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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:
@Number Sequence
Yeah, he was, I happened to catch that.
@Àine
Well, my posts have been pretty Trump-centric lately, but it is worth pointing out that both Trump and Adams are pretty misogynistic, in general and with regard to how they treat Hillary.
@Sinkable John: someone kindly put this on one of the threads earlier:
http://www.npr.org/2016/09/26/495115346/fact-check-first-presidential-debate
Roger may find it interesting too, if Roger is at all interested in facts.
I’m not a racist or anything, but boy, that guy talking about how all of the nation’s problems are caused by immigrants coming into “our country” sounded really reasonable to me.
I’m not a sexist or anything, but women who know their shit are smug and passive-aggressive. I find I am sympathetic to men who constantly interrupt these bad women.
@Sinkable John: no interesting trolls. A rather dull one, though.
I’m not a racist or anything, but Trump’s idea to build a huge wall to keep out the immigrants who pick our crops and wait on our tables and construct our buildings, often for little pay and under terrible conditions, and somehow (a black box is involved) force Mexico to pay for it seems like sound foreign policy.
I’m not a sexist or anything, but a woman who is satisfied with herself makes me very anxious and sad.
Viscaria –
It’s not all the problems, but the recent terrorist attacks were caused by immigrants which is what Trump said. He was right on that point = reasonable. Probably better to be careful.
I don’t think Clinton was being passive aggressive because she knows her stuff – and I’m sure she is as capable of anyone as being aggressive-aggressive – it was probably a tactic to make Trump look bad.
It’s just that, in my eyes, it made her look bad. If I’m thinking about who I want to watch on TV for the next 8 years, Trump is winning.
That’s a beautiful summation, Viscaria, thank you. May I quote you on it?
@ roger
I think I’ll let Barry Shitpeas field that one…
And this, right here, is the problem with the US electorate: believing that politics is just another reality TV show.
The rest of us are thinking about who’s qualified to address the serious problems facing the nation and the world, which candidate has the experience, and which candidate is able to make a speech without insulting, demeaning, or threatening to deport 3/4 of the population.
Trump isn’t even that entertaining as a TV star. He can’t go five sentences without injecting a personal brag of some kind, or putting someone else down. He’s boring, shallow, and very negative.
Back to Scott Adams:
Maybe that’s because she was being interrupted 51 times.
Was Roger watching the debate with the sound off? Is that why Roger missed noticing all the lies Trump was caught out in? Read the transcript, Roger. Trump didn’t even trot out the “all terrorism is done by immigrants” furphy in the debate – if he had you could have read the factcheck on that.
But Roger intends to vote according to what Roger likes looking at on TV, not the issues. And Roger is looking forward to seeing this at every press conference announcing the latest Trump governmental failure
https://mobile.twitter.com/ChuckTingle/status/780592369917759488/video/1
because there’s nothing smug about that!
Because we need a little cuteness among the stupid political BS that is this election: That capybara with the kitten looks like Cheesecake. Cheesecake lives at Rocky Ridge Refuge and fosters puppies.
http://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/cheesecake-the-capybara-is-the-worlds-best-puppy-foster-mom/
Roger
Roger, you were already a Trump supporter, you didn’t just decide. It’s fine. You weren’t going to be swayed no matter what.
Actually, you call Clinton smug, and that turned you off her, but what about Trump’s behavior of interrupting and making faces? Why is smug worse than petulant child?
So what if she’s establishment? The alternative to the establishment still has to be good. A goat isn’t establishment, would you vote for that if it had the non establishment platform? Or a pile of leaves? “That pile of leaves isn’t a DC insider, it’s got my vote!” “That passing cloud doesn’t look smug! I’ll vote for that.” So how is he a better alternative? How is someone who happily says he exploited the laws to stiff workers he owed money a good thing? How is a guy who thinks bombing another country’s ships because they “taunted” ours wouldn’t start a war a good thing?
You say recent terror attacks were caused by immigrants, but the recent terror attacks were caused by US citizens. But that also ignores the much more frequent mass shootings by white dudes that don’t get classified as terror attacks.
Wait a minute. I thought that Trump was supposed to win the debate through his mastery of linguistic killshots.
Tessa, you miss the point when you write of “frequent mass shootings by white dudes that don’t get classified as terror attacks.” An incident is defined as a terror attack if its purpose is not only to cause immediate damage, but to leave the larger society unsettled and, well, terrified. Obviously, only black and brown people would want to do that. If a white person does it, he is expressing a legitimate grievance, or else he is simply a disgruntled loner whose problems are entirely personal. So, by definition, white people are incapable of terror attacks.
I don’t know about everyone else, but I totally believe that Roger was an undecided voter until the debate.
Roger,
Rather than telling me what is bad about Clinton, could you please tell what you think Trump will do as president that will be good? I mean policies. Not you wanting to look at him on TV. I’m pretty sure the only ones I heard the other night were cutting taxes and federalizing stop and frisk even though it’s unconstitutional. Did I miss something?
Trump’s plan to stop outsourcing by cutting taxes is just so ridiculous. There was still plenty of outsourcing during the George W Bush administration. Why do Republicans think tax cuts are magic? It’s just the silliest thing. I suppose it’s appealing because it’s simple. But it doesn’t work.
@EJ TOL, of course! You may also feel free to adapt and improve it.
@Roger
Huh. If that is your main voting criterion, may I suggest allowing Canada to annex your nation? Our current leader looks absolutely marvelous in front of the camera. Plus, you’ll be able to compete in the Commonwealth games.
To heck with Canada, if you want your leader to look good on TV, get the USA to be annexed by Bhutan. The King of Bhutan can be SO photogenic it’s spooky.
BaronJenks,
I looked him up. Wow. He’s beautiful.
I was going to tell you to stop muscling in on my con, BaronJenks, but then I looked him up. Wow. That is one attractive head of state.
Edit: Haha I can’t believe Lea and I said almost the same thing, word for word.
@BaronJenks
You are so right! I had to google images of him, but the King of Bhutan has some serious photogenic cred.
Rightly or wrongly if you’re being attacked by a group it is more threatening than being attacked by an individual.
Also, there are plenty of bad people in the country. Plenty of bad white people too. We don’t have any choice about that.
We can have a choice about letting in only good people from other countries though. So that is one thing Trump would do better.
I don’t like Trump’s economic plans. I don’t think he knows what he is doing. But he seems reasonably sensible – I think he’ll probably adapt. If Clinton came out and acted like a human, she could sway me – but I just feel like she’s too sure of herself – or too sure of what to do.
An adaptable idiot is preferable to an expert completely sold on the conventional wisdom. It’s called the Socratic paradox. Look it up.
White people are individuals, people of colour are a massive indistinct horde. Got it.
But anyway, the conversation has moved on, Roger! We are now talking about the preternatually beautiful King of Bhutan. Please keep up.
He looks like Antonio Inoki.
So, Roger, the bad thing about Clinton is that she has ideas on what to do, and the good thing about Trump is that (you assume) he will let other people tell him what to do. We, the voters, should evaluate the candidates not on what they say they will do, but on how likely we think they are to do something completely different instead.
Well, I cannot fault the logic in that. Mainly because I cannot see any.
Really, Scott Adams actually had the stronger argument when he urged voting for Trump because he insults Rosie O’Donnell (except that Trump again insulted O’Donnell in the debate, which means that he should have won the debate, and even Adams admits that he did not…oh, my brain hurts.)