Trump loves low blows, but voters want a clean debate.

[Rogue Valley]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-loves-low-blows-but-voters-want-a-clean-debate-biden-shouldnt-take-the-bait/2020/09/25/d2d452f8-feae-11ea-9ceb-061d646d9c67_story.html

9/25/20
Tuesday’s presidential debate at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland is not expected to be anything like the “Rumble in the Jungle” between boxers Muhammad Ali and George Foreman on Oct. 30, 1974, in what was then known as Zaire. But if President Trump behaves true to form in his first face-to-face exchange with former vice president Joe Biden, count on an onstage spectacle just the same. Fox News’s Chris Wallace will moderate, and once again Trump just can’t resist the urge to try to work the referee, as he did when NBC’s Lester Holt moderated Trump’s September 2016 debate with Hillary Clinton. Wallace, who also moderated the Trump-Clinton faceoff held Oct. 19, 2016, at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, knows that Trump loves to throw low blows and lie through his teeth. Rest assured, Wallace is ready for the displays of incivility that attend so much of Trump’s life. Hope it’s true, too, of the moderators in the debates to follow. What you aren’t likely to see Tuesday is a repeat of Trump’s attempts at intimidation. The question is whether Biden is prepared for the insults, untruths and uncouth behavior set to come his way. Either way, let’s hope Wallace doesn’t put up with Trump’s distractions for long, because the designated debate topics offer a rich field for exploration. The voters want and deserve a clean contest.

I hope Chris Wallace retains his esteemed journalism credentials and cuts Trump off at the knees when Trump jumps out-of-bounds. And he will. While Trump is an accomplished smear-artist, he is lousy at debate. Worse still, he has produced precious few policy victories during the past four years. He'll claim the robust pre-COVID economy, but that was merely an extension of the robust Obama economy he inherited in 2016. He may claim the 2017 tax-bonanza for the wealthy and corporations as a victory, but this produced little uplift for the average American. US economic inequality under Trump is at a historic high and the tax bill added $1.9 trillion to the US deficit. Trumps foreign policy is a total dumpster fire. His failure to take the novel coronavirus seriously (It's a Democrat hoax) in January, February, and March set the template for Trumps utter failure of COVID leadership. The US has more COVID dead than any other nation in the world and Trump has consistently ridiculed COVID guidelines such as face-masks and social distancing, holding packed rally's which morph into COVID "super=spreader" events. Trump attempted to blackmail Ukraine, and is closer to Vladimir Putin than some of Putin's own officials. The corruption of Trump and AG Barr is open and in your face. They just don't care.

The debates will serve to illuminate Trumps failures in leadership, and his toxic personality which his niece ( PhD in clinical psychology) diagnosed as a "narcissistic psychopath".