First presidential debate - September 26: Trump vs Hillary

[Kathandira]

The crowd kept laughing at his statements all the time. Especially when he started praising his temper

I almost did a spit take when he said that.

[Cyberowl]

Did he ever ask Hillary a follow up question? He asked Trump follow up questions. He could've asked Hillary about the emails for example.

Maybe that's because she actually answered the questions instead of talking about her cybering 10 year old son or responding how she will America great again when asked about whether she will accept the result of the election.

[Celista]

Hillary should send Lester Holt, the moderator, a gift basket.

I think Trump should, Holt let him interrupt and talk over Clinton often enough.

[May90]

Like what, they want to invade Syria or start a war with Russia? I never knew that the progressive left held the same ideology as people like Charles Krauthammer.

Do you even know what "policies" are? Here, read a bit, hopefully not TL;DR.

https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/

I almost did a spit take when he said that.

I was almost sure he did this as a self-deprecating joke initially.

[DeadmanWalking]

This from nytimes conservative journalist, pretty much saying that you can't wing a debate anymore than you can wing a presidency. http://nyp.st/2d5c9SB

[Breccia]

She said she made a mistake (it wasnt a mistake, it was deliberate), she didnt say she was wrong. Also how did she take responsibility? Taking responsibility usually means you accept some kind of punishment

Well, maybe if charges had been filed...but there weren't.

[DeadmanWalking]

Did he ever ask Hillary a follow up question? He asked Trump follow up questions. He could've asked Hillary about the emails for example.

He didn't ask Trump follow up questions, he followed up his question with the same question as trump never managed to answer questions the first time.

[Ghostpanther]

There is more than enough proof regarding the myriad of Trump scandals that are too numerous to mention here. If you prefer Trump as a candidate that's fine, trying to claim that Clinton's scandals trump Trump's scandals or that Trump's scandals are nonexistent is the height of partian bias.

But it is true. National Security does trump many other scandals. The public in general still think Hillary is not being truthful in her handling of the emails. It will haunt her on election day. Not saying enough she will lose. But if she does, it will have played a major role.

[DeadmanWalking]

Well, maybe if charges had been filed...but there weren't.

NY has a statuate of limitations on reporting child molestation.

In New York, if you were sexually abused as a minor, you must file your lawsuit within 5 years of reaching the age of 18. If you wait until after age 23 you will not be permitted to sue your abuser and seek compensation. The statute of limitations for filing a sex abuse or negligence claim against a third party such as a school or a church is three years However, if the acts of negligence occurred when you were a minor, the time period expires 3 years after your 18th birthday, at age 21.

[Reeve]

Emails, Benghazi, who she is as a person... but I try not to get involved in these threads because of how personal people can get about it. I'd rather just keep my opinions to myself on the matter. I won't be voting for Hillary, and if that means my choice is Trump, so be it.

I can understand disliking Hillary, even if I think a number of the things you're quoting are overblown. What I don't understand is how any of those things could possibly make Donald Trump a preferred alternative.

This is a guy who wants to create a database of all the Muslims in the country to track them, Hitler style. This is a guy who said that when the Iranian Navy vessel taunted one of ours, he'd have "blown it out of the water." And when Clinton said he'd have started a war, he said, "That wouldn't have started a war!" This is someone whose tax plan would bankrupt the country. His best defense against the fact that he used to deny minorities from living in some of his communities was that "Those lawsuits were settled without admission of guilt," and then went on to try to prove he's not racist by saying that he once built a club in Palm Beach, Florida that allowed minorities in. Clinton may be unlikeable, but Trump is actually and literally dangerous.

[TZucchini]

Some online polls showed Trump winning the debate and some showed Hillary.

There isn't an objective measurement on earth by which you could proclaim a Trump victory. He got absolutely manhandled. He looked like a tired, old man. Constantly fidgeting, interrupting, sipping his water, sniffling. He was on the defense almost the entire time.

If Trump can't be bothered to prepare for a debate, why does anyone believe he'll be bothered to prepare for the job of President.

[Skroe]

@Skroe

Skroe, would you say that right now, only Eastern Europe is supporting more than their fair share due to their proximity (and thus feelings of being threatened) by Russia? I mean, Germany and others feel less pressure because they have other nations serving as buffers between them and their immediate threat.

I think one can be Charitable to Trump's (though I doubt he has ever thought of this) position in that the use of scare tactics to promote cohesion in NATO is kind of sad, and it will be worse than if Russia invades Estonia and Germany sits back because they don't care about Estonia. Trump is evaluating the alliance, for better or for worse, in a method similar to China's FP establishment.

I'd say that you're expecting something unrealistic to happen in the timespan expected.

It took a decade for NATO to effectively demobilize in the wake of Western victory in the Cold War. The slashing of troop levels, inventory and budgets happened across the late 1990s and early 2000s. It did not happen over night. And NATO's mission shifted mostly to Counter Terrorism / Counter Insurgency in Afghanistan and across the Arc of Instability. This calls for entirely different sets of equipment, training and funding than the Heavy Armory and High-End air power that would make up a NATO capable of fighting and winning a major war against Russia.

NATO shifting to that footing is what has come of the question of "What now for NATO, post-Afghanistan". It's a back to the future, a return to the fundamentals. But this takes time.

Why would it take time? A number of reasons.

First is just the mechanics of standing up military forces. Obama for example, wants to contract the Army. As part of that process the Army says that undoing that contraction would take on the order of three years and $20 billion per 20,000 troops. Europe is doing just this assessment right now. The Western European countries you name are all doing the assessment about enlarging their forces, often with conscription playing a part of the planning. And the numbers are similar. To grow NATO ground forces will take years and cost billions. But even if we start today, it won't be until after 2020 it's operationally ready. This extends to procurement as well. In the military threads we're often talking about "After 2025" or "around 2030". It sounds far fetched but in truth, that means "what military's are buying next". A single aircraft carrier for the US for example, takes strictly about 5 years to build, but if you tack on pre-construction material stockpiling, financing, testing, shakedown, training, refining and introduction, building a carrier is about a 13 year process from the first time the first dollar is authorized to the point at which the ship operationally deploys the first time.

To put it another way, for the NATO we want in 2027, we need to be laying the ground work for that in 2017, because the NATO in 2018 won't be substantially better than the one in 2016. or 2015. The time horizon is decedal, easily.

A second reason is what a new defense-against-Russia strategy for NATO represents: the fundamental defeat of an integrationist worldview that many in Europe in particular, had come to take for granted. We're talking about getting a generation of voters and politicians to align against something they believed in and has been proven a fallacy - that Russia was interested in cooperation and partnership with the west and that peace was maintained by trade ties. This is a massive policy shift. It's rare a shift this big happens in international relations. It's a once-in-every-thirty year realignment of priorities. Funding and laws follow policy. So for NATO militaries to grow in capability and size, the policy has to be laid that accepts that the old way of doing things is over. Nearly 3 years into Russia's Ukraine invasion, that has gradually happened. Three years ago nobody believed that sectoral sanctions would ever be imposed. Then MH17 happened. And here we are. And they keep sticking around despite the occasional whine from a Russia-friendly EU partner.

Is NATO today what it needs to be? No. Not even close. But it's on the right track. Germany and the UK are planning a replacement for the Panavia Tornado, that should it be bought continent wide, combined with the shrinking size of powerful bombers, could actually give Europe the ability to bomb things again with something more than a F-16. Germany-France and several others (possibly Poland) are collaborating on a new tank to replace all the 1980s/1990s/2000s tanks they own, something which will likely encourage the US to either accelerate the M1A3 program or design an entirely new clean sheet successor. NATO is at the very forerfront of multinational cyber-warfare integration. There is a lot of good going on.

I'd like to see Europe spend more money on defense. Don't get me wrong. But there is zero point in it - ZERO - unless the money is spent vastly more efficiently than it is today. It's like what I say to deeply naive people who think that the NASA budget should be doubled: it won't get you twice the missions, just twice expensive missions. Lets say that the British doubled their shipbuilding budget. They wouldn't build twice as many ships. They'd build more ambitious ships in the same number. Would the ships be larger? Yes. And somewhat more capable. But not a doubling in capability. Europe's issue is numbers, not effectiveness of their military technology.

But more to the point you make a wrong assumption about NATO in yoru post when you posit what would happen if Germany didn't come to Estonia's rescue. Again, it's far more likely the US tell Germany not to get involved. Why? Because the US and a regional coalition of the willing would, in an effort to keep it low level and limited to Estonia, and offer Russia plenty of ways out of the crisis and back to the status quo ante. If the US just hit the Article V button and forced the mobilization of Germany and everybody else, it would escalate, rather than de-escalate, a crisis the US would work hard to try and diffuse. It would also risk severe damage to Europe before it becomes necessary (as Russian troops would be outnumbered nearly 4 to 1, among many other unfavorable metrics). The chief priority of the US in Europe would be to protect Europe, not to beat the Russians senseless. NATO would be kept out of the fighting until absolutely necessary. Hell it's far more likely that Germany, China and Japan would be at the forefront of dragging the US and Russia to the negotiating table to cool things off before it went further.

The most important thing NATO European forces can do it multinational integration of forces. Peroid. Unified commands. Yes. It is the nucleus of a"EU Army". But consider the alternative. Denmark has a GDP of $335 billion and a population of 5 million. Both numbers are smaller than the US state of Massachusetts. It is ridiculous to expect Denmark, or any other European country like it, and even the larger powers like Germany, to alone have the resources to man and fully equip a US-peer level military. They can do it, only if they don't try to duplicate what their neighbors have and centralize capability. NATO owed AWACs for example, is one such example of it done right. An entire European or NATO-based support backend for countries ranging from Estonia to Denmark to Germany would make every Euro spent on defense more efficient.

[Venant]

Do you even know what "policies" are? Here, read a bit, hopefully not TL;DR.

https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/

Were you not paying attention when Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize, then went on to murder thousands of civilians in his drone wars? At least with Obama there was some plausible deniability when it came to believing him before he completely sold out.

[Reeve]

I agree. He clearly supports her. He let her run over her 2 min time limit often and interrupted Trump more often. I would give him a C- in his performance as a moderator.

He was definitely harder on Trump than Clinton.

But at the Commander in Chief Forum, Matt Lauer was MUCH harder on Clinton than Trump. If anything, I'd say Clinton came out the worse between these two events.

[Celista]

But it is true. National Security does trump many other scandals. The public in general still think Hillary is not being truthful in her handling of the emails. It will haunt her on election day. Not saying enough she will lose. But if she does, it will have played a major role.

Sure, I absolutely think it will play a role. National security is an important issue. I don't think either scandal is an indictable offense for a variety of reasons, but handling of data in Washington was clearly in need of reform and we should hold elected officials to a high standard.

[DeadmanWalking]

Were you not paying attention when Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize, then went on to murder thousands of civilians in his drone wars? At least with Obama there was some plausible deniability when it came to believing him before he completely sold out.

Why did you redirect from Hillary to Obama? And who did he sell out to? Did he get the Nobel prize before the drone strike or after? Do you listen to republican talking points too much? Why are you fighting Obama when you are not running against Obama? These are the important questions that need to be answered.

[Kathandira]

I was almost sure he did this as a self-deprecating joke initially.

I'm more than certain that's what he will say if questioned about it. He never sticks to what he said when what was said is in question.

[Themius]

I agree. He clearly supports her. He let her run over her 2 min time limit often and interrupted Trump more often. I would give him a C- in his performance as a moderator.

Oh yeah trump never went over his time limit. I mean he had 20 seconds but talked for like 2-3 minutes, yep only hillary went over her time.

Oh and all the trump interruptions too.

[Flarelaine]

Frankly if I was a republican I would be furious right now that my candidate decided to wing a debate instead of being professional about it and preparing. Not covering my ears and saying bullshit like, "She was rehearsing while he was out there meeting real Americans!" That's the biggest load of horse shit political think tank tripe I have ever heard.

The two guys in this thread being loudest about her being scripted aren't even American. Same old bull tho.

[May90]

Were you not paying attention when Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize, then went on to murder thousands of civilians in his drone wars? At least with Obama there was some plausible deniability when it came to believing him before he completely sold out.

Do you just make random comments now, or what? What does this have to do with the discussion?

I find it symptomatic that both Trump and his supporters never stick to the point and always run around the actual topic.