While several were sitting there, in the front row. He then tried to walk it back by listing all of the different ranks of the people in the room. I could almost hear the gears crunching in his head: “Oh shit! There are generals here. I better say something to show them I didn’t mean them. Damn it. Are they all generals? Who’s here anyway? Maybe I should just list some other ranks to show them I know all the best military stuff.”
But … e-mails!!!
FTR, Lauer’s questions to Trump were the soft bigotry of low expectations.
First, “What have you experienced in your personal life or your professional life that you believe prepares you to make the decisions that a commander-in-chief has to make?” Damn, boy.
“You recently received two intelligence briefings … Did anything in that briefing, without going into specifics, shock or alarm you? … Did you learn new things in that briefing?” Maybe you could give Lauer credit for being patronizing there, but it sounded more like sycophancy. Or perhaps playing to the (military) audience.
“Will you be prepared on day one, if you’re elected president of the United States, to tackle these complex national security issues?” Nope, no excuses for that one.
And no follow-up, not even much interrupting, unlike with Clinton.
Was Lauer auditioning for the Trump News Network anchor job?
Lauer threw heat at Clinton while hanging curves for Trump. Trump struck out despite Lauer’s efforts. He has two responses to every question- 1)condemn Obama and Clinton and 2) brag about himself.
Why no questions about veteran homelessness? If you read the memes on your Facebook feed, you know that not one nickel should be spent on any other cause as long as one veteran is homeless.
Why no questions about:
- Vietnam deferments?
- Khan’s?
- Giving nuclear weapons to the Saudi’s and Japan?
Also, it was pointed out that the questions that Matt Lauer chose for each candidate had no relation to each other, so, after 1 full hour, it is impossible to compare the two on a 1:1 basis on any issue touched on.
Throat chlamydia? Sorry, what does that mean?
Hillary coughed the other day. Right wingers started saying she had throat chlamydia. This was in reference to those beliefs.
I am not making this up.
Matt would need 3 hours to cover every dumbass thing Trump has ever said. Candidates were given only 30 minutes, 15 of which was fielding questions from the audience.
Even with so little time, Trump missed no opportunity to step on his own dick.
He’ll be the first to tell you it’s hard not to, it’s so HUGE.
But Matt could have asked the same questions of each:
- Iraq decision
- ISIS
- Russia
- China
- Mexico
- Etc…
Instead, he made the decision to craft each candidates questions to his own agenda, not to the goal of finding out their foreign policy positions.
I think this is a much greater professional failing than merely not fact-checking Trump. Though that’s needed too, Chris Wallace.
Still, there can’t be much doubt that all this casts a shadow on Hillary’s Presidential campaign. Also, clouds.
People have Asked Questions. Experts are also Concerned.
I liked the part where Trump answered the question about whether he was going to follow the advice of military leaders he had just badmouthed, and he replied that they wouldn’t necessarily have their jobs if he got elected…then he immediately referred again to the list of military personnel in his pocket. Is he saying that they would get promoted, perhaps because they supported him?
Weren’t they all retired? Seems to me it’s not kosher for active military to endorse a candidate.
Not “kosher” in the same way that a ham and cheese sandwich with a nice glass milk isn’t. On rye with a shmeer won’t help.
I have no idea if this was Lauer’s intention, but by not dealing with Trump’s Iraq War claim directly, he left the door open for other media sources to conduct their own fact checks (and this appears to have gone viral), which could end up calling more attention to the lie than confining the fact check to one source. Just my $.02.
Time constraints, perhaps. If he had called Trump on his shape-shifting, Trump would have taken another ten minutes to say “nunh-uh!”.
Thereby, giving the second candidate the opportunity to either take the opposite position or the same but better position to that stated by the first candidate. No, asking the same questions would be the wrong approach, unless this was Family Feud and the second candidate is back stage isolated in a sound proof room.
I found that Matt, did a reasonably good job, playing to each candidate’s weakest positions. Obviously, he had to choose those he felt would be best addressed in the 15 minutes he was given with each.
If Matt had an “agenda”, it didn’t seem evident to me. What was Matt’s agenda, in your opinion?
Head Of Republican Party Says Clinton Needs To Smile More When She Talks About The Military
“We sent soldiers to kill the innocent, in service to muddled objectives, and all to force an evil man to surrender weapons he did not have.”
[Grin!]
Head of the DNC, Donna Brazil, should put out a statement saying:
"Donald Trump needs to be less of a buffoon when his lips are moving."