Andrew Bolt: Presidential mud-wrestle a petulant battle to be alpha male
It wasn’t Donald Trump who turned to petulant abuse in the presidential debate — Joe Biden acted the thug but looked weak but in the end undecided voters were left with one choice: which man looks strong enough to be the Most Powerful President in the World, writes Andrew Bolt.
Andrew Bolt
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Donald Trump won dirty at the first presidential mud-wrestle — don’t call it a debate — with Joe Biden.
But Biden lost even dirtier.
And again I wonder, shouldn’t the left back Trump instead? Isn’t he actually the kind of president they dreamt of?
Trump is savaged for being, well, a savage.
But it wasn’t Trump who in Wednesday’s debate turned to petulant abuse: “shut up”, “clown”, “racist”. That was Biden, who managed a rare trick: of acting the thug but looking weak.
That wasn’t just because he looked older, thinner and more frail than Trump, and sometimes had to search for his words.
He just seemed like a geriatric down the street threatening to punch your head in. You may admire him for his spirit, but mark him down for so forgetting himself.
True, Trump acted not much better. He interrupted Biden so often to knock him off his stride that moderator Chris Wallace repeatedly rebuked him, finally asking in frustration why Trump could not keep his word to let Biden speak uninterrupted for just two minutes.
And Trump didn’t shy from the personal, repeatedly asking why the widow of Moscow’s mayor had sent $3.5m to a company co-founded by Biden’s son Hunter. (Biden denies his son co-founded the company.)
I won’t bother you with details of who shouted what precisely at the other in 90 minutes of high-decibel head-punching. Both had good moments — Trump in hammering Biden on law and order and asking why police associations didn’t back him, and Biden on blaming Trump for coronavirus deaths.
Biden also did well to keep looking down the camera at the “folks” watching to ask if they really felt any better under Trump.
But in the end, the few undecided voters were left only with this choice: of the two men shouting, which looked strong enough to be the Most Powerful President in the World?
That would probably be Trump, who was like a bull. Nothing about Biden in this debate — or anywhere — says “leader”.
But this was another debate that confirmed prejudices, and did not challenge them, which is actually Trump’s problem.
Trump is behind in every poll, not least because for three and half years he has faced the most insanely hostile media coverage.
Think of all the fake news tipped on his head: that Trump colluded with Russia; that he’s racist; that he really thinks you cure coronavirus by injecting bleach; that he’s broke; that he paid only $750 a year in tax.
But here’s what I don’t get about the media left’s gut hatred of Trump. In fact, he’s a President they’d once have backed. The old left, that is.
The one that used to look kind of adult.
List some of his achievements and you’d swear they were of some peacenik president — a Jimmy Carter, but with talent. What’s there not for the left to like?
See, Trump is the first president since Carter not to send US troops to a new war, and has pulled them out of Syria.
He’s helped to negotiate many more peace deals than most other presidents — between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, between Israel and Bahrain, and between Afghanistan and the Taliban.
He’s also just brokered a deal between Serbia and Kosovo, which fought each other in a savage ethnic war just 21 years ago. How could the left not applaud this? No wonder Trump now has three nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize, which he won’t get, of course, because he’s well, Trump.
But on it goes. Trump, before the coronavirus, drove black unemployment down to the lowest levels ever seen. He’s also race-blind in the tradition of Martin Luther King Jr, judging not by the colour of someone’s skin — a position that the Left’s hateful new race-baiters and Black Lives Matter today denounce as racism. As did Biden in the debate.
Trump has also passed law reforms to treat prisoners more humanely, cut mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes and get more prisoners into rehabilitation. As he pointed out in the debate, these reforms helped African-Americans most of all.
And look at what he represents: he’s the Washington outsider who has championed the poor against the elites. Isn’t that something that once made the left’s heart beat faster?
So this debate saddened me, as a former Labor campaigner. There was Trump in a smashing contest with Biden, trying to show who was the alpha male.
But look at those policies — bleeding heart.
And who cares?