If Donald Trump had been in court, instead of on stage at a presidential debate, he might have ended up in contempt for refusing to keep his answers relevant.
But we know that about Trump: The man is a rambler.
Not that he doesn't have a favorite destination. Every question seems to be an excuse to trot out his hobby horses and give 'em a little exercise.
His first words were interesting. Hillary Clinton had morphed a question about the tone of the campaign to set out her plan for the future of this country, ending by saying she hoped to be elected in November.
Trump said: "I agree with everything she said."
Next up: the hot-mike tape of Trump and Billy Bush. Trump characterized it as "locker-room talk" and said he had apologized. He said it wasn't as bad as ISIS and all the barbaric things those rascals are up to. He did not fail to blame Obama and Hillary for setting the stage for those guys.
Asked if he had done the things he talked about on the Access Hollywood bus, Trump pointed out that he had a great deal of respect for women. As for his comments: "You hear these things. They're said."
Asked again to confirm or deny he'd ever done what he talked about, he finally let it slip, almost parenthetically: "No, I did not."
Apparently the words "locker-room talk" are code for "swapping lies."
Hillary said she didn't think Trump was fit to be president. (What a surprise, Trump added.) After listing his faults in this area, Trump responded: Words, just words.
At first I thought he was reminding the audience that the stuff he said on the bus were just words, not actions. But it turned out he was jumping ahead to one of his favorite new anti-Hillary points—that she talks a good game about helping Americans but has, in thirty years in government, failed to actually do it.
He'll come back to this later.
(He comes back to everything, eventually. And repeatedly.)
Throughout the night, Trump always wanted to respond after Hillary spoke. What he means by "respond" is apparently this: She just said some bad things about me and I want a chance to say some bad things about her.
What we needed was a moderator who could say: Go ahead, Donald, but only if you can say something that directly counters what she just said—and only if you haven't already made that point on this stage tonight.
Trump went on to say (vis-a-vis the "locker-room talk") that Bill Clinton had said and done much worse—that the man was a great abuser of woman. (Trump had some of Bill's victims in the hall tonight.) And Hillary had attacked them, too. For which she should be ashamed. That got applause from the Trump contingent.
Hillary's response included a quote from Michelle Obama ("When they go low, you go high.")
Trump pounced on the name Michelle Obama, bringing up campaign ads from when Hillary faced Barack Obama in the primaries, eight years ago. Turns out Hillary's friend Michelle said some "vicious" things about her. (Trump loves the word "vicious.")
Was Trump implying Hillary displayed bad judgment in choosing her friends?
Trump went on to point out that Hillary had done some horrible things (aided by the DNC) to defeat Bernie Sanders. He was amazed Sanders had "signed on with the Devil" by endorsing Hillary after the convention.
He then said Hillary should apologise for the 33 thousand emails she deleted—an action taken after being subpoenaed by congress for all her emails. Trump also said (with reluctance, he claimed) that if he were elected he would have a special prosecutor go after Hillary. (And he expected her to go to jail.)
(As for the deleted emails: From what I gather, the order to delete them had gone out months before the subpoena, but her staff had failed to get the job done until just after the legal action was taken. Not actually Hillary's fault.)
After all this jabbering about emails, Trump demanded to know why the moderators didn't ask about the emails. He must have thought those guys were sparing Hillary by not bringing them up.
Even though the emails were quite thoroughly up.
Asked how American Muslims could live under the threat of anti-Muslim sentiment, Trump again made his bizarre statement that neither President Obama nor Hillary Clinton would use the term "radical Islamic terror." (Can't fight it if you can't name it.)
I don't know where Trump gets this idea, or why he thinks it's so significant. Clearly both Obama and Hillary Clinton are against this particular form of terrorism.
(It's true, though—you hardly ever hear Obama mention ISIS. But that's because he uses the administration term ISIL. Does Trump think ISIL is somehow a less damning word than ISIS? That Obama is going easy on those guys because he's their founder?)
Concerning Syrian refugees, Trump says we know nothing about them, and shouldn't let a bunch more into the country. He says Hillary is already soft on immigrants who have committed crimes. If the country of origin refuses to take the guy back, Trump is going to force them to take him. (If the offender is from Mexico, Trump can fling the guy off the top of the Wall.)
When asked how he would make the rich pay their fair share of taxes, Trump talked about his tax cuts for the rich.
Asked about evading federal income tax, Trump again pointed out Obama and Hillary created the vacuum that brought about ISIS. (No doubt the logic of this is central to Trump's thinking. All questions about his actions lead to a condemnation of Hillary.)
Asked about Syria and Aleppo, Trump repeatedly said Syria and Russia were fighting ISIS. (And Iran, too, a country we saved from ruin with that disastrous nuclear deal.)
Hearing a quote from running mate Mike Pence, advocating military action against Syria and Russia for bombing Aleppo, Trump said he hadn't talked to the guy and disagreed. (Later, Pence said everything was okay between him and Trump; that he had been misquoted. He is likely incorrect about that.)
Anderson Cooper quoted from one of Trump's books, which said a leader needs to have discipline. He then brought up the series of tweets Trump made between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m., ending with a suggestion folks check out a sex tape.
He was trying to finish the question by asking if this demonstrated discipline, but Trump had heard the words "sex tape" and was already talking: There wasn't check out a sex tape, just a suggestion to take a look at the person Hillary had made out to be "this wonderful Girl Scout—who was no Girl Scout." (Former Miss Universe, a reference to the first debate.)
Trump then went off on a Benghazi rant, triggered by the words "three a.m." in Cooper's question.
He finished by pointing out Twitter was a modern-day form of communication and that he had a lot of followers. Trump said he was "not unproud" of that.
The man clearly enjoys free associating on the stage. Fortunately for him, all paths lead to Hillary's shortcomings.
In the mean time, the actual question about a leader's discipline had disappeared in a puff of smoke.
When asked about the qualifications of a new Supreme Court justice, Trump managed to attack Hillary for not putting millions of her own money into the campaign, seeing as how she got rich in office.
The cool thing is that Trump not only knows his own mind, he knows Hillary's, too. He knows she has no idea who the rebels are in Syria; he knows she has no idea if Russia is behind cyber hacks in this country (he suggested maybe there were no hacks); and he says: "Believe me, she has tremendous hate in her heart."
Humans often think they know what's going on inside other people's heads. In fact, they claim to know things the other guy doesn't even know about himself. The illusion of knowledge is central to a human being's makeup.
In the end, a moment of sweetness. Asked to say something nice about Trump, Hillary praised his children. Trump said he liked that Hillary was a fighter who never gave up.
His statement created the far side of a pair of bookends for this debate. He had begun by meekly agreeing with "everything" she said in her opening remarks, and ended by praising her as someone who never quit.
Words that may come back to haunt him.
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