| John Nance Garner, one of FDR's veeps, once described the vice presidency as "not worth a bucket of warm piss," which is an extremely weird metric to assess something's trade value. On the other hand, 14 of the 47 VPs so far have managed to make the jump to the presidency. If it's possible to start with a bucket and a six-pack and obtain control of the U.S. military in two steps, it would make the trade-a-paper-clip-for-a-house guy seem lazy and unambitious. |
| In today's FTR, we recap Tuesday night's vice presidential debate and admit that the media once again got tricked into watching a lengthy infomercial. |
| Bucket fight! |
| Did you miss last night's debate? Open up YouTube videos in three separate tabs and make them all play at the same time, and you'll have the general idea. We isolated the audio from Gov. Mike Pence, Sen. Tim Kaine and debate moderator Elaine Quijano, and this is what they talked about, as best as we can figure. |
| • | Defending the running mates. The night wasn't ever really about Pence or Kaine, it was about the guys at the top of the ticket. Pence pushed Kaine to talk about Hillary Clinton's private email server, her role in shaping the Obama administration's foreign policy in the Middle East and her "basket of deplorables" comment last month. Kaine pushed back on Trump's refusal to release his tax returns, his praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his support for more nuclear-armed nations. | | • | Police and race relations. Both candidates spoke positively of the Second Amendment, community policing and criminal justice reform, but Pence called for an end to "seeking every opportunity to demean law enforcement broadly by making the accusation of implicit bias every time tragedy occurs." Kaine countered by saying, "I can't believe you are defending the position that there is no bias" in policing. | | • | Abortion. Both are morally opposed, but Kaine said he doesn't think "the doctrines of any one religion should be mandated for everyone;" he also grilled Pence on Trump's comments that women who have abortions should be punished . Pence specifically zeroed in on the issue of partial-birth abortion, saying "the very idea that a child that is almost born into the world could still have their life taken from them is just anathema to me." | | • | Whose turn it was. The two candidates were frequently speaking over one another and Quijano, and going beyond time limits, with Kaine doing most of the interrupting. Quijano tried in vain to keep the two in line, frequently interjecting with things like "gentlemen, please," "the people at home cannot understand either one of you when you speak over each other," and "the question was about Korea, why are you two insulting each other's mothers?" | |
| And the fact check? We got your fact check right here. |
| So who won? |
| The evening began on a bizarre note when GOP operative Marty McFly traveled back to the year 2016 with a copy of Grays Politics Almanac to announce that Mike Pence was the "clear winner" of the debate about two hours before it began. (So wait, you had the power to travel through time and tell us about anything that happened in 2016, and this is the thing you picked? Huh.) |
| But Marty was right. A CNN/ORC poll scored it a win for Pence, 48% to 42%, and the LA Times' three-judge panel unanimously gave the edge to Pence . "(Pence) delivered a mix of conservative orthodoxy and there-you-go-again rejoinders with a coolness and polish that Ronald Reagan himself might have admired," said Times political reporter Mark Z. Barabak. "Tim Kaine played the traditional role of vice presidential attack dog in a way that seemed both canned and, at times, overly exuberant." |
| As for who won the "that's what she said" portion of the debate? That one's easy: Pence's "you whipped out that Mexican thing again" easily beat out Kaine's "Our plan is like Ronald Reagan's plan from 1986." Geez, Kaine. It's like you weren't even trying. |
| History ain't changed |
| The last time the media waited around for hours to cover an infomercial, it was Donald Trump's half-hour sales pitch about Trump International Hotel on Sept. 16. "We won't get fooled again!" we vowed. |
| But less than three weeks later, many reporters and pundits were parked in front of their monitors at 4 a.m. EDT Tuesday to watch Julian Assange's live video feed celebrating WikiLeaks' 10th anniversary, amid speculation that a major Hillary-related bombshell would be revealed. What we got instead was a reel of WikiLeaks' greatest hits and a request for donations to fund the organization's efforts. Assange also said WikiLeaks would start "publishing every week for the next 10 weeks" material on weapons, war, Google, the election and other topics - an odd timeline, considering the election is five weeks ago yesterday, and early voting is already well underway in a dozen states. |
| When it was all said and done, there was less actual news than this news story about a pig with its own wheelchair. It was a source of frustration for many viewers who hoped to see some new Clinton dirt sooner rather than later, and it almost instantly spawned its own trending topic: #Wikirolled. |
| You know who did come through on Tuesday? Guccifer 2.0, who claimed to have hacked the servers of the Clinton Foundation. Granted, it seemed like his leaks attempted to tie Clinton Foundation donations to TARP funds distributed during the George W. Bush administration, but at least he had the day right. The hacker tells BuzzFeed there's more on the way. |
| You know who did come through on Tuesday? Guccifer 2.0, who claimed to have hacked the servers of the Clinton Foundation. Granted, it seemed like his leaks attempted to tie Clinton Foundation donations to TARP funds distributed during the George W. Bush administration, but at least he had the day right. The hacker tells BuzzFeed there's more on the way. |
| More from the campaign trail |
| • | 'Old Russian proverb' is neither old nor Russian, but it sounds better than '2014 Mike Pence proverb' (BuzzFeed) | | • | GOP donors back a late Trump push in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Nevada (USA TODAY) | | • | Trump says Bill Clinton 'went through hell last night' after he criticized Affordable Care Act (Arizona Republic) | | • | Trump to shoot a man in Reno, just to see if he could do it and not lose voters (Reno Gazette-Journal) | | • | Clinton asks Bernie to go to Michigan, tear the roof off the sucker (Detroit Free Press) | | • | Jack White says 'Seven Nation Army' ain't what he wants to hear in a Trump video (The Tennessean) | | • | Voting in Wisconsin? Prepare to show your license, birth certificate and underwear label because no one knows what you need (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) | |
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| Aaaaah freak out! |
| For Trump Train freakouts, check out the #Wikirolled link above. For freakouts from the (mostly) I'm With Her crowd, check out comedian Tyler Fischer asking people on the street for their reactions to Hillary dropping out of the race. |
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