Seven of the already-losing Republican presidential candidates gathered last night at the Ronald Reagan Souvenir Shoppe And Grenada Invasion Memorial in Simi Valley, California for a completely forgettable debate on Fox Business. Like the previous Fox News debate, and all foreseeable GOP primary debates, the ordained nominee Donald Trump was not there, which may have been the only good thing about the spectacle.
The candidates all bickered and talked over each other even more than has been the norm at these things, resulting in this magnificent clip of pure chaos that MSNBC has been having fun circulating. It’s less than half a minute of unintelligible crosstalk, but seems interminable. You can shut it off after it cuts to the Morning Joe discussion segment, or watch the whole piece for more idiocy.
Nobody had any serious policy proposals, although Mike Pence did suggest a solution for school shootings: an expedited death penalty that would sidestep the Constitution to execute perpetrators within a few months, which would apparently be better than keeping guns out of the hands of would be mass shooters. (It also ignores the little detail where most such shooters expect to either kill themselves or be shot by cops.)
But golly, they sure had some zingers! You won’t remember any of them, either, although we suppose Chris Christie may end up on some highlight reel of the saddest attempts at an applause line ever. (It’s not even a “Please clap.”) Attacking Trump for not showing up for the Seamy Valley Follies, Christie — who had clearly practiced the bit all day — looked right into the camera and pretended to get tough on Trump. It was not successful:
I want to look at the camera right now and tell you, Donald, I know you’re watching. You can’t help yourself. I know you’re watching, okay? And you’re not here tonight not because of polls and not because of your indictments. You’re not here tonight because you’re afraid of being on this stage and defending your record.
You’re ducking these things. And let me tell you what’s going to happen, you keep doing that, no one up here is going to call you Donald Trump anymore, we’re gonna call you “Donald Duck.”
And by Jiminy, all you could hear from the audience was Crickets.
Ron DeSantis and others went after Trump as well, but only for his not being at the debate. Nobody — not even the Fox moderators — thought to criticize Trump for his recent call for the literal execution of Gen. Mark Milley, so we’ll just have to assume that’s one more thing Republicans are fine with.
Vivek Ramaswamy offered his unfailing charm again with a strange argument for ending military aid to Ukraine, saying that “Just because Putin’s an evil dictator does not mean Ukraine is good,” which might have been his most nose-punchable moment of the evening, although any other time his mouth was open might do.
Ron DeSantis, whose state is such a dick-shaped climate disaster that insurers are abandoning it, didn’t bother answering a question about that, instead blaming “Bidenomics” and “rules and regulations” without actually acknowledging that major insurers are no longer writing new policies in Florida. He also didn’t answer a specific question about why 2.5 million Floridians lack health insurance, because the answer is that DeSantis, the GOP-dominated Legislature, and previous Republican governor Rick Scott have blocked Medicaid expansion under Obamacare, so hooray for “freedom.”
He also insisted that new state history standards saying enslaved people learned useful skills were actually just “a hoax that was perpetuated by Kamala Harris,” and that the authors of those standards were descendants of slaves themselves, so all is well.
And during a discussion of how China is literally using TikTok to spy on Americans and make them do stupid shit for attention — a previously unknown behavior among Our People — Nikki Haley unleashed what was generally considered one of the highlights of the evening, telling Ramaswamy, “Every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber for what you say.” Yep, a riff on a line from the 1995 Adam Sandler movie Billy Madison was the most inventive thing anyone came up with last night. We award the Republican primary field no points, and may God have mercy on our souls.
The candidates mostly agreed that the United Auto Workers strike against the Big Three automakers is stupid and bad, and that unions are for lazy slackers, so that ought to appeal to the working class voters who Republicans insist they represent far better than Joe Biden does.
As for Trump, he spoke at that non-union auto parts maker we told you about, and wow, that was a dog’s breakfast, too. He told the anti-union autoworkers that none of the people running against him will become his VP, probably, but maybe some might become “Secretary of Something,” who can say?
For the striking UAW autoworkers not in the room, Trump said, “I don’t care what you get in the next two weeks, or three weeks, or five weeks,” because they’ll all be forced out of work by the electric vehicles that Joe Biden is personally forcing the worldwide auto industry to transition to building. But despite not giving a shit what the UAW wants, he also asked UAW leader Shawn Fain to endorse him because it would be a change from how unions always endorse Democrats for some stupid reason.
He went on to lie about how everyone who buys EVs starts to “panic” as soon as they get them home and realize EVs have no range at all, other than the 200 to over 400 miles generally available in current models. But at least he came up with a new, hilariously bad lie about the energy transition that’s already underway, claiming that electric motors can never be used in boats, because if they sink everyone onboard would be electrocuted. We sure hope someone lets manufacturers of electric boat motors — which use sealed batteries — know this.
In conclusion, we sure are glad we spent last night reading, the end.
[The Hill / MSNBC on YouTube / CBS News / Tampa Bay Times / New York / Image generated from MSNBC video screenshot using DreamStudio AI]
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