But this time the former guy was the scowling loser while a smiling Vice President Kamala Harris handled him with ease. To their credit, the ABC moderators didn't back down from tough questions. The orange turd just can't control himself and that's what makes him the worst choice. Nick Vesser offers six key outcomes.
Harris had [the felon] shake her hand during their first-ever meeting.
Harris effectively baited the former president on crowd sizes and his 2020 election loss.
[He] went on wild tangents focused on false claims.
The moderators fact-checked some of [Fuckface's] wildest claims.
Conservative pundits were not happy with [Dear Leader's] performance.
Harris wants a second debate. [He] hasn't committed.
Update (September 11): Heather Digby Parton sums up the debacle.
[Von Clownstick] relentlessly hammered on migrants which will probably play well with his base, along with all the other lies and conspiracy theories, but to anyone else he sounded like a lunatic, surly, rude and out of his depth. His laziness and inability/unwillingness to learn anything new caught up with him last night. He lost this debate, as he would say, bigly.
And Amanda Marcotte says there's no way to "sanewash" this performance.
After last night's debate performance, hopefully, the questions about [his] basic brain functionality will grow even louder.
These are just two recent examples of crazy shit the Republican presidential nominee says:
Whoever heard you get indicted for interfering with a presidential election, where you have every right to do it.
The transgender thing is incredible. Think of it. Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.
But many of these kinds of statements aren't adequately covered in the press. Parker Molloy argues that media "sanewashing" is a form of misinformation.
By continually reframing [the felon's] incoherent and often dangerous rhetoric as conventional political discourse, major news outlets are failing in their duty to inform the public and are instead providing cover for increasingly erratic behavior from a former — and potentially future — president.
The consequences of this journalistic malpractice extend far beyond misleading headlines. By laundering [the orange turd's] words in this fashion, the media is actively participating in the erosion of our shared reality.
Update (September 5): Greg Sargent notes that news stories about President Biden's age were justified as relevant to his ability to do the job if re-elected.
But if so, then why don't things like [Dear Leader's] obvious cognitive impairment, his frequent inability to speak and think coherently, his resolute refusal to acquire minimal baseline knowledge on many consequential issues, his tendency to invent things on the fly that are wildly disconnected from reality, his intense narcissism, his deliberate lying and bigotry and misogyny—to name just a few traits—also go to his core mental and characterological capacity to do the job as president?
Sargent argues that reporting about the Republican candidate needs to "treat signs of the subject's questionable mental fitness for the presidency—and the politics surrounding them—as themselves being the real news".
Update (September 6): Chris Hayes on "the quality of brains we've got over there".
And Heather Digby Parton points out another Fuckface train wreck answer to a question about child care.
But the media covered for him as they so often do. He has the whole press corps acting as his ghostwriter, sanitizing his babble for the public. But Joe Biden and Kamala Harris aren't so lucky. They have to campaign and govern in a world where they are held to the standard that requires a president to be able to demonstrate his or her fitness for the presidency.
For the press to do otherwise
Why, they might even conclude that he doesn't have the mental capacity to be president. I guess that would be rude.
SiriusXM host Dean Obeidallah likened [the felon's] comments on child care to a "dementia clinic." And political commentator Digby said the ex-president "sounds like a 4th grader who didn't read the book." And Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell noted that she "can't even find a complete sentence" when reading the transcript of his comments.
Update (September 9): Jennifer Rubin offers her take on the "sanewashing" phenomenon.
Imagine obsessing over polls in the 1933 German election without covering Mein Kampf. That is what is going on now.
It's utter journalistic malpractice if not outright bias to refuse to ask [Dear Leader] at the debate about his threats of bloody mass arrests. It's an easy call for ABC. I have no idea if they are up to it.
