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If you thought Chuck Tingle’s version of the Clinton-Trump debate last night was surreal, well, take a look at what Dilbert creator and wannabe master persuader Scott Adams has to say about it.
Unlike some of Trump’s superfans, Adams is willing to admit that, yeah, Hillary kind of won the debate, at least by normal debate standards.
Clinton won on points. She had more command of the details and the cleaner answers. Trump did a lot of interrupting and he was defensive. If this were a college debate competition, Clinton would be declared the winner.
But Adams thinks this “victory on the 2D chess board” doesn’t really matter, because in his mind, apparently, Trump is playing some kind of 95th Dimensional mashup of Chess, Cribbage, and Hungry Hungry Hippos, or something. And in this game, Trump is the clear winner.
“Clinton won the debate last night,” Adams explains. “And while she was doing it, Trump won the election.”
IS YOUR MIND BLOWN YET
On the off chance that your mind is not, in fact, blown, let’s look at exactly why Adams thinks Trump is the real victor in this game of 95th Dimension Chesscribbippos.
As he sees it, Hillary needed to prove to skeptical Americans (or at least to Dr. Adams) that she’s healthy. And she failed.
Clinton looked (to my eyes) as if she was drugged, tired, sick, or generally unhealthy, even though she was mentally alert and spoke well. But her eyes were telling a different story. She had the look of someone whose doctors had engineered 90 minutes of alertness for her just for the event.
Huh. This is your takeaway from a debate in which Trump sniffled so much that people started to wonder if he wasn’t hopped up on the cocaine?
Some will say Clinton outperformed expectations because she didn’t cough, collapse, or die right on stage.
But that’s not enough for Adams, who raises the serious medical question: Is Hillary’s smile kind of weird?
Clinton’s smile seemed forced, artificial, and frankly creepy. … My neighbor Kristina hypothesized that Botox was making her smile look unnatural. Science tells us that when a person’s mouth smiles, but their eyes don’t match the smile, they look disingenuous if not creepy. Botox on your crow’s feet lines around your eyes can give that effect. But whatever the reason, something looked off to me.
CLEARLY UNQUALIFIED TO BE PRESIDENT
Trump, by contrast, was the perfect model of health and handsomeness! Well, not entirely.
To be fair, Trump’s physical appearance won’t win him any votes either. But his makeup looked better than I have seen it (no orange), his haircut was as good as it gets for him … .
But Trump didn’t WIN THE ELECTION LAST NIGHT just by being somewhat less orange than usual. He showed what a calm, cool, and collected customer he is.
Trump needed to solve exactly one problem: Look less scary. Trump needed to counter Clinton’s successful branding of him as having a bad temperament to the point of being dangerous to the country. Trump accomplished exactly that…by…losing the debate.
Wait, what?
Trump was defensive, and debated poorly at points, but he did not look crazy.
MASSIVE WIN
And pundits noticed that he intentionally avoided using his strongest attacks regarding Bill Clinton’s scandals.
You actually think he lost the debate … on purpose?
In other words, he showed control. He stayed in the presidential zone under pressure. And in so doing, he solved for his only remaining problem. He looked safer.
As I put it in a tweet to Adams last night (you’ll have to forgive my typo):
Yeah, Trump throwing a tantrum as the same exact moment he was attacking Hillary for having a bad "temperament" was super duper reassuring. https://t.co/RQnRLxd66C
— David Futrelle (@DavidFutrelle) September 27, 2016
Trump definitely looked presidential, not at all like a giant petulant baby who shouldn’t even be in the same city as the nuclear codes.
BLINKING SARCASM.GIF
The most memorable moments of the first debate: Clinton laughs off Trump’s temperament barb https://t.co/NW6ToTCDFS https://t.co/IR90V9KcLc
— POLITICO (@politico) September 27, 2016
Ladies and gentleman, Donald J. Trump! https://t.co/H9Uy8yzNYZ by @RiosJose559 via @c0nvey
— FLOR DO DESERTO (@FlorDeserto) September 27, 2016
https://twitter.com/peterwsinger/status/780607277938147328
https://twitter.com/CCW000/status/780897508310458368
Oh, wait, that last one isn’t Trump. Hard to tell sometimes.
And here’s the latest Pledge Drive capybara, with a friend:
I don’t know. I walked away even more terrified of the cheeto toddler.
This reminds me of the football over here. Whenever a team goes crashing out of the FA Cup the managers always claim it was a deliberate ploy so they can “concentrate on winning the League, because that’s what really matters”.
Scott Adams: the walking, talking, Dunning–Kruger effect.
“I had an idea, and if it were true I’d be so clever for thinking of it, and I am so clever, so it must be true!”
[bloviating intensifies]
“Surreal” is so completely inadequate….
When I was a kid I remember my dad talking about how dangerous Barry Goldwater seemed. How far (over the precipice) we’ve come.
So, Scott Adams thinks this is Trump:
American politics is shallow. The candidate who has something mockable the media takes and runs with, is the losing candidate.
If Trump’s sniffles sticks, it’ll join Romney’s binders of women, Marco Rubio’s thirst for bottled water and Al Gore inventing the internet as the thing that killed the campaign.
ETA: How could I forget to throw the Howard Dean scream in there when he’s been in the news today too!?
Freaking 11th dimensional chess players, they play one game and suddenly they see pawns and rooks wherever they go.
So in Dilbert the pointy haired boss was the self insert of Scott Adams. Stupid, selfish and boring.
Also, FDR was a living corpse through four terms in office
I’ve got it!!! I know what’s going on now!! It’s all so simple!!!!
Scott Adams is the human incarnation of Poe’s Law, and Trumphhhh is going to spring an October surprise by dropping out, saying “I ran a campaign based on the worst ideas I could say out loud and not go to jail!! Even after THAT, you f***ing morons were gonna make me PRESIDENT!!!! What the f*** is WRONG with you???”
WWTH, I agree 1000%… My nightly prayers are “pleeeeeease, don’t let Hillary say anything about Swift Boats or something else they can run with”
Long-time lurker, first-time commenter here. Scott Adams might be doing that whole affirmations woo he used to tout the benefits of about 10 years back (and still might), where basically you write down what you want to happen enough times, and it will magically come true with no effort on your part. Seriously. “Trump Will Win the Presidency, Trump Will Win the Presidency, etc.”
Can we rule out that Scott Adams may just have too much invested and Trump has put him under spell as he was first and has a lot to gain from a president Trump. Like in the Miss Universe talk he was visibly shocked and rattled and if Clinton is able to drag up information like that while going to bat for the victim giving them a platform is her path to the presidency and may be wider then we think.
So all Trump had to do to “win” the debate was not drop his pants, shit in his hand, and fling it at Hillary? I’m probably being overly emotional and not using my man-logic here, but that seems to be a pretty fucking low bar to clear.
Let me tell you why this is good news for McCain!
Why am I reminded of the Confederacy rejoicing, after Richmond fell, that it no longer had to defend cities?
As far as snubbing the moderator goes, I thought I saw Trump double back and shake his hand? Probably a breach of etiquette not to be right behind Clinton, but they did shake hands.
I’m still not certain why they think bringing up Bill Clinton’s affairs would hurt her. It wasn’t her that did the cheating. Other women were sympathetic. A cheated on spouse saying mean things about her husband’s mistress is understandable. Bill isn’t running.
But most of all why would they possibly think a serial adulterer going after the victim of adultery would look good for him? Do they honestly think that she doesn’t have an answer ready for that? Do they think opening up questions about his relationships makes him look better?
I’m pretty sure Adams would have counted that as a victory, too.
Okay, somebody invent this, because I would play the shit out of it.
Also Dave, your sense of humour gets me every time and it’s why I keep coming back here. You do such a great job of finding the absurdity hidden within the awfulness.
Hillary: “Donald (you don’t mind if I call you Donald?) do you REALLY want to get into a discussion about marital fidelity???”
That would have been priceless!
@Thiazin red
I’m not even sure why anyone would think his numerous affairs would hurt Bill Clinton. Gennifer Flowers was heavily publicized before he was even the front-runner in 1992, and never had any negative effect on his campaign. For whatever reason, the voting public has never cared.
It’s chess with pigeons, every single time.
So Trump acting less like the asshole he is will win him the election by losing the debate? Mr. Adams, that’s called moderating your stance which most candidates do for general election. You are not clever.
You know, Trump’s for all forms of energy… particularly White Power, but I don’t think that’s going to help him now.
On a side note – if you hate listening to the debates, try muting and closed captioning if your TV has that option. I think YouTube does, too. I actually like to watch the debates that way to pay more attention to body language. Well, and to MST 3K whatever Clinton was writing.
If we all say “Trump Will Lose The Presidency” 5 times into a mirror in a darkened room, will he disappear?
And perhaps spare a thought for your captioners, who are doing that shit live! Very impressive.
I “listened” by reading the NPR feed.
I forget who tweeted it, but my fave from last night:
TRUMP: I have the better temperament!
FACT CHECK: He is Donald Trump.
If Trump wins, Adams will never shut up about having called it… 🙁
@Bias Free Cookies
Welcome package on the right, newbie 🙂
@Viscaria
Yep