“Stretching Facts To Fit His Preconceptions”: Only Softballs? Transcript Shows Trump Lied About Democratic Debate
By now you may have noticed that Donald Trump exists in his very own reality — a pleasing world where the Mexicans will pay us to build a border wall, where industrial nations will capitulate instantly to his trade demands, and where global climate change is merely a myth “created by and for the Chinese.” Lunatic as The Donald’s confident assertions often may be, not all of them are as easily debunked as certain remarks he made at today’s press conference in New York to introduce his new book.
Discussing the presidential debates, Trump complained more than once about the free ride that Hillary Clinton supposedly enjoyed at the last Democratic debate, which was televised by CNN and moderated by Anderson Cooper. According to the real estate mogul, the questioning by Cooper and his colleagues “was very unfair because Hillary Clinton was given all softballs. They didn’t ask her one tough question! They didn’t talk about the foundation, they didn’t talk about the emails….She only got softballs, that’s all she got…Hillary had only softballs, all night long. ‘Here, Hillary, hit this one over the park.’”
That struck me as a pandering and distorted account of the debate — so I checked.
It is true that Cooper didn’t inquire about the Clinton Foundation, but the questions he did ask (reproduced below without Clinton’s answers, which can be found in the full transcript here) indicate just how far Trump is willing to stretch facts to fit his preconceptions. Not only did Cooper pose several tough questions to her, from the very beginning of the debate, but he seized every chance to pillory Hillary in framing questions he put to the other candidates. (And he did ask her — and the others — about the damned emails.)
Unlike the Republicans, she spared us the post-debate whining.
COOPER: Secretary Clinton, I want to start with you. Plenty of politicians evolve on issues, but even some Democrats believe you change your positions based on political expediency. You were against same-sex marriage. Now you’re for it. You defended President Obama’s immigration policies. Now you say they’re too harsh. You supported his trade deal dozen of times. You even called it the “gold standard”. Now, suddenly, last week, you’re against it. Will you say anything to get elected?
COOPER [following up]: Secretary Clinton, though, with all due respect, the question is really about political expediency. Just in July, New Hampshire, you told the crowd you’d, quote, “take a back seat to no one when it comes to progressive values.” Last month in Ohio, you said you plead guilty to, quote, “being kind of moderate and center.” Do you change your political identity based on who you’re talking to?
COOPER: Secretary Clinton, Russia, they’re challenging the U.S. in Syria. According to U.S. intelligence, they’ve lied about who they’re bombing. You spearheaded the reset with Russia. Did you underestimate the Russians, and as president, what would your response to Vladimir Putin be right now in Syria?
COOPER [to Martin O’Malley]: Secretary Clinton voted to authorize military force in Iraq, supported more troops in Afghanistan. As Secretary of State, she wanted to arm Syrian rebels and push for the bombing of Libya. Is she too quick to use military force?
COOPER [following up insistently]: Does she — does she want to use military force too rapidly?
COOPER: Secretary Clinton, on the campaign trail, Governor [sic] Webb has said that he would never have used military force in Libya and that the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was inevitable. Should you have seen that attack coming?
COOPER [following up]: But American citizens did lose their lives in Benghazi.
COOPER: Secretary Clinton, you are going to be testifying before Congress next week about your e-mails. For the last eight months, you haven’t been able to put this issue behind you. You dismissed it; you joked about it; you called it a mistake. What does that say about your ability to handle far more challenging crises as president?
COOPER: Secretary Clinton, Secretary Clinton, with all due respect, it’s a little hard — I mean, isn’t it a little bit hard to call this just a partisan issue? There’s an FBI investigation, and President Obama himself just two days ago said this is a legitimate issue.
COOPER [after Bernie Sanders dismissed the email controversy]: It’s obviously very popular in this crowd, and it’s — hold on.
(APPLAUSE) I know that plays well in this room. But I got to be honest, Governor Chafee, for the record, on the campaign trail, you’ve said a different thing [challenging Clinton’s ethics]. You said this is a huge issue. Standing here in front of Secretary Clinton, are you willing to say that to her face?
COOPER: Governor O’Malley, you expressed concern on the campaign trail that the Democratic Party is, and I quote, “being defined by Hillary Clinton’s email scandal.”You heard her answer, do you still feel that way tonight?
COOPER: Secretary Clinton, how would you address this [income inequality] issue? In all candor, you and your husband are part of the one percent. How can you credibly represent the views of the middle class?
COOPER: Secretary Clinton, Governor O’Malley says the presidency is not a crown to be passed back and forth between two royal families. This year has been the year of the outsider in politics, just ask Bernie Sanders. Why should Democrats embrace an insider like yourself?
By: Joe Conason, Editor in Chief, Editor’s Blog, Featured Post, The National Memo, November 3, 2015
“The Real GOP Divide”: One Of The Big Contrasts Between The Two Parties; Democrats Are More Bullish On The Future
Maybe our definition of the Republican presidential contest is a little off.
It’s often cast, accurately enough, as a choice between “outsiders” and “insiders.” But another party division may be more profound — between Republicans who still view the country’s future hopefully and those deeply gloomy about its prospects.
The pessimism within significant sectors of the GOP is more than the unhappiness partisans typically feel when the other side is in power. It’s rooted in a belief that things have fundamentally changed in America, and there is an ominous possibility they just can’t be put right again.
This is one of the big contrasts between the two parties: Democrats are more bullish on the future.
Hillary Clinton has a big lead in the national polls because Democrats broadly favor continuity, with some tweaks. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) offers a tough critique of inequality and the outsized power of the rich. But he and his supporters are comfortable with the country’s cultural direction and have enough faith in government to believe it can engineer the reforms that economic fairness requires.
These thoughts are provoked by an evening spent watching last week’s GOP presidential debate with a group of Republicans pulled together here for me by Sarah Stewart, a New Hampshire political consultant.
They were anything but pitchfork-bearing rebels, and many of them are involved with local government. There was not a Donald Trump or Ben Carson supporter in the lot, although Jon DiPietro, a libertarian-leaning businessman, said he gets Trump’s appeal and could imagine voting for him.
The debate watchers shared the media’s view in one respect: They all agreed that Jeb Bush had a bad night. DiPietro’s offhandedly devastating comment: “Bush had a typical poor performance.” Toni Pappas, a Hillsborough County commissioner, offered sympathy that was almost as crushing. “I feel badly for Jeb,” she said. “He’s really a bright guy.”
The consensus was that the strongest performance came from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, not Marco Rubio, the man lifted high by the very media he and the others enjoyed attacking during the event. Rubio gained ground with some in the group, but Newton Kershaw III, a successful developer, said the young Florida senator still hadn’t persuaded him that he had the experience to be president. Rubio, Kershaw said, looked “rehearsed and studied.”
Gary Lambert, a former state senator who chairs Lindsey Graham’s campaign here, was proud of the South Carolina senator’s performance in the undercard match. But he spoke for the group in praising Christie for having some of the evening’s best moments. Lambert also offered his take on Carson’s appeal: “He remains so calm. I could never do that.” Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) also got some nods of approval.
But the most instructive part of the evening came toward the end when Ross Terrio, a Manchester school board member, took the conversation to a different place, describing his response to President Obama’s time in office. “I have gotten so pessimistic,” he said. “I used to be such an optimistic person. Maybe Obama just sucked the life out of me.” Terrio, who works as a pharmacist, has no complaints about his personal situation but wonders how his neighbors with much more constrained incomes can make it.
DiPietro shared Terrio’s worries that the country’s problems might be beyond our ability to solve, especially if Democrats win the White House again. Terrio, for his part, wrote me later to say that he was pessimistic about the future “regardless of which party wins the presidency.” Reflecting his skepticism about the public sector, DiPietro said he had warned his daughters about a dark future in which “government’s going to be reaching into your wealth.” Lambert’s worries focused more on terrorism and the rise of the Islamic State, one reason he supports Graham’s robust interventionism.
Others in the group pronounced themselves more hopeful, Pappas, perhaps, most of all. She highlighted her faith that the inventiveness and entrepreneurial spirit of the next generation would pull the country through.
But that this argument about the country’s long-term viability could break out among these thoughtful citizens — they in no way fit the stereotypes we liberals sometimes hang on conservatives — speaks to a central reality of our politics: Many Republicans see government itself as almost irreparably broken.
This is why there’s cheering on the right for the obstructionism of groups such as the House Freedom Caucus. Throwing sand in the gears of the machine is an honorable pursuit if you believe the machine is headed entirely in the wrong direction. It’s also why Trump and Carson will not be easily pushed aside.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, November 1, 2015
“Retreating Entirely Into Their Own Little World”: GOP Debate Flat-Earthers Would Rather Just Talk Among Themselves
The defining essence of today’s Republican Party is that it lives in its own reality with its own set of “facts.”
You know this well enough. On the planet most of us inhabit, huge tax cuts for the rich hurt the economy and compound the deficit. The Earth is warming, and man-made carbon emissions have a lot to do with it. Evolution is a fact that happened and is still happening. On GOPEarth, tax cuts for the rich help the economy and reduce the deficit. The Earth isn’t warming, and even if it were just a little, it’s nothing to do with us. Evolution is just a theory.
It’s all fantasy, and all promulgated partly out of deluded belief but mainly for the benefit of Republican politicians’ benefactors and shock troops—in the three cases above, for the über-rich, for energy and oil companies, and for religious-right voters. And because of the way discourse in a democratic society works, if one party decides that it believes and wants to peddle empirically untrue things, well, provided it gets enough people to believe and repeat those things, the rest of us have no choice but to take those arguments seriously and engage them and quarrel with them. So we waste a lot of time in this country “debating” things that in every other advanced democracy in the world are settled matters of fact.
But now Reince Priebus may be doing those of us on mother Earth a favor. With his astonishing admission Monday that anyone allowed to ask a question of a Republican presidential candidate at a debate ought to “care or give a rip about the Republican Party,” the GOP chairman is unwittingly hastening the arrival of the day when the flat-earthers can just talk among themselves and the rest of us don’t really have to pay attention.
It’s an incredible statement in the way it imposes a precondition of support for the party before a person is even allowed to ask a question. Now, there may be a reasonable role for ideological journalists to be on a debate stage. I’d love to participate in a Democratic debate. But not so I can lob them softballs. Rather, I’d ask them tough questions that it would never occur to Anderson Cooper to ask, because I’m immersed in liberal thought and policy debates in a way he isn’t, and I have a pretty strong sense of what kinds of questions might get them off their talking points. So there’s a role for that. But that of course is not what Priebus meant. He meant lickspittles.
On the surface, the Republican anger over the debates is about a series of somewhat picayune questions about format, like these, which were set forth in a letter from GOP lawyer Ben Ginsberg to the networks (Will you commit that you won’t “show an empty podium after a break/describe how far away the bathrooms are”?)
While Donald Trump, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, and John Kasich all said Monday that they would not sign the letter, even I would agree that Republicans have a couple of legitimate gripes on some of these format questions.
The format of having the top 10 (or 11) candidates debate and leaving the others to the kids’ table has been ridiculous from jump street. Lindsey Graham and Rick Santorum, both of whom have actual policy knowledge, aren’t any less serious than Chris Christie and John Kasich just because they’re a point or two behind them but within the margin of error. From the start, it should have been two groups of eight or nine, randomly drawn from a hat (although, interestingly, the campaigns did not agree Sunday that this should be the practice going forward).
They’re right that the CNBC debate was chaotic. And they’re right that questions aren’t fairly distributed. Underlying these two problems, especially the latter one, is a hard economic fact that the networks won’t acknowledge and which Republican free-marketeers are unlikely to condemn. These debates, especially with Donald Trump in the picture, are far less about civic edification than they are about ratings and the ad rates that can be charged when Trump-scale audiences tune in who naturally enough want to see more of Trump than they do of Mike Huckabee. Did CNN expand that GOP debate to three tedious hours so the public would learn more, or so that the network could rake in one extra hour’s worth of ad revenue? Let’s not kid ourselves.
But at bottom, the Republican complaints about the debate process aren’t really about these format issues. They’re about GOP resentment that the questioners don’t share the candidates’ ideological presumptions and don’t see the debate as a PR opportunity for the party; which is to say that they’re about this insular reality that Republicans and conservatives have created for themselves in which everyone who doesn’t reflexively agree with a long list of litmus-test assumptions about the world, many of them provably untrue, is a liberal and an enemy of freedom and all the rest.
So now, with Priebus’s words Monday, they’re edging close to retreating into that reality in a way that would have been unimaginable a few years ago but that we may yet see. Picture this: Hillary Clinton wins the presidency. In 2019, Republicans start contemplating running against her and start thinking about primary debates. First off, they may not even have them at all (a blessing in a way, though not really a triumph for democracy). But if they do have them, is it far-fetched to think that there will be only two, and that they’ll be limited to, oh, the Christian Broadcasting Network and the Tea Party Network? After all, remember, it’s C-effing-NBC they’re mad at—the network that helped create the Tea Party! Remember also that Fox made them furious back in the summer, when Fox moderators asked tougher-than-expected questions. Pretty soon their own mothers won’t even be allowed to ask them questions (especially Jeb Bush’s).
Priebus doesn’t seem to have thought through one basic fact: If the Republican Party really sues the political media for a debate divorce, then the political media will be under decreasing obligation to take the party’s barmy positions seriously, and they can talk on their networks about their world, and the rest of us can talk in every other outlet about the real world. It’s sad, but not as sad as having to take all their whining seriously.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, November 3, 2015
“The GOP’s Deranged List Of Debate Demands”: Somebody Save Us From Reporters Asking Rude Questions
The Republican debates have been a disaster for some candidates, a boon for others and an uninspiring spectacle for the nation to witness. But don’t blame it all on the moderators.
Not that the questioners are blameless, mind you. It’s true that some of the queries at last week’s CNBC encounter seemed designed to provoke rather than elucidate. Ted Cruz’s memorable characterization of the questions sounded like a parody: “ ‘Donald Trump, are you a comic-book villain?’ ‘Ben Carson, can you do math?’ ‘John Kasich, will you insult two people over here?’ ‘Marco Rubio, why don’t you resign?’ ‘Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen?’ ” But the moderators, using different words, really did ask those things.
They weren’t crazy questions, though, even if they should have been framed in a less confrontational way.
Trump was asked about the central argument of his candidacy, which is that his brains, energy and competence would allow him to accomplish improbable feats such as building a wall along the southern border and making Mexico pay for it, deporting 11 million illegal immigrants and cutting taxes without increasing the deficit. “Is this a comic-book version of a presidential campaign?” was not the best way to phrase it, but the question was certainly germane.
Carson was asked about math because his proposal for a flat income tax of about 15 percent doesn’t come close to adding up. Kasich was asked his opinion of front-runners Trump and Carson because he had begun the evening with an unprompted attack on the two outsiders as unqualified to be president.
Rubio was asked to respond to an editorial in Florida’s Sun Sentinel newspaper that cited his absenteeism from Senate floor votes and called on him to resign his seat. The paper’s stance was “evidence of the bias that exists in the American media today,” he said, omitting the fact that the Sun Sentinel endorsed him in his 2010 Senate race.
And as for Bush’s anemic poll numbers, the fact is that he was once considered a strong favorite to win the nomination. The plan was for a “shock and awe” campaign that would overwhelm the field. So far, it has fizzled.
An argument could be made that such horse-race questions are a waste of valuable airtime. But the other lines of inquiry that Cruz blasted in his soliloquy were substantive and legitimate — and apparently made the candidates uncomfortable. Time to put an end to that.
Representatives from all the leading campaigns except one — that of businesswoman Carly Fiorina — met at an Alexandria hotel Sunday night to try to wrest control of future debates from the television networks and the Republican National Committee. The meeting was the brainchild of neurosurgeon Carson, who is running a strong second to Trump in national polls and leading him in first-in-the-nation Iowa. After Trump’s campaign joined in calling for the summit, the others had no choice but to come along.
Carson’s original idea was apparently to have all candidates onstage, including those relegated to the undercard, and for each to give a five-minute opening statement. This would take well over an hour and turn a “debate” into a string of little stump speeches. The fact that television executives would never agree to such terms did not bother Carson’s advisers, who have suggested that the debates be streamed on the Internet instead.
Republican attorney and power broker Ben Ginsberg — who no longer has a horse in this race, following Scott Walker’s withdrawal — chaired the meeting. Ginsberg suggested the hosts be required to make a long list of promises, including not to “ask the candidates to raise their hands to answer a question” or “have reaction shots of members of the audience or moderators during debates.”
The RNC decided last week to “suspend” a planned February debate to be hosted by NBC News — CNBC’s parent network — and Telemundo. Bush’s representative reportedly argued that the party should not turn its back on the only Spanish-language network scheduled to participate in a debate. According to Post reporter David Weigel, quoting an attendee, Trump’s campaign manager shot back that if Telemundo were included, “Trump walks.” Sources later told The Post that Trump had decided to negotiate with the networks on his own.
In past cycles, the RNC was the final arbiter. But the party is in chaos and the candidates, led by Trump and Carson, are driving the bus. We’ll face down Vladimir Putin and the leaders of Iran, the contenders all say, but somebody save us from reporters asking rude questions.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, November 2, 2015
“Comprehensive Immigration Reform”: Rubio’s ‘Biggest Weakness’ Goes Unmentioned, For Now
As the race for the Republicans’ presidential nomination started to take shape, there were plenty of reasons to be skeptical of Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-Fla.) chances. For example, he’s a career politician who’s never run anything. He has no real accomplishments. He’s developed no areas of policy expertise. Rubio gives a nice speech, but there’s ample reason to question whether he’s prepared for national office.
It’s quite easy to imagine, however, Republican voters overlooking all of this. Indeed, these truths may be a problem for a general-election audience, but there’s no reason to believe any of them would be a deal-breaker in GOP primaries and caucuses.
All of which brings us to the one problem Rubio may not be able to dismiss with ease: comprehensive immigration reform.
If I were a Republican presidential candidate, and I were at all worried about Rubio, I’d probably repeat one talking point every minute of every day: “Marco Rubio partnered with liberal Democrats to write Obama’s ‘amnesty’ bill.” For the GOP base, the bipartisan immigration reform package is truly despised – it’s right up there with “Obamacare” – and yet one of the party’s leading presidential candidates is one of the bill’s authors.
I don’t understand why this simple, straightforward detail isn’t dominating the Republican race. I don’t mean that in a rhetorical sense; I mean I literally don’t understand it. Shouldn’t candidates like Ted Cruz and Donald Trump be screaming this from the hilltops?
Vox’s Matt Yglesias took a look at this dynamic today, arguing that the “chickens will (probably) come home to roost.”
One reason Rubio has looked so good thus far, in other words, is that his biggest and most obvious weakness hasn’t been on the table. That’s a lucky break, but it’s hard to see how it will last.
If by the next debate Rubio has succeeded in clearly displacing Jeb Bush as the establishment favorite, then the incentives for Cruz and Trump (or even Christie or Fiorina) to start lighting into Rubio on immigration get a lot bigger. But as Cruz himself outlined to Shane Goldmacher, his current plan is to focus on consolidating the vote that he is currently splitting with Trump and Ben Carson and only later turn on whomever the strongest establishment-friendly candidate will be.
At this point, the limited areas of disagreement between the competitive candidates will be extremely important. Candidates like Rubio and Cruz agree on practically everything, making it all the more important that the former aligned himself with Democrats on immigration while the latter fought to kill the bill.
Yglesias added, “It hasn’t hurt him thus far because it simply hasn’t been tried. But it’s nearly inconceivable that Rubio can keep coasting much longer without facing his core vulnerability.”
It’s worth emphasizing that Rubio has no doubt memorized the script on what to say when this comes up. The Florida Republican will assure his party’s base that he now opposes the bill he helped write in the last Congress, and he’s already gladly betrayed his former allies on what was supposed to be his signature issue. Never mind what he supported in 2014; he wants the focus on his brand new position rolled out in 2015.
Whether such an argument will be persuasive remains to be seen, but if the race for the nomination comes down to Cruz vs. Rubio – a scenario I consider fairly likely – the only major area of disagreement between them will be immigration, and the Texan will have a potent message to share.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, November 2, 2015
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