Tom Toles for August 12, 2020

Right. Why debate him at all? Maybe Biden could set up a cardboard cutout in a folding chair…

“And no, Rebuttal is not a neighboring country to Thighland.”

Trump has had so many conflicts with things he said previously that he could debate himself if he waited several minutes between answers.

1: “Guess what! We buried Donald Tяump yesterday!”

2: “Really? Are you sure he was dead?”

1: “Well, he said he wasn’t, but you know how he lies…”

DJT’s epitaph (may it soon be written on the urinal serving as his headstone): “Here lies Donald John Trump, as always.”

Congenital Liar – {limerick}

Will someone please at least Try

to explain to this president why

it idn’t okay

from truths to stray, -

- that it’s not copacetic to lie.

… Coda: – {4 beats/line}

The Donald he figures that things go nicely

when he idn’t attentive to truths too precisely.

He’s congenitally a liar {to put it concisely}.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

“I am lying.” Admittedly he’s likely not clever enough to say that.

An article that Trump is deploying the “Dictator’s Playbook”: – https://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2020/08/will-enough-americans-show-stop-trump-using-dictators-playbook

Trumpie the Clown will just bully it’s way though like always .

{Off-topic:}

Brought to Nought – {limerick}

America’s been danged near brought

to an ignominious nought.

We’re taut, distraught,

unglued, overwrought

o’er this prez with psychoses fraught.

… Coda: – {4 beats/line}

He’s tied our governance in a Gordian knot, -

- yet his base would give him another shot{!!}.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I’ve had the thought that the debate rules should require constant and concurrent fact checking. At the fourth lie, the candidate should be escorted from the debate. In other words, no alternate facts!

The questioner appears to be unclear on the concept.

… and so, after an extended dramatic pause, Donald Trump finally reveals his true form. He is “Basilisk,” one of the evil mutants that comprise a small group of malicious X-Persons (female mutants among them insisted on that PC term).

Basilisk directs a baleful glare and exhales a blast of his noxious breath to overcome the presumptuous questioner. As he loudly crunches her bones within his gaping maw — as at a signal, all over the country the mutants in his administration reveal their true appearances and nefarious abilities. Numerous members of the Republican Congress take the form of despicable jabbering yellow Minions.

However, hardly nonplussed, the monitors continue the debate. By this time, “It is what it is” has become the standard response to any of Trump’s outrageous comments and actions. Although Joe Biden expresses apparent disapproval of Basilisk’s action on the stage, he leaves further comment to a time when all facts have been examined.

Not even a televised “Special Report” seems merited. “News at Eleven” has it as a brief lead story quickly followed by reports of delays among Sports seasons and another celebrity Covid-19 infection. Fox News pundits minimize the impact of the whole situation — and no wonder, because many of them are likely evil X-Persons, too.

And life goes on, as usual and aboutthesame … (—

Now Trump will just have to walk out of the debate because he can.

The R.N.C. told him a week or two earlier they had “acquired” in advance the list of questions they would be asked ! They MAILED it to him. As Trump was having a bowel movement he thought they had said “E-mailed”. His lips puckered up remembering telling his cronies slow the mail down, Pence knew they didn’t have a prayer . . .so to speak.

See the hilarious online Trump ads that label Biden as Liar Liar.

Trump: “I always lie.”

Moderator: “Is that a lie?”

Trump: “Of course.”

Moderator: “So then you sometimes tell the truth?”

Trump: “No.”

Moderator: “And that’s a lie too?”

Trump: “Of course.”

Moderator: “We could be here all day.”

Trump: “That’s the truth.” (a lie?)

So, will he just throw another juvenile hissy fit and waddle off the stage, sippy cup in hand???

I am happy to see the reporters start to questions his lies at the “press conferences”, he gets mad, flustered and walks off claiming fake news because they are outing him. Hope it continues bigly!

Any debates this cycle better include a switch to turn off trumps mike as soon as he digresses from the question.. with a very obvious flashing red light to show both trump and the audience he is talking to himself.

There should be rules – No name calling and must speak in complete sentences.

Biden shouldn’t even bother to debate the gasbag. Haven’t we heard enough of Trump’s lies?

The response will be incoherent.

You can’t talk to him like that! No one can talk to him without supplication!

Person, woman, man, camera, TV. Take that Biden….

Since the candidates need to agree on a format for each debate, Joe must insist on some element of real-time fact checking or else not debate the President.

At the first debate, Biden should introduce Mr. Veritas and say the role of Mr. Veritas will be to sound an air horn whenever one of the candidates tells a lie.

Or just ring a bell every time Trump opens his mouth! :D

Stupid liar funny hair Trump the racist called Kamala Harris “phony”.

“That’s an unfair question. A nasty question. Everybody will tell you I’ve never told a lie in my life.”

Don’t care as far as the moderators ask this hard question (which they won’t)

And he doesn’t even know he does it either! Just a few days ago he noted that the flu epidemic of 1918 ended World War II. So many thing wrong with that statement. I bet half the time he lies is because he thinks he needs to say something to support his beliefs and existence and if he has to make things up, so be it. What a putz … and he ain’t my putz.

Mr. Trump: “That’s a nasty question! Why do you ask a nasty question like that?”

Moderator: “Sir, I just asked your name.”

{Off-topic:}

America’s Blunder – {limerick}

There ain’t no need to wonder

why our nation is going under

{we’re ripping asunder

while plutocrats plunder}: -

- Not dumping Trump is our blunder.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Orange TasteeFreez’s podium is bigger! Is that to cover the extra long tie or something else we’d really rather not know?

You know he must be afraid of her if comes right out and starts calling her nasty names.

Like all con artists, Li’l Donnie has complete and utter contempt for the victims of his con—in this case, his voters. (Unlike most if not all other con artists, Li’l Donnie cannot even picture people AS people—even the children he spreads around with different wives seem to him to be merely extensions of his glorious self.) And, Li’l Donnie is living proof that a successful con artist or cult leader (and he was both for a time) need not be intelligent. He merely needs to be slightly less of an imbecile than the victims of his con games, or the victims of his cult. Trump is slightly less of an imbecile than the people who voted for him.

Let’s try another tack: the people who voted for Trump first time around (and I HOPE they regain their sanity…….) fell into three categories. The first category, of course, would bes his fellow corporate welfare queens and tax dodgers (and frequently but my no means always, his fellow draft dodgers). This bunch of people is obviously the smallest. Of course, they did like that fact that Trump was following the usual Republican policy of taking money away from people who desperately need it in order to give it to people who couldn’t possibly spend what they already have. Yet, because of Trump’s imbecility, dishonesty, cowardice, insanity, and treason, he would, if left off his leash long enough, inevitably destroy the country. And they would go down in a flaming ball of wreckage, the same as the rest of us. Therefore, they were stupid to vote for him. The second category comprises Trump’s fellow racists, bigots, and misogynists. A large category, but not even necessarily the majority of Trump voters—though Trump’s own perverted positions are completely obvious. Problem for THEM, of course, is that Trump doesn’t give the tenth part of a damn about his fellow bigots if they aren’t rich. Therefore, if they aren’t rich, they were stupid to vote for him. If they ARE rich, see above about the flaming ball of wreckage. The third category of Trump voters, of course, is people who don’t know nothin’ ‘bout NOTHIN’. These, ironically, MIGHT be reachable and teachable……

2020 Presidential debate rule: Whenever it is the turn of the President to respond to his opponent, or for the moderator to ask him a question, a helicopter parked in the auditorium must start its engine and continue running until the President either completes his answer or angrily exits the stage in a silent flounce.

{Off-topic:}

Yet His Base Remains Awed – {limerick}

America’s soul has been gnawed

by a perp of humongous fraud.

Our soul has been chewed

by a prez who’s quite crude

and sociopathically flawed.

… Coda: – {2 beats/line}

Yet his base remains awed

as this thug they applaud.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

You can tell if Trump is lying because you can see his lips move. That’s why he’s started wearing a mask.

Why point it out at all!?His answer, by definition will only be a lie!

Psychology Professor Dan P. McAdams, the author of “The Strange Case of Donald J. Trump: A Psychological Reckoning" in a pundit point to ponder:

Abraham Lincoln once said, “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.” To be a good liar you have to keep track of all the lies you’ve told, and to whom, in order to keep the truth hidden. But Honest Abe never knew President Donald Trump, or perhaps anybody like him.Trump is a successful liar because he refuses to remember. Not only that: He refuses to anticipate that he will remember the current moment in the future. If you live mainly in the current moment, then the future consequences of your lies will not matter to you. And if you have lived your entire life this way, and to great acclaim and success, why would you ever want to change?The president was recently annoyed when Dr. Anthony Fauci stole the spotlight by throwing out the first pitch for Major League Baseball’s opening game. In response, he falsely claimed that the New York Yankees invited him to throw out the first pitch for Aug. 15. His assertion was roundly refuted a short time later. The incident recalls Trump’s false boast that the crowd attending his 2017 inaugural address was the largest in history. Objective photographic evidence decisively refuted that claim.And yet Trump never pulls back on blatantly false statements — lies that are so obvious that they often defy the laws of physics, chemistry and common sense.