If we’re working under the assumption that the final presidential debate’s two-minutes-of-no-interruption rule applies equally to all parties, including (and especially) the moderator, fine. President Trump has nothing to moan about ahead of the event on Thursday.
Until then, he can ready himself to take advantage of the last chance to save his messy campaign and win over millions of voters to earn him a second term. It’s still possible, and here’s how in three easy steps.
1. Trump having recovered from COVID-19, despite being almost the definition of a high-risk subject, blessed him with a gift: an effective political message on the pandemic, which he’ll have to hammer at the debate. He said it perfectly earlier this month. “This is America,” he said. “This is the United States. This is the greatest country in the world. This is the most powerful country in the world. I can’t be locked up in a room upstairs and totally safe and just say, ‘Hey, whatever happens, happens.’ I can’t do that. We have to confront problems. As a leader, you have to confront problems.”
True. Despite the crippling lockdowns, social distancing, and mask-wearing, the new coronavirus has continued its spread here and in every other civilized country. There is no immediate end to this where we see a vaccine and we call it a day. All indications are that there is only medicine to count on and, fortunately, advancements in that field have been rapid. Trump will have to insist that as a country, we move through it and move on. It can be done as safely as possible for those most at risk, but we have to move on.
2. It would be a crime against humanity for Trump not to remind his captive audience over and over of that absolute horror of the summer that Democrats, including his opponent Joe Biden, excused and actively encouraged. The rioting, the looting, the arson, the violence, the deaths, all of it now endearingly referred to as “the mostly peaceful Black Lives Matter protests,” should never be forgotten, and if Trump flinches for a split second in ensuring that everyone knows it was Biden, the Democratic Party, and the national media who supported all of it, he deserves to lose in a record-breaking landslide.
3. There is no topic more crucial than either of the two above and no reason for Trump to stray from them. Kristen Welker plans on also discussing “climate change” and “national security,” according to the Commission on Presidential Debates, and as riveting as those issues can be, nothing comes close to what the pandemic has done to our economy and what the rioting has done to our cities. When the subject veers away from either of those two, Trump can ask why we’re even bothering when voters are watching their life savings disappear and their neighborhoods overrun by “woke” maniacs demanding that you “check your privilege.”
Trump has less than two weeks to save his campaign. He can use it trying to win on the issues, or he can complain about how unfair everything has been.
