Pence isn’t there to dictate foreign policy, he’s there to sit and look pretty.
The biggest losers tonight were Hillary's #MSM operatives, and the #GOP's #NeverTrump concern trolls.
— Nicholas Stix (@NicholasStix) October 10, 2016
CBS seemingly doing energetic catch-up work to try to save debate for Hillary. Unusually conspicuous. #allhandsondeck
— Mickey Kaus (@kausmickey) October 10, 2016
CNN collectively agrees that Trump threw Pence under the bus tonight and that this would create chaos in the campaign. Then show this. 😂 https://t.co/yifGkuqNEI
— Anthony Weiner (@AnthonyVVeiner) October 10, 2016
fly circled trump and decided not to land… landed on hillary twice.. this is an omen
— #FreeRicky Sam Hyde (@Night_0f_Fire) October 10, 2016
Donald Trump's highest moment when he held Hillary liable for her emails and called for a special prosecutor. #debate pic.twitter.com/V4eEIjnMlG
— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) October 10, 2016
* After the first four minutes, it seems to me that Trump has already won. Hillary is hammering down on her talking points, but her phoniness is palpable. Trump is coming across as utterly, sympathetically human.
* The first “undecided” voter asks about “setting a bad model for children” and is a black woman school teacher. I’m sure she was completely honest about being open to voting for Trump.
* Trump is doing great so far against a hostile and biased set of questions.
We are about 15 minutes and every single question so far has been a pointed anti-Trump question that has nothing to do with policy.
I wish Trump would shut up about the emails however. Do you think a single voter is going to decide based on this issue?
* SLUGFEST!!!! This is better then the fights at Vegas. Trump punched the hell out of Hillary on the e-mails and the Bill Clinton sex scandals. Hillary was ROCKED! THIS is the Trump we’ve been waiting for!!!
* My e-mail and text lit up with that one. Pretty much everyone I know thought that was a direct hit. I would say most of my friends are mildly anti-Trump. Those who are pro-Trump were roaring with approval.
* Trump is fucking full nuclear Liberty Prime tonight. Good fucking gravy.
* Trump comes out swinging! He’s doing great.
So far, the debate “moderators” have been a black man, a black woman, a white woman and a gay man. The media isn’t going to wait until Hillary is elected – they’re replacing hetero white men right now. Trump is alone in standing up for us, dealing with immigration, attacks on police and las and order, trade, jobs leaving the country, etc.
* I had decided this morning that the leaked recordings scandal was good for Trump in the long run because it was a hard punch to the face that shook him up and forced him to take things seriously. He looks much more self-controlled and prepared tonight compared to last time.
* After this debate there’s a pretty good body of evidence that Trump set the bar low in the first debate so that he could vault over it this time. Holy crap he’s hammering her on all her weak points.
* Not quarter given in politics. The GOP has been groveling for decades hoping for mercy. They never get it. Trump, to his credit, seems to be figuring that out and is now unleashing his full arsenal.
My guess is the release of that tape pissed him off. Probably a bad move by Team Clinton.
One instance of the Trump Effect is every journalist now declaring inner city blacks are doing Amazing. https://t.co/JmGGX0kHTk
— Tim Carney (@TPCarney) October 10, 2016
* Scorched Earth Indeed. Trump won on points. She is still as slick as ever, but DJT’s new focus and fight is going to set the stage for an even more epic Debate #3. He can win the Big Prize. The ferocity of this election is the great catharsis the nation needs to cut the establishment & MSM down to size.
* So Trump has given a press conference with women who have claimed to have been sexually assaulted by Bill Clinton.
I guess to me it isn’t so obvious that this is a poor tactic.
Look, negative advertising works. This is why it’s used. Negative advertising has now been thrown at Trump in the form of this tape, and Trump’s press conference is way of throwing it right back.
I appreciate that it’s typically best if this counterattack is performed by surrogates instead of the candidate. But will such a response really be heard from someone else’s mouth, especially given how the Megaphone will never give Trump’s side its due?
In fact, it’s simply a remarkable piece of gall that Hillary’s supporters — and, for God’s sakes, Hillary herself in a tweet — should express such disgust over Trump’s tape, given how eager they have been to support Bill Clinton in the face of his sexual scandals. They have opened up this entire line of attack, presumably expecting that there would be no one to call them on their hypocrisy. How do they effectively answer him on this point? His case for their hypocrisy is actually quite compelling, and easy to understand for the public. And fighting fire with fire isn’t exactly an unpopular thing to do.
I’m not going to pretend that I know that this will work — but I don’t see why people seem so certain it will backfire. It may seem that not responding to the controversy, or making light of it, would work better, but I don’t know why this would be so — the most likely consequence of doing so is that the issue festers, and indeed is aggravated over time, as Hillary’s supporters keep pushing it hard.
But if Trump has an effective answer, and the women Bill Clinton has abused seem persuasive to the public, then I think that entire line of attack might be greatly diminished in power, and will be so at the earliest possible time, rather than continuing through election day. Better sooner than later.
It would of course be great if Trump could just focus on the issues — but nothing could be more obvious than that the next number of newscycles will be consumed with this tape, and/or other similar tapes, because that’s what the media wants. But if every such newscycle is answered with Trump making even more prominent the women Bill Clinton has abused, and Hillary has defamed or dismissed, that ploy may be reduced or retired — which is what seems to have happened to Machado.
It may be that this won’t be enough for Trump to win — but it can still be the best, most effective thing he could do, under the circumstances.