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Happy Thursday, everyone. So is it really so great to have presidential debates? Yeah. It’s time to review.
VIDEO: The futile rally in Simi Valley.
Yeah, as you can see in the lower right-hand corner of your screen, it’s been 23 hours since the second GOP presidential debate. No one’s ever done that before. And much like Vivek’s hair line, my migraine is finally receding. The debate was held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, a reminder of an era when a president leaving office at the age of 78 was considered too old and a reminder that it is still legal to park a jet in a library. Excuse me, ma’am. Where can I find the classic literature section? Right behind the 747. Okay, so in case you missed it, let’s get right to the highlights. Here are all the best parts.
VIDEO OF DANA PERINO ASKING QUESTIONS: How would you, as president, protect American farmers and ranchers from that kind of retaliation from a foreign government like China? How do you think about dealing with the root causes of crime, especially this revolving door of the criminals that just get out and come back and commit another crime? What is your mathematical path, Governor DeSantis, in order to try to beat President Trump, who has a commanding and enduring lead in this race?
Yeah, yeah, that lady’s pretty good. She was the only moderator I could understand without a struggle. Somebody should give her a job sitting next to an incredibly handsome genius every day at 5:00. And also Jesse Waters. Anyway, here’s a little-known fact that I just made up. Debate is actually a Latin word, meaning everybody talking at once.
VIDEO OF CANDIDATES TALKING OVER EACH OTHER
All of those voices. I felt like I was inside Geraldo’s brain. No offense to Dana’s fellow moderator, Ilia Calderon, but damn, and I’m not talking about her accent, although she does make Salma Hayek sound like Queen Elizabeth. But as she struggled, I struggled with her. But look, if you hired me to moderate a Spanish language debate, I wouldn’t do a very good job either. But at least I wouldn’t fill up the airwaves with a bunch of liberal cliches. Or as they say in Spanish b******.
ILLIA CALDERON ASKS A QUESTION: You have said slaves developed skills in spite of slavery, not because of it, but many are still hurt. What is your message to them? Would you work with Congress to reach a permanent solution for Dreamers? What is your specific plan to curb gun violence? Violence against LGBTQ+ people is on the rise and intensifying. How would you protect this community from violent attacks?
So those questions insulted me because we’ve regularly challenged those phony talking points every day. And yet here we pretend they’re agreed-upon truths at this debate. Too bad the candidates let them fly, because those questions, which oddly had no follow-up from her, could have been written by Keith Olbermann if he could still write. She amplified a smear about DeSantis. She blamed Americans for the fentanyl flooding the southern border. She asked Mike Pence what he would do to stop violence against LGBTQ+ people. I’m sorry, guys. This is a Republican debate. If I want my intelligence insulted, I’ll talk to Brian Kilmeade but that’s Univision, it’s not Fox News, so that’s a good call RNC well done. Thankfully, Pence was good for a few dad jokes.
MIKE PENCE: My wife isn’t a member of the teachers union, but I got to admit, I’ve been sleeping with a teacher for 38 years. I served in Congress for 12 years, although it seemed longer.
Yeah, he made Ronald Reagan Library sound like an actual library. The guy’s stiffer than Nancy Pelosi’s eyebrows. If I wanted horribly delivered bad jokes, Seth Meyers is back Monday. I don’t even know him. They’re like, Why did he bring up this stranger? DeSantis seems to have pulled ahead, however, simply by not s**** his pants, low bar. And near the end, thankfully, he was able to articulate something beyond a robotic smile and stiff arm movements. Because up to that point, I was waiting for Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz to oil his elbows. Vivek, he was weird. He went from the insult pirate of the last debate to ‘Hey, you guys are awesome now.’ And every time somebody insulted him, his hair grew a little higher. By the end, air traffic control at LAX kept telling him to duck, but he did make good points about mental health, social media, trans and kids. And he did have the last word as the debate crumbled into the ether. I’d say Nikki Haley came off as shrill, but at least she nailed TikTok even as they advertised during the debates. You know you’re being lied to when TikTok suddenly pretends to be right-wing. But there was one candidate who, like Hunter Biden on Father’s Day, was absent. Donald Trump.
CHRIS CHRISTIE VIDEO: Donald, I know you’re watching. You’re not here tonight because you’re afraid of being on the stage and defending your record. You’re ducking these things. And let me tell you what’s going to happen. You keep doing that, no one up here is going to call you Donald Trump anymore. We’re going to call you Donald Duck.
Looks like a human bottle opener. That was the worst delivery I’ve seen since the Octomom gave birth. Trump wasn’t there, of course, because he’s leading every poll and every attack on him felt like a child getting back at Daddy. But I would have preferred these guys answering the questions instead of taunting the Orange Menace. So you had the clear winner of the debate, Dana Perino. Why isn’t she running for president? Not only would she be the first female president ever, but she’d be the first one to take the oath of office while standing on six phone books. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Just think about all the extra room they’d have in the White House. We could Airbnb it to pay down the debt.
But it’s hard to pick a winner because no one shined. I felt like a school bus driver taking a group of noisy delinquents to community service. And you know what? It’s not their fault either. If the advent of podcasting taught us anything, it’s that this free-for-all debate structure is deader than Joe Biden’s frontal lobes. Turns out it turns everyone into ‘Look at me’ potshot artists instead of people explaining why they should be president. I felt gross watching it, but that could have been the £3 cakes I ate. Who didn’t feel like slitting their wrists after that quarrel over curtains?
VIDEO OF TIM SCOTT AND NIKKI HALEY ARGUING OVER CURTAINS
A fight over f**** curtains. Does it matter who was right or wrong? And the moderators were powerless to stop the noise because that structure leaned into the chaos instead of preventing it. From now on, they should give the moderators tasers that’ll quiet things down. They’re going to use the potato gun on Christie, but carbs only make him stronger. But maybe it sucked because when you compare debate structures to long-form interviews where you learn a lot about the candidates, you know, maybe it’s time to take this sort of spectacle out into the woods and shoot it. This is 2023. That debate felt so 2015. We deserve better, like smaller debates between two candidates, one after the other. It’s worth a shot. One thing’s for sure, no matter what you think about the GOP candidates, including the one who didn’t show up, none of them are as bad as this guy.
VIDEO OF BIDEN FALLING
Yeah. We need a president who can stand up for America. Or maybe one that can just stand.
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