Letters: Debate was political, media failure; concerning string of SCOTUS decisions

Debate was political, media failure

The media’s unrelenting analysis of Biden’s whispery voice and breakdown episode, and the possibility these could be leveraged to collapse the Democrat’s nomination process, could make it seem that a momentous political event happened hast week. But significant features of the presidential debate suggest the event was just another political and media failure.

First, almost everything Trump said in the debate was misleading or an outright lie. There was little discussion of this and no follow-up as whether a liar is fit to be president or of whether the Republicans should identify a candidate who can do something other than lie to us. Second, the CNN hosts provided very little structure for the debate. They did not flag or correct any of Trump’s lies. They did ask Biden to restate his breakdown response. They did little at all to ensure that the speakers even addressed the questions they posed.

What we saw was one presenter with a speech disability, and another whose speech was clear and competent, but who presented lie after lie. We already knew that Biden has had speech problems for decades, and that Trump tends to lie frequently. It is not a shock that speech disfluency is easier for viewers to detect than lies. Almost nothing of substance emerged from the event. Whoever wants to organize further debates needs to configure and manage them to make the events more substantive and informative for citizens.

Concerning string of SCOTUS decisions

I cannot comprehend how the former president’s desire to remain in office, to write off the will of the voters, to seek and ask for additional votes to materialize, to do absolutely nothing about the calls to hang his VP come even close to the performance of “official presidential duties.” The discussion of potential immunity is beyond my understanding. The decisions that they have made over the last two years have eliminated rights and undone precedents, starting with overturning Roe. Then gutting the Voting Rights Act so as to give favored status to one party over another and effectively silencing voters.

The last few decisions prior to the end of the session saw the overturning of the 1984 Chevron doctrine, and lastly ruling on presidential immunity.

The six extreme justices are slowly implementing the transition plan laid out in Project 2025. By overruling Chevron, they have effectively dismantled the expertise of our regulatory agencies upon whose expertise we depend to create the regulations that protect the safety of our food, drugs, air, water, transportation, climate, etc. The “Supreme” Court has decided with this ruling that judges, not experts, will be deciding what regulations should exist for our safety.

Lastly, I would like to know why there is almost no discussion about character when it comes to the presumptive GOP nominee for president. DJT is a convicted felon. Shouldn’t we be asking for more in our president and Congress people? Shouldn’t we be looking at character?