Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:19 pm
Fox & Friends’ reaction to the presidential debate last night is, predictably, outrage over the moderators, tweeting this morning that “In St. Louis, moderators Raddatz, Cooper interrupt, talk over and even debate Trump.”
We get that Fox News doesn’t think moderators should fact check, but if all Trump going to do is come out on stage and lie repeatedly, he has to expect the consequences. His words must address reality, not some fantasies that exist only in his own head.
Those not wearing ideological blinkers see things differently. Kurt Eichenwald tweeted the real problem last night, and it wasn’t a pair of moderators having a close encounter with Donald Trump’s ego-driven lies:
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I'll jail my opponent. My VP is wrong. I'll side with Russia in committing war crimes. I dont know where ISIS is. Trump is unfit.
— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) October 10, 2016
You know, because presidents don’t get to do these things. We have laws. We are a nation of laws. And there are international laws against war crimes. If it was bad enough Mike Pence pretended Trump didn’t exist at the VP Debate, now Trump is flat out saying his own running mate is wrong.
It’s a long list. But you see the problem.
Paul Krugman does. He also seized on the real gist of Trump’s message last night, and he drove the point home clearly and concisely:
Let's be clear: a candidate for president promised to put his opponent in jail if he wins. Everything else is secondary.
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) October 10, 2016
His should not simply be the conscience of a liberal, but the conscience of all Americans.
Republican Ana Navarro had this to say to her fellow Republicans: “Dear GOP: Congrats! We nominated a misogynist, racist, vulgar, lying, ignorant, mad man as our nominee. Oh, and he breaths like Darth Vader.”
And frighteningly, wants to act like Darth Vader too. A dictator wanna be is bad enough. The consequences of a mad one beggars description.
Awful as the rest of it was – and it was pretty awful – the revelation that Trump is thinking like a dictator, not an American president, was the most frightening revelation of last night’s debate. We all get that Trump thinks Vladimir Putin is the bee’s knees, but we don’t get to act that way in the United States. Republicans claim President Obama runs the country like a dictator, but last night, we saw a real dictator unmasked.
George Takei might have put it best last night: “If the bar gets set any lower, Trump is going to trip over it.”
We all will. And that’s the problem.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
