I’m no expert in politics—especially international politics—but even I think this week’s Presidential debate was a car crash you can’t look away from. Knowing that I won’t understand most of the debate without some help, I assembled a team of international experts on various topics and brought them to Weis Cinema with me. Their comments and questions were vital to my understanding of current political situation in the US, so I’m going to share some of them here.
“Trump is flirting with Putin,” said the expert on romance. “He must’ve called Moscow and said, ‘I’m so sorry, dear friend, but I’ll have to say that I don’t know you, it’s for the politics, you understand.’”
Viewing the debate through the lens of the Snapchat’s puppy filter, another expert noticed that Trump manages to say a lot of words without actually putting any meaning into them.
The language expert that speaks four languages and is about to learn a fifth remarked, “Trump’s English is about as good as my German but I’ve only been speaking German for a year or so.”
The film expert was convinced that the debates are nothing but entertainment, and said, I quote: “What we have here is a trilogy, and you know how it always is—we never really need the third movie, but it comes out, and we know it’s going to be terrible and yet we go and watch it.”
All the experts were impressed by Hillary Clinton’s eloquence and composure. “She can form a full sentence,” I heard someone say. “Yeah, and the words actually make sense when she puts them together.”
“But isn’t it what you should normally expect from a presidential candidate?” I asked, more and more shocked by the whole thing.
“Well,” said one of the experts, “clearly it is not that common nowadays.”
After the debates the experts and I went to dinner, and each expert commented on the political problems of their countries. Our friendly conversation quickly escalated into a heated discussion, but in the end everyone agreed that their candidates are not the worst there is.
In all seriousness, though, the debates have been one of the strangest American experiences I’ve had in these two months. In my country we don’t really have that sort of thing—we just elect the same guy over and over again—so I wasn’t sure what to expect. And I still don’t know exactly what I witnessed.
