'Old, weird and tired': Columnist says 'sanewashing' can’t clean up Trump’s debate performance
ABC News hosted Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris' first presidential debate at Philadelphia's National Constitution Center on Tuesday night, September 10. Some of Trump's supporters were quick to rush to his defense after the debate — including Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Oklahoma), former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and podcaster/former Fox News host Megyn Kelly, all of whom accused debate moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis of being unfair to the former president.
Muir and Davis fact-checked Trump at times, inspiring Mullin and Ramaswamy to claim that he unfairly had to debate three people in Philly instead of one. But the vast majority of the fact-checking during the debate came from Harris, who debunked Trump's claims on everything from abortion to healthcare to foreign policy.
In a scathing article published the morning after the debate, Salon's Amanda Marcotte stresses that all the "sanewashing" in the world cannot clean up Trump's "weird" and "bizarre" debate performance.
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Sanewashing is a slang expression that means trying to make extreme ideas seem rational. And the debate, Marcotte argues, was a nonstop demonstration of how unfit for the White House Trump is.
"Old, weird, and tired: Trump knew those were the words he had to contend with going into the debate," Marcotte explains. "Yet he couldn't help but prove the charge. As practiced a liar as Trump is, he can't hide who he is and how much worse he's getting. He spent the debate vomiting out all the weirdest right-wing conspiracy theories as though he was a scowling human embodiment of an illiterate MAGA meme."
Marcotte continues, "He belched out a bizarre fantasy that doctors commit 'execution after birth,' which drew a fact-check from moderator Linsey Davis. He yelled a lie about how immigrants are 'eating the dogs' and 'eating the cats,' which triggered another fact check by moderator David Muir. He sounded very much like a chatbot programmed to speak only in far-right phrases, except worse, because it's shorting out. If that sounds like an exaggeration, it's not. He literally said, at one point, 'She wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison.'"
If Harris' goal was to bait Trump into showing how unhinged he is, Marcotte writes, she was wildly successful.
"The Harris campaign made their choice to focus on how Trump is old and weird," the Philadelphia-based journalist observes. "In this debate, Harris successfully zeroed in on that narrative, hitting it over and over. Now, every garbled statement or odd behavior from Trump will reinforce her message."
Marcotte adds, "Luckily for her, Trump can no more stop acting weird than he can stop wearing orange makeup."
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Amanda Marcotte's full article for Salon is available at this link.
