A Panic

In my last post, I neglected to address an additional point in the Trump-Biden debate in which Joe Biden failed to exploit an infamous remark made by an incumbent President who has been off his game for a few months now.

The missed opportunity came when Trump claimed (at 51:31) "they say the stock market will boom if I'm elected. If he's elected, the stock market will crash" and Biden responded

The idea that the stock market is booming is his only measure of what's happening. Where I come from, in Scranton and Claymont, the people don't live off of the stock market. Just in the last three, three years during this crisis, the billionaires in this country made, according to the Wall Street, $700 billion more dollars. $700 billion more dollars. Because that's his only measure. What happens to the ordinary people out there? What happens to them?

The reference by ol' Middle Class Joe to Scranton, PA. and Claymont, DE. works. However, if that's Trump's primary measure, as Biden recognizes, the latter missed an opportunity when he maintained the President "knew how dangerous it was but he didn't want to tell us, didn't want to tell us because he didn't want us to panic."

Trump did not tell Bob Woodward that he didn't want his subjects to panic.  He told the journalist in February "I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic."

The President did not then contend he did not want people to panic, nor even that he did not want to create panic. He did not want to create a panic.

Donald Trump's entire political strategy is centered on scaring people- on creating panic. Among his golden oldies are:  “In Joe Biden’s America, rioters, looters and criminal aliens have more rights than law-abiding citizens, and that’s true;”  “The entire Democratic field supports deadly sanctuary cities, which release dangerous criminals to terrorize your communities right here in North Carolina, believe it or not;”  and “Every major Democrat running for president has pledged to eliminate gas-powered automobiles and destroy the U.S. auto industry forever.”

Yet, when Donald Trump, who has touted stock market increases throughout his presidency, is caught obsessed with creating a panic, virtually everyone everywhere assumes he was referring to inciting hysteria.

Maybe he was, given that he often speaks on a sixth grade level. But maybe he wasn't. And if I'm an election opponent who is emphasizing that Donald Trump is for people over profits and the stock market over life, I hope I'd argue that when Donald Trump decided to withhold the truth from Americans, he was protecting the stock market and not people from Scranton, Steuben, or Saginaw.

 

Share |