The second American presidential debate (10 September 2024)

[Retro]

Quick reminder that the coverage starts in 2 hours and the debate in 3. CNN started talking about it an hour ago, bless. And yes, I'm watching it, lol.

 

[Tiffany]

@Retro you're gonna be up late!

I have it on already for the warm-up discussion, while I'm finishing up some work. This almost feels like a sports event.

 

[Retro]

Yup, I'll be up late alright! Handily, I woke up really late too, which should give me the stamina to stay up until 4am-ish for this.

Sports event, yeah, lol. I bought some munchies to enjoy this cinema special experience. I refrained from the proverbial popcorn though to not overdo it for health reasons, although I really wanted the butterkist, bless.

I'm watching it on CNN, how are you watching it?

 

[Tiffany]

I have CNN on. I've been working on my laptop at my desk near the living room for hours....just listening to the commentary to stay on pace, lol.

Every time you mention your popcorn, I want to get some too....though for me, the same, have to abstain. Popcorn Indiana has popcorn with chocolate drizzle on it. It's divine!

So, anyone else staying up late across the pond like Retro?

 

[Retro]

Popcorn Indiana has popcorn with chocolate drizzle on it.

omg yes! I've never seen this variety on this side of the small pond called the Atlantic. I'll see if Costco do it.

 

[Tiffany]

omg yes! I've never seen this variety on this side of the small pond called the Atlantic. I'll see if Costco do it.

Warning, it's pretty addictive.

K, back on topic.

 

[Retro]

I like that the moderators are fact checking Trump and calling him out on some of his lies.

He's showing a lot more self control than expected though, unfortunately.

 

[Astro What]

So far, it appears that Kamala is ahead on the debate... she's really hitting some big triggers on him that gets him going and I've yet to see any real discussion of policy position from him. It's the same old tired song from his rallies.

 

[Retro]

I'm glad he's getting called out for his insurrection.

His voice has risen several decibels now and starting to get a bit interrupty too. Come on asshole, completely lose it!

 

[Astro What]

I loved the comment one "talking head" made... Kamala was chumming the water and Trump went wild over the bait she was using.
She really set him off.
Did she do perfect? No.
But at least she got some rough policy positions out there for the viewers.
All Trump did was serve whine and cheese from the same old tired menu.

 

[Astro What]

Just in... Taylor Swift officially endorses Kamala after the debate was finished.
Boy, that kills the AI generated crap that Trump "truthed" on his minor platform.

I REALLY loved when he brought up the well debunked story of immigrants in Ohio stealing and eating peoples pets.

 

[Astro What]

Zing... BTC nails it again.

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[Retro]

I think Trump did better than I expected unfortunately, but it looks like the pundits on the BBC and CNN are saying that Harris came out on top. TBH I was pretty tired by the time that the debate finished and I've not had much sleep since. Gonna try and watch the recording of it when I'm feeling fresher to reassess it after I've had some more sleep and with the perspective of having seen what the pundits think. I'll watch that BTC video first for example. What's clear is that Harris could hold her own there. Think how intimidating it must be for a small woman to be up against a tall, hulking man like that, in person. She did really well.

 

[Retro]

Check out this BBC review of who won and it was unequivocally Harris. The snap CNN poll showed a 63% to 37% win for Harris, too. Note the caveats for it though that it's only a very small subset of people that took part in it, due to this poll's nature.

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris met for the first time on the presidential debate stage in Philadelphia on Tuesday night.

They may have shaken hands, but they did not hit it off.

In a fiery 90 minutes, Harris frequently rattled the former president with personal attacks that threw him off message and raised the temperature of this highly-anticipated contest.

Her pointed digs on the size of his rally crowds, his conduct during the Capitol riot, and on the officials who served in his administration who have since become outspoken critics of his campaign repeatedly left Trump on the back foot.

Who won the debate? Harris goads Trump into flustered performance

Trump couldn't resist Harris's personal digs at the debate which threw him off message, writes Anthony Zurcher.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Retro]

Zing... BTC nails it again.

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Just watched it. What a smackdown by Harris! I can just see her taking a clear national poll lead after this. Especially so as ABC didn't hide the debate behind a paywall allowing it to be viewed on all news networks and on various platforms and channels online, giving it the widest audience possible. Credit to ABD News for running without a paywall.

 

[Astro What]

I think Trump did better than I expected unfortunately

Really? Talking about immigrants eating cats and dogs of the residents of the area they live?
Trump did what he always does.. told a LOT of lies and 1/2 truths and didn't really give ANY policy input.
The fun thing was watching how easily Kamala triggered him into going off on tangents. It showed a lot of the issues that ex-Trump aides have commented on him having.
I also found it rather amusing that he kept whining on "why didn't she do something, she's had 3 1/2 years in office" and yet he clearly stated that his VP pick has no position to speak for him in his Presidents capacity. Just a minor part of the hypocrisy that he shows regularly. That would be like expecting him to allow a VP in one of his companies to set policy.

She trolled Trump like a champ and showed how easily manipulated he was. His ego writes his checks.

 

[Retro]

You've taken that one line out of context, haven't you? Read it in the context of the rest of the post and then my next two as well (second one in reply to you no less) and you'll understand why I thought that at the time and that I've revised my position on this. Make sure to get the full picture in future before trying to "correct" me.

Having said all that, the one area that I was a bit disappointed to see Trump actually do better than I expected was self control. Seriously, I was expecting him to start making a fool of himself by constantly interrupting, unable to help himself, as Harris increasingly wound him up, even though the mic was muted, but that didn't happen. If anything, Harris did that a bit with the occasional interruption where he smacked her down with "I'm speaking. Sound familiar?" and I cringed a bit, but it doesn't seem to have hurt her in the end. Trump showed various facial expressions, but otherwise just kept quiet, which is very unlike him. He also almost never looked at her which was a Biden tactic at their first debate in 2020, which I thought was quite effective as a subtle way to show contempt for his opponent. However, Harris looked at him all the time, but I think that was for feedback to gauge how she was doing against him, so fair play.

 

[live627]

Trump saying “you get him out of bed you wake him up at 4 in the afternoon and say let’s go down to the office and sign a bill.” Was hilarious

 

[Retro]

Here's a detailed debate analysis from CNN:

Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris in a virtual coin toss before their presidential debate – but that’s about all he won.

From the opening moments Tuesday night, when the vice president strode over to Trump’s podium and all but forced him to shake her hand, she dictated the terms of their critical clash exactly eight weeks before Election Day.

From Harris’ point of view, the night could hardly have gone better.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/11/politics/harris-trump-debate-analysis/index.html

 

[Retro]

I've watched that again now and realised just how much I'd missed because I was tired last night at 2-4am, especially towards the end. Harris wound up Trump good and tight, efficiently derailing him. His lie about babies being aborted after being born was so obviously moronic that anyone can see that and spouting the debunked conspiracy theory about Haitians cats and dogs, which he got immediately fact checked for, made him look stupid and desperate.

I thought Kamala would be able to run rings round him and shows how sharp she is, the polar opposite of Biden. Let's see if the "big macho man" has got the balls to debate her again, like she wants. I have my doubts.

All media outlets are saying that Harris came out the clear winner too which bodes well for increasing her popularity, hence putting clear air between them in the polls and to eventually win that election with a clear majority that Trump can't claim to have been "stolen". We'll then finally see the legal noose tighten around his neck as he's convicted in all four criminal cases (one is done already, of course) and he ends up in jail. Even a relatively short prison sentence will be sufficient to completely humiliate and break him and hopefully he'll die there due to his age and be down and out forever.

 

[Astro What]

You've taken that one line out of context, haven't you? Read it in the context of the rest of the post and then my next two as well (second one in reply to you no less) and you'll understand why I thought that at the time and that I've revised my position on this. Make sure to get the full picture in future before trying to "correct" me.

No, I' m saying any reasonable person would not have thought that was better than expected that has been keeping up with Trump and his escapades of porky story telling. Trump is Trump... he can't stay on policy (mainly because he doesn't have any other than empty promises which does not even have any bones of plans started), he has to tell lies and exaggerations. To expect anything else would be the shocker and would have been better than expected. As I said, his answers were simply a Trump rally style response to questions that were meant to get specific answers that he had none of and he ran down the rabbit holes of off topic constantly.

The debate is not going to change the mind of any of his cult members... but it was a solid step towards those undecided and center left/right voters that were on the fence.
I do wish she would have delved a little deeper into policy proposals, but with limited time that is better for a one/one interview scenario and then she could have touched on those interviews and the policy proposals that would have already been out there.

I thought Kamala would be able to run rings round him and shows how sharp she is, the polar opposite of Biden. Let's see if the "big macho man" has got the balls to debate her again, like she wants. I have my doubts.

Initial indicators anonymously out of his camp is that he and they wants to avoid another confrontation on a debate stage as he did so poorly being led by the nose. If you notice, he immediately referenced "polls" that showed that he won... when in reality, the polls done at the time showed that Harris walked all over him. Now, maybe polls of his cult members were different, but that would be the norm as that is what they like him for, his entertainment value and not any factually based position.
Even his staunchest allies are having great difficulty spinning his debate performance as something positive.
I like what Mike Madrid (Lincoln Project co-founder) said: “This was an old, tired performance from a feeble old man who’s suffering from mental decline.”

I see that Trump is complaining about the moderators fact checking him and not Harris.... well, that happens in the REAL world when you are telling tons of porkies. But Trump's ego can't allow him to be told to his face he is wrong.
That's one of the reasons he had a 96% turnover rate in his upper echelon of staff when he held office. If you were not a "yes man" you were out the door shortly.

 

[Astro What]

Trump saying “you get him out of bed you wake him up at 4 in the afternoon and say let’s go down to the office and sign a bill.” Was hilarious

He finally acknowledged, even if he didn't realize it, that it is actually Biden that sets policy and not Harris like he and Vance have been trying to infer.

 

[Retro]

Here's another article on Trump's bad performance in the debate. I especially like the bit where it says that Trump "shuffled", lol.

The clearest sign that Kamala Harris’ campaign thought she won the ABC presidential debate was the fact that her elated surrogates in the post-debate spin room were gloating about “finally landing a punch on Donald Trump” — and floating the possibility of a rematch.

The clearest sign Trump knew he lost was the fact that Trump himself appeared in the spin room to defend his debate performance on Tuesday night.

Shortly before 11:30 p.m., the former president shuffled into the Pennsylvania Convention Center, where an armada of surrogates, including Robert Kennedy Jr., Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, former adviser Stephen Miller, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — as well as running mate, J.D. Vance — had been struggling mightily to make a case that Trump did anything other than burst into flames on the stage.

Trump Rushes to Spin Room to Save Face After Disastrous Debate

The former president visited with reporters after the ABC debate as his surrogates struggled to defend his performance

uk.news.yahoo.com

 

[Retro]

No, I' m saying any reasonable person would not have thought that was better than expected that has been keeping up with Trump and his escapades of porky story telling.

I've clarified the context in which he did better than I expected and it doesn't contradict the other points you make about him, which we're on the same page on. I also explained that I was tired when watching it in the middle of the night and so on, so no point repeating myself here. I'm just a bit surprised (and disappointed) that he didn't have a complete meltdown with constant interruptions and loss of self control even though the mic was muted. That would have sunk him completely, even with his more loyal supporters I reckon, but not the hardcore types.

I see that Trump is complaining about the moderators fact checking him and not Harris.... well, that happens in the REAL world when you are telling tons of porkies. But Trump's ego can't allow him to be told to his face he is wrong.

You know, I was thinking about this. Even if the mods were biased and didn't pull up Harris on her lies* they were still correct to pull up Trump on his lies regardless. In other words, he shouldn't get away with doing wrong no matter how the other candidate is treated.

He's such a fucking crybaby and sore loser. I have zero respect for him. At 78 and with all those billions in the bank, he should be putting his feet up and chilling out, playing golf, living out his twilight years in luxury and comfort that us mere mortals can only dream of etc, not trying to become dictator of America. The way he's going he's likely to die in a jail cell for his crimes. What a prick.

*Of course she wasn't lying, just emphasizing the point.

 

[Astro What]

Even if the mods were biased and didn't pull up Harris on her lies* they were still correct to pull up Trump on his lies regardless.

I don't think the points that Harris made that were not correct were as egregious as the ones that Trump did. The shit he stated begged to be called out and corrected by somone.
Yes, she told at least one porkie and was not entirely factual on a few others.. but NONE of them reached the crescendo of absolute BS that Trump was spewing.