In case you missed the first five minutes or so of Monday night’s presidential debate — the first scheduled, non-Twitter showdown between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump — here’s a quick summary of all the bullshit that Trump tried to pull. Luckily, in the age of instant fact-checking, even moderator Lester Holt, bless him, was able to call out the candidate soon enough to watch him stumble further down the rabbit hole.
1. Clinton: “Donald thinks that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.” Trump: “I did not -- I do not say that.”
Yes, you did. Several times. Trump's original 2012 tweet declared that global warming is a concept “created by…the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” He has since backed off from this, claiming that it was a joke. Where’s the punchline? Nowhere, apparently, because he went on
Fox and Friends in January and said that he thinks that climate change “is just a very, very expensive form of tax. A lot of people are making a lot of money. I know much about climate change…And I often joke that this is done for the benefit of China…But this is done for the benefit of China, because China does not do anything to help climate change. They burn everything you could burn; they couldn't care less.” Meanwhile, I guess the factual evidence for climate change is just going to gather dust over in the corner. Because since when is politics about the truth?
2. Trump: “You go anywhere you want, Secretary Clinton, and you will see devastation where manufacturing is down thirty, forty, sometimes fifty percent -- NAFTA is the worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere but certainly ever signed in this country.”
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, NAFTA didn't end up causing the yuge job losses that Trump describes. In fact, "the overall net effect of NAFTA on the U.S. economy has been relatively small, primarily because total trade with both Mexico and Canada was equal to less than 5% of U.S. GDP at the time NAFTA went into effect." Another important note from this source: because of NAFTA, U.S. exports to Mexico, our leading partner in merchandise trade, has increased by a whopping 478% ($41.6 billion in 1993 to $240.3 billion in 2014), so maybe building a wall isn't the smartest idea.
3. Trump, to Clinton: “No wonder you’ve been fighting ISIS your entire adult life.”
"Hillary Clinton was born in 1947. The roots of ISIS arguably go back to the late 1990's, but the rise of ISIS in its present form followed the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011. Either way, the terrorist group was long after Clinton became an adult." – Sarah McCammon, Politics Reporter
Again, another heat-of-the-moment response that accomplishes nothing but affirming his temperament as a petulant child who was denied his free Icedream at Chick-fil-A.
4. Trump: “Now look, we have the worst revival of an economy since the Great Depression.”
I've noticed that Trump really favors the unfounded blanket statements; not only does the simple vocabulary appeal to the IQ of the average Trump voter, but the fear-mongering without any factual basis whatsoever plays off of our emotions like that one guy you had a crush on in the tenth grade.
Just to clear the air: "Private sector employers have added 15.1 million jobs since the trough of the recession in 2010. Unemployment, which peaked at 10 percent in October 2009, has fallen to 4.9 percent. Unemployment among African-Americans, which peaked at 16.8 percent in March 2010, has fallen to 8.1 percent. And unemployment among African-American young people is not 58 percent as Trump claimed, but 26.1 percent." –Scott Horsley, White House Correspondent
5. Holt: “The IRS has an audit of your taxes. You’re perfectly free to release your taxes during an audit.”
Trump's lawyers (if he actually has any, and it's not just one long boardroom full of computer screens all skyping himself) have advised the candidate not to release his tax returns, which is really the only way to prove or disprove his countless claims about just how successful his business is. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said that “the IRS doesn’t care one way or another if a taxpayer releases his or her own documents.” Here's to hoping that Wikileaks will do us a solid.
CNN's poll that came sliding in an hour after the debate ended declared a win for Clinton (62%) over Trump (27%). Although it's safe to say that Clinton "won" the debate, it was likely not enough to turn the tide of the undecided voters. And there are still two more rounds to go — if Trump even shows up.
So, please, for the love of God, get out there and vote.