
Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden attended cable news town halls this week. And the difference was stark.
Trump
Trump’s town hall was pretty bad. I hadn’t really thought about it before, but in his press conferences, Trump relies a whole bunch on yelling at reporters. If he gets a difficult question, he just calls the reporter “nasty” (especially if it’s a woman) or “fake news.” Then he moves on.
But with the town hall, he couldn’t really do that. And the fact that he didn’t shows that he’s more together than he often appears. So he was left with his other weapon: bold-faced lies. And he used it a lot.
Lies, Damn Lies, and Donald Trump
Daniel Dale has been documenting Trump’s lies for a long time. After the town hall, he said, “There was just so much lying, Don. I’m going to go quickly here so literally just stop me whenever you need to.” Over a minute and a half later, he said, “Don, this is a preliminary list. I have hours of fact-checking to do today because there is even more of this. This was just a fire-hose of lying, again, from the president.”
And when cornered, he just blamed Obama. Remember back in June 2009 when Republicans were outraged that Obama occasionally mentioned Bush? Republicans really are a postmodern party that believes in nothing other than that it is good if they do something and bad if the Democrats do it.
“I Don’t Feel Your Pain”
But it’s more than just the lying. It’s also that Trump seems to be unable to empathize with other people. When he was asked if he understood that the MAGA slogan was tone deaf for African Americans, Trump responded that things were better for blacks under his administration.
It went so poorly that Laura Ingraham called the town hall an “ambush.” It doesn’t make any sense to call it that. Trump must have known what he was getting into. And frankly, it wasn’t all that hard a venue. It’s just that Trump is really, really bad at this stuff.
Biden
The only bad thing I can say about Biden’s town hall was that he’s showing his age. But he’s still the same old Joe. And one thing I thought while watching it was that he was standing throughout it. Yeah, I know Trump will be standing in the debates. But he sat for his town hall and that’s how I always think of him: sitting. Or wandering around on the grass.
Biden was really focused at the town hall. Again and again, he showed himself to be really informed about policy and related minutia. I guess that’s what comes from dedicating your life to this stuff.
Biden Is Good at Politics
Check out the following clip of Biden answering a question from a woman whose mother has cancer. Biden engages with her. He even manages to remember that the woman said “multiple myeloma” in her question (a feat I could not accomplish). And he still manages to use it to attack Trump.
During part of the answer, he veers off to talk about his son and attack Trump’s comments about soldiers being “losers.” I’m sure that’s something that Biden cares deeply about. But it was still a brilliant piece of political theater. His son died of cancer so it was related. And I’m sure Biden has no problem getting choked up when thinking about his son.
Watch this; it really is brilliant.
Republicans Respond
Of course, just as the right-wing came to the defense of Trump’s horrible town hall, they had to trash Biden’s. And the best idea they came up with was from Bill O’Reilly.
The truth is that Bill O’Reilly knows better than this. But it doesn’t matter. They have to come up with some reason to claim that Trump is right and true and Biden is not.
Dean Baker responded, “Yeah, someone must have told Biden there would be questions on the pandemic and the economy. Otherwise, how could he be so well prepared.”
But most of the better responses were like BrooklynDad Defiant! who said, “Hilarious that Joe Biden is supposed to be Sleepy and Slow, but guys like Bill O’Reilly think he has the mental acuity to memorize a ton of questions AND answers.”
Final Analysis
I’ve become far more pragmatic in my politics over the last year or two. I think Trump does that to people. This isn’t to say my goals for politics have changed — just that I’m more risk averse and focused on the short-term.
I like Biden and I think he’s a decent guy. If he becomes president, I won’t be thrilled with his foreign policy, but it will be far better than Trump’s. And I’ll generally find his domestic policies to be less bold than they should be. But I fully expect to be significantly more pleased than I was with Obama.
And Biden showed that he is rather good at this whole politics thing. Who would have thought?! I mean, he’s only been doing it for 50 years. But it’s more than that. I’ve said before: Joe Biden is the best retail politician of my lifetime — with the possible exception of Bill Clinton.
Trump is a bad retail politician. He’s at his best in front of big adoring crowds. He will struggle in the debates. His only hope is that the media grade him on a curve. And they have so far.
Image cropped from Joe Biden by Gage Skidmore via Flickr. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
If there is ONE area Trump should be competent, just one, it should be public speaking
Mr. Trump, there’s a lot you don’t understand, but I never thought one of those things would be show business
-Stephen Colbert
It’s weird how inconsistent he is. At one rally, he’ll be his old self. At another, he slurs words and seems like he needs a nap.
I think these will be the first presidential debates in my adult life that I do not watch. I already know exactly what the candidates will say and how their performances will be graded by various observers. I certainly hope Biden does well (I’ve already voted for him), but have no need to see it live.
Besides, even in a non-Trump world, I’m not sure how much debates matter, anyway. There was an element of fun in watching Obama call out Romney on his lies or Biden reveal Palin as a blistering idiot. I can’t imagine a Trump/Biden debate being fun in any way. (I might watch Harris/Pence, though, that has potential.)
Yeah, I think Harris-Pence will be better. I’ll probably watch all of them. But it is really hard. This week, it’s been hard to pay attention to the news at all. I’m getting the impression the election is going to be stolen. And the Republicans will stand by and do nothing because it keeps them in power and they know that if they ever lose power, they are just one election cycle from the American people forgiving them and putting them back in power.
Pence is actually an interesting character; Trump is not. Pence went full broke and didn’t have Daddy’s money to save him before he got a new job loudly proclaiming that girls are untrustworthy sexual tricksters behooving to get child support (as if that’s a thing) — apparently, this was enough to get him elected by diplodocus deadbeat white guys in Indiana or whatever f***king state he became governor of because he was dead broke.
It’s two kinds of villainy. Raised in a normal family, Trump would have been a bum — and liked it. Pence was born ambitious. They would both destroy the world if they thought it would help them.