ZeroHedge debate on Trump

Last night I took part in a debate sponsored by the website ZeroHedge, on the question of whether one Donald J. Trump ought to be the next President of the United States. As an equal opportunity hater, endowed by our glorious Constitution with the eternal right to oppose everybody, I of course argued against the motion. But as I stressed from the outset, this should in no way be construed as indicating my support for Joe Biden or any other candidate. In fact, I’d be happy to take part in subsequent debates opposing Biden, or Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for that matter. But last night the subject at hand happened to be Trump, so I was happy to oblige and spell out the deficiencies in the case for his candidacy.

Roger Stone was originally supposed to be debating for the “pro-Trump” side, but he dropped out at the last minute and was replaced by Alex Jones, who beamed in via satellite. I’m not sure how conducive this was to “debate,” but I hopefully made the most of it, and was even commended by Jones for being the only honest “liberal” he’s ever interacted with, although I had to take offense at the “liberal” label. I was amusingly paired with Richard Painter, the former George W. Bush White House lawyer who later became a rabid Trump antagonist, and ran for office several times as a Democrat, in addition to his regular pundit appearances on cable news. Filling out the debate was George Papadopoulos, the low-level Trump campaign advisor who was ridiculously hounded by the FBI for supposedly facilitating collusion with Russia, which of course never happened.

My basic point was that the best window into what Trump is likely to do as President again is what he did the first time. This isn’t 2016 when everyone had to speculate, because Trump had no record in public office. We now have four years worth of data showing what Trump did when he wielded power. And that record is simply not consistent with depictions of Trump as some warrior against the “Deep State.” Rather, my contention is that he’s actually perfectly compatible with the will of the “Deep State,” as demonstrated by the record of his previous term. Of course, this fact-based evaluation of Trump is not terribly welcomed either by Trump supporters or opponents, who tend to prefer fixating on imaginary or hallucinated versions of Trump.

The debate was held in West Palm Beach, FL, just a stone’s throw from Mar-a-Lago. I have some free time this afternoon, so I’m wondering if I should drop by and knock on the front door…