A Flippin’ and a Floppin’

Good morning again, this time from the comforts of my Hunker-Bunker overlooking a saturated Puget Sound It’s a bit wet outside, now that we are slipping into our Fall weather pattern. It is supposed to get to a sweltering 61°F today with drizzles on and off throughout the day.

I plan on sleeping through most of it, because I have to be back at the hotel around 2100-ish for the final push to get the 40-ton heat pump back online.

Yeah, I know I posted earlier this morning, and I wasn’t going to post anything on the debate last night. Well, after watching it, and then reading Humpty Dumpty’s lies and reactions to the debate last night, I think I might have something to say here.

Trump Demands ABC Be Shut Down for Daring to Fact Check Debate

For a guy who is unilaterally claiming that he won the debate last night, he is certainly an angry fellow this morning.

Donald Trump called for ABC News to be shut down during a rant about the way he was treated by the network during his presidential debate against Kamala Harris.

One does not ‘rant’ about something they think they “won”. No, if he really felt that he won the debate last night, he would be crowing about it. He would be piling praise on the moderators for creating a situation that allowed him to win. He certainly wouldn’t be calling for ABC to be “shut down”.

So why is Trump upset? Exactly how did they mistreat him last night?

The former president called into Fox & Friends on Wednesday morning to complain that he’d faced a “rigged deal” with the debate, with moderators “correcting everything” he said while “not correcting with her.” Asked why he felt moderators hadn’t corrected Harris in the same way, Trump answered: “Because they’re dishonest.”

So his complaint is that he was being fact-checked in real time by the moderators? And that they pushed back on thirty-three of his lies and disinformation, as opposed to the one time they pushed back on Harris? It’s certainly not because the moderators were being “dishonest”. It’s because Trump was caught being wrong and/or misleading more often than Harris was. The King of Projection’s greatest tell is when he accuses someone else of being _______________. It usually means he’s talking about his behavior.

“I think ABC took a big hit last night,” he continued. “To be honest, they’re a news organization—they have to be licensed to do it. They ought to take away their license for the way they did that.”

First of all, ABC is a licensed broadcast company, its purpose is to broadcast content entertainment to the masses, in exchange for money derived from selling commercial spots. Unlike Fox News, ABC is NOT a news channel. News is just a small part of the entire business, and they — like Fox — can run their news any which way they like, and not worry about the government yanking their license for whatever drivel they want to toss out there.

So the idea of the government taking ABC’s broadcasting license away because Donald Trump had his ample ass handed to him by a woman, only makes him look like a giant crybaby.

Trump used the interview to repeatedly complain that the debate was “three-to-one,” meaning he felt that moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis were on Harris’ side against him.

Again, for someone who is claiming he ‘won’ the debate, he’s doing an awful lot of complaining about the rules that he had agreed to before the debate.

If either candidate had said something that was demonstrably not true, then the moderators have a duty to point it out and give the candidate the opportunity to either correct or double-down on the disinformation. A liar thrives in a world where the lie isn’t questioned, and Trump is always looking for the advantage where he’s never questioned or pushed back on.

“The press is so dishonest in this country, it’s amazing,” Trump said. “Now, I didn’t mind because frankly I was pretty sure that’s what they would do. CNN was much more honorable—the debate we had with Biden was a much more honorably run debate.”

Ah, and there it is. He’s still mad because he isn’t still running against Joe Biden. He literally had Joe stuttering around trying to counter Trumps onslaught of blatant lies. Trump loved the shit out of that, because the truth didn’t rear its ugly head every time Trump opened his mouth.

But like I said, both candidates and their campaigns agreed to the rules as they were.

The CNN moderators in June notably did not fact-check or question statements made by Trump or Biden during that event, as per agreed rules.

Seems kind of what I just said, huh?

Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt cited a report from Media Research Center—a conservative group which describes itself as dedicated to combating “falsehoods and censorship” in the news media in order to “preserve America’s founding principles and Judeo-Christian values.” The report, which was covered by right-wing outlets including Breitbart and the Daily Wire, claimed Muir’s show, World News Tonight, was unfairly biased against Trump and in favor of Harris.

For what, because Trump got his ass corrected 33 times and Harris was only corrected once? Doesn’t that show you the value of being correct in what you say and/or do? Are we supposed to reward someone for being literally demonstrably incorrect to the point of absurdity?

I mean, he’s STILL, as of this moment, still trying to push his latest absurdity: “Haitians eating your pets.” Virtually NO police department in Ohio or the greater United States of America are there Haitians eating your pets.

Now there IS one black woman in Ohio who was arrested last month for killing and eating a cat in front of her neighbors. But she is not Haitian, she’s a mentally challenged, naturally-born American citizen who has a history of mental illness. Even Trump’s VP pick, JD Vance has just come out saying that this the story he first pushed about Haitians “probably isn’t true”.

But it will not stop Trump from continuing to push it. Noope.

The show then aired a compilation of what Earhardt described as the “lies” Harris told about Trump during the debate, including her statements that Trump “plans on implementing” Project 2025 and “will sign a national abortion ban” if he returns to the White House.

I don’t know that Project 2025 is more a wishlist of the greater MAGA movement than it is a priority for a President Trump. It’s a fairly safe bet that any legislation deriving from this Project 2025, Trump will blindly sign into law.

But the signing of a “national abortion ban” if it crossed his desk? Without a doubt. He may be waffling on it right now in order to be everything to every person, but at the end of the day, he will gladly take credit for that.

The montage also included Harris paraphrasing Trump’s comment about there being “very fine people on both sides” of a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia—Trump later said at the same 2017 press conference that neo-Nazis and white nationalists should be “condemned totally.”

LOL! If you are in need of a ‘montage’, I could give you one that spreads from the 1970s through twenty minutes ago that fully exposes his racist, White supremacist / White Nationalist views. Literally the first letter of the word NAZI. So yeah, Trump had a Freudian slip during that press conference that he tried to weakly clean up at the end. But that cat got out of that bag a long time ago.

It further showed Harris saying during the debate that Trump has said “there will be a bloodbath” if “the outcome of this election is not to his liking.”

Trump LOVES to used “charged words” that can be read two different ways. He will use them in such a way that he knows will rile a group of people, and if it gets too far out of hand, he will simply shift and say that he meant something different. It’s the typical bait and switch tactic confidence men use if they get tripped up on their con.

“‘Bloodbath’ was referring to the economy,” Trump said after the compilation ended. “Everybody loved the term, because as soon as they heard the word—it’s sort of a vicious word.”

“Everybody.” “Nobody ever…” Trump has this tendency to believe that EVERYONE is on his side, except for a few “very bad people, the worst that anyone has ever seen”. The reality is that outside a few hyper-enthusiastic fans, most people find the guy boorish at best. I prefer his original description prior to running for president the first time: a “Vulgarian”.

He also said that the full context of his quotes on Charlottesville make it clear that what he’d said was “absolutely perfect.”

This man is a walking, talking Thinking Error. Also a bit redundant. He also made a “perfect phone call” that got his ass indicted, and if you still believe the 2016 version and 2020 version of Trump, we aren’t supposed to trust anyone who has “taken the fifth”, or has been indicted and/or convicted. Or even under federal investigation. He also said that Hillary shouldn’t be allowed to run because her husband got impeached. The 2024 Trump doesn’t seem to hold those same values any more, does he?

“ABC News knew that, everybody knew that, frankly,” Trump said. “I think they lost a lot of credibility.”

“There’s that “everybody knows” again.

From everything I’ve seen so far, most people making noise are pretty happy with how ABC handled the debate. I couldn’t tell you how MOST people feel because most people aren’t even thinking about the debate. Only those of us who are hyper-focused on this shit.

Now here comes the best part:

Nevertheless, Trump claimed the evening had gone well for him. “I’ve been told I’m a good debater,” he said. “I think it was one of my better debates. Maybe my best debate.”

Who told him he was a “good debater”? His wife? His kids? People wanting to keep their jobs? If you demand total loyalty from your subjects, they are going to lie to you each and every time, and that lie will take on a life of its own.

But if he thought this was a good debate, then he is also delusional.

I’m sorry, but Harris walked away with it. She’s ready for a second one. He’s not. He’s suddenly scared.

One of the more interesting arguments (at least interesting for me) is the one about Kamala Harris “flip-flopping” on her positions on things like fracking. Or legalizing marijuana. Or a plethora of other issues.

Weird things about most humans: we tend to evolve in the way we think about things, based on the information we have on hand at any particular moment. Sometimes we change our minds about things. Sometimes they are foundational or fundamental changes of opinion. We go through changes in our lives every seven years. Is it somehow unreasonable for people to change their minds on … well, anything?

People do change their minds on a lot of things over the years. A politician can change their minds at the drop of a dime. Or a dollar.