{This commentary is belated, and the presidential race has changed, but what difference, at this point, does it make? I foolishly ventured into the CNN transcript of the Biden v. Trump debate; I warn you, do not go there. It should be labeled ‘Abandon hope, all ye who enter.’ I know this is a painfully long read but imagine how painful it was for me to write it.}
“I never knew a man could tell so many lies.” (Neil Young, “Ambulance Blues”)
Consider this a Public Service Announcement: adjectives are not facts, bluster and bravado are not evidence. 1
I make this announcement because a substantial number of Americans are enthralled, it seems, by the alleged accomplishments of a man whose actual accomplishments are all but nil. This man—let us call him “Klump”—praises himself to the skies while heaping abuse on his opponents. That in itself is neither novel nor noteworthy, but what is striking about Klump is that his self-praise is a litany, not of facts, but of adjectives. If you removed descriptors from his statements—words like “best,” “worst,” “greatest,” “beautiful,” “powerful,” “strong,” “weak,” etc.—you would find no evidence, no statistics, nary a fact in sight: nothing but a thesaurus’s worth of meaningless adjectives attached to unproven assertions. “I have all the best words.”
How did the American economy do under President Klump? “We had the greatest economy in the history of our country. We had never done so well. Every – everybody was amazed by it. Other countries were copying us. We did a great job. We got a lot of credit for the economy, a lot of credit for the military, and no wars and so many other things. Everything was rocking good. It was the greatest economy that we’ve ever seen.”
Foreign policy? “What’s happened to our country in the last four years is not to be believed. Foreign countries – I’m friends with a lot of people. They cannot believe what happened to the United States of America. We’re no longer respected. They don’t like us. We give them everything they want, and they – they think we’re stupid. They think we’re very stupid people. What we’re doing for other countries, and they do nothing for us. What this man has done is absolutely criminal.”
Border security? “We had the safest border in the history of our country. Now we have the worst border in history. There’s never been anything like it. And people are dying all over the place, including the people that are coming up in caravans.”
Since Klump belittles, mocks, and lies about anyone who stands against him, his “successes” seem that much greater. Under Obama, for instance, America was a “disaster,” struggling through the “weakest economic recovery” in its history. Crime was rampant, the border was porous, terrorists were everywhere (including on the roof of a building in New Jersey on 9/11), America’s infrastructure was crumbling, the airports were at a third-world level, and the military was out of ammunition (“Sir, we have no bullets.”).
Magically, Klump turned it all around. He secured the border (“the safest border in our history”), he rebuilt the military (“I made our military the strongest in history”), he cowed our enemies (and, when necessary, our friends)—"If we had a real president, a president that was respected by Putin, he would have never – he would have never invaded Ukraine. Russia would’ve never attacked if I were president.” Imagine the very stable genius required to undo the disaster that was Obama’s America and to restore the nation to greatness—in three years! “The country was going like never before.” Alas, now “we’re like a third world nation,” just as we were under Obama. Apparently, Klump’s successes, impressive as they were, were not sturdy enough to withstand the assaults of the Biden regime.
Klump is and always has been a publicist, inflating his net worth (except when it’s time to pay taxes) and exaggerating the grandeur of his properties, while wiping the public slate clean of his many failures (Klump University, Klump Steaks, several bankruptcies, failed marriages, etc.). “I’ve been a success at everything I’ve ever done,” insists the man who managed to lose money running a casino in Atlantic City. The key to understanding Klump is the “Principle of Persistent Prevarication”: if you just keep lying, repeating the same lies over and over again while adding new lies on top of the old, many people will come up to you and say, with tears in their eyes, “Sir, you are the only politician who tells us the truth.”
His mentality is Manichaean: black and white. He is the best; his opponents are the worst. His policies are the greatest; their policies are taking us down the drain. America is either great (again) like it’s never been before (again) or it’s a disaster, a third-world country (“We’re literally an uncivilized country now”). There is no middle ground, no shades of gray in his rhetoric. Nuance is beyond him. He speaks exclusively in world-historic terms: there’s never been anything like it, no one’s ever seen anything like it, people are amazed we could do it, people can’t believe how bad it’s gotten, best in our history, worst in our history, worst in the history of the world. “Nobody’s been worse than him. I had the highest approval rating. The secretary general of NATO said I did the most incredible job he had ever seen.”
Capable of reasoned criticism? “Biden’s presidency, his – without question, the worst president, the worst presidency in the history of our country. He’s become like a Palestinian. But they don’t like him, because he’s a very bad Palestinian. He’s a weak one…He is the worst president. He’s the worst president in the history of our country. He’s destroyed our country. If he wins this election, our country doesn’t have a chance. Not even a chance of coming out of this rut. We probably won’t have a country left anymore. That’s how bad it is. He is the worst in history by far.”
Able to engage in serious policy analysis? “Biden caused the inflation and it’s killing black families and Hispanic families and just about everybody. It’s killing people. They can’t buy groceries anymore. They can’t. You look at the cost of food where it’s doubled and tripled and quadrupled. They can’t live. They’re not living anymore. He caused this inflation. I gave him a country with no, essentially no inflation. It was perfect. It was so good. All he had to do is leave it alone. He destroyed it with his green new scam and all of the other – all this money that’s being thrown out the window. He caused inflation. As sure as you’re sitting there, the fact is that his big kill on the black people is the millions of people that he’s allowed to come in through the border. They’re taking black jobs now and it could be 18. It could be 19 and even 20 million people. They’re taking black jobs and they’re taking Hispanic jobs and you haven’t seen it yet, but you’re going to see something that’s going to be the worst in our history.”
A friend of the environment? “I want absolutely immaculate clean water and I want absolutely clean air, and we had it. We had H2O. We had the best numbers ever. And we did – we were using all forms of energy, all forms, everything. And yet, during my four years, I had the best environmental numbers ever. And my top environmental people gave me that statistic just before I walked on the stage, actually.” 2
A truly decent, admirable human being? “I am the least racist person you have ever met.” “I have the biggest heart on the stage.” “There’s my African-American!” “I prefer heroes who don’t get captured.”
Self-awareness? “I’ve never seen anybody lie like this guy. He lies – I’ve never seen it. He could look you in the face. So – and about so many other things, too. And we mentioned the laptop, we mentioned “Russia, Russia, Russia,” “Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine.” And everything he does is a lie. It’s misinformation and disinformation. It’s a disgrace.”
Coherence? “We’re doing very well at addiction until the COVID came along. We had the two-and-a-half, almost three years of like nobody’s ever had before, any country in every way. And then we had to get tough. And it was – the drugs pouring across the border, we’re – it started to increase. We got great equipment. We bought the certain dog. That’s the most incredible thing that you’ve ever seen, the way they can spot it. We did a lot. And we had – we were getting very low numbers. Very, very low numbers.
Closing statement, sir? “The only reason I’m here is he’s so bad as a president that I’m going to make America great again. We’re going to make America great again. We’re a failing nation right now. We’re a seriously failing nation. And we’re a failing nation because of him. His policies are so bad. His military policies are insane. They’re insane. These are wars that will never end with him. He will drive us into World War Three and we’re closer to World War Three than anybody can imagine. We are very, very close to World War Three, and he’s driving us there.
For three-and-a-half years, we’re living in hell. We have the Palestinians and we have everybody else rioting all over the place. You talk about Charlottesville. This is 100 times Charlottesville, 1,000 times. The whole country is exploding because of you, because they don’t respect you. And they have to respect their president and they don’t respect you throughout the world. What we did was incredible. We re – rebuilt the military. We got the largest tax cut in history, the largest regulation cut in history. All of the things that we’ve done, nobody’s ever – never seen anything like – even from a medical standpoint. Right to Try, where we can try Space Age materials instead of going to Asia or going to Europe and trying to get when you’re terminally ill.
Postscript:
Best exchange of the debate: Klump: Let’s not act like children. Biden: You are a child. 3 Lincoln-Douglas this was not.
Most memorable line ever in a presidential debate: “I didn’t have sex with a porn star, number one.” As Bill Clinton might have said, it depends on what the meaning of ‘star’ is.
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Most of the above quotes are taken verbatim from the CNN debate transcript: READ: Biden-Trump debate transcript | CNN Politics I have here and there spliced together separate transcript quotes; in a few instances, I have recycled Trump quotes from the past.
1 “Bluster and Bravado”: band name or law firm?
2 Technically, claiming to have “the best numbers” is not itself “a statistic”.
3 Neil Young shouts at his TV screen, “I am a child!”
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