I DON'T KNOW WHERE THE BOTTOM IS • US presidential elections part VIII

being in a room full of vets and praising the hell out of Putin while constantly disrespecting the President seems like a curious move

"are you prepared for the Oval Office?" "yeah sure I'm prepared" "okay next question"

I've been on an island for several days, is there still an election on

the good news is I'm now completely confident he's going to get wrecked in a debate

that said I just remembered that the 3rd and most important debate is going to be moderated by FOX News who straight up said they don't really care if the candidates tell the truth or not

If the Fox News one is moderated by Megyn Kelly, Trump might actually call her (Megyn Kelly) a slur on television, triggering a new round of Surely This

like did I hear this wrong or did he say he was going to replace all the generals.

Has he accused them of being Gulenists yet?

Obama, Trump says, has reduced our generals "to rubble."

"What I did learn is that our leadership, Barack Obama, did not follow what our experts and our truly -- when they call it intelligence, it's there for a reason, what our experts said to do," he said during the forum.

worth pointing out that this almost certainly false - intelligence briefings do not contain any such 'recommendations' - Trump quite blatantly made this up

good rundown of the night

https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/773745177781477376

https://j.gifs.com/gJoj0Y.gif

cool gif of woman asking about veteran suicides getting corrected as to the exact number per day - even though she was right

take the oil

as usual Chait exaggerates but he's otm about Laue:

rump went on to make a series of wild and dangerous statements. He praised Russian President Vladimir Putin as a strong, effective, and popular leader. Lauer did press him on this point, and when he did, Trump offered the astonishing rebuttal, saying President Obama had done equivalently brutish things. Lauer did not press Trump on his claim that the president of the United States behaves in a fundamentally similar way to a dictator who imprisons and kills political critics and journalists. Trump likewise reiterated his belief that “to the victor go the spoils” is the proper basis for American foreign policy, specifically with regard to his longstanding lament that the United States failed to steal Iraq’s oil after the 2003 invasion.

Lauer’s attempt to press Trump was the completely ineffectual technique of asking repeatedly if he is ready to serve as commander-in-chief. Lauer probably believes the answer is no, but nothing about this question would drive home Trump’s extraordinary lack of knowledge. Instead it allowed him to performatively demonstrate his confident, alpha-male reality show character as a prospective chief executive.

Both of these beliefs stun and appall foreign policy experts in both parties, as readers of the Washington Post or the New York Times know. But the average undecided voter isn’t reading those newspapers. The average undecided voter is getting snippets of news from television personalities like Lauer, who are failing to convey the fact that the election pits a normal politician with normal political failings against an ignorant, bigoted, pathologically dishonest authoritarian.

"Morning Joe" crew also legit horrified by Trump – at last – but can't avoid the Both Sides Do It equivalence, i.e. Hillary looked defensive answering email questions (surprised they didn't call her "shrill" or "robotic").

idk what else lauer could have done

our idiotic television media is -- somehow -- ill equipped for something this idiotic.

she came off well imo, burying Lauer and audience in data w/out boring anyone.

xxp lauer could have stayed home and thought up more money saving travel tips. fuck nbc for propping him up as if he's some kind of journalist. what the fuck kind of world are we living in when a morning talk show host is tasked with posing questions to a reality TV star about if he's ready to be president. fuck this election

https://twitter.com/Morning_Joe/status/773851435477762048

Aleppo was one of the minor Marx brothers iirc

Meanwhile, there was this fun moment with Gary Johnson, who doesn't know what/where Aleppo is

http://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/gary-johnson-asks-what-is-aleppo-760358979962?cid=sm_fb_msnbc_native

oh, xpost paws

In a way, I almost find the second part more distasteful, where he goes through a wellknown and well rehearsed spiel on how Syria is a mess because we supported regime change. The absolute authority and selfassurance he brings to a subject he's just admitted he knows nothing about. He knows nothing of the specifics, but the outcome was still 'inevitable'.

Goddamn, dude running for president. I'm ignorant as shit and I know what an Aleppo is.

What the fuck is happening in this country?!

Lauer's getting all sorts of hell this morning, just like Stephanopoulos did in 2008, so I wouldn't worry too much about Trump getting a pass. It could even help Clinton in the debates. She can be as aggressive calling him out as she needs to be now--the moment has passed where he was going to go into the debates with an absurdly low bar to clear. The bar should still be absurdly low for him, but because of the polls and because of last night, I don't think it is anymore.

I can't remember which perennial 80s/90s sitcom supporting actor Gary Johnson reminds me of, but it's all I can think about whenever his Droopy Dog ass is being interviewed and it drives me nuts.

In those days there was a fifth Rutle, Leppo, who mainly stood at the back. He couldn't play the guitar, but he knew how to have a good time, and in Hamburg that was more difficult

Trump about "cyber" last night:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CrwzbmoXYAAe-sh.jpg

http://i1.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/018/489/nick-young-confused-face-300x256_nqlyaa.jpg

Wait...seriously? That's seriously something the GOP presidential candidate said, and he hasn't been definitively shut out of the race and perhaps moved into a group home for the mentally handicapped?

Good luck, humanity.

idk what else lauer could have done

I dunno call out the dude who is blatantly lying to you for one

Maybe a press a little so the dude running for president actually has to answer a straight questions

Like he wouldn't even walk back his "I know more about ISIS than the generals do" comment, how the hell do you just let that pass

holy shit at gary johnson's blank-eyed, vacant 'aaaannnnd what is aleppo?'

time for the libertarians to be taken over by that fat guy who stripped on stage during their convention

Clinton can score a big 2X point bonus in debate #1 if she says "I'm going to hold you accountable for your lies since they [waves dismissively at moderators] won't."

this is pretty amazing too on a number of levels - mika holds an iphone showing video of gary johnson attempting to clarify his ignorance of aleppo with an incoherent series of run-on sentences

http://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/johnson-seeks-to-clarify-aleppo-remarks-760369731559

http://d158ejkbvy3pxw.cloudfront.net/wp-poricontent/uploads/2016/03/Time-2.jpg

yeah I mean all things considered I was pretty impressed by Clinton last night and I kinda get the impression she can't wait to lay waste to Donald J. on the 26th

the debate prep should be remarkably easy. you know exactly what Trump's going to say. you know he won't back down on any of the ten-thousand dumb comments he's made and you know exactly what he's going to lie about. and yeah if nothing else this is at least going to let her team know that the mods can't be trusted to fact check him.

If the cyber comment is any indication he won't directly comment on anything, though if you're lucky he might vomit out at least one word that has some relation to the question that was asked.

why can't she do w/ him what christie did to rubio and just be like "dude has nothing intelligent to say. he just rambles word salad stream of consciousness hoping you won't notice that he is a total ignoramus." "...and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and, I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, or, uh, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future." "there he goes again."

She can and should

http://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/johnson-seeks-to-clarify-aleppo-remarks-760369731559?cid=sm_fb_msnbc

haha he tries to make it better and makes it 100x worse

Hilldawg giving another press conference right now, she's just kind of standing up there shaking her head

oh mannn at gary johnson. what a clown.

He reacts as if he's being chastened by a coworker for not keeping up with current events. Yeah, he probably should learn more. Preferably before running for fucking president of the United States.

I don't get how this election is even a contest.

Christopher Hill, ex US-ambassador in Iraq, someone who really should know better called Aleppo "the ISIS capital" in response to Johnson's remarks.

I don't know which is worse.

didn't watch the lauer thing but yea that whole equivalence bullshit has been happening this whole election. NPR has been uniformly terrible at this, has anyone else noticed how bad they've been? they were talking about the "cyber" comment last night and were ridiculously generous, like "there is still a little of the stream of consciousness tendency but trump is really trying to push that he will be the tougher commander-in-chief"

this election is so fucking depressing.

This election = last 20 years

one takes small comforts, like watching joe scarborough having a blowhard breakdown in response to mika brzezinski pushing on johnson's pathetic performance - http://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/stunning-mortifying-johnson-unaware-of-aleppo-760387651580

didn't watch the lauer thing but yea that whole equivalence bullshit has been happening this whole election. NPR has been uniformly terrible at this, has anyone else noticed how bad they've been? they were talking about the "cyber" comment last night and were ridiculously generous, like "there is still a little of the stream of consciousness tendency but trump is really trying to push that he will be the tougher commander-in-chief"

― marcos, Thursday, September 8, 2016 8:57 AM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't remember if it's an explicit directive but IIRC NPR tries to maintain as unbiased a stance as possible wrt politics because of government funding. So, as is the case with pretty much all television news media, I basically pay zero attention to any of their political coverage.

btw I guess this will hardly be mentioned with all the other craziness but Trump did admit that he doesn't actually have a plan to defeat ISIS

Lauer: So, is the plan you’ve been hiding this whole time asking someone else for their plan?

Trump: No. But when I do come up with a plan that I like, and that perhaps agrees with mine — or maybe doesn’t — I may love what the generals come back with…

A second grader would get an F- for that sentence construction.

MAKES NO SENSE, TRY HARDER NEXT TIME!!

No. But when I do come up with a plan that I like, and that perhaps agrees with mine

wut?

He probably doesn't know what Aleppo is either