Donald Trump Should Not Have Been on That Stage
Plus: What would you have done if confronted with Trump’s galloping lies?
DONALD TRUMP WON the first presidential debate the minute he walked onstage. His win was cemented a few minutes later, when the moderators addressed him as Mr. President. He had no business being there and his presence was stark evidence that our system is not only dysfunctional, it is impotent when we need it most.
The guardrails—the impeachment process, the Twenty-fifth Amendment, the courts—did not hold. They have proved to be a fairytale we spin to make ourselves feel better. They will remain just that: a fantasy destined to implode, over and over.
Maybe as soon as in the next few days, if the Supreme Court tells us whether Trump has immunity from prosecution for laws broken during his presidency. Maybe a few months from now, at the polls. Maybe next year, when his federal criminal trials will amount to something, or nothing, but too late to matter.
I’ve never understood why so many people buy into the Trump shtick—the bluster, the lies, the grift, the corruption, the amorality, the utter indifference to truth, national security, public health, and economic logic—and how polls could show a static, statistically tied race. But this has been the political wallpaper of American life for years now.
Trump’s appearance on the CNN debate stage was a jolting reminder of what this country has done to itself. For me it was a lightning strike of disbelief: Why was a twice-impeached, convicted felon allowed to participate? A former president who tried to overturn an election, hoarded national security secrets, and faces federal and state charges on both?
Why did President Joe Biden and his campaign not merely consent to be onstage with this man but demand an early debate?
Team Biden certainly did not anticipate that their candidate would create (even more) panic and despair about his age, health, and capacities. But many of us anticipated almost exactly what Trump would do. Aided by the debate rules, he showed some discipline and self-control in his demeanor. Aided as well by CNN’s avoidance of real time fact-checking, his lies were prodigious and outrageous. Fundamental, too.
When it was over, CNN’s ace fact-checker, Daniel Dale, briefly ran down what he called at least nine “false or misleading statements” from Biden: Statistics on drug prices, troop deaths, border crossings, taxes, and unemployment. Claims that Trump wants to end Social Security (he doesn’t, Dale said) and advised Americans to inject bleach (“foolish comments” but not framed as advice, he said).
Dale then delivered a three-minute virtuosic rapid-fire summary of Trump’s “way, way longer” list of lies, a “staggering” catalogue of “at least thirty false claims,” on every subject or person anyone would care about—Biden, Nancy Pelosi, abortion, China, veterans, immigrants, NATO, taxes, Ukraine, terrorism, crime, inflation, January 6th, and the 2020 election—dismissing them with phrases like “zero evidence” and “total nonsense”:
Who could have predicted this would happen?
Anyone who watched CNN’s town hall with Trump, when moderator Kaitlan Collins tried to push back on the lies and in short order had lost control of Trump, the facts, and the event. Anyone aware that CNN’s political director, David Chalian, had signaled a few days in advance that the moderators would not be fact-checking. “The venue of a presidential debate between these two candidates is not the ideal venue for a live fact-checking exercise,” he said. That responsibility was to be left to the candidates.
Terrific. So to set the record straight in real time, Biden would have had to dispute Trump thirty times or more. He did take some opportunities to strike back, but who among us would have all the statistics and facts in our brain to effectively deploy every time? What candidate would want to use up all their time arguing that the other guy was wrong? How do you weigh and conclude on the fly what is worth rebutting and what you need to let go in order to get your own points across? In a he-said, he-said situation, intentional and by design, who would trust your rebuttals? Only those who already trust you. And who will stay tuned for a fact check after the main event, even a spectacular and spectacularly brief one like Daniel Dale’s?
PART OF THE PROBLEM HERE IS THAT, as David Frum notes, the format of presidential debates is ill suited to our moment. But the deeper problem is that Trump was not stopped before this. Republicans failed to convict and remove him in two Senate impeachment trials arising from egregious acts. The Justice Department did not act quickly enough to bring cases against Trump. The Supreme Court and U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon gave Trump far more deference than he is due, or than other defendants get. And Democrats failed in Biden’s first two years to do enough to Trump-proof democracy.
Back in 2018–19, while Trump was still in office, a Brennan Center for Justice task force led by former federal prosecutor Preet Bharara and former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman delved into what Congress should do to strengthen our constitutional system. The to-do list would keep lawmakers busy for years. In the first installment they suggest, among many other things, laws that require disclosure of tax returns and business records, written justifications for pardons of close associates, an enforcement scheme for the Emoluments Clause, and new power for agency inspectors general to investigate improper interference in law enforcement matters. They also call for Congress to pass a resolution “expressly and categorically condemning self-pardons.” One item in the equally comprehensive part two says Congress must pass laws to address the Trump administration’s “stunning disregard” for the White House security-clearance process that is “critical to protecting national security.”
In today’s real world, though, there’s no ‘felons need not apply’ condition for the presidency and it’s scant comfort to recognize that reading a transcript of what Biden said in the debate is somewhat better than hearing and seeing him say it. By Friday, he was doing what he could to mitigate the damage. “I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious,” he told a cheering crowd in Raleigh, North Carolina. “I don’t walk as easy as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to. But I know what I do know: I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong. And I know how to do this job.” But scripted speeches read from a teleprompter won’t undo the impression of old age that Biden left last night.
Still, the much larger point remains about Trump, not Biden: It’s a disgrace that a democratic superpower would miss every single opportunity to keep a man like Trump off the debate stage, off the convention stage, and out of the White House. The Founders gave us the tools they thought we’d need to prevent this recurring nightmare. But every institution has let us down, from the GOP to (even and especially) the federal courts. If Congress doesn’t change our laws, and if Republicans keep equating patriotism with diehard or even lukewarm Trumpism, those institutions will continue to fail us and the prospect of another Trump will always loom on the horizon. If not closer.
 | A guest post by
|