Neither of the highlights of President Trump’s week did much to further his chances for reelection, according to our graders. There was agreement that his aggressive style at the first presidential debate with Democrat Joe Biden didn’t win him any of the votes that he needs to push into the lead. And his treatment for COVID-19 has hurt his plans to campaign.
Both our graders, conservative analyst Jed Babbin and pollster John Zogby, thought the week was a real stinker.
Jed Babbin
Grade: D-
From the Tuesday night debate to the COVID-19 diagnosis late Thursday, this was an awful week for Trump.
By his performance at the debate, Trump deprived himself of the principle advantage he could have gained. Former Vice President Joe Biden was stumbling along, trying to create comprehensible sentences. If Trump had let him speak more than half a sentence, Biden would have demonstrated his serious mental incapacities. But Trump didn’t. Trump, instead, interrupted so often and shouted over Biden (who did his share of interrupting and shouting) that Biden didn’t get a chance to screw up.
Moderator Chris Wallace did an appalling job, and Biden blatantly lied (e.g., when he said the stories about his son, Hunter, getting rich from payments from Russian oligarchs and Ukrainian businesses had been debunked), but both of those facts didn’t make up for Trump’s failure. At the end, Trump didn’t even say he’d accept the results of the election if he lost. No American president should ever fail to say that.
The tests proving that both the president and first lady Melania Trump had caught the COVID-19 virus will cause them to quarantine themselves, crimping Trump’s campaign. The effect on the election is probably going to be minimal because it’s hard to believe any voter is still undecided.
John Zogby
Grade: F
First, I extend my sincerest wishes that the president and first lady Melania Trump recover fully and soon.
This was a terrible week for President Trump. His debate performance, born out of desperation and arrogance, was embarrassing and very sad. If the goal was to throw Biden off his game, he failed. Early polls after the debate show the president trailing Biden with a little more than five weeks to go.
Besides being a bore and a bully during the debate, he filled the 90-minute debacle with fabrications and misrepresentations of facts and merely shadowboxed his way through. By continuing to defy science-based rules of behavior during this pandemic, he has enabled risky behavior by his most ardent supporters and has helped to create a chain of thousands of possible victims of this virus. He and Melania Trump do not deserve to be ill — nor do the many other additional victims of his incompetence.
Jed Babbin is a Washington Examiner contributor and former deputy undersecretary of defense in the administration of former President George H.W. Bush. Follow him on Twitter @jedbabbin
John Zogby is the founder of the Zogby Poll and senior partner at John Zogby Strategies. His weekly podcast with son and partner Jeremy Zogby can be heard here. Follow him on Twitter @TheJohnZogby
"bad" - Google News
October 03, 2020 at 11:28PM
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White House Report Card: Trump’s week went from bad to worse - Washington Examiner
"bad" - Google News
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