Hillary may have failed to win the forum hands down, but come on Daily Beast, it was Trump who failed miserably. This is from this morning’s Daily Beast:
SORRY, AMERICA
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump Self-Destruct at Commander-in-Chief Forum
On Wednesday night, the candidates were given a chance to show they had what it takes to be commander in chief. They took very different approaches to the challenge and both failed. Miserably.
I am trying to be objective as I think about last night’s TV forum. Not so The Daily Beast. They begin their article:
"In military terms, the first national security battle between Hillary Clintonand Donald Trump took the form of mutually assured destruction.”
Mutually assured destruction? Did they really reduce each other to nuclear waste? Give me a break!
Then they go on to compare the two and conclude:
"It was a dumpster fire of an evening, for a dumpster fire of a campaign—the first time this election cycle where voters could see in stark contrast the two major choices for president, and both came up lacking. Two candidates took the stage, separately, to talk about why they were qualified to be commander in chief. Instead, both showed themselves to be terribly flawed candidates.”
Following this:
"Clinton came off as a defensive and lawyerly—technical where unnecessary, vague where details were necessary, or simply utterly wrong. Trump, meanwhile, assumed the role of a huckster—a man who praised Vladimir Putin while insulting female combat troops, correcting a veteran with an incorrect figure about suicide, and suggesting the military needed to be purged of its generals and admirals.”
The criticism of Hilary says she “came off” as defensive and lawyerly… and it is a fair assessment to say this since she was being peppered by questions about the email, including one from a Trump supporting vet who aggressively and impolitely insulted her using a Trump attack line. Had she come across like Trump she would doubling down and attack back. We don’t want that in a commander-in-chief. She’s a lawyer. She was after all defending herself.
Then to say she was vague where details were necessary, in a half hour which was fast approaching a close because of the time spent on the emails, is unfair. She gave brief answers.
The final charge that she was “simply wrong” must be referencing the ground troops comment. Of course Hillary is aware that we have some 5,000 soldiers “on the ground;” but anyone with an open mind knows that when she talks about ground troops she means tens of thousands of troops, essentially sending a new army to assume a large role fighting on the ground. Her answer that she’d expect the Kurds and other countries to provide those boots on the ground makes this, or ought to, make this clear.
Compare this with what Beast wrote about Trump:
"Trump, meanwhile, assumed the role of a huckster—a man who praised Vladimir Putin while insulting female combat troops, correcting a veteran with an incorrect figure about suicide, and suggesting the military needed to be purged of its generals and admirals.”
One word should sum up why Trump lost the evening and lost it big time, they said he assumed the role of a “huckster.”
Meanwhile over at Politico:
Less than three weeks before the first general-election debate, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton shared a stage for the first time on Wednesday night — and neither appeared ready for the brightest lights of 2016 as they flashed the very liabilities that make their backers uneasy.
Clinton wobbled on style. Trump stumbled on substance.
Read more: www.politico.com/...
Again, there are clearly different standards being used to grade Trump and Clinton:
Clinton, a former secretary of state, was a master of the material but still looked uncomfortable as she fielded multiple questions about her private email server and struggled to squeeze her vision for American foreign policy into clear and concise terms.
Trump projected confidence even as he avoided specifics and treaded into politically treacherous territory as he belittled American military leaders (“the generals have been reduced to rubble”); said he has a plan to defeat the Islamic State but wants to keep it secret; and seemingly developed new policy on the fly, saying that undocumented immigrants who serve in the military could then stay in the United States legally. He also offered repeated praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin as a superior leader to President Barack Obama (“He does have an 82 percent approval rating”).
Read more: www.politico.com/...
Trump said our command corps of generals and admirals have been reduced to rubble, that CIA briefers supported his beliefs through their body language, implied that Putin would be able to flatter him into submission, that the US should have illegally (and impossibly) taken over the oil supply of a sovereign nation because “to the victor belongs the spoils.”
He lied again about whether he did or didn’t support the Iraq war.
Probably the craziest gibberish coming out of his mouth was his I have, no I don’t have, I’ll see what the generals say, then if I agree — response to questions about his secret plan to defeat ISIS.
Between the introductory sentences they cover the “self-destruction” and as has been happening repeated prove that Trump is held to a far lower standard than Hillary.
He is graded on a curve and merely getting a C is considered a stellar performance. Hillary is graded on a straight standard where in my opinion she got a solid B.
If you don’t know the difference between curve grading and straight grading then you didn’t take a course like zoology from the likes of Prof. Braddock at Michigan State who used the later method (which convinced me I didn’t have the memory to go to medical school). Getting a C in that course took my studying so hard I thought my brain would explode.
