SEPTEMBER 8, 2016
Photo: Getty
On Wednesday night, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump shared the same stage for the first time (though not at the same time) at NBC News’ first-ever Commander-in-Chief Forum.
The forum, which was put together by veterans groups in hopes of getting issues facing returning vets on center stage, was seen by many as a dry run for the first Presidential debate scheduled for September 26.
If their performances on Wednesday night served any guidepost, both candidates have a lot of work to do before they could be considered debate-ready by the 26th. A lot.
The agreed-upon format was that each candidate was given 24 minutes to be interviewed by Matt Lauer of NBC’s “Today.” Trump won the coin toss to determine the order, so Clinton was interviewed first.
It did not go well. Lauer spent the first ten minutes grilling Clinton on the e-mail server controversy, so she was put on the defensive from the first minute. And Clinton, when she’s lawyer-ly and on the defensive, is not good, as she can come across as resentful and abrupt, as she often does. The amiable persona that she has displayed with the press this week went right out the window with this first segment. When she took questions from the vets in the audience, things went a little bit better until she unloaded this doozie:
“We are not putting ground troops into Iraq ever again, and we’re not putting ground troops into Syria.”
OK, I get that she was trying to reassure the vets and the TV audience that she was not a neo-con war-monger. But no President should ever use the definitive phrase “ever again” when it comes to events in such a volatile area of the world as the Middle East — such a pledge might help her in the short term but is not wise when events change.
Regarding the e-mails, she had the opportunity to speak directly with the American people with some kind of variation of “I didn’t want my private e-mails to be available to the press because I’ve been burned by them before,” and we would understand that. Not the most noble reasoning, but it’s human. Instead of that honesty, we got lawyer Clinton parsing words to try to slip by. It was a real missed opportunity for her.
But if Clinton stumbled, Trump fell flat on his face. Where to start?
Let’s begin with his schoolgirl crush on notorious KGB thug Vladimir Putin. Trump went so far as to say that Putin “has been a leader far more than our President has been.” This is coming from the “America First!” guy. (If a Democrat ever said that a tinhorn dictator was much more of a leader than the American President, they’d have been crucified.) Trump then cited Putin’s popularity in Russia — an 82% favorable rating according to the people living in a totalitarian regime — even after Lauer pointed out that:
“He’s also a guy who annexed Crimea, invaded Ukraine, supports Assad in Syria, supports Iran, is trying to undermine our influence in key regions of the world, and according to our intelligence community, probably is the main suspect for the hacking of the DNC computers.”
Trump, however, pooh-poohed those facts because Putin once called him “brilliant,” so Trump said he’ll take the compliment. With that, it would appear that Trump’s foreign policy initiatives will favor whomever most recently kissed his butt.
And then there’s Trump’s thoughts on the military:
“I think that, under the leadership of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the generals have been reduced to rubble”
Remember, this was in front of a military crowd. Sensing that he had made an error, Trump pivoted to praise the generals, but Lauer reminded him that he had publicly said
“I know more about ISIS than the generals do, believe me.”
Trump said that, not to worry, when he gets in, there’ll be all new generals. (Like he could do that.) And of course, mass firings of generals would clearly do wonders for morale. Military experts on all cable channels (except Fox News) had a field day with that one.
When the discussion turned to the war in Iraq, Trump once again asserted that he was always against the incursion, despite ample evidence in video and audio tape that proves the opposite. In her segment, Clinton even cited Trump’s famous 2002 radio interview with Howard Stern where Trump clearly stated his support for the war in Iraq. She cued it all up for Lauer, but when Trump lied about it again, Lauer completely whiffed. Just disgraceful on Lauer’s part.
Finally, on the issue of sexual assault in the military, Trump asserted that military sexual assaults should be expected “when they put men and women together.” So it’s the woman’s fault? Again? This “boys will be boys” excuse should have run its course decades ago, but the fact that we have a Presidential candidate of a major party leaning on that crutch should give pause to any woman entering the voting booth.
It’s only 18 days until the first debate, and based on last night’s performances, both candidates are going to have to hit the books. Hard.
xoxoxo
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