Did anyone watch Don the Con’s Comedy Hour? Granted, it wasn’t fun being soaked to the bone by his fire hose of falsehoods, but the pleasure of last night’s Philadelphia “town hall” was seeing him rebuked by a real citizen. A black woman with a serious health condition.
“Mr. President,” said Ellesia Blaque, “I was born with a disease called sarcoidosis, and from the day I was born, I was considerable uninsurable. That disease started in my skin, moved to my eyes, into my optic nerves, and when I went to graduate school, into my brain…It costs me – with co-pays, I’m still paying almost $7,000 a year in addition to the co-pay.”
She then pointed out that Obamacare protects the coverage of people with preexisting health conditions. She started to ask whether that protection, which Obamacare “brought to fruition,” should be removed – when Trump tried to jump in:
“No – “
But Blaque quickly cut him off:
“Please stop and let me finish my question, sir.”
Trump being upbraided by a black woman…That must’ve sent the bees in his head abuzzing. He was a long way from his rallies with unmasked saps.
Anyway, Blaque kept going: “Should that (protection) be removed? Within a 36 to 72-hour period, without my medication, I will be dead. And I want to know what it is that you’re going to do to assure that people like me who work hard, we do everything we’re supposed to do, can stay insured. It’s not my fault that I was born with this disease. It’s not my fault that I’m a black woman, and in the medical community I’m minimized and not taken seriously. I want to know what you are going to do about that.”
Then came his lies, gushing by the gallon, almost too numerous to count:
“W are not going to hurt anything having to do with preexisting conditions. We’re not going to hurt preexisting conditions. And, in fact, just the opposite. If you look at what they (Biden and the Democrats) want to do, where they have socialized medicine, they will get rid of preexisting conditions, if they go into Medicare for All, which is socialized medicine…But what we’re doing is, we’re going to be doing a healthcare plan – preexisting, protecting people with preexisting conditions – as an example, yourself, it sounds like that’s exactly perfect. That’s exactly what we’re talking about. We’re going to be doing a healthcare plan very strongly and protect people with preexisting conditions. I will say this, they will not do that.”
Well. Let’s stipulate that his cultists will guzzle all that like it’s God’s sweet nectar. But for those of us who pine for the restoration of facts, let’s enumerate:
1. Trump is currently in the U.S. Supreme Court, agitating anew for the total repeal of Obamacare – which, for the last 10 years, has protected the coverage of people with preexisting conditions.
2. Medicare for All would not “get rid of” people with preexisting conditions. Quite the opposite.
3. Biden doesn’t even support Medicare for All. He campaigned against it during the primaries. He would add a public option to Obamacare – an option to get government care – and thus continue to protect preexisting conditions.
4. Trump has promising to unveil his own health care plan “very strongly” for virtually the entirety of his regime. He said in June ’19 that it was merely weeks away – nothing happened. He said in July ’20 that it was merely weeks away – nothing has happened.
Last night he actually said: “I have it all ready. I have it all ready… I have it all ready and it’s a much better plan for you, and it’s a much better plan…You’re going to have new healthcare, and the preexisting condition aspect of it will always be in my plan. And I’ve said that loud and clear…We’re going to have a very good healthcare. I think maybe a great healthcare for less money.”
Somewhere in that flurry of lies – and I’ve condensed it for you – town hall host George Stephanopoulos asked a very simple question:
So where’s this health care plan you keep talking about?
There’s no such plan, of course. There never was. But whenever Trump is cornered, he just floors the accelerator on his bullshit bulldozer: Obamacare “has been a failure from day one,” but he’s running Obamacare “so much better than Obama ran it.” (Huh?) And Biden really does want Medicare for All “because he sees his poll numbers going down substantially.” (Huh? Biden leads in all battleground states, and is reportedly five points up in pivotal Florida.)
Indeed, the Philadelphia event was festooned with whoppers – like when he praised the stock market and said that “stocks are owned by everybody” (in truth, roughly half of Americans do not own stock); like when he said “I didn’t downplay” the coronavirus, “I up-played it” (he admitted on tape to Bob Woodward that he purposely downplayed it); like when he said that Biden “wants to raise everybody’s taxes” (the Biden plan raises taxes only on those who make more than $400,000); like when he said that “a lot of people think that masks are not good,” and tried to blame it on restaurant waiters; like when he offered this inexplicable observation about Biden and the Democrats: “They said at the Democrat convention they’re going to do a national (mask) mandate. They never did it because they’ve checked out and they didn’t do it.” Well, yeah. Biden didn’t do it because he’s not the president.
And if you’re wondering how Trump will “debate” Biden, 13 days hence, look no further than last night’s transcript. We’ll all join Ellesia Blaque in saying, “Please stop, sir.”
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Oh, and this was my favorite line of the night. He was talking about his (few) visits to Dover Air Force Base:
“I greet oftentimes soldiers coming in. And they’re dead.”
My concern with the debates is that, unlike being questioned by actual citizens there’s a star moderator, so there won’t be follow up questions or real-time fact checks, the moderator will repackage talking points as questions, and it will be more show than substance, all to the disadvantage of Biden.
The debates should enforce time limits on responses, with perhaps a 30 second allowance to finish a sentence. It’s pretty easy to do; we have the technology: shut off the mic of the offender. Otherwise, 45 will just keep rambling on, incoherently.