It was another balancing act for Joe Biden tonight, and if Donald Trump hadn’t killed our outrage receptors, many of us would probably find the confusion truly alarming. Even if you’re convinced that Biden is, by far, the lesser of two evils, it’s still worth taking a minute to stop to consider what we might be getting ourselves into with Biden and the Democrats. It ain’t pretty. Thursday night’s town halls were a stark contrast in style, with the ABC town hall being stylistically like Biden (slow and substantive), and Trump’s NBC event reminding me of him (flashy, interrupting, and entertaining). […]
presidential debate
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President Donald Trump has returned to the campaign trail a week after being discharged from the Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre. Political analyst Thomas Sutton and body language expert Allan Pease have analysed the president’s latest performance in Florida, the first one since he contracted the coronavirus. On 12 October, the president held a rally in Sanford, Florida, while on Thursday, Trump will take part in an NBC News town hall event in Miami at the same time as Joe Biden has his own town hall gathering, which will be broadcast by ABC. Trump’s Body Language Signals He’s Confident & […]
The infectious President Donald Trump has announced that he has absolutely no intention of taking part in a virtual debate with Joe Biden, just minutes after the Commission on Presidential Debates confirmed the pre-election event would take place remotely to keep everyone safe. In his first live interview since he was hospitalized for three days with COVID-19, Trump told the Fox Business Network Thursday morning: “I’m not going to do a virtual debate… I’m not going to waste my time on a virtual debate.” Then, in a dubious attempt to convince everyone that a debate would be safe, he added: “I […]
https://cdn1.img.sputniknews.com/img/07e4/0a/01/1080633516_0:0:2801:1576_1200x675_80_0_0_3d1c472b8d8d23c8e662bf49efdda763.jpg Sputnik International https://cdn2.img.sputniknews.com/i/logo.png Sputnik https://cdn2.img.sputniknews.com/i/logo.png https://sputniknews.com/us/202010011080633552-trump-opposes-debate-changes-that-cover-for-biden-inability-to-perform-white-house-says/ WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – US President Donald Trump wants to participate in the next presidential debate but does not want the rules changed simply to cover for his rival’s inability to perform, White House spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany said on Thursday. “First, with regards to the commission rules changes, the president made it clear his view on that yesterday that he thinks the only way there is a fair debate is changing the moderator and is changing the Democrat nominee”, McEnany said at a press briefing. “He wants to debate. He plans on being at the […]
The heated and disorderly Trump-Biden debate this week undoubtedly made an impact on US voters’ perception of the two candidates. Verbal exchange aside, the presidential contenders’ body language had a role to play too, and appeared to speak volumes about their confidence. Dr Michelle Cohen, a psychological expert on communication, relationships, personal issues, body language, life coaching, life choices, profiling, and self-help guidance, believes that Trump’s body language was more assertive and emanated confidence, whereas Biden’s gestures and posture were humbler, yet the Democratic candidate had his “powerful moments”, too. Sputnik: Considering Trump and Biden’s body language, who was the leader […]
“Not enough alcohol in the world right now,” Lewis Black tweeted Tuesday night during the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Like the rest of the country, the comedian was horrified by what he was watching. He just happens to be better than most Americans at putting that horror into words. “What happened last night was unconscionable on so many levels,” Black tells me during our taping for this coming week’s episode of The Last Laugh podcast. “Every so often in my life, I’ve regretted not having children,” he adds. “But basically I feel like I made that […]
The headlines said it was a disgrace, a national embarrassment, and a shitshow, but the debate wasn’t any of those things. Donald Trump was, and why don’t we say so? Putting his actions in the passive voice, as things that happened rather than things he did is to show how little has been learned since 2016 and how successful he’s been at normalizing the unthinkable. Putting all that on the debate, rather than the president, lets him off the hook for behavior so frightening that parents who let their kids stay up to watch rushed them off to bed early. Watching […]
Well. I need a shower. That was a disgusting event, and we all know why. It’s been said a million times, but it’s never been truer than on this night: Donald Trump drags everything down to his level. And the moderator let him. That was the most shocking and pathetic moderator performance that we’ve ever seen. I can’t imagine Trump helped himself with that performance. I suspect that to regular voters, he just looked rude or worse, in failing to denounce white supremacy and railing on about Hunter Biden. Fox went gaga over that performance, of course, but I think most […]
Poor Chris Wallace, the debate moderator who couldn’t. As the first—and possibly last—televised presidential shoutfest of the 2020 general election campaign devolved Tuesday night from the worst Thanksgiving dinner ever to a drunken, knife-wielding bar fight between Donald Trump and Joe Biden amid shattered beer mugs, the Fox News Sunday anchor was powerless to stop the American carnage. “Chris Wallace did not act as moderator. Donald Trump was the abuser and Chris Wallace was among the abused,” MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace (no relation) said when it was all over and the only thing left to do was shoot the wounded. “The debate […]
“Get ready for democracy to crumble!!!” Stephen Colbert shouted at the top of his live post-debate monologue Tuesday night. “I come to you tonight, ladies and gentlemen, an empty vessel, a man with a mind wiped clean,” the Late Show host said. “I have stood in the swirling chaos of creation. I have seen Shiva dancing his destructions, wielding his trident, carving great gouts out of universe. The sky, once both red, blue, and black until all that remained was a starless void and the hollow husk once known as Chris Wallace. We have emerged from the mad whirlwind where we […]
Tuesday’s “debate” was a trainwreck. A national embarrassment. A disgrace. If Joe Biden were looking for a pretext to skip the next two debates, he found it. It would be hard to blame him for concluding this is simply a waste of everyone’s time. We’ll see. From the start of this debate, Donald Trump interrupted Biden. Repeatedly. For a while there, it looked like Biden was going to get destroyed—that Trump would simply run over him and Biden would be left sitting there, with that far away look in his eyes. But Biden rallied. He embraced the shit-show format, grew stronger […]
Shepard Smith’s new CNBC show is called simply The News. And with that in mind, the former Fox News anchor is trying his best to play everything right down the middle. Ahead of his premiere this Wednesday, Smith appeared on his new network colleague Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show, where he offered up a series of non-committal, both-sides takes on the biggest news events of the week. Smith got in one joke about Donald Trump writing off $70,000 in hairstyling expenses but otherwise said he didn’t expect the bombshell report on the president’s tax returns to change any voters’ minds. He similarly […]
Joe Biden, unless he has some huge brain fart, is going to win the debates. But it’s not likely to help him very much, for two reasons. So I would caution his campaign against thinking they can lock this thing down with solid debate performances. My advice would be: Rather than trying to win the debates, Biden should give Donald Trump the room to lose them. I’ll explain what I mean by that below, but first, let’s get to those reasons. Reason one why winning won’t matter much is that everyone expects him to win. This may sound kind of odd […]
Win McNamee/Getty Images After shadow boxing for months, taking jabs and lobbing insults, Donald Trump will meet his challenger in a socially distanced way Tuesday evening for the first of three debates. The bar is high for Trump in the age of COVID. Can he con the country into wanting the chaos he generates for four more years when there are 200,000 Americans dead from the virus on his watch? Will the rally-loving president be able to perform in an almost empty debate hall without an audience of admirers chanting “fill that seat”? For Joe Biden, this will be the first […]
“People are dying, tens of thousands of people are out of work—he’s embarrassing,” is not only the quote of the year from former Hillary Clinton senior adviser Philippe Reines, but also sums up how he, Rick Wilson, Molly Jong-Fast, and Lincoln Project co-founder Mike Madrid feel about Donald Trump’s dwindling support among his own base. To make matters worse for the president, he is set to debate Joe Biden for the first time Tuesday night, and he doesn’t have that same 2016 anger and energy he drummed up to defeat Hillary Clinton. In this new members-only bonus episode of The New […]