Debate & Switch Finale: A New Translation

 

 For those who missed it because life is too short and the prospect was too disgusting, here is Sardonicky's deconstruction and enhancement of the final debate between the two right-wingers currently running for president.

Trigger warning: although widely praised by the corporate media as being more "civil" than the first Hindenburg disaster of a debate, detailed discussions of actual policies that will help ordinary people were few and far between, from either candidate. But if anyone wants to fact-check my own interpretation of the event, please feel free to check out the official transcript. 

I think you might find it even more horrifying than my condensation.

I've abridged the dialogue, often modifying it into what I believe are the core intents and  hidden agendas of both the candidates and the NBC moderator.

 DT is Donald Trump, JB is Joe Biden, and KW is Kristen Welker, the moderator.

 

KW: Mr President, you have two whole minutes to blather about Covid.

DT: Two million people were expected to die but the bastards lied, they didn't follow through and actually croak. So the sub-excessive mortality rate is a huge win for me. And we keep pounding down those spikes. We pound those spikes good and hard in all the battleground states. We pound them and people right into the ground and stomp all over them until only the tippy tops are showing. We pound them down with Operation Warp Speed and a vaccine that will be announced right before election day and might possibly maybe probably be available sometime next year.  Myself, I'm immune, so who cares? We're rounding the turn.

KW: Over to you, Veepy, how would you lead the country out of this crisis?

JB: Anybody responsible for 220,000 deaths should not remain president. He has no plan. But I will take care of this. I will make sure we have a plan. I will make and implement a plan even before I am inaugurated. Because here's the deal.  My remaining time could be as short as the half-minute I have to answer these questions.

KW: Prexy?

DT: Even if we don't have a vaccine, the military will distribute it. The generals are just sitting around twiddling their thumbs and dropping their bombs just waiting to distribute a hundred million vials of the stuff. So it might as well already exist. Did I tell you I'm totally immune?

KW:What do you say, Mr. Veep? Forty percent of Americans say they won't take the vaccine if it's approved. What will you do to convince them?

JB: I'll make it totally transparent. None of that cherry-flavored red stuff in a vial. I will make it so totally clear, you'll be able to see right through it. This fella Trump thought he was the Easter Bunny bringing eggs last spring. He has no clear plan. I have a plan to have a clear plan myself eventually, something that is not as vague and fuzzy as my answers are here tonight. It's going to be a long dark winter.

KW: Trump, he says you have no plan.

DT: It's not going to be a dark winter at all. That science stuff about the days getting shorter is from China, which if you pound a spike in the ground long enough and as strongly as I do, it goes right through the earth and then you find out that it's always nighttime in China while it's  sunny in America. When Joe ran it, the Swine Flu it was a total disaster.

KW: Your response, Veepy?

JB: My response is he's a total racist xenophobe. He said the Chinese president was being transparent. The only transparent thing is my plan for a vaccine. Trump here says the pandemic is going to be over soon. Hah!

KW: Trump?

DT: I didn't say over soon, I said learning to live with it. Joe just locks himself up in his basement. You call that living? I wish I could put myself in a basement. The only time I ever went in a bunker was after I had my military fire tear gas into a crowd of peaceful protesters so I could hold up a Bible outside a church. I meet a lot of Gold Star families who lost their kids in the line of fire of our endless wars of expansion, and these grieving people are the ones who spread their virus to me. But it would have been horrible not to let them hug me and their germs contaminate me, because as president you always have to put yourself in the line of fire, I'm cured and I'm immune, so everybody else should get infected because it's a walk in the park. If people can't voluntarily catch Covid, we won't even be a capitalist nation any more!

KW: Joe, respond to that in 30 seconds or less.

JB: People are learning to die with it. Trump never said it's dangerous, and we're dangerous. You take no responsibility for danger.

DT: I do take responsibility, but it's not my fault. It's China's fault and Nancy Pelosi is out there dancing on the streets of Chinatown. And Joe, you called me a racist and a xenophobe for closing China!

JB: No, I said you were xenophobic for closing the border to Chinese immigrants,

KW: V.P. Biden, let's move on from your plan to get a plan on Covid into the real nitty-gritty of having a strategy for devising a strategy to deal with people's  feelings about shutdowns and quarantines.

JB: I want to shut down the virus, not shut down capitalism. Trump's ineptitude is what shut down the country. He was stuck in a sand trap at his golf course. We need safe openings. But no bars and gyms.

DT: Democratic states are shut down, and they're dying. And he supports dying people and places! My young son tested positive and he didn't die. Harrumph!That makes my spawn so superior to New York and California.

KW: Prexy, you demanded that schools re-open. But many of them are shutting down again. What say you?

DT: We have to open our country because there is tremendous drug abuse. The cure can't be worse than the disease. And he (Biden) wants to shut it all down!

JB: Not true! I want plexiglass dividers in restaurants. And by the way, all you teachers out there — not that many of you are going to die, so don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. Come on.

DT: New York is a ghost town. You want to eat in a cubicle wrapped up in plastic inside a Tupperware container? You can't do that to my wonderful beloved city that I abandoned for Florida, because I can never eat lunch wrapped in plastic in that town ever again! Since I'm leaving, everybody's leaving.

KW: Your turn, Veepy.

JB: Seems like only 20 minutes ago I scoffed at this fellow for claiming that we're rounding the corner on Covid. That's malarkey, because here's the deal: in New York they already rounded the curve on Covid after thousands of people needlessly died from it. Now let me plagiarize my friend Barack Obama a wee bit and repeat there is no Red America or Blue America, there is the United States of America! All masks are created equal!

DT: Look at Michigan, which is like a prison. By the way, Kristen, thanks for not asking me about my role in the right-wing militia's kidnapping plot against the Democratic governor there, or any of that other coup plot stuff. But wherever there are Democratic governors there are spikes that are not being pounded into the ground as hard as I can pound them. We have to protect our seniors with diabetes and keep pounding down those spikes.

KW: Mr. Prez, why did you call renowned epidemiologist and liberal hero Dr. Anthony Fauci a "disaster?"

DT: I love disasters. I get along very well with disasters. Some of my best friends are disasters. Fauci I think is a Democrat but that's okay. Everybody makes mistakes.

JB: Trump knew about the dangers in January and didn't tell the American people. He said he didn't want people to panic. But let me tell you something. Americans do not panic. But he panicked. His folks went to Wall Street and told them to panic and sell short because it's dangerous and we gotta keep moving.

DT: You're the one that takes all the money from Wall Street. I could make them give me all the money I wanted but I don't need it, I'm already as rich as sin.

JB: Average contribution $43.

KW: Let's get on to another pressing kitchen table issue that is on the minds of All Americans. Foreign and Russian interference in our elections. How will you deal with this, Joe Biden?

JB: Everybody has to take the pledge. Whenever the booming and privatized Security Industry announces a threat, anybody who interferes with our propaganda will have to pay a price. And that includes non- believers. Everybody has to take the pledge.  Russia and China will pay a price, when I am president, for interfering with American hegemony. I don't think Trump has said anything to Putin about interfering. Nothing good happens, like a new war for instance. Putin is paying a bounty to the Taliban to kill our guys who've been occupying Afghanistan for the last 20 years.  I believe everything I read in the New York Times,  and why wouldn't I? I am often one of the anonymous sources who dictates this bullshit to the Times. I am the authority. Take the pledge and defeat this fascist!

DT: Joe takes money from Russia.  When Russia took over that submarine port (Crimea) Joe Biden was in charge and he let them do it. I can red-bait like the best of these war-mongers.Nobody is tougher on Russia than me. Didn't I refuse to renew the nuclear arms treaty? What more do you possibly want from me? And all these emails about your kid Hunter taking money from Ukraine, when are you going to come clean with the American people, Joe?

JB: I have never taken a penny from a foreign source in my life. I am not addressing how many pennies my son took. And that is because the mainstream media is not only not really pressing to explain those leaked emails about Hunter, they're either suppressing the story or calling it a bunch of malarkey. End of story. What about Trump's tax returns, which are perfectly okay for the media to steal and print? If you won't talk about your corruption, why should I talk about my corruption?

DT: I've been under audit since I was in the womb. And I don't make money from China, I just have a few secret bank accounts there besides the one I closed. Joe, why are you called "Big Man" in those emails? 

KW: Prexy, but when are you doing to release the same tax records that the New York Times has already printed?

DT: The IRS not only treats me terribly, they treat me horribly, even worse than the Tea Party gets treated. Not to mention unfairly.

JB: Oh come on now, folks!

DT: I was put through an impeachment witch hunt. What about you, Joe? Millions of dollars and houses all over the place.

KW: All right, gents, all this corruption is just canceling itself out. So let's move on to asking Joe Biden about his son's sleazy consulting gig with a corrupt Ukrainian gas oligarch. Do you regret this scandal, Veepy?

JB: Here's the wheel and deal, folks. All the Democrats in the impeachment testified that I did my job impeccably. End of story. Period, period, period.

DT: The Hunter gig was a hundred percent dishonest.

JB: Everyone, meaning my Democratic friends and media pals, testified we did nothing wrong in Ukraine.

KW: Okay.What about your businesses and personal properties, Prez?

DT: I have bank accounts all over the place. I was a businessman doing business.

KW: Okay.

DT: Big difference, he was the vice president of the United States, his family was getting rich like a vacuum cleaner.

KW: Okay, now we have to move on from the first moving-on and I am not kidding this time. Let's move to a broader China than the one you and Hunter did business with. By that, I mean let's revisit that whole Covid Transparency thing that we we already moved on from once in this soap opera. VP Biden, how are you going to  make China pay? Please, for once in your life, be specific when I vaguely ask about China broadly.

JB: I'd play by the American Supremacy rules, unlike him. Also too, China would have to play by the rules. I'll fly right through their no-fly zones. Heck, I already flew our bombers right through that airspace. Trump doesn't play by our rules, he kisses up to thugs like Kim Jong Un.

KW: Oh, all right then, Let's move on to North Korea.

DT: Hold on there. His son walked out of China with millions.

JB: Not true, not true.

KW: All right then, let's take a detour back to China if you really insist.

DT: I am making China pay. I made them pay $28 billion to our farmers.

JB: That was American taxpayers' money, not yours.

DT: No they devalued their currency and the farmers got the money.

KW: Your response, Veepy?

JB: I can't say it's not true about the Trump aid to farmers. So I'll deflect and say that I don't want to make this all about me. This is about your family sitting around the kitchen table, worried about their tires going as bald as the backs of our heads. Scranton, Scranton, Scranton. 

KW: Beat the buzzer, Donald. Ten seconds and counting.

DT: Kitchen table is typical politician-speak. Let's get off China, let's talk about sitting around the kitchen table. Come on Joe, you can do better.

KW: Okay then, let's deflect from farmers deflecting from kitchen tables and go back to North Korea by way of the China detour. Why are you so lovey-dovey with Kim Jung Un, Mr. Prez? You have 30 seconds to explain your position on world-destroying nuclear war, because we have many more important topics to move on to.

DT: Barack Obama told me when I won the election that the biggest threat to world peace was North Korea. There has been no war with North Korea on my watch.

JB: I had to make it clear to North Korea that here's the deal, they had to be part of the deal. We're going to continue to control them. And what has he done? He's called this nuclear-capable thug his good buddy. North Korea has to be a nuclear-free zone while we keep building our own trillion-dollar nukes. It's the exceptionally American way.

DT: A good relationship with the leaders of other countries is a good thing.

JB: We had a good relationship with Hitler before he invaded the rest of Europe. Me and Obama chose to starve North Korea into submission, and then the thug refused to cooperate with us. Come on, man!

KW: Let's move back to American families sitting around the kitchen table. The Affordable Care Act is moving back to the Supreme Court and families might lose the privilege of paying exorbitant rates to the health care insurance industry. So what would you say to those families, President Trump?

DT: I terminated the individual mandate. But pre-existing conditions will always stay. Not that they'll be covered, mind you, but we will always be stuck with the conditions we are often born with or irresponsibly develop. Joe Biden is going to terminate all that great big beautiful profitable private health care! The job being done on American health care and on sick people has been absolutely incredible. The rest of the advanced world is looking at us in awed amazement.

JB: Obamacare will become Bidencare, with a public option. What this means is, we will bypass Red states that have refused to expand Medicaid and automatically enroll them in my strictly means-tested plan. Folks who are struggling to pay the high premiums and deductibles and co-pays to the private insurers whose stock went sky-high when we cheated Bernie out of the nomination will not qualify for my  public option unless they fall below our ridiculous measurement for poverty. I beat out 20 other Democratic primary challengers because even though more than 80 percent of my party's base favors Medicare For All, they obviously like me a lot more than they care about their health. I will never advocate for single payer health care, even in the middle of a pandemic. Like I said when we started, people are learning how to die with it. Take the pledge! If you like your plan you can keep your plan even if you don't like it.

KW: But, given that my own NBC employer is funded by corporations and insurance companies, wouldn't your plan cause losses in our ad revenue and take us one step closer to socialized medicine?

JB: That's ridiculous. Health is not a privilege, it is the human right to compete and pay a private corporation for something that every other advanced government in the world automatically provides for its people.

DT: Bernie Sanders wants it, and the Democrats are going to get it. Joe claimed to be against fracking, too, before he is suddenly for it.

JB: I beat all those people  - not because they dropped out en masse when Barack gave them a friendly prodding phone call - but because I didn't agree with them. Just because I once tried to cut Social Security and Medicare don't mean a thing when you ain't got that swing.... state of mind.

DT: The Stock Market will boom when I'm re-elected.

KW: As the Democratic candidate and leader of the party, Biden, why aren't you involved in getting the stimulus through Congress? 

JB: Scranton, Scranton, Scranton. Hardscrabble kitchen tables. Sleepless nights worrying about the medical bills. Scranton.

KW: Let's round the curve before the ratings of this spectacle flatten out, and move on to another 30 second pivot point. But about the Covid relief bill, Mr. President? People are either sitting around the kitchen table, or tossing and not turning the corner in bed.

DT: Nancy Pelosi.

JB:  Mitch McConnell. But when I am elected, to plagiarize Obama again, there will no red states and no blue states, only the United States of America. McConnell will melt right in my arms.

And here's where I get really radical. Just because I was a right-wing austerian my entire political life, I'm going to jump off a cliff here and embrace deficit spending for a change. Or at least that is my current aspirational plan.You'll just have to stay tuned for my cabinet appointments to get a hint as to whether I'm serious about his or not.

DT: No increase in the minimum wage, because people in Alabama are used to having nothing. You already know how I feel about spoiled rotten New York.

JB: Our first responders deserve a minimum wage of $15. Because by the time it finally passes, it will not by any stretch be a living wage. So I'll go out on another limb and be for it. 

KW: On to immigration. What about the caged children and the missing parents?

DT: Latino parents are al coyotes who took money to bring strangers' kids across our borders. It was Obama who built the cages. And anyway, they are very clean cages. Other countries look at our cages and are amazed. We are working as hard to reunite the children and parents as we are at hammering away the Covid spikes. In other words, maybe it will all just go away if we only ignore it long enough.

JB: Pictures of kids in cages makes us the laughingstock of every other nation. The well-being of children pales in comparison to the hit that our reputation as savior of the world has taken. When Barack was president, we imprisoned the parents and children together in what we called Family Detention Centers. We only threatened to take the kids away one time, when the mothers staged a hunger strike at our condemned facility in Berks County, Pennsylvania. Which, by the way, is in the same state as Scranton Scranton Scranton. Oh, and I was only the powerless vice president when Obama deported more people than all other previous presidents combined. It was a mistake. But I won't mention my part in going down to Mexico to make sure that Hondurans and other Central Americans never got past their border on the way to our border.

DT: I hate to love to say this, but the only illegals who ever show up in our courts voluntarily have low IQs. 

KW: Okay, let's move on to race in America. Mr. Veep, I want you to talk directly to the Black families about The Talk.

JB: My daughter is a social worker. Rich Black people get stopped by the police as often as poor Black people. That is my way of ignoring the Class War, by the way, and feeling good about representing the rich of all races.
Even if you're making $300,000 a year you're still a victim. It's about having the ability to be free from violence as you are accumulating wealth.

DT: In 1994 you did such harm to the Black community with your Crime Bill. You called them super-predators.

JB: No I did not, that was Hillary Clinton. I called them thugs and hoodlums out to rape my wife and my daughter, you racist pig. You, who called for the death penalty for the Central Park Five even after they were cleared. Our character is on the ballot, Look at us closely.

DT: Hunter Biden is the Laptop From Hell.

JB: It's a Russian plot. Hundreds of my Deep State colleagues say so, who needs evidence?

KW: I thought we were talking about race. What about your support of the white militia movement,  Prexy?

DT: I am the least racist president of all the racist presidents.

JB: You support the Poor (sic) Boys.  This guy has a dog whistle as big as a foghorn, while my own is very tinny-sounding and proper. Everybody voted for my Crime Bill. Mistakes were made. At the very end of the Obama administration, we released a tiny percentage of people serving long sentences for minor drug crimes. Obama had a legacy to protect and a book to write.

KW: Let's leave our token discussion of climate change  for the very end, when the attention span of our audience is faltering. Because Big Oil advertises on NBC

DT: I love trees, air and crystal clear water. Since I love them they will take care of themselves. But look at those filthy shithole countries, Russia, China and India.

 JB: Climate change is an existential threat to humanity. I do not support the Green New Deal. I will create millions of new green jobs, though, because it's good for Wall Street.

DT: You are jumping through hoops for AOC+3. You want to knock down buildings and put small windows in buildings like holes. You said we're going to have a very dark winter! Windmills kill birds.

JB: I never said I oppose fracking! We need fracking to transition to clean energy, the same way we capitalists need predatory private insurance to transition to single payer in the next century.

DT: Yeah, so Black people who live right near oil refineries and chemical plants might get sick from pollution, but at least they don't need a car to get to their great oil refinery jobs to get rich.

JB: When I was growing up, our car had oil on the windshield, so I can relate to Black people in those fenceline communities. I am not banning fracking! Wall Street says there will be good paying jobs to capture all that excess gas we extract from the earth. I will replace oil over time. Eons of time we don't have, after I am dead.

KW: We're out of time, gentlemen.

DT: Nothing succeeds like success. Nothing exceeds like excess. I am both. Vote for me!

JB: I will be the president of all the people. There is no rich America, there is no poor America. Folks, we're all in this together with Jeff Bezos and United Healthcare. Choose hope over fear. Vote for me!