What The Transcript Shows

 

My previous post addressed a concern that the media are writing narratives for us, telling us what to think, creating a consensus that may be at variance with reality. I cited the conclusions drawn about the Liberal loss in the Toronto by-election of Toronto-St. Paul and the debate between Joe Biden and Don Trump.

A producer of nine federal leaders' debates in Canada, Mark Bulgutch, offers his view of the American debate, observing that if one were just to read the transcript and not fixate on Biden's weak performance, one might come away with a different perspective.

Compare the content, not the performance, and then decide who should be president.

For example, when Trump spoke about abortion, he claimed that Democrats, “will take the life of a child in the eighth month, the ninth month, and even after birth — after birth.”

Biden responded, “He’s lying. That is simply not true.”

Trump: “Every legal scholar, throughout the world, the most respected, wanted it [abortion law] brought back to the states.”

Biden: “The idea that states are able to do this is a little like saying, we’re going to turn civil rights back to the states, let each state have a different rule.”

Trump on illegal immigrants: “We have the largest number of terrorists coming into our country right now. All terrorists, all over the world — not just in South America, all over the world. They come from the Middle East, everywhere. All over the world, they’re pouring in.”

Biden: “I’m not saying no terrorist ever got through. But the idea they’re emptying their prisons, we’re welcoming these people, that’s simply not true. There’s no data to support what he said.”

Trump: “And because of his ridiculous, insane and very stupid policies, people are coming in and they’re killing our citizens at a level that we’ve never seen.”

Biden: “Every single thing he said is a lie, every single one.”

As I said in my post, Biden did, despite his muddling performance, had policy on his side, while Trump relied on his usual strategy of total fabrication.

When Trump was asked about climate change, the best he could do was, “I want absolutely immaculate clean water and I want absolutely clean air, and we had it. We had H2O.”

Biden pounced. “The idea that he is claiming to have done something that had the cleanest water? He had not done a damn thing with the environment. The only existential threat to humanity is climate change. And he didn’t do a damn thing about it.”

Biden skewered Trump time after time. On Trump’s election denial: You’re a whiner. When you lost the first time, you continued to appeal and appeal to courts all across the country. Not one single court in America said any of your claims had any merit.”

On Trump’s accommodation of white supremacists: “What American president would ever say Nazis coming out of fields, carrying torches, singing the same antisemitic bile, carrying swastikas, were fine people?”

And finally, on why those who have seen Trump close-up now flee from what they saw: “His own vice president — look, there’s a reason why 40 of his 44 top cabinet officers refused to endorse him this time. They know him well. They served with him. Why are they not endorsing him?”

And I have nothing to add to Bulgutch's conclusion:

Yes, Joe Biden had some truly awful moments during the debate. But I’m not sure a president makes his toughest decisions in two-minute sound bites. Judge what he said, not how he said it.