Let’s make one thing clear, last night was a face-off between Tim Kaine and Mike Pence. It wasn’t a debate. It was barely moderated. On the surface it was an argument.
This is a totally unique day after because there’s a small media window for the talking heads before Hurricane Mathew hits and as seems likely will cause devastation on the east coast.
Tim Kaine did his job. He forced Pence to defend most of the Trump outrages, and Pence was woefully unprepared to do so. All he could come up with was denial, verbal or with a frowning head shake. In every instance he was denying that Trump said what he is on record as saying.
In at least one instance Pence denied saying something he himself said, his comment about Putin being a better leader than Obama.
When Trump weasel Steven Cortes, says that Pence hit a 400 foot home run (as he just did on MSNBC) you know this was a loss. The surrogate advising Trump on Hispanic relations tried to defend Trump’s remark about illegal immigrants being rapists. Pence tried to defend this too by misquoting what Trump actually said. The remark Trump made is at right.
Pence accused Kaine of taking the quote out of context and claimed that Trump said “many are good people.” Not only didn’t he say that, when you hear the way he said the final sentence he paused for effect and said it clearly as an afterthought. Listen to it a couple of times and note that he also said that last line twice as fast as the previous lines, and with little conviction. This need to be replayed again and again along with Pence’s lie.
I think by the end of the day it will be clear that Kaine lured Pence into a trap. What do you think?
Update: Thanks to www.dailykos.com/…
Wednesday, Oct 5, 2016 · 5:42:56 PM +00:00 · HalBrown
Sums it up:
And while Kaine has told his own story better before, on other nights, in other venues, his was not the story he arrived last night to tell. “I can’t imagine how Governor Pence can defend the insult-driven, selfish, me-first style of Donald Trump,” Kaine said, early on. Kaine explicitly challenged Pence to “defend” Trump nine times during the evening, using sheer force of repetition to move the debate on to questions that Clinton’s campaign preferred. Beneath the tactical sparring there was a deeper probe into how far the Republican Party, with Pence as its avatar, would go to defend the casino billionaire. www.newyorker.com/...
