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Notes -
I want a vice presidential debate top level post.
So JD Vance sounded pretty good here overall. If you ask me, both speakers were miles ahead of their presidential candidate counterparts, which is sad. There is probably a lot that can be read from the debate, but I did want to discuss a couple moments making waves on other social media. First I will mention I was surprised to hear JD Vance support nuclear energy, and I will also mention a lot of people were probably unhappy with how he handled the gun control/mass shooting question. But back to the two I wanted to mention
The first such moment originated from a fact check:
Tim Walz responds to his statement, and then a debate moderator comes in with this:
I will cut it off there to not balloon this post. You can read the transcript here.
It seems many blue tribers saw him complaining about a fact check and seeing a win. Why would you complain about fact checking other than if you were lying? This is another example going back to Scott's post about the media rarely lying. Hey, they're temporary asylum seekers, so since they were allowed in with little hindrances to speak of, they're legal. Fact checked. This is an example of why I tend to dislike fact checking in a debate. It introduces an opportunity to use unfavorable framing on an opponent with lawyerspeak on technically true things. Let the candidates do it themselves if they want.
Next up, the January 6th and failure to concede the election:
Once again, there is more to this exchange than that. I said earlier that they had good performances, and I'll go further here and say that JD Vance had a pretty great night. I'd never heard him speak before and he sounded very well spoken, very well informed, and brought up many issues that I so dearly wished that Donald Trump would have brought up, like specifically naming the asylum system and mentioning the partial birth abortions allowed in Minnesota (I noticed Tim Walz's denial was not fact checked). That is to say, JD Vance is competent and might have won against Kamala Harris, representing a return to civil debates and "normal" politicians, despite the "weird" allegations.
But he is really dragged down on this issue. It's lame he has to defend election denial claims in the first place, and leave room for challenging more later. I know many of you have strong feelings on the truthfulness of the claims. I will say this: if someone goes and makes those claims, they shouldn't run again. That is very powerful ammo for the other side. And it's far from the only ammo. I am very disappointed with the rhetoric Trump throws around. His lashing out against Taylor Swift reads as totally pathetic. And it is sad to see someone with as much talent as JD Vance have to try to slip around all this crap coming at him, from both Tim Walz, the debate moderator, and untold amounts of unhappy people on Twitter.
JD Vance basically won the debate. He was bogged down by being tied to Trump’s dumber ideas, but he won nonetheless by running rings around Walz. He clearly knew what he was talking about, too, with comments like the CBP one app.
Walz lied about project 2025, but that’s to be expected. Vance pinned him on after birth abortion but I wish he could’ve called him out on Amanda Thurman.
Overall I think lots of Americans would be much happier if it were a Walz-Vance élection. The moderators were clearly biased but less so than the Trump-Harris debate. And I think the most lasting moment from the debate will be Walz’s gaffe where he claimed to befriend school shooters.
People here keep saying Democrats “lied about Project 2025.” What are they actually saying about it? What has Trump said, other than “not knowing the guy?”
I think if you take Trump seriously but not literally, or just assume that he doesn’t have many plans to choose from, he’s probably going to end up picking a very Project-approved slate. Kind of like the Federalist Society list of justices. He’s never had any problem delegating before.
That it is Trump's plan for his second term. It is not Trump's plan, neither in the sense of Trump creating it nor Trump endorsing it.
But surely we can agree Trump's thinking has been influenced by his careful study of the 922-page publication from the Heritage Foundation describing Project 2025, and/or the back-and-forth discussions he engaged in with its authors on policy matters prior to its being released.
I... think this is satire?
I just find the whole Project 2025 association so absurd because I actually followed the Democrats' advice and "google[d] Project 2025", which led me to the discovery of the project's 922-page book. And to claim that Donald Trump, of all people, actually read this book, well... is there any person in America who could believe it? As Loquat says in his comment, people invent all kinds of fantastical stories about Trump, but the idea that he would read a book? You've got to be kidding.
Well, I don’t think trump’s thinking was influenced by it because I don’t think Trump has coherent thoughts on policy. The less catchy version would be that the people staffing a future Trump administration would be influenced by the agenda outlined in project 2025. I don’t think that’s far off from what’s being said, is it?
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I've heard all manner of claims about Donald Trump, but I've never heard anyone accuse him of being the sort of man who'd carefully study a 922-page document on governance.
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