GOP lawmakers and analysts virtually unanimous that Trump was second best to Harris in first presidential debate
Donald Trump’s campaign was in damage control mode on Wednesday amid widespread dismay among supporters over a presidential debate performance that saw Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent, repeatedly goad him into going wildly off-message and missing apparent opportunities to tackle her on policy.
Even with Trump insisting to have won the debate “by a lot”, Republicans were virtually unanimous that Trump had come off second best in a series of exchanges that saw the vice-president deliberately bait him on his weak points while he responded with visible anger.
The Republican nominee – who took the unusual step afterwards of visiting the media spin room, a venue normally frequented only by candidates’ surrogates – was non-committal on Wednesday to the Harris campaign’s proposal for a second debate. Despite widespread opinion to the contrary, Trump suggested she needed it because she had lost. “I’d be less inclined to because we had a great night. We won the debate,” he told Fox & Friends.
Also, I forgot to ask about this last night…
“Where is he?” Trump asked. “They threw him out of the campaign like a dog.”
Does Trump think you just kick dogs out of your home and they go away?
That’s one of his go-to turns of phrase, and like all his go-tos he grinds it into dust through overuse. Apparently, he is not a dog person.
Probably would be if it was slathered in ketchup
“It’s always projection.” 🤣
Where is he?
Dunno, prolly running the country or smth. 🤷♂️
At the same debate, Trump also claimed that he was thrown out of office, that he doesn’t know whether or not he’s alive and that Kamala Harris IS Joe Biden.
So I don’t think he actually knows that.
Trump hates dogs.
Because dogs hate Trump. They can smell the gross.
Yes, but more to the point, he doesn’t understand them or what people do to them. You can hate dogs to the point that you kick every dog you see, but you’ll still likely understand that if you throw a dog out of the house, the dog won’t usually leave and never come back.
What kind of lame equivocation is “second best?” If he’s “second best” in a debate with two people, then that means HE LOST.
Are these GOP lawmakers and analysts so spineless and beholden to Trump that they cannot discuss this as just one more - in a long list - of his failures?
Are these GOP lawmakers and analysts so spineless and beholden to Trump that they cannot discuss this as just one more - in a long list - of his failures?
Yes :)
They probably don’t want their inboxes filled with bomb and rape threats from the very domestic terrorists they radicalized.
I have hope that they will not learn from these mistakes and will therefore keep making them. I hope that hope is not misguided.
It’s worse than that. They think that toeing the line and refusing to deviate is the strong position to take here. Always has been.
Second best?! Really? Now we think participation trophies are fine? Ok whatever.
As for the aftermath of the debate. I like it. I enjoy that orange fuck getting made fun of and the memes are superb. But as expected, he could have yanked his pickle out and jerked off live on TV and his cultists would still defend him. I am 100% sure that this would have been the case. And there still would be people who are undecided!
I think it’s more of a mushroom, but point taken.
Undecideds are fake by and large this time around. Just media bullshit or liars getting airtime.
OK so Biden had a bad debate, was visibly incoherent for a while beforeheand, and they took him out of the race.
Now Trump has had a bad debate and has been visibly incoherent for years. Is the GOP going to take him out of the race for a stronger candidate?
I don’t want to make a false equivalency, these are different parties and different candidates; Trump supporters are more loyal than usual, and he would take them with him as he’s not likely to accept his exclusion, so the GOP taking Trump out of the race is riskier than Dems taking Biden out of the race.
But, seen from the left, conservatives are the ones with a reputation for ruthless pragmatism when it comes to electoral politics. They’re the ones who sacrifice their values by voting for candidates that do advance their goals.
A lot of leftists, out of idealism, wouldn’t vote for Clinton in 2016 or Biden in 2020; meanwhile evangelicals made the pragmatic decision to vote for Trump, the least christian man in the whole GOP, because he furthers their anti-abortion agenda. I argue that conservatives are absolutely correct in this, voting for a candidate that you don’t like just to advance your goals is the correct approach to representative democracy. My evidence for this is that evangelical voters were rewarded for their vote when of Roe v Wade was overruled thanks to judges from the Trump administration.
So i think, if the GOP replaces Trump but keeps an equally extremist agenda, there’s a world where electoral pragmatism causes those voters to transfer over, leading to better odds of a GOP victory. And a conservative presidency other than Trump would push their agenda more efficiently than the first Trump presidency did or than a second Trump presidency would.
Uh… So DON’T do that. That should not happen. It would be the right thing for the GOP to do, which means it’s the wrong thing and i hope it doesn’t happen.
The thing that allowed the Democrats to switch candidates was that the Democratic National Convention had not happened yet, which is when the candidate is officially locked in as the party’s candidate on ballots for president.
The Republican National Convention was mid July. Trump and Vance are locked in. To swap candidates now would be considerably more difficult for them (not to mention having to fight against a self centered toddler that will refuse to let anyone other than him run).
Swapping out candidates would be good for the Republicans. The process of swapping out candidates would not be.
I’m wondering if Biden withdrew after the rnc so he would be locked in. Not withstanding the pressure he faced.
Surely you know by now that only Trump is able to play 5D chess at such a high level. (massive /s)
Oh right, it’s obviously too late to swap. Small detail i forgot lol
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meanwhile evangelicals made the pragmatic decision to vote for Trump, the least christian man in the whole GOP, because he furthers their anti-abortion agenda. I
Conservatives get abortions as soon as their own daughters get pregnant. They’re consummate hypocrites. Voting republican has always been about keeping workers deprived of rights and wage increases. No conservative gives a shit about the culture war stuff. The culture war is and has always been a distraction from creating welfare states like in EU.
The culture war is an important piece of the conservative agenda- it isolates and eliminates the various groups that will group together to support non-conservatives.
They cannot swap him out because he will not cooperate. Attempting to swap him out would do nothing but split the vote for them.
Repubs have spent decades propagandizing their fear-addicted voters with racist delusions. Donald has taken over that mechanism.
The sane but sociopathic Repub leadership is experiencing the classic trope of a monster they thought was tame (the racist voters they have been agitating) turning on them (a dementia patient they have no control over blathering about eating cats during the debate).
He really can’t drop out. He could be replaced but the legal maze of local and state deadlines and printed paper ballots that would have to be destroyed would abridge on early voting rights.
Rfk is having that problem right now in a few states. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/09/north-carolina-robert-kennedy-early-voting-trump-sabotage.html
Unprepared my ass. I watched the whole debate. He prepared his lies and bullshit.
He can’t ever be prepared. He is stupid, narcissistic, impulsive and damn senile. Not the best combo.
I’m surprised nobody is going after him for how low energy he was at the debate. He looked like he was gonna fall asleep. The only time his eyes opened wide was when she called out his crowd sizes
“IS SHE TALKING ABOUT ME?!!!”
Your stage whisper is perfect.
Republicans: “What a bad and unprepared debate that was! He didn’t even get to the part about how life begins at conception and guns are more important than children!”
Hey now, let’s be fair!
It’s entirely possible he rigorously prepared and that was genuinely the best he could do.
He did say that he watched the news. If he didn’t prepared, how else would he have known about people eating cats? Checkmate liberals.
Didn’t he say “television” and not specifically “news”? For all we know, he most likely saw that on some cartoon show.
Old reruns of Alf.
Business interests, evangelicals, and cops/white supremacists.
Oh yeah, and that 50+ year campaign of gerrymandering, voter suppression (e.g. vote on tuesday, in person, during business hours, no time off work), abstracting the election process away from the ballot, and designing the court system to favor conservative calls in disputed elections.
America has a rather anti-democratic voting system…
That’s ok crazy orange grandfather, keep us informed about the people eating cats and dogs, and transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison.
Wait until their secrets are threatened to be exposed and then see how they all change their tune in the next couple days.
