On Sunday the news shows happen. So far, the Trump surrogates have stayed away from most major news sources because, well, you can imagine. Half of them have seemingly tested positive for COVID-19 and the other half is most likely quarantining, and the third half doesn’t want to step in a big pile of pooh after this unimaginable garbage fire of a week. But Trump campaign strategist Steve Cortes, who is not particularly good at speaking outside of talking points, was willing to go on Chris Wallace’s Fox News Sunday program to campaign for the seemingly very ill Trump.
Wallace wanted to know why, even though stipulations were in place, did the Trump family and friends refuse to wear masks during Tuesday night’s debate with Joe Biden. According to reports, the debate’s medical staff—provided by the Cleveland clinic—were waived off when they attempted to provide Ivanka and Eric masks. Wallace started by asking Cortes to answer for the Trump entourage’s rule-breaking, health hazardous, behavior at the debate. And from there it got interesting.
Cortes very quickly explained that “everybody was tested before that event,” something that in all honesty we have to take the Trump team at their word for. And taking the Trump team at their “word” is the same as taking Donald Trump at his “word.” But, as Wallace interrupts to point out, that isn’t the point.
“Steve, it doesn’t matter. Everyone in that room was tested, but the Cleveland Clinic’s regulation was that it didn’t matter: everyone except the three of us on the stage was to wear a mask, and people from the Cleveland Clinic came over and offered the first family masks, thinking they may have not had any, and they were waived away. And the Commission on Presidential Debates has issued a statement saying, from now on if you don’t wear a mask you’re gonna be escorted from the hall. So forget this question about being tested, everybody was tested before hand.”
Steve wants to cut in to say whatever dumb thing he’s going to say, but Wallace points his finger saying “No. I’m going to finish my question. Everybody was told to wear a mask, why did the first family and the chief of staff feel that the rules didn’t apply to them.” Cortes proceeds to ramble about Trump believing in masks, he then said they also believe “in freedom of choice,” that everyone was “distanced.” Wallace is hopping mad at this point—hopping mad being relative in Wallace’s case—and he interrupts Cortes to say that they weren’t particularly distanced and “there was no freedom of choice. They broke the rules. Why did they break the rules?” Cortes tries to talk over Wallace about how everybody was distanced but does not want to answer the mask question.
Wallace then dismisses Cortes’ attempts to talk about distanced chairs to ask, once again, why the Trump family and chief of staff disregarded the rules that were put into place at the event, potentially exposing everybody in that room to a much higher degree of health harm. The conservative and Trump handbook is to obfuscate at all costs. When one cannot use a talking point, one should try and pick up on a small detail of a larger question to turn into a straw man argument (i.e. how far or not far apart chairs were when discussing the first family’s refusal to wear masks), if these junior high-school debate team tactics are pushed aside, one should attack their opponent , climb up onto their existential make-shift cross and pretend they are being persecuted by … Fox News?
STEVE CORTES: Chris, the way you’re starting to harangue me now actually reminds me of what you did to the president during that debate on Tuesday night.
CHRIS WALLACE: Right, I harangued him.
STEVE CORTES: He not only had to debate Joe Biden but you as well.
Cortes says Wallace had become the “effective opposition to the president.” Huh. Wallace points out that Cortes is full of shit and that his boss Donald Trump interrupted Biden and Wallace over 140 times during a 90 minute broadcast.
No comments:
Post a Comment