Madness

Before we get started, I was 100% wrong about the Vice Presidential debate.  I thought Tim Kaine won.  I didn't think he was great, but I thought he clearly won.  Not one person on TV agreed with me.  Even though Mike Pence spent 90 straight minutes lying, he was super chill about it, and I guess that's all it takes.  So at the end of this, I'm going to tell you who I thought won, and I'm going to be wrong.

Anyway, remember last time when I told you this election was surreal?  Well, I spent most of the day Friday away from TV and not really getting any information.  I got home and there was baseball on and I didn't really get around to watching any news until after midnight.  When I got there, it was absolute madness.  MSNBC and CNN were doing live coverage, after midnight on a Friday, of Donald Trump on tape saying things that weren't even a little bit surprising.  This is a man who bought the Miss Universe pageant and then immediately started fat shaming one of the winners, because even Miss Universe isn't enough of a 10 for Donald Trump.  We can't act surprised when we find out that Donald Trump has no respect for women.  We already knew that, and I'm not sure MSNBC and CNN needed to do hours, literally hours, of after midnight coverage to drive the point home.  Chris Matthews was there.  Does Chris Matthews look to you like a guy who is generally up after midnight?

Having said that, the tape was jarring and upsettingly vulgar.  Listening to a major party Presidential candidate talking about popping some tictacs and sexually assaulting women, even when it isn't surprising, is genuinely unsettling.  It was unclear if he was talking about actual sexual assaults he had committed, or just joking about hypothetical sexual assaults he might commit, but neither of those options seems OK, right?  While I thought CNN and MSNBC went a little overboard, it was definitely a story.  Which is why I was both amused and disgusted to see that Fox News was making no mention of it.  Like, at all.  They were covering a hurricane, and literally nothing else.  There wasn't even anything on the crawl at the bottom of Fox's screen about it.  There has to be someone who can force them to remove the word news from their programming.  Come on, Obama!  Do something useful!

Republicans spent the last two days begging the Trump campaign to just apologize and not make things worse.  Trump responded by holding a quick press conference a little while ago with some women who had accused Bill Clinton of assaulting or harassing them.  Again, we shouldn't be surprised that a man who has no respect for women, and doesn't even really see them as people, would think it makes sense to blame a woman for her husband's philandering, but surprising or not, it is also still pretty unsettling.  

Remember that time when we were kids and we watched the Challenger explode on live TV?  This election has been like that, except it's gone on for a year and a half.  It's been like watching the Challenger explode on live TV for a year and a half.  I hate it.  Everyone hates it.  And we damn well should.  So, let's have a debate.  Yay.

8:53PM: I just flipped over to MSNBC to hear Brian Williams struggling to explain why Bill Clinton sexual assault/harassment accusers were sitting there in attendance at the debate.  Then Rachel Maddow showed us a clip of Trump from 1999 saying that it was a shame that Hillary had to put up with all of the Bill Clinton sex scandal stuff in public.  He went on to call her a "wonderful woman".  Sigh.

8:56PM: Hey, it looks like Anderson Cooper is moderating tonight!  Hey Coop!

8:57PM: There's also a woman named Martha.  Her jacket has at least one too many zippers.  As always, Coop is impeccably dressed.

8:59PM: Chris Matthews is predicting that Trump will point to Bill Clinton, and then to some of the women Trump invited, and say "you raped her, you groped her".  I predict that he will then fail to explain what that has to do with whether or not he or Hillary would make a good President, and somehow nobody will ask him.

9:02PM: I have to at least ask why the Bill Clinton accusers would agree to show up for this.  How could this possibly be a good thing for them?  Is Trump paying them?  

9:04PM: Have I mentioned that I hate town halls?  The people asking questions tonight are undecided voters.  They represent the most clueless people you could possibly find.  Why do they get to play?

9:05PM: Then candidates did not shake hands.  Off to a fantastic start.

9:07PM: Some lady asked them if they thought they were setting a good example for kids.  I wouldn't say either of them really answered.  I guess, if you get to ask the first question at a town hall, the upside is you get to go first, but the downside is whatever you ask, the answer is just going to be whatever opening statement the candidates prepared.

9:10PM: Coop, who is awesome, just told Trump that what was on the tape from Friday was Trump admitting to sexual assault, and he simply asked Trump if he understood that.  Trump responded by saying it was just locker room talk and he's going to knock the hell out of ISIS.  

9:12PM: Coop kept pushing, and he asked Trump is he has ever actually kissed or groped women without consent.  It took Trump quite a while, but he eventually said that he has not.  Coop actually made Trump answer the question.  Only Coop should be allowed to moderate debates.  

9:13PM: Hillary calmly laid out the case for why what we heard on the tape represents who Trump is with regard to how he sees women and made a broader point about Trump being unfit.  I've said this before.  I really like serious, calm, I don't care if you like me Hillary.  If she would just be that person all the time, I would be very happy to vote for her.

9:16PM: Trump asked if he could respond to what Hillary said about him, and Martha gave him some time, but he just sort of rambled about Hillary's Senate campaign and eventually Martha cut him off, and he complained about it being unfair.  

9:17PM: It took Trump roughly 10 minutes to get into how Bill Clinton was abusive to women and Hillary attacked those women viciously.  He also brought up a time when Hillary did the defense for a 41 year old who was accused of raping a 12 year old in Arkansas in the 70s.  I don't know much about that case, but I know that everyone is entitled to a defense, and sometimes young lawyers get stuck providing that defense.  It's a shitty but incredibly necessary job and only a guy like Trump would criticize someone for doing it.

9:21PM: Hillary gave a very good, calm response and ended up with saying Trump owes apologies to lots of people.  Trump's response was basically, I know you are but what am I?  Then he said Hillary didn't beat Bernie Sanders fair and square, and he can't believe Bernie made a deal with the devil and supported her.  Then he promised to have a special prosecutor investigate Hillary if he wins.  Just to be clear, he's openly threatening his opponent with political retribution should he win.  That's a thing that just happened.

9:24PM: Hillary seems maybe 3% rattled right now.  Trump is looking to get her over 50%.  I don't think he's going to get there.  She mostly seems amused by his desperation.

9:25PM: Hillary very simply stated that it's a good thing that someone with Trump's temperament isn't in charge of the law in this country.  Trump responded by saying that if he was she'd be in jail, because Trump has literally no idea how the justice system works.  The yahoos in the audience who support Trump went nuts for his witty one liner.

9:29PM: Trump wants to know why Coop isn't bringing up the emails that we just talked about for ten minutes, and then accused this of being a 1 on 3 debate.  

9:30PM: Health care question.  Oh boy.  Here's the quick answer Democrats should give whenever someone bitches about the Affordable Care Act.  If you already had insurance, the Affordable Care Act wasn't for you.  Not everything is about you, you selfish fuck.  The Affordable Care Act was for the 20 million people who didn't have health care before and do now.  Please go fuck yourself.  Hillary didn't say that.

9:32PM: Trump says Obamacare is a disaster, and it will never work because it is far too expensive health care.  Trump just wants to replace it with something better and much less expensive.  That's such a good idea, why haven't we done that already?  Oh right, because Trump's idea is a hypothetical idea that nobody actually has.

9:34PM: To be fair, Trump got through two minutes on heatlh care without calling Bill Clinton a rapist, so I guess that was a win for him.

9:35PM: Hey, Hillary just kind of gave my go fuck yourself health care answer.  I'm like this close to definitely voting for her right now.  Seriously.

9:36PM: Coop, because, again, he's awesome, is pushing Trump on what his actual plan is.  Like most Republicans, Trump's only idea is to break down the imaginary lines between states to create competition.  This is a dumb idea.  Most people don't go out shopping for health care in a free market.  They just get a job and then someone hands you an envelope telling you what health insurance you have.  The free market doesn't work for everything.

9:38PM: How will Trump work to prevent Muslims from all being lumped in with terrorists.  Apparently, he'll do that by suggesting that all Muslims are partially to blame for terrorism because they all know about it and don't report it.  I don't think that's the right answer.

9:39PM: Trump also said you have to be willing to talk about Islamic terrorism and call it by the right name before you can fight it.  That's not even 1% true.  I don't understand how stupid you have to be to not get that Obama doesn't want to give them the holy war they're so eager for.  Apparently, you have to be at least as stupid as Donald Trump.

9:42PM: Trump said, again, that he was against the Iraq war, which is demonstrably false.  You can ask Sean Hannity if you want, but it's still false.

9:43PM: Martha is trying to get Trump to tell us if he still supports the Muslim ban he proposed a while ago.  He just keeps saying "extreme vetting".  When pushed, he says it slower.  You guys, are we sure we don't want to vote for Trump?  A Trump Presidency would be so entertaining.  He literally mansplains policy points to female reporters when they point out that he isn't making any sense.  

9:45PM: OK, we can't really vote for Trump because it's too dangerous, but can we at least have a sitcom based on a hypothetical Trump Presidency.  Please??  Can't someone please work on that?  Aren't there any funny people who aren't too busy right now?  Rob Lowe had two different shows cancelled at the end of last season.  He could play a hypothetical President Trump. Come on, we can do this.

9:47PM: While I was fantasizing about a President Trump sitcom, Trump was rambling about refugees.  I guess some of them are murderers and Trump would just force them right back into their countries.  What percentage of people from other countries does Trump think are murderers?  Like 80%?

9:49PM: Martha asked Hillary about the Wikileaks thing with her speeches and how she said you have to have a public and a private position.  She basically said she was talking about Lincoln and how you have to manipulate Congress sometimes.  If she had added "because most of Congress is morons", the race for my vote between Hillary and third party candidates would be over.  She didn't though.  Instead, she somehow pivoted to Trump's tax returns.  

9:51PM: Trump literally just said "I know nothing about Russia".  I honestly don't even know what to do with that.

9:52PM: Trump is sniffling a lot again.  He's also unraveling as the debate goes on, a lot like last time.  My best guess is that he snorts Valium before the debates.  It causes him to get the sniffles and wears off as the debate goes on.  Do you have a better theory?

9:54PM: Trump, in an admirable effort to try to talk about policy for a minute, said Hillary is going to raise your taxes and he wants to lower them bigly, or maybe he's saying big league.  He needs to learn more words.  

9:56PM: Hillary says what he said about taxes is not true.  Trump is now randomly wandering the stage while Hillary is talking.  

9:58PM: It sounds like Trump just admitted to not paying personal income taxes.  I guess we don't really need his tax returns anymore.  Trump says Hillary knows people who don't pay taxes either.  They're not running for President though.

10:00PM: Somehow the tax question turned into Trump talking about how Hillary and Obama created ISIS.  I wonder if Trump honestly just hears and sees different things than the rest of us.  Is he Neo?

10:00PM: Now they're arguing about carried interest.  Trump says he wants to get rid of it and Hillary says she's against it too.  Trump, because he doesn't understand how government works, is asking why Hillary didn't just get rid of it when she was a Senator.  Hillary is trying to explain how government works, but if Trump's campaign people can't do it, I don't like her chances.

10:02PM: Why don't these debates have any commercials?  Can you imagine how much GEICO would pay to show us a 30 second gecko commercial right now?  You could fund Trump's whole imaginary health care plan.

10:03PM: The question is, with the State department calling for a war crimes investigation into Syria and Russia for recent events in Aleppo, hasn't the US waited too long to help in Syria?  Coop and Martha are both actual journalists.  How did they get this gig?  I know some social media person actually wrote the question, but Martha picked it instead of some question about how their faith informs their beliefs or whatever.

10:06PM: Trump said we're all tired, exhausted about nuclear.  I have no idea what he was getting at, but if he's already feeling tired and exhausted discussing nuclear weapons, maybe being President isn't really the job for him.

10:08PM: Martha asked Trump about Mike Pence's position on the humanitarian crisis in Syria.  Trump said he and Pence haven't spoken and he disagrees with what Pence said.  Then Trump asked why we can't just sneak attack ISIS leaders.  Martha is now openly arguing with him about his total lack of understanding of military strategy.  Martha is going to get some criticism later for this exchange, but I love it.  She's honestly exasperated but Trump's complete inability to understand or articulate military strategy.  It's like watching a college history professor argue with a 2nd grader.  He's wrong, but way too dumb to know it, and it's killing her a little bit.

10:13PM: Hillary is having a little trouble explaining what she would do differently than Obama, but then she got to arming the Kurds.  Can we please have a plan in the middle east that doesn't involve arming some new random group of people who we don't fully understand?

10:14PM: Trump says he will be a President for all of our people, and he will give people strength.  Now we're talking about trade.  I think it's a shame that nobody in this election defends free trade.  It's a complicated issue, and I'm not saying I'm for free trade, but both sides of the trade debate have valid arguments and I wish we were smart enough to have an election that involved that discussion.

10:17PM: Hillary is talking about her record of public service and work on behalf of underrepresented people.  Hey lady, Trump builds golf courses all over the place that can benefit any CEO, or even most CFOs.  Everybody makes the world better in their own way.

10:20PM: Trump says we have a divided nation like a guy who walks into your living room and takes a dump on your carpet and then says "Hey, what's with all the shit on the carpet?".  That's a joke but now it kind of sounds like something he's probably done.

10:22PM: Question to Trump about his 3AM tweets encouraging people to check out Miss Universe's sex tape.  Apparently that never happened and also Benghazi.  Is there any doubt that Roger Ailes did all of Trump's debate prep this time?

10:24PM: Hillary would appoint justices who have real life experience and haven't just worked in big law firms.  Trump is looking for judges very much in the mold of Justice Scalia, because I didn't already hate him enough.

10:27PM: Trump says the 2nd amendment is totally under siege.  This country is full of idiots with guns.  How much more guns can we possibly have?  This country has more guns than people.  Hillary says she respects the 2nd amendment too.  I don't, for the record.

10:29PM: Some guy with a mustache and a sweater asked about energy policy.  Trump says Hillary wants to put all the miners out of business, and there is a thing called clean coal.  Actually, there really isn't, clean coal is mostly nonsense.  And yes, coal miners are going to have to get new jobs soon, just like bank tellers and those ladies from 50s movies who used to connect phone calls for people. Life moves on sometimes, and it sucks, but that's the way it is.

10:34PM: Some guy just asked if they can name one thing they respect about the other person.  Hillary said she respects Trump's children.  Either she prepared for that question or that was pretty good thinking on her feet.  Something to respect about Donald Trump.  I couldn't have answered that question on the spot. 

10:36PM: I literally can't wait for Trump to answer this question.  I'm just imagining all the things he could say.  I'm so excited.  Trump kind of let me down.  He actually gave her a compliment.  He said she fights hard and doesn't quit or give up.  That could have gone so much better, or worse depending on how you look at it.

I guess that's it.  I think Martha and Coop were the clear winners here.  They were just fantastic.  Between the two candidates, I'd say Hillary won pretty easily because Trump was in full tantrum mode for most of the night.  That probably means the TV people will say Trump won.  See you next time, assuming the third debate happens, which seems pretty up in the air right now.