MAGA Debate Rules
What Trump Is Really Saying Tonight
Presidential debates have their own special stakes, media rituals, cadences, and implications, and since its likely we only have one debate — more on that later — tonight’s showdown in Atlanta will be one for the ages. The all matter. This one matters a lot.
One consequential factor playing into this debate is the media’s outright bias against one of the candidates. Their preference for the showmanship, click-and-eyeball catching antics, and scenery-chewing fun of Donald Trump isn’t ideological; it’s just business. The buttoned-up, boring, old and old-school Biden White House just lacks the crazy carnival ride appeal of Four Last Years for the American experiment.
The treatment of Biden versus Trump in the days leading to this debate continues to astound me.
Donald Trump has been virtually speaking in tongues, his incoherent logorrhea practically requiring a team of trained linguists and semioticians to extract even a scintilla of meaning from torrential flood of word vomit. He’s spent months promising a reign of political vengeance, flaunting his lavish criminality, assaulting the truth like a SEAL team’s worth of Tommy Flanagans, and promising a reign of authoritarian excess.
But Biden is so old, right? He did boring debate prep, like a nerd.
The spin structure ahead of the debates permeating the media noosphere this week centers on Biden’s age, and the seemingly never-learned lessons about Trump’s battlefield preparation of the debate stage. “If Biden wins, he’s on drugs! If he loses, he’s senile!” was the central thrust of the Trump’s highly aggro approach this week.
But Trump isn’t feeling the confidence and swagger he usually sells.
He knows Biden beat him twice before. Trump knows Biden has been prepping while he’s been golfing. He regrets the format and the lack of an audience. None of this feels right to Team Trump, which is why the teased withdrawing from the debate earlier this week and why his senior aides are very quietly working to lower expectations.
His social media followers are making “rigged debate” tweets at a ferocious clip this morning. Everyone in their orbit seems eager to talk about the VP contest…”Oh, yeah, the debate. Biden’s on drugs. Whatever.”
The headlines and assertions in the MAGA media betray a certain degree of nervous resignation:
The increasingly Rupert-y Wall Street Journal opined: “Even with the moderators in Biden’s corner, the president will have a hard time with the questioning.”
Ben Shapiro weighed in: CNN’s Debate Moderators: Don’t Expect Fairness
The lesser lights of the MAGA media crazy train also bleated their wrongpinions:
Donald Trump’s Handicap Match: Liberal media won’t let this be a fair fight.
Watch Out for Shenanigans From CNN Debate Moderators Tapper and Bash!
Three Hoaxes To Watch for In Thursday Night’s Debate
That’s just a very superficial collection of their pre-gaming.
For the debate tonight, not only for the spin before and after, but for every Trump utterance on stage, remember the MAGA Debate Rules below. You will hear a thousand ways to contextualize every one of Trump’s assertions. I’ve written a set of rules that I believe give you a chance to know what he really means, no matter what he says:
MAGA DEBATE RULES
Every accusation is a confession.
Every denial is a full confession of guilt.
Every claim of evil is projection.
Every boast of strength is an admission of failure.
Every fact is subject to Trump’s sole interpretation.
Every law is a conspiracy against Trump.
Every anecdote is pure fiction.
Every casual cruelty and crazed conspiracy leads deeper into more cruelty and conspiracy.
Every word is a lie, every lie is a promise of betrayal.
Every person or group Trump claims to stand for, he loathes.
Finally, Everything Trump Touches Dies.
I was going to write up a clever drinking game for tonight, but I don’t want to be responsible for a wave of alcohol poisonings.
Tune in! Will be wild!
The drinking game to play to avoid alcohol poisoning is to do a shot whenever Trump completes a coherent sentence. You’ll stay stone-cold sober.
Keith Olbermann has been on this like white on rice. He's furious that CNN won't fact check the debate in real time and fears another Kaitlan Collins town hall debacle (I have respect for Collins and I think she tried, but the format just let Trump steamroll her). And then there's the idiot commentary from some of my homies at The Bulwark that cutting off mics actually helps Trump. No, it doesn't; it prevents Trump from filibustering, not that it would be coherent but that it would "show dominance" which is the only calling card Trump has left. It's a taste of fairness that the debate needs.