Donald Trump's Not so Great Debate and Inability to Concede Defeat
If Men in Black technology existed and someone could delete a memory from their brain, Joe Biden would probably choose his last debate against Donald Trump. It was an enduring embarrassment for him but also for a Democratic Party that looked like it was putting all of its energy and resources into someone whose cognitive decline had become impossible to ignore.
Biden did not need to be told that he had lost the debate. He conceded that he had had a bad night but hoped that it would not define him as a candidate or president.
After the debate, Biden did something bold and rare, if not unprecedented. The sitting president bowed out of a re-election race and threw his support behind his vice president, Kamala Harris.
It took humility and integrity for Biden to put his country above his ego.
On a similar note, During his debate with Kamala Harris, the disgraced, twice-impeached one-term president did so badly that his cognitive decline became impossible to ignore.
Where Trump came off as young, vibrant, and assured when pitted against a man even older than himself, he seemed confused, thin-skinned, senile, and old when debating Harris.
Harris humiliated Trump by treating him as a joke and a clown to be laughed at, not the fearsome leader of a populist movement to save our nation from the Woke Mind Virus.
Trump clearly underestimated Harris because of her gender and race and the fact that she works for Joe Biden. She destroyed the ex-president with words. The facial expressions told the whole story. Harris was laughing and having fun. Trump looked like he wanted to murder Harris with his bare hands.
If I were Trump, I would want the world to forget about a debate that marks the nadir of his candidacy so far and exposed him, again, as a narcissistic, thin-skinned fool who can be easily manipulated through flattery.
I would realize that I had done very poorly in the debate, something that even the vast majority of Republicans have been forced to concede, lest they come off as completely insane and out of touch with reality.
That’s not how Trump handled the situation. While his aides wearily wondered whether his campaign could handle that kind of public humiliation, Trump took to social media to declare himself the clear winner.
Trump insisted that the debate was rigged and unfair and that the mean news people were ganging up on him by not treating him and his lies with undeserved reverence, but he still managed to win decisively.
One of Trump’s annoying tics is to declare that “everybody” feels the way he does because he is obviously always right. He claimed that “everybody” wanted Roe Vs. Wade overturned, which, like so much of what comes out of Trump’s mouth, is transparently, clearly wrong.
Trump delusionally declared that “everyone” agreed that he had won the debate with Harris. It wasn’t even close. In Trump’s mind, everyone agreed he had won in a landslide. Everyone said that Trump was the greatest debater the world had ever known, and Harris solidified her standing as the worst vice president ever with her shameful performance.
Anyone with eyes and ears and a basic grasp of reality could see that Trump was not only lying but lying egregiously. As always, Trump was shooting the moon. In Trump’s mind, he didn’t do better than he was given credit for because, in his mind, everyone gave him credit for a victory of historic proportions.
By constantly re-litigating the second debate, Trump is drawing attention to one of the low points of his political career. He’s reminding people who might have forgotten how badly he’d done in a debate he should try to get the world to forget.
You’d need to ignore your eyes, ears, and mind to think that Trump triumphed during his debate against Harris. Yet Trump has spent nine years gas-lighting his cult into thinking that a man who constantly spouts lies to advance his political agenda is an unerring source of truth while respected publications and institutions respected for their honesty and integrity lie constantly to advance their odious anti-Trump agenda.
This might be the most intense test yet of Trump’s Reality Distortion Field. Can he convince people who saw him lose the debate badly that he actually won by a huge amount? Can he get people to believe that he won by repeating the lie often enough?
Donald Trump is a terrible liar in that his lies can be easily, even instantly, disproven. Yet he is a wonderful liar in that he lies so often and with such intensity and conviction that he can convince people who should know better that he’s being honest.
This Big Lie hearkens back to one of Trump’s favorite flattering fictions: that he won the 2020 presidential election by a sacred landslide. Nothing can disabuse Trump of the idea that he won but had his massive victory stolen by the Deep State. He will never let go of that idea. It is a core component of his personality and persona at this point.
This overlaps with Trump’s other Big Lie: unless you vote for me, evil brown people will invade our country, taint our sacred bloodline, rape our wives, take our jobs, and murder our husbands.
Trump and JD Vance recently added the new wrinkle that unless you vote for them, evil brown people will invade our country and eat our cats and dogs. It doesn’t matter that this fiction has been widely disproven.
All that matters is that this lie supports his Big Lie about illegal immigrants being the source of all our problems.
Trump and Vance can’t go back. They can’t concede that they discovered new information and now know that they were wrong. That requires a level of humility and honesty neither man possesses.
I’d like to think that people who bought into the Big Lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump because it seemed at least vaguely plausible watched Trump brag about how he won the debate and came to the realization that he’s a pathological liar out of touch with reality and unwilling to concede that he’s lost even when he clearly has.
That gives Trump fans more credit than they deserve. After all, if they had a problem with lying, they wouldn’t be a member of his cult in the first place.
Nathan got life-changing dental implants, but they’re crazy expensive, so he set up a GoFundMe at https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-nathans-journey-to-dental-implants. Give if you can!
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