WS Chronicle

By Dr. James B. Ewers Jr.

Talking loud and saying nothing! That is how I saw Mr. T at last week’s first presidential debate. According to most polls, that view was shared by many Americans.

Now that the president has contracted the coronavirus, there probably will not be another presidential debate.

Screaming, yelling and interrupting were done all night by Mr. T at the debate. This was the president of the United States of America sounding like a third-grade student who could not get his way.

Let me be crystal clear. Nothing that he says or does will negatively impact his base of support. They see his histrionics as simply another day in paradise. We who are right thinking and rational, see it as another day in you know where.

Mr. Trump and his followers live in another world. Their world consists of them and nobody else. Mr. Biden called him a clown during one heated exchange. I am reminded of an old expression: If the show fits, wear it. Well, I do believe the shoe fits and he is wearing it well.

When Chris Wallace, the moderator of the debate, asked Mr. T to denounce white supremacy, he could not. Instead he told the Proud Boys to stand by.

The next day on Wednesday, when asked by a reporter about the Proud Boys, he claimed not to know who they were.

The POTUS has made telling untruths into an art form. He does it with such casualness and regularity. He has no relationship with the truth. He dodges, punts and forgoes any semblance of the truth. So, in many ways, he is doing a stand-up comedy act with the presidency.

COVID-19 numbers are bad. There is no other way to say it. Yet if you listen to him, we will have a vaccine next week. He does not and will not acknowledge that we have over 208,000 people who have passed away from this illness.

His arrogance extends to his family and staff members. There they were on Tuesday, sitting in the audience without masks and bunched up together like cousins.

In another exchange, former vice president Joe Biden told him to shut up. I believe that Biden showed that he was not going to take that garbage that Mr. T was spewing out.

Mr. Biden came out swinging and left with a TKO.

Joe Biden handled him in a way that he has not been handled before now.

The leader of the free world – for now, that is – cannot answer a question. Why? Because he does not have any answers. Both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have said that he is unfit to be president.

They are right and America knows they are right.

Last week’s debate has made the debate officials to seek some changes because of his unruly behavior. It is my opinion that Mr. T lacks self-discipline and has no self-control.

So rules, no matter how laid out they are and how well-intentioned they might be, will not mean a thing to him.

This debate held in Cleveland, Ohio, should have shown undecided voters that they can now make a Biden-Harris decision. Our country needs stable and wise leadership. It does not need instability and petulant decision-making.

The POTUS has had a great fall and none of his advisers can put him back together again. The bell of doom is sounding louder and louder each day against Mr. T.

Bad decisions, meanness, and the coronavirus have his train stopping on the tracks. Can it make it to the station for relief? Can they get the vice conductor to lead it?

I don’t think so.

James B. Ewers Jr. is a former tennis champion at Atkins High School and played college tennis at Johnson C. Smith University where he was all-conference for four years. He is a retired college administrator and can be reached at overtimefergie.2020@yahoo.com.