One of the few highlights of Tuesday's debate was conservative moderator Hugh Hewitt's attempted garroting of Donald Trump by asking him a policy question predicated on knowing, well, policy.
HEWITT: [Ben Carson] mentioned the triad. The B-52s are older than I am. The missiles are old. The submarines are aging out. It’s an executive order. It’s a commander-in-chief decision.
What's your priority among our nuclear triad?
In fact Ben Carson did not mention the nuclear "triad," a term referring to the three pillars of American nuclear strategy (air, ground, and sea-based attacks). He merely recited the relative age of three primary elements of that triad in a memorized line intended to prove our military needed more funding. It's not clear Carson knew from his debate prep (and he certainly didn't mention) the common role that "Ohio-class submarines," "Minuteman 3 missiles," and "B-52 bombers" play in American nuclear deterrence theory.
But Hugh Hewitt either graciously presumed that Ben Carson knew what the nuclear triad was from context or simply didn't catch that Carson had blown his memorized lines. Thus the question to Donald Trump: What do you think of the nuclear triad?
And Donald Trump had clearly never heard the term before in his life. So what followed was a hoot.
TRUMP: Well, first of all, I think we need somebody absolutely that we can trust, who is totally responsible; who really knows what he or she is doing. That is so powerful and so important. [...]
Spectacular.
HEWITT: Of the three legs of the triad, though, do you have a priority? I want to go to Senator Rubio after that and ask him.
TRUMP: I think — I think, for me, nuclear is just the power, the devastation is very important to me.
Glorious. Won't make a dent in Trump's poll numbers, but I hope to see Trump 2016: The devastation is very important to me bumper stickers available from his campaign store before the week is out.
For the record, Rubio then brightly explained to the audience "who the triad—what the triad is," thus proving to be at least one bantered-about phrase more knowledgable about military policy than Donald Trump, and then proceeded to merrily dodge the question anyway. Asking concrete policy questions at one of these things is like throwing popcorn into the zoo monkey cages—you're not supposed to do it, the handlers get really mad when you do it, and the best case result can only be a lot of sick, angry monkeys.