Eight Debate Moments that Matter More than Snifflegate

Something was wrong with Donald Trump last night. He was huffing and sniffling and chugging water throughout the debate. After attacking his Republican rivals and Hillary Clinton over their thirst and health and energy level.

Snifflegate is getting a lot of coverage today, in no small part because Trump decided to blame his sniffling on a defective mic. It is the kind of trivia that the media loves in order to avoid substance. Gore sighed. Obama slumped his shoulders. Who got the best one-line zinger in?

In a sense, we should be glad that the trivial stuff from the debate works against Trump. It will get covered and only drive him further away from rational behavior.

In another sense, though, we shouldn’t miss the actually important things that happened last night and allow trivia to dominate the discussion. Here are some things that happened last night that can’t be sniffled away:

1. Donald trump admitted he was rooting for the housing crisis to line his own pockets

I believe this will be the moment of the debate that lives on in ads going forward. Hillary accused Trump of rooting for the housing crisis because he could buy cheap property and he responded with “That’s called business.”

As many as five million people lost their homes in the market crash. Millions more saw sharp reductions in the value of their home. Donald Trump’s cavalier attitude about profiting off that tragedy was probably his worst moment in the debate.

I feel confident that we will see an ad cut with “That’s called business” featured prominently alongside people who lost their homes and their savings in the crash. 

2. Donald trump admitted to paying no income taxes

When Trump said that avoiding paying his taxes was “smart” he opened a huge vulnerability for himself. This may not resonate as strongly as the housing comments because people CAN identify with doing what they can to reduce their tax payments, but there’s still plenty to exploit here.

First of all, this makes the tax returns that much more important. (Side note- why can’t he release previous years’ returns even if he is being honest about being under audit this year?)

How much did he make? What deductions and loopholes did he exploit to eliminate all taxes? Why should he pay less in taxes than hardworking Americans? What about charitable giving? If he isn’t donating what he claims and he isn’t paying any taxes how can he claim to support the troops, the police, infrastructure, or anything else?

This will keep the issue of the tax returns alive and kicking even stronger than before.

3. donald trump doubled down on racism and sexism

What was Trump’s response to a question on how he would heal the racial divide? “Law and order,” racial profiling, and racist generalizations about communities of color. He bragged about how his club in a wealthy community didn’t ban nonwhites from attending (at least I think that was the point he tried and failed to make). He bragged about endorsements from police and immigration enforcement unions.

His response to charges of sexism? Spend nearly a minute of precious debate time rehashing his character assault on Rosie O’Donnell from a decade ago. He doubled down this morning on his attacks on a former Miss Universe’s weight. He tried to avoid his own quote about Hillary not having the “Presidential look” by claiming he said she lacked “stamina” instead, which wasn’t really less sexist.

This is a feature for a huge segment of Trump supporters, not a bug. But for moderate voters, soft supporters, undecided voters, and those considering wasting their vote on a third party candidate the fact that Trump cannot control these impulses even when he knows the nation is watching is a huge negative for him that needs to be hammered home consistently.

4. “tough guy” trump whined that it was “not nice” and “dishonest” to run ads quoting him directly

This one was rich. Trump whined that Hillary’s attacks on him were “not nice.” Donald Trump is suddenly concerned about what is nice, apparently. This was a moment of incredible weakness for him. Complaining two or three times within a minute about how she was not nice to him (in those words!) shows, once again, how thin-skinned, easily provoked, and unable to handle any criticism Trump is. Not good qualities in a President.

As to Hillary’s “dishonest” ads? I’m pretty sure every single negative spot (or at least the overwhelming majority) feature little other than Trump’s own words, usually on video. I guess any ad quoting Trump accurately is bound to contain a few lies, but I don’t think that’s what he meant. If her super mean and dishonest attack ads are just running loops of the things he’s said he’s not only weak, he’s… deplorable.

5. trump lied flagrantly about easily fact-checked things (and is finally being held accountable)

On claim after claim Trump lied, usually related to something he said in the past. He said that he opposed the Iraq war, but he supported it. He said that he never called climate change a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese, but he did. He at first seemed ready to deny the Miss Universe charges “Where did you hear that?” but he’s on video, and doubled down on them today.

Shortly before the debate the worm was turning in the media regarding actually referring to Trump’s dishonesty as lying, and that will only accelerate now.

What’s more, Hillary smartly avoided even the small stretches that fact checkers love to seize on. I’m sure her team is ready to document and defend any claim she made last night. A Huffington Post fact check of the evening found 16 outright lies from Trump and ZERO from Clinton.

More and more those in the media are willing to call out Trump, and even use the word “lie” for once. This is a narrative he cannot let get out of control because being viewed as an honest straight shooter is one of the very few advantages he holds over Clinton in polling.

6. the birther controversy isn’t going away as long as he keeps lying about it

His campaign’s failed attempts to push the birther controversy onto Hillary have been widely panned as the ridiculous nonsense that they are. The fact that he uses that debunked lie to avoid talking about the five years of birtherism after the President released his certificate is the reason people will keep asking. He needs an answer to the question of why he continued stoking a racist conspiracy theory after it was settled, particularly if he wants to brag about the release of the certificate as some kind of accomplishment of his.

There are more important issues in the election, obviously, but this issue gets to the heart of who Trump is. He’s a racist and a con man who is willing to use the bigotry of others to enhance his own stature. If he accepts the birth certificate as legitimate then he was lying to his followers for five years before finally coming clean. If he wasn’t lying then, then he needs to explain what changed his mind since January of 2016 when he was still spouting the nonsense.

I don’t know that there is a GOOD answer for him to give on this issue, but he needs to deal with it one way or another.

7. what his ghostwriter said about his attention span is obviously true

The man who ghostwrote The Art of the Deal said that Trump has an attention span of about 15 seconds. We’ve all seen it before in his debates and speeches where, even if he starts out trying to answer the question or speak on a topic, he veers off in all kinds of directions, usually towards self-aggrandizement of one kind or another.

For the first few minutes of the debate I was actually a little worried because he seemed calm, collected, and stayed speaking about the same topic (if with little to no detail) for extended periods of time.

By about 15 minutes in, though, you could tell he had lost all control of whatever remarks he had cooked up with his team and was whitewater rafting on the Trump stream of consciousness. His ten year old son apparently has something to do with cyber warfare. He’s going to get to Pennsylvania Ave with his hotel if he isn’t elected. He started off stronger than I expected, but went downhill very quickly. Sometimes this is even more obvious reading the transcripts than watching the video. He made no sense, and wasn’t even tangentially answering the questions more than half the time. This is part of the temperament question, and it is a big one. It is terrifying thinking of Trump dealing with an unfolding crisis, or trying to make it through a critical intelligence briefing. Imagine him spewing wilted word salad at world leaders.

8. hillary knows how to get under his skin

Last night, despite the fact that he was interrupting and speaking over her, Hillary was clearly in command of the debate from start to finish. Not only was she in control of her own presentation and emotion, she was the one controlling Trump’s, too. Without ever coming off as mean-spirited or overtly negative she managed, with surgical precision, to get off the barbs that drove Trump off message and out of control. 

Look back at the debate. He was often reaching to two or three questions back to try and respond to something that took her two seconds to say. He was agitated, he was defensive, and he was off-topic.

They didn’t know which Trump would show up, but she managed to bring out the one she most wanted to debate. There’s a lot more there for the next two debates, and I’m sure Hillary is ready.

Even Trump’s attacks are going to backfire because of the way she throws him off. If he starts bringing up Bill’s past indiscretions do you think she doesn’t have an answer ready about his own issues with women? And do you think he’ll be able to let it go once she mentions it?

She’s living in his head rent-free and she’s not moving out.

Bottom line is that there are impacts from this debate that will reverberate over the next six weeks that go way beyond Snifflegate. Donald Trump revealed, once again, who he is at his core.

Last night’s debate can be summed up by CJ Cregg, press secretary and chief of staff to President Josiah Bartlett:

When you can't lower expectations, you have only one thing you can do. You have to meet them.

Donald Trump lost the debate, obviously. But it shouldn't be ignored that Hillary obviously won it, too.