What did you think of Trump’s town halls with Savannah Guthrie and Biden with George Stephanopolous?

I didn’t watch, but I read the newspaper accounts. (Was reading a book instead).

Apparently both went as expected. Biden was calm and cool, and Trump was an ass. I was encouraged to read that Savannah Guthrie wasn’t taking any bullshit.

I thought Trump was okay. It was pretty obvious he was trying to be charming and smile more, when he remembered. The bluster is hard to take over a long period.
I’d like to ask him a few questions still.

I didn’t watch but they just came out with the stats that Biden had 1 million more viewers than trump.

I didn’t watch either one, but I heard that Savannah Guthrie just kicked trump’s butt when she wouldn’t settle for vague “Some people say,” crap that trump throws out. She demanded to know who are those “some people.” Eventually trump got intimidated and irritated and resorted to being sarcastic and dismissive as he always does when confronted with women who are smarter than him (which is virtually every woman on the planet!)

I wonder how they would know that @chyna?

I only watched the one with BIden. He appeared cool and calm and never seemed to falter for an answer. I’m told he stuck around at the end after the video cameras went off answering questions for audience members, which was cool. Oh, and in the pix I saw, he put his mask back on. The audience members who asked the questions on camera had good ones, too, none of them gushing all over him like the one clip I saw last night of the gal who seemed giddy to speak to Trump and told him how handsome he is when he smiles. I honestly didn’t know anything about Savannah Guthrie (no tv, hence have only seen her at some friend’s place randomly and even then not on serious matters), so was surprised to hear she did an excellent job trying to pin Trump down. George S. didn’t have that tough a task at hand with Biden but did seem to try to pin him down on some issues, like the “packing the court” issue. Liked ABC not having people behind the moderator and Biden, which looked like it might be distracting in the NBC setup for Trump and Guthrie. I’ll check out some clips from the NBC broadcast as the day goes on, I’m sure, and perhaps have a better answer later besides that the people in the pictures behind Trump seemed distracting.

I thought Biden was a rambling mess, all while answering easy softball questions. Trump made an ass out of himself as usual, but he said one thing that I agreed with, that Nancy Pelosi isn’t agreeing to the stimulus purely because of political reasons. She knows that the stimulus checks will have Trumps name on them and she doesn’t want that to help him in the election. Also, I thought Savannah Guthrie was extremely unprofessional.

I think it’s basically journalistic malpractice that she didn’t ask anything about climate change or the environment, but wasted time on QAnon. We all know Trump is racist, so there’s no need to keep asking him about it.

I’ll stick with my opinion, Biden impressed me. Gotta admit, The RNC/Trump set a low bar for him trying to characterize him as this side of feeble and brainless, which no one really believes unless they’ve bought into the Trump babble, however, so they didn’t help themselves there. I’m maybe cutting Guthrie some slack but maybe she had to spend so much time trying to get an even reasonably straight answer out of Trump that some of the desired topics never made it on the air. I mean, how long did the gushing woman who thought Trump was soooo handsome when he smiled take up. That was icky.

So, a lot of jellies didn’t watch it but have opinions based on TV clips and articles.

I watched both.

I felt Savannah Guthrie was argumentative and missed opportunities to demonstrate Trump was giving no details and not answering questions.

For instance, an audience member asked about Trump’s plan for healthcare; Trump went on his tangent about ACA being terrible, he said he would protect pre-existing, and then he said ACA will be replaced with a great new system, a very fabulous system. He didn’t answer the question of what will healthcare be if he gets his way. Instead of Guthrie saying, “ok you will get rid of ACA, so what are the details of your health plan?” Instead she cut him off and went back to the past criticizing him of not doing anything this whole time to put his supposed plan in place, which he could have blamed on the Democrats, but he missed that opportunity. If she had asked what will his plan be, he would have said again, “a great plan a great system,” and she could have asked again, “what’s the system?” His non answer would have stood out.

This type of thing happened a lot, she got caught up in arguing with him and interrupting him, and she can be easily criticized by Republicans because of it.

I think she made a mistake making her first question about whether he was tested for covid before the debate. Why not lull Trump into a place of comfort in something he can answer well first. Instead, right off the bat a fight. It set everything up to be contentious and she showed her cards.

By the way she asked him about blaming a gold Star Family for giving him covid, and he said he isn’t looking to blame anyone, and I completely believe him. I have never thought he was blaming them. This twist liberal media is trying to take is ridiculous to me, but I know some people buy it.

Biden, was calm, and almost a little boring at first. He came off as extremely honest and wanting to sincerely answer questions.

The first question was about how he would have handled covid, and in my opinion was a little inadequate, but hard to know really since circumstances would have been different altogether. He would not have disbanded the pandemic team which might have made a big difference.

He answered questions about mandating vaccines, and although I think he was smart and pensive about the question, I feel he did not communicate his answer well.

Later, he was asked questions on foreign policy that were fantastic and his answers were fantastic! He really was amazing, and so much distraction on domestic policy in the country right now is in my opinion a big miss when it comes to evaluating who should be president.

Biden was asked about if he loses, and his reply was that he guess that means he wasn’t a strong candidate, meaning didn’t run the race well enough, and that he hopes it doesn’t mean we are as divided as a nation as so many people think. I’m paraphrasing it al. It was basically a commentary on America and working together.

Biden was truly amazing the second half. I think you should watch both town halls in full and not listen to anyone else. Don’t spend hours listening to cable news or reading someone else’s opinion, spend a couple hours with your own ears to the real thing.

I hope in the last debate they have more foreign policy questions and allow candidates to answer these questions at length. Not just two minutes, but more like there and time to go back and forth. I also hope there are questions about the budget. Why the hell is nothing being said about Trump running a deficit this entire time when supposedly he had a great economy and lots of money flowing?