Patriot group issues “call to action” to air “grievances” at Oregon wildlife refuge.
I wanted to follow up on my debate take from last night. As I said, following the debate, the Trump festival and the video out of Oregon all together made it hard for me to follow as closely as I’d have liked or take it in as coherently as I’d wish. And it seems the initial reaction from commentators is that Cruz did worse than I suggested. My general sense is that it wasn’t that Cruz got attacked or that the attacks on him did any particular damage. It was that the spotlight was inherently bad for him.
Here’s what I mean.
As I noted earlier, the multiple events we were trying to cover tonight – especially what amounted to a Republican debate and a simultaneous counter-debate – prevented me from giving the kind of focus to the debate proper which I normally would. So my impressions will be more tentative than they normally are.
Let me start with the debate itself.
At the outset we had the round of questions and snarks about Donald Trump. And for the first half hour or more the debate had some of the feel of community access television. There was even some odd tone to the sound system, at least on my hearing. But mainly, I think it felt disjointed and a little odd because the major center of gravity in this battle, Donald Trump, wasn’t there. You had canned, awkward jokes and a lot of off-balance tension. But the big takeaway for me was that after a half hour or so of that, they were done talking about him.
Professor Richard L. Hasen will stop by The Hive to chat with Prime members, Today at noon EST. Get your questions in here! He’ll be chatting about election law and his book PLUTOCRATS UNITED, which explores how both left and right wings avoid the key issue of the new Citizens United era: balancing political inequality with free speech.
10:48 PM: Cruz: “I will tear down the EPA’s blend wall.”
We are currently covering the debate, the Trump speech and the breaking news out of Oregon of the FBI release of the fairly detailed video of the death of militant LaVoy Finicum. I’m hoping back and forth myself between each of the three. And I confess it’s made my blogging lighter and less coherent than I’d like it to be. But we’ve got members of our team working each story.
* First, watch the FBI video. It’s 26 minutes long. But the key events take place over about a minute starting just before 8 minutes in.
* On the Trump front, I was only able to watch live the early part. It started with this weird portion where Trump rattled through a list of his rich pals who wrote big checks for the fundraiser. And it was big money. A million a piece from a few people, including a million from Trump. It was also genuinely surreal, sort of a mix of Jerry Lewis telethon and oligarch variety hour, a view from a different world of rich real estate magnates in the tri-state area who can help out with a check for $100,000 or $1,000,000 for a friend and a good cause. It was weird. All quality people.
* The basic decency and seriousness of John Kasich is a truly discordant note in this debate.
9:12 PM: As we’re watching the early moments of the GOP debate, here’s some video that captures what Donald Trump has done to Jeb Bush.
9:27 PM: “I know you like to argue about the rules but we’re going to have a debate.” Chris Wallace gets frustrated with Ted Cruz’s nonsense.
9:29 PM: Cruz gets boo’d by the crowd. (Some disagreement among the editors here about whether crowd was booing Cruz or booing in support of Cruz. What’d you think?)
9:41 PM: Once again, listening to Kasich, it’s not that I necessarily agree with him. But he’s really the only one up there that is acquainted with a pretty broad range of policy issues and has pretty reasonable views. That’s opposed to people who either have no acquaintance with any of these topics or who are simply taking dictation from the neocons who ran things under President Bush.
10:01 PM: Jeb Bush has become a reasonably funny insult comic against himself.
We’re just getting word that federal law enforcement in Oregon is holding a press conference where they are going to release a video of the shoot out in which the ringleaders of the Oregon militia stand-off were apprehended. This is presumably to clarify how militant Robert “LaVoy” Finicum died. More shortly.
And here’s the video.
* So Trump starts with basically saying, he was mistreated by Fox so they needed to be punished.
* Now he’s explaining how they spent the day begging him to be nice to them, show up at the debate. Says he got an apology from Fox.
* The gist of Trump’s comments are: Fox apologized but it was too late. I already have my veterans event.
* “I wanted to fight for myself, just like I’ll fight for the country.”