Trump’s disastrous town hall shows he should never
have made mental acuity an issue
Opinion by
Columnist
September 16, 2020 at 11:55 a.m. CDT
It was not
simply that President Trump resorted to obvious lies at the ABC News town hall
Tuesday night, or that he was rude and ineffective in addressing the terrific,
substantive questions from real, undecided voters. His campaign’s bigger worry
is that he came across as confused, lost and incoherent. He really should not
have gone down the road of challenging his opponent’s mental acuity.
The
Post’s fact checker Glenn Kessler reels off the list of lies:
Trump falsely claimed he hadn’t played down the pandemic (we know he did, and
he confessed to Bob Woodward); he falsely claimed our mortality rate was
something to be envied; he bizarrely claimed we had no ventilators when he
entered office; he repeated the oft-used lie that Democratic presidential
nominee Joe Biden opposed his travel restrictions on China as xenophobic; for
the bazillionth time, he falsely claimed credit for passing the Veterans Choice
program (which President Barack Obama signed into law); he falsely took credit
for sending in the Minnesota National Guard during protests in May; and he
wrongly claimed he had the best economy in history.
What
was far worse than the nonstop stream of lies was how foolish Trump sounded. He
did not downplay covid-19; he “up-played” it! He said “herd mentality” would
eliminate the pandemic. (Herd immunity might, at the cost of
millions of lives.) He criticized Biden —
who has not been in office for the past four long years — for
failing to enact a nationwide mask mandate. He tried to interrupt a questioner,
only to have her sternly tell him to let her finish. He rambled and came off as
entirely uncaring in not directly answering questions from an African American
pastor and a woman whose mother died of cancer.
At one
point, host George Stephanopoulos gamely broke in to remind Trump he was
seeking to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which contains protection for
preexisting conditions. He also noted that Trump keeps promising to introduce
his own health-care plan, but never does.
Imagine
how much worse it will be for Trump when he has a prepared opponent willing to
deliver a tongue-lashing for such silly lies and excuses. Biden could ask when
we can finally expect Trump’s magic health-care plan and demand he bring it to
the next debate.
Biden
could laugh and roll his eyes when Trump blames him for not assuming the duties
of president (“C’mon, man — you are president, not me!”). We saw in
Trump’s devastating interview with Axios’s Jonathan Swan that Trump
short-circuits whenever confronted with a new piece of information outside his
limited frame of reference. When he tosses up another word salad, Biden surely
can say, “You just talked for a minute and said nothing. Answer the question.”
There might be less fact-checking, but the Biden team can put out a
split-screen version of the debate with a rolling fact check. More important,
the Biden team stands to receive a bountiful gift of soundbites for its next
round of ads.
The
whole disastrous outing was characterized as
an “ambush” by Fox News apologists, a surefire sign that even they were
appalled by Trump’s performance (disclosure: I am an MSNBC contributor). Trump
cannot function without the right-wing media cocoon and without the ability to
deny a reporter a follow-up, or even the chance to complete her question. If he
insults a voter at the third town-hall-style debate, he will be lambasted as a
bully.
There
is, fortunately for Biden, no one in Trump’s circle with the will and ability
to stage an intervention and tell him not to show up. There is no one to tell
him he bombed and needs practice. Trump will likely stride confidently into the
first debate, but whether he ever shows up for another one will in large part
depend on how much material he gives Biden to ridicule him.
