Trumpfendämmerung

 

The original Zoom debate, from the Democratic primary campaign in New York's 14th congressional district, 20 May 2020, screenshot by Mashable.

No, I'm not going to waste my time on a virtual debate. That's not what debating's all about. You sit behind a computer and do a debate is ridiculous. And they cut you off whenever they want.

Donald J. Trump, 8 October, rejecting the format proposed by the Commission on Presidential Debates for the scheduled 15 October town hall–style debate in Miami, after Trump's Covid-19 infection raised safety concerns. I can't find out anything about the role computers were supposed to play in the proceedings—the CPD's statement didn't mention this—but it must have been discussed in the course of the CPD negotiations with the two campaigns, and that's where Trump got it.

My idea is that it was really going to be a Zoom debate, as suggested originally by Mashable and later backed up by Fox Business, Vice, Catholic University's The Tower, and I don't know who else—Fox was the most authoritative, citing Mitch McConnell and the Trump campaign's Mica Mosbacher—and Trump was thrown into a panic, not by the thought that the moderator was going to have a mute button (he's accepted that, at least for part of the time, for Thursday's debate), but because he might have to operate one himself; that he might be required to touch a key or click a mouse, hands at the console and face at the camera, and he was certain he would screw it up.

Code Talkers Vs. Dog Whistlers

Via navajopeople.org.

One of the things that hasn't been noticed in Emperor Trump's smarmy, patronizing, shoulder-patting performance with three nonagenarian World War II Navajo Code Talkers at a Native American Heritage Month event at the White House yesterday, after the group's president, Peter MacDonald, had presented his own opening remarks summarizing their achievements. Not the characteristic narcissism—

And I want to tell you -- you said you're 90 years old? That's great, because you have good genes. That means the press has got me to kick around for a long time. (Laughter.)

(Trump is going to live for a long time because his guest has good genes?) Or the unceremonious decision not to read the remarks that had been prepared for him and just dump the text into MacDonald's hands—

I loved that and I loved your delivery. And the Code Talkers are amazing. And seriously, it is what I said. So what I'm going to do is give you my speech, and I want you to hold that. And I know you like me, so you'll save it. But that was so well delivered, from the heart. So I want to give you this speech because I don't want to bore them with saying the same thing you just said. And you said it better, believe me, because you said it from here. And I mean it from there too.

It's that he has no idea what they're being honored for, what the Code Talkers did, beyond being "special" and "brave" and displaying "love for the country"—didn't have any idea what it was before yesterday, hadn't read the remarks in advance, and had been daydreaming while MacDonald spoke, hearing nothing but a reference to Iwo Jima, until the very last bit (an appeal for help in putting together a Navajo Code Talkers Museum), which he did pick up on later on: