“Trump is incapable of talking about policy because his record is dismal and he doesn’t know anything,” Meyers said. “There’s a raging pandemic, an economic crash, and the west is on fire—and that’s why he’s talking about drugs and Hunter Biden and whatever other bullshit he and his gang of mafia bobbleheads concocted. That’s all they can talk about. They have nothing else. The same reason why Trump refuses to condemn violent white supremacists and why he’s lying about the safety of mail balloting. His only chance of remaining in power is to undermine the election and threaten violence if he loses. He doesn’t want to win the election—he wants to destroy the election, just like he destroyed the debate.”
In the aftermath of the debate, Trump’s failure to denounce white supremacists, specifically far-right group the Proud Boys, drew the most outrage—so much so that Trump attempted to walk back the comments on Wednesday afternoon. But, once again, he failed to condemn white supremacists. “I don’t know who the Proud Boys are, you’ll have to give me a definition,” Trump claimed. “Whoever they are, they have to stand down, let law enforcement do their work.”
“They literally told him ‘do it, condemn them,’ and he still wouldn’t,” Meyers said. “The best he could muster was, ‘Sure, I’ll condemn them,’ before refusing to condemn them. That’s the way you respond when you’re offered hors d’oeuvres at a party.”
Trump’s comments drew fire from anonymous campaign advisers (“He blew that for sure”) and top Republicans like Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who—without mentioning Trump by name—said it was “unacceptable not to condemn white supremacists.” But, as Meyers said, “if you’re wondering what sort of defense Trump allies could possibly mount of those horrific comments, here’s Rick Santorum—who, for some reason, is still a CNN commentator—doing his level worst.”
“He was asking the president to do something that he knows the president doesn’t like to do,” Santorum said of moderator Chris Wallace’s attempts to get Trump to denounce white supremacists. “Which is, say something bad about people who support him.”
“That’s your defense?” Meyers said in response. “I guess by that same token, Trump would accept an endorsement from ISIS if they praised him. If they were smart, they would start waving Trump flags from the back of their trucks.”
Meyers concluded his commentary with a blunt assessment of the debate. “The president’s performance in last night’s debate was truly one of the most embarrassing debacles in American history. Trump debased himself, and the nation and then his wormy supporters slinked to his defense,” he said, before laying the antics displayed by the president at the feet of the Republican Party.
“Trump’s behavior last night was perfectly emblematic of the modern GOP, right-wing media, and the conservative movement. The Republican mascot shouldn’t be an elephant—it should be a possum being cornered in a garage by a rake,” he joked. “They’re all like this: deranged, petulant children, constantly aggrieved, making excuses. We got a closeup look at just how odious and grotesque the president is. His only goals are chaos and nihilism. He thinks that’s the path to power. And now it’s up to us to show him he’s wrong, and restore our democracy by voting in overwhelming numbers to repudiate him and everything he stands for.”
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