2016 Presidential Debate #3: Clinton vs. Trump Live Blog + Poll

What television event is bloodier than a sliced finger on Chopped, more combative than Ricky when Lucy wants to be in the show, and more disturbing to watch than a surgery scene on Chicago Med? The answer is either Megyn Kelly moderating the GOP candidates debate, or the final presidential debate tonight at 9:00 at the fabulous University of Las Vegas.

Also known as Alien vs. Predator and The Lockhorns’ Divorce Proceedings, the debate has been preceded by ugly revelations about Donald Trump’s crude boasts of his delight in sexually assaulting women, newly leaked evidence that indicates Hillary Clinton wrote an awful lot of emails, and final proof that Kellyanne Conway won’t be getting any job offers from Snopes. Adding to the tension promising to loom over the event, moderated by Chris Wallace, the nasally Fox News guy, is the presence in the audience of President Obama’s half-brother, apparently a move by the Trump camp to rattle anyone who isn’t already completely confused by what’s happening.

We expect to learn how Trump believes the election will be rigged, and why he accepted the role of local chapter president of the corrupt insider system he’s denounced hourly during the past week. We’ll also be privy to Clinton’s response to new allegations of pay-to-play tactics, which has been test-marketed by her team among several demographic groups selected for not hanging up when they called. Maybe we’ll also find out if Melania has consulted a medical professional about the possibility of Botox seepage into her frontal lobe, and whether Hillary’s security detail hated her more for yelling at them or for being a woman who yelled at them.

I wonder if Putin is live-streaming it. Apparently, Julian Assange has to have a friend DVR it for him. The Debate Commission officials introduce the events, although I think The Rachael Ray Show‘s warm-up guy is funnier. They then explain how the format will work, in preparation for all the participants to completely ignore it. I have never been more bored by two grey-haired white guys in frumpy suits.

Here come the Trump family members and Mike Pence with his wife, whose size is not offered by Ivanka’s fashion line. Facebook is thanked for their pleasant world domination. It turns out a Holocaust survivor invented the idea of presidential debates, mostly because he would’ve liked Germany to have had some in the 30’s.

The bitching hour approaches. It’s appropriate that this is in Las Vegas, so afterwards everyone who was there can go out drinking, gambling, and eating too much. Chris Wallace is introduced. I hope he has one of those squeezy stress balls. He reminds the audience not to cheer, boo, or vote for Donald Trump. It is suggested that the Clinton team didn’t want Hillary to shake Trump’s hand because of the stunt he pulled last debate with the Bill accusers in the audience, but it seems more likely she just knows too much about where Trump’s hands have been.

We begin. Welcome to the nominees. Hillary is in white, completing her Old Glory theme from the two previous debates. First topic: The SCOTUS. Where does each one want the court to take the country? What about the Constitution? Is it okay to copy and paste parts into other documents without attribution?

Hillary thinks the Constitution indicates the way the country will go, which is left. The court must be on the side of the people (“we”), and stand up on behalf of us all, even if they have to sit down while they do it. We must beat back Citizens United, preserve Roe v. Wade, and maybe require cake at all birthday parties.

Trump says, “The Supreme Court, it’s what it’s all about,” which was one of Pepsi’s best slogans in the ’70s. He also thinks it’s important to uphold the Second Amendment, which is “under such trauma,” probably from a gunshot wound. His judges will have a conservative bent and will interpret the document the way the founders wanted, although it’s a problem because they didn’t want women to vote.

Does Hillary want to abolish that amendment? No, she likes guns, especially when they kill bad guys and might be used to curb Bill’s libido. But she feels toddlers should play with Fisher Price Little Rednecks instead. She wants reasonable regulations that enrage the NRA slightly less than Mike Bloomberg does. Is Trump persuaded by this? No, he thinks Hillary was very angry when Heller was upheld in D.C. He cites the compelling data of other people being upset with her for that. Then he brings up the tough gun laws in Chicago that do not eliminate deaths from guns bought in another state.

Abortion is addressed next. Cue the Jaws music. Does Trump want the court to overturn Roe v. Wade? He says it’ll happen automatically, in fact, when his appointed judges go rogue and legislate from the bench. Hillary supports Roe v. Wade, and doesn’t like how many  states are undermining it in the same way Bill undermined their future in politics, by slowly eroding available resources.

Chris brings up partial-birth abortions. As Hillary replies, Trump crouches down and drinks some water, which is impressive while grimacing. Hillary has met devastated women who have had to have late-term abortions to save their own lives, not just to avoid stretch marks like most women do. Trump opposes “ripping the baby out of the womb,” a procedure that I don’t think is covered by insurance. Hillary doesn’t think Trump really grasps the clinical description of abortion, which is funny considering how familiar he is with women’s reproductive parts. He contends that women have abortions one, two, three or four days before the baby is born–sometimes even after the birth announcements have been printed.

That blessedly over, it’s immigration time. Trump still thinks we need strong borders, although he’s still not sure where they all are. To underscore the point, he’s brought along some mothers of people murdered by illegal immigrants, which is even worse than having them murdered by people with green cards.

Stupefying most of the sentient viewership, he declares, “We have some bad hombres here, and we’re gonna get ’em out.” And we don’t need no stinkin’ badges to do it! Hillary disagrees with this concept, supporting her view with several annoying facts, workable policies, and a dose of human decency. Trump claims NAFTA was the worst deal in the history of deals, even all the ones to buy Edsals. He also points out that Obama has deported a lot of people, something which nobody knows about, except probably the deported people.

Does Hillary actually want open borders, as Trump contends? Kind of.  She wants energy to cross borders, and probably wouldn’t object if birds and pleasant fragrances do. She seizes the moment to remind everyone that Russia has worked with WikiLeaks to screw her over. She wants Trump to admit that the Russians are bad actors, even worse than Nicolas Cage, and say he will reject those commies and their borsht.

Chris rushes to grab control as the exchange becomes more heated than Chelsea’s hot comb, but lets Trump tell us that Hillary will permit all kinds of flotsam and jetsam into our nation to scrub floors and pick grapes. What’s more, Putin said nice things about him, which you have to admit is a rare circumstance. Hillary suggests he will run a puppet government.

“You’re the puppet, you’re the puppet,” he rails, like Lambchop in denial. He insists that Putin has pulled the wool over Hillary’s eyes every step of the way, even when Gorbachav was in office. He does condemn Russia’s interference in our elections, but only because it’s not working very well.

Hillary thinks Trump’s eagerness to use nukes is similar to his eagerness to grab p***y, only there’s no one left to talk to the New York Times in the former case. He repeats that he has generals endorsing him on security issues, and possibly also on the p***y-grabbing, too. It’s just generals’ talk, after all. Hillary wants to work with our allies, not charge them more money to exploit our brand.

The economy: Why does each one believe their plan superior to the other’s? Hillary likes the middle-class doing well, as do I and Walmart. She proposes lots of jobs, clean energy, small business growth, and koala bears with ice cream for everyone. That’s much better than what Trump wants, which is to allow the rich to roll in piles of money like Scrooge McDuck. He claims we will have a massive, massive tax increase under Hillary. He may even be able to write off more than billion dollars in a year.

Then he returns to security. He’s a big fan of NATO, you know, but we have to tell Japan and South Korea nicely to help us out. Maybe we’ll send them a fruit basket. With his plan, we’ll have a lot of free trade, it’ll be great. Everyone trading, trading, trading. Not sure what the connection to NATO is, but maybe he means we’ll buy lots of Japanese-made missiles. Hillary insists she will not raise taxes on people who live-blog for income. Trickle-down does not work, she insists. Maybe it just needs a new washer. Chris asks if her plan is really just a continuation of Obama’s. She feels the president saved the economy post-recession, but more needs to be done, like ensuring that Target always stocks my favorite facial scrub.

Trump says we’re not growing. Even India and China are ahead of us, despite the far greater popularity here of moo shu pork to vindaloo. He’s met so many wonderful people who are so sad that there are no jobs for them, including in Trump factories. He asks yet again why Hillary didn’t do anything in the last 30 years to repair what’s gone wrong in the last four. She points out the many things she was doing while he was borrowing millions to work his way up to p***y-grabbing status. Yet Trump persists. He lists a number of countries we should look at to prove his point, but not what we would see.

Onto BushBusgate, and the women who have come forward to accuse Trump of you-know-what. He blames Hillary for putting these women up to it, as well as coaching all their witnesses who learned about his abuse at the time it occurred. He claims he knows none of them, although he might recognize their breasts. Hillary points out the obvious flaws in this defense, then gets out a guitar and sings an old folk song about everyone in America being nice and helping each other.  Trump insists no one has more respect for women than him, except perhaps every human being on earth who isn’t Ted Bundy. It brings a giggle from the audience, who enjoy slapstick humor with their politics.

He tries next to divert with the emails accusations, which we’ve heard about more often than the Kardashians. Hillary ripostes with a comprehensive list of all his insults to individual people, ethnic and religious groups, and hairstylists. Meanwhile, he would love to talk about other things, like how ISIS kills women before it grabs their p***ies.

The Haiti/Clinton Foundation thing is next. Hillary praises all that the foundation has done, including throwing some kickass staff parties. Chris demands she answer the pay-to-play allegations, which she denies. Trump breaks in to tell her she took money from people who treat women horribly, without even calling them names first. He reports that people in Little Haiti hate the Clintons, almost as much as people in Little Rock do. Chris points out he spent some of his own foundation’s money for personal use, but he denies it all. In fact, the stolen money was used to put up a flag in Palm Beach, so it’s noble.

Hillary deftly swerves to the fact that if he won’t release his taxes, we can’t confirm any of what Trump says. He claims she should have single-handedly changed the tax laws if she doesn’t like them. I wish I could do that with alternate side of the street parking laws.  He describes sitting in a beautiful hotel nearby as he thought about this topic, to which Hillary interjects “made with Chinese steel.” Woo hoo, high-five to The Hills!

Trump rambles on about how crooked Hillary is, and that she should never have been allowed to run for president. Chris explains to him about the peaceful transition of power that distinguishes our country, but Trump prefers that we just say “You’re fired” to the loser. Hillary points out that Trump claims everything he doesn’t like is rigged, even Rosie O’Donnell. She is appalled at his position, and also at his tacky penthouse. Chris despairs at how off-track they’ve gotten, but he recaptures control like they’re two dogs on Flexie leashes.

ISIS: What’s next for that bunch? Hillary goes on about Kurdish forces and special forces and Americans on the ground and Syria as a hotbed of terrorism and an intelligent surge. I had one of those when I played online Jeopardy! one time. Trump talks about something he read somewhere about three months ago that proves we have no element of surprise in war, and that MacArthur and Patton are spinning in their graves. This confirms that he has about two prepared–by him or a four-year-old–pat phrases which he applies to a given topic. It’s like a Dick and Jane book about contemporary geopolitics.

“No, you’re the one who’s unfit!” Trump whines after Hillary remarks on what a useless dolt he is (paraphrasing here). He asserts that Bernie Sanders said Hillary is unfit, to which she points out who Bernie is supporting in this election. “Big mistake!” Trump replies. It’s like watching Big Bird argue with Einstein.

Refugees: Hillary will vet everyone to ensure they are not a threat to national security or planning to manage a new Chipotle. Trump will grab the women’s p***ies before sending them back to a war zone. He also says we  should never have let ISIS happen. His father should never have let Trump happen.

GDP and deficit stuff: They both have plans that the other says will raise the national debt exponentially or at least a whole lot.  Trump says he will create all kinds of jobs, like stripper and supermodel, and Make America A Great Dealmaker Again. Hillary reviews Trump’s history of complaining that America has sucked since the 80’s. She won’t add a penny to the national debt, she claims, mostly because it takes so much time to roll them first. Instead, we’ll have middle outgrowth, similar to what I had removed from my shoulder blade last year.

Now entitlements, which represent 60 percent of federal spending: Experts say neither of these two have a solution for that. Trump will cut taxes, but Chris interrupts to say that won’t help. Trump ignores him and adds that we must repeal and replace Obamacare, possibly with WebMD. Premiums will go up 100 percent next year, he claims, maybe even eleventy-nine percent, such that people will have to sell their children to get a boil lanced.

Hillary wants to put more money into Social Security by making Trump pay higher taxes, “if he can’t figure out how to get out of it.” “Such a nasty woman,” he snarls. She has no breast implants either, ugh.

Finally, closing statements. Hillary: Blah, blah, blah, make me your president. Trump: Make America Great Again, she sucks.

Chris thanks both candidates, the university, and his Norvask. Thank you, good night and may God have mercy on us all.

Who won the debate?

About E.M. Rosenberg 240 Articles
Favorite 40-volume series issued by Time-Life Music: Sounds of the Seventies. Favorite backsplash material: Subway tile. Favorite screen legend I pretend wasn’t gay: Cary Grant. Favorite issue you should not even get me started about: Venal, bloodsucking insurance industry. Favorite character from the comic strip “Nancy”: Sluggo, or maybe Rollo. Favorite Little Debbie snack: Nutty Bars. Favorite Monkee: Mike.