Trump and Biden interviewed by AARP – The town halls for Biden and Trump – Evening statistics
I was out much of yesterday, enjoying the fine weather, and did not return home until fairly late. Little of interest was to be found in the news and it did not appear worthwhile to compose a journal entry for the day. Either that, or maybe I simply was too tired to write one after walking 20 miles.
This morning I read the latest issue of the AARP magazine, which included interviews with both presidential candidates. The AARP editor noted that they each responded eagerly to the opportunity to be interviewed and that they treated the interviewers with great respect. In all fairness Trump did not show to disadvantage in this setting. He was able to sound fairly reasonable and balanced, at any rate in print. On the subject of Social Security, for example; he denied that his plan to eliminate the payroll tax would deplete the funds for the program and he outlined methods in which Social Security would still be funded. The actuaries disagree with him on this point, but that’s a detail.
I mention this, not because, as should be apparent, I wish Trump to succeed, but because I have several friends, ardent partisans of Biden, who continually exclaim about his opponent, “How can anyone vote for a man like this?” And I’m afraid that when they do so, they are being naïve. If anyone were to read the AARP interview without listening to him in person and was in ignorance of the headlines that occurred during his administration, he might conclude that Trump is in control of the national situation and is making far-sighted plans for ensuring the comfort and security of the nation’s senior citizens. Donald Trump can sound plausible when he chooses. There is nothing surprising in even quite intelligent people being duped by a clever fraud; and Trump can be clever on occasion, though he certainly is very unwise.
Then, too, however one might feel about his style of delivery on the podium (which to me is about as alluring as a bedizened, obese drag queen), he does project an aura of confidence that Biden does not. In watching Biden’s town hall last night my impressions of the former vice-president acquired over the past several months were reinforced: he is earnest, well-intentioned, invariably courteous towards anyone who converses with him, devoid of the bombast that characterizes his opponent; but he is also long-winded and circuitous in his answers, and – as is the case with both of the vice-presidential candidates – he seems incapable of delivering an unequivocal “Yes” or “No.” One can hardly fault him for not wishing to give hasty, ill-considered responses to the questions posed by the participants, but one wishes that he could speak more forcibly once in a while. He did speak quite well about Trump’s inadequacies in handling the virus, it is true (not a difficult task), but he hedged on the issue of packing the Supreme Court and I doubt if his response to the question about his by-now notorious remark about African-Americans not supporting him being “ain’t black” brought much reassurance to black voters.
By all accounts, though, he did much better than Trump did when the latter had the effrontery to set up a hastily-arranged town hall meeting of his own at exactly the same time as Biden’s after he called off the second Presidential debate in panic at the prospect at going virtual. It would appear that Savannah Guthrie, the moderator, was intent on getting a direct answer to the questions she was directed to ask and, to that end, pressed Trump on certain matters in a style to which he is not generally accustomed. According to the transcripts, she managed to extort from him an admission that he is in debt to the tune over $421,000,000 to his creditors and that he supported a claim (quite baseless, needless to say) by QAnon that Biden arranged to have a Navy Seal team killed. When he tried to backtrack on this latter issue, the following exchange ensued:
Trump: That was a retweet! People can judge for themselves!
Guthrie: “I don’t get that. You’re the president, not someone’s crazy uncle.”
As one might easily predict, Mary Trump was swift to post a tweet of her own shortly afterwards, suggesting that Guthrie could be mistaken on this last point.
If the intellectual level of Trump’s town hall was consistent throughout with this exchange, as I suspect it was, I think that I did well to watch the Biden town hall instead.
In recent weeks Trump has made several blunders like this ill-judged last-minute town hall, some of them so egregious as to lead a few acquaintances of mine to speculate whether he desires to lose the election in reality. I have heard such a theory in the past, but I believe it to be the result of wishful thinking. A criminal prosecution almost certainly awaits Trump the moment he ceases to be President, and he will cling onto the position as long as he is capable of doing so. But such maneuvers on his part make me somewhat more hopeful about the results of the upcoming election. I believe his flailing about in this manner is a sign that he is becoming more and more despondent about his chances of winning, and that our nation will be free of this incubus at long last. It is now 18 days to the day of the election (actually 17 days, 13 hours, 3 minutes, and 37 seconds as of writing this sentence to the closing of the last polls in Hawaii; but who’s counting?) and there is not a single poll that shows Trump to be in the lead anywhere in the country.
Yesterday’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 39,150,748; # of deaths worldwide: 1,102,404; # of cases U.S.: 8,214,803; # of deaths U.S.: 222,698.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 39,544,938; # of deaths worldwide: 1,108,175; # of cases U.S.: 8,285,824; # of deaths U.S.: 223,612. Our case count is showing an upward trend again; today’s increase was nearly 70,000. But the COVID virus is increasing generally, and in Europe in particular; at this point we account for 20% of the deaths from the virus and 30% of the active cases – very greatly out of proportion to our population count, but still somewhat less so that these were a month earlier.