Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, is not being paid.
.. Mr. Trump said Mr. Ailes was not formally involved in his debate preparations, and chafed at the suggestion that he even needed to prepare for them. “I’ll speak with Roger, but this is not a formal thing,” Mr. Trump said. “I don’t have a debate coach. I’ve never had a debate coach.” He insisted that Mr. Ailes had “no role.”
.. During a prep session, he asked Reagan, who had performed badly in the first debate, how he would handle being asked about his age... He was one of 10 candidates onstage and could often filibuster his way through questions or avoid them entirely as his rivals consumed airtime — an approach that would be untenable in a one-on-one or even a three-way matchup including the Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson.
A Winning Debate Strategy for Trump
Allahpundit points out the difficult but achievable way that Trump could make up a lot of ground, fast:
The smart play would be to study his ass off and shock the country with his surprising grasp of policy at the first debate. Everyone will be expecting Trump the loudmouthed clod; if instead they get Trump the statesman battling Hillary to a standstill, it’ll show millions of casual voters that all of the hype about Trump being unready for the presidency was nonsense. And rest assured, there will be many millions of casual voters watching: The first debate between Romney and Obama drew nearly 70 million viewers, double what their speeches at the conventions that summer drew. A Trump/Clinton debate might blow the roof off in terms of viewership. As such, Trump delivering a surprising standout performance could change the election overnight by moving huge swaths of undecideds into his column. And, having delivered that, he could then preserve his victory by boycotting the second and third debates under whatever pretext he likes. All he has to do is turn in one excellent debate. And all he has to do to achieve that is prepare diligently.
But he’s Trump, so he won’t.
‘Reality Is Socially Constructed’
Well, I listened to the entire Radiolab episode, and it’s worse than the reader thinks. The black teams learn that they can win debates by ignoring the topic and forcing the debate to be about how racist debates are. A black woman interviewed on the show — I believe she was the debate adviser for the team — says that any attempt at objectivity (i.e., debating the issue at hand, leaving the subjectivity of the debater out of it) is “anti-black.” In other words, the persuasiveness of your argument is inextricably linked to your race, your gender, and so forth. And any objection to this approach to debate is racist.
.. Eventually, a two-man team from Emporia, Kansas — both of them black and gay, according to the story — go to the national debate tournament, and get all the way to the finals with this approach. In their matches, they would approach debate as a performance, and would be profane and emotional, emphasizing their blackness and their queerness. Their entire strategy was to make every debate about themselves, about race, and about exclusion.
.. If I argue that a vote for me is a vote for my ability to express my Quare identity it by definition constructs a reality that a vote against me is a rejection of my identity. The nature of arguments centered in identity puts the other team in a fairly precarious position in debates and places the judges in uncomfortable positions as well.
.. What has happened in America — and you see this in the Radiolab episode, as well as in the phenomenon Jen Senko describes — is the exaltation of emotivism, and the weaponization of grievance. How can we hope to have a peaceful, orderly society if the concept of truth is up for grabs? If an educated man says that “reality is socially constructed,” and acts accordingly, and teaches others to do the same.
.. True story: I got into an argument some years back with a Fox News devotee at a social event. She refused to accept facts that contradicted the opinion she preferred. “Look, I’m a conservative too,” I said. “But this is not a matter of opinion. It’s about facts.”
“Well,” she said frostily, “you have your opinions and I have mine.”
“It’s not a matter of opinion!” I said. “We are talking about facts, not the interpretation of facts.”
“You have your opinions, and I have mine.”
There is no difference between that white conservative woman and the black liberal debaters in the Radiolab story. We literally could not have a discussion about the issue, that woman and I, because the very structure of normal debate (not forensics, but just ordinary give-and-take) she took to be entirely subjective. In the end, she took my disagreement with her as a rejection of her identity.
Trump Meets the Mean Boys
why do you think these debates now go on for two and a half hours? Do you think it’s some kind of test to make sure the final nominee is physically fit? It seems a little strange that in our Twitter-centric age — when, according to one recent study, the average attention span of an adult is shorter than that of a goldfish
.. You can understand why Rubio felt that getting personal was the only way to go. Trump has been breezing through the campaign without making any discernible effort to come up with coherent policies, or even to keep his stories straight.
.. The most optimistic analysis of Trump as a presidential candidate is that he just doesn’t believe in positions, except the ones you adopt for strategic purposes when you’re making a deal.