Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump squared off from the same stage Wednesday evening — if not exactly face to face — in a televised forum on national security and veterans issues. The candidates appeared and took questions separately, with Matt Lauer of NBC as the moderator, in a broadcast from New York. The event came hours after Mr. Trump delivered a national security address in Philadelphia.
- Hillary Clinton and her team need to find a way to let the email stories go away: She spent more than a third of her time talking about her emails and being on the defensive. Pressed by Mr. Lauer on her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton repeated that “it should not have been done,” insisting that she had not threatened national security.
- Matt Lauer may have been intimidated by Donald Trump: When he spoke with Hillary Clinton he was able to ask his questions and followed up properly. However, Trump got away with saying things like our military has been reduced to rubbles. Mr. Trump, confronted with past comments that he knew more about the Islamic State than generals do, said that generals under President Obama and Mrs. Clinton “have not been successful.” “I think under the leadership of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the generals have been reduced to rubble,” he said.How? Mr. Trump said that because he has “a very substantial chance of winning,” he would not detail counterterrorism plans and “broadcast to the enemy exactly what my plan is.” He said that he might rely on “a combination of my plan and the generals’ plan” in formulating his approach. He stated that there will be new Generals under his administration. Is he going to fire, demote or retire the current ones and will he be the one choosing how the ranking works? He wants to take the oil. When has America or any other country gone into a sovereign state to take their natural resources and how does he plan on doing that. • Asked what experience has prepared him to be commander in chief, Mr. Trump began, “Well, I built a great company, I’ve been all over the world.” Pressed again, he said, “the main thing is, I have great judgment,” before arguing that he was, in fact, against the war in Iraq, citing an article from 2004, after the war began. and he stopped pressing for a real answer. Mr. Trump, whose campaign has been scrutinized for ties to Russia, said of President Vladimir V. Putin, “If he says great things about me, I’m going to say great things about him.” He cited Mr. Putin’s approval ratings.“I think when he calls me brilliant, I’ll take the compliment,O.K.?” Mr. Trump said, adding that such comments would not affect his position in negotiations. He said that an improved relationship with Russia would be beneficial because “Russia wants to defeat ISIS as badly as we do.” Asked what kind of preparations he was doing to brush up on policy, Mr. Trump said he had been studying, but allowed, “I’m campaigning, I’m running a business, I’ve got a lot of hats right now.” He said he would be “100 percent” prepared by the time he took office, if elected. Really?
Donald J Trump at the presidential forum on Wednesday in New York. - Instant fact checking was totally absent: The moderator did not fact check some of the things these candidates talked about last night and we need to fact check them to educate the electorate. For example, Trump saying he was never in support of the Iraq war after Hillary was just Asked about her vote as a senator to authorize the war in Iraq, Mrs. Clinton repeated that it was a mistake, then turned her attention to Mr. Trump, who has said he opposed the war. She cited an interview from the time in which Mr. Trump expressed support for the war. “My opponent was for the war in Iraq. He said he wasn’t,” Mrs. Clinton said. “You can go back and look at the record.” why wasn’t this brought up to him? Also, the intelligence guys giving him National Security briefings told him or gave him body language that President Obama was not taking their advice on how to handle National Security? How did he let that go? On Hillary Clinton’s part talking about no ground troops in Syria and she will not send ground troops there. Well, the moderator should have let reminded her of the 5000 American troops facing combat currently in Syria and some of them have been killed by ISIS.
- These debates should be a cake walk for Hillary Clinton if Trump were a normal candidate: With her experience and knowledge of everything in a commander-in-chief’s job Hillary Clinton should be coasting in this election. She has the easiest candidate to run against but he is not a normal candidate and it makes life tough for anyone running against him. Last night was about sharing their vision on National Security and Trump spent the time talking about things unheard of in politics and he got away with it. He has set the bar so low that all he needs to do is remain calm and pretend to be presidential he will get a pass. Fareed Zakaria of CNN said it best. He said because Trump says these controversial and unrealistic things the media spend most of their time covering him and less time talking about Hillary Clinton who is the more knowledgeable candidate. When you compare how Mrs. Clinton defended the nuclear agreement with Iran, saying she believed in a “distrust-but-verify” approach with the country. “That agreement put a lid on their nuclear weapons program and imposed intrusive inspections,” and how Trump says things like “If we would have taken the oil, you wouldn’t have ISIS, because ISIS formed with the power and the wealth of that oil,” Trump told Lauer. How would we take it? “Just we would leave a certain group behind and you would take various sections where they have the oil,” he replied. One might wonder if we couldn’t just, you know, guard the oil on behalf of the Iraqis to curtail the Islamic State, if we’re putting people around the oil anyway? Well: “It used to be to the victor belong the spoils,” you will see how there will be more coverage on Trump’s remarks versus Hillary’s. Is is safe to say this is a strategy?
- Matt Lauer’s widely-panned performance shows the perils for debate moderators: No one is happy with the host of NBC’s “Today” show, who interviewed each presidential candidate back-to-back for 30 minutes during a “commander-in-chief forum” in primetime. It was a high-stakes political moment, far from the chummier confines of the ‘Today’ show and, for Matt Lauer, NBC’s stalwart of the morning, a chance to prove his broadcasting mettle on the presidential stage. The consensus afterward was not kind. … The criticism captured what has become a common complaint about media coverage during this election: that news organizations and interviewers treat Mrs. Clinton as a serious candidate worthy of tough questions, while Mr. Trump is sometimes handled more benignly.”Hillary Clinton’s campaign is angry that the NBC host devoted one-third of her time on stage to asking a series of follow-up questions about her email practices as secretary of state and then gave her little time to talk about pressing national security issues.Trump’s allies, meanwhile, insist that he took it too easy on her. “Six Obvious Follow-Up Questions NBC’s Matt Lauer Failed to Ask Hillary Clinton” is the headline on Breitbart News (which is controlled by Trump campaign CEO Steve Bannon). Good Luck to the moderators of the upcoming debates. They better be prepared to treat these candidates equally and probe them like they will any other presidential candidate.