘terminate’ portions of the Constitution.

60

There’s a CNN article fact-checking the debate that also covers a few whoppers that trump told during the Tucker interview. Tucker / trump covered under the fold here:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/23/politics/fact-check-republican-debate/index.html