Second Presidential Debate of 2016 - Analysis

Test. So who won the second presidential debate of 2016 between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump? The answer is Hillary Clinton. Now, let's take a step back a moment and look at the broader contours of the political environment at the moment. Donald Trump had a bigger issue than this one debate. The videotape release, an audiotape release from Friday where he. And I'm not even going to repeat what he said, but when he talked about sexually molesting any woman he meets, grabbing the woman's genitals, that completely dominated all news coverage and put his campaign into absolute crazy crisis death spiral mode. You've got dozens of highly ranked officials in the Republican Party repudiating him, canceling their pledge to support him and vote him. You've got people like Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican Party, saying basically this campaign is over. In fact, during the debate, he was tweeting, here's the state of the Republican Party today. And he had a mushroom cloud in nuclear disaster. So it's not that Donald Trump did anything especially bad or worse than any other debate tonight. It's just that he really had one goal. He had one thing he had to do. He had to somehow convince people that he was contrite, that his apology was sincere, that that somehow they could look at this whole incident of him boasting about being able to just grab any attractive woman's genitals he wanted at any time. He had to somehow change people's perspective on that, because as it is now, he is nothing but a laughingstock. He is a joke. He is a pariah. The analogies used most often among Republicans is that it's the Titanic sinking and everyone is running for life rafts trying to figure how they can jump off that boat as quickly as possible. There is absolute pandemonium in the Republican Party. Did Donald Trump's performance at the debate tonight do anything to alter that fundamental equation? Absolutely not. He did not fluster Hillary Clinton. They had a press conference beforehand where all these various women who have accused Clinton of sexual harassment, rape, other atrocities over the years were lined up for a press conference beforehand. It was a nice picture, nice photo op, but it sort of landed with a thud once the debate started. I will say this about the debate. The dynamics of the campaign have changed with this whole Trump tape thing where the moderators took the gloves off. Martha Raddatz and Anderson Cooper were not the typical deferential moderator where they just sort of toss up a question for the politician, let them speak on and on and avoid the subject, and dodge it and go on. They really, really ripped apart Trump. They called him out on his bs. I do predict that the right wing media, conservative media, those still remaining favor of Trump are going to just absolutely vilify the moderators of this debate. I think they did a very tough job on Trump, but I do think they were fair. Not all candidates, sure, you could say all politicians lie, but not all politicians lie as frequently or as forcefully or in ways that were as obvious to detect. And Trump just, you know, whether he continues to say he was against the Iraq war, when there is footage recordings saying he's in favor of the Iraq war time and time again, he just flat out feels compelled to just make stuff up to lie. And Anderson Cooper and Martha Raddatz called him on it. They called him on his dodges. It was an extraordinarily different debate than anycertainly than any I've seen in my lifetime. And I've seen pretty much all the debates, although I wasn't around for the Kennedy Nixon debates, although I've seen them after the fact. Other odd things that jumped out. There was a lot of commentary during the first debate about Donald Trump's constant sniffing, but boy, was it pronounced tonight. Surely he can't blame that on the microphone, just at some point, I thought Hillary Clinton was going to say, hey Donald, you need some Obamacare to take care of this bad cold you've had for a couple of weeks now. She obviously didn't want to get cute, but it was pronounced. The other odd thing is the way he sort of was stalking around in the back, lumbering around almost in a menacing way. It just seemed odd. Now, Hillary Clinton had, I thought, a strong night. I think if you're Hillary Clinton, the Hillary Clinton team, you look at her performance tonight, you have to say, this is exactly what we wanted to do. She didn't just pile on with the, oh, aren't you horrible for saying you want to grab women's genitals. She didn't just take the easy, simple way. She took that and threaded it through a whole needle that connected to you're against women. You're saying wild, obnoxious, inflammatory, bigoted statements against women here. But that fits a pattern of being anti Muslim and anti immigrant and anti Mexican. She consistently weaved it through various constituencies to remind people that this is not a one off, this is a part of who Donald Trump is. And to me, that was the central challenge for Donald Trump tonight. He had to convince people that either through his contrition, the strength of his apology, that Somehow who he is can't be defined as a guy who is just so obnoxious, so fuck full of himself, so arrogant that he can just run around and grab women's genitals and sexually assault them any way he wants. That was his mission. And while any one answer on other subjects, you could say he gave a pretty good answer that was okay. He failed in that fundamental mission. So I do not see how that is going to change the fundamental arc of the campaign we are in now. After the last debate, Hillary Clinton was judged by me and almost all other commentators to have won the debate. And the polling data started shifting. It went from about equal or her being up plus two to her being up plus four, even six points across the country. Certainly the events of the last 48 hours and I'm taping this Sunday night right after the debate ended, nothing happened at the Bay tonight to change that. Nothing happened in the last 48 hours to change that general direction of Trump going down. And a lot has happened to accelerate his decline. Now, a lot of pundits have been wrong in the last year predicting the demise of Donald Trump. I'm certainly not going to predict that he drops out of the race. And boy, oh boy, Hillary Clinton sure does not want him to drop out. Trump drop out of the race. But I have a hard time imagining that his poll numbers don't drop below 40 and hers go up in the high 40s and we get to the point where it's like a 10 point spread and then you're really talking about just epic landslide proportions, not just in the electoral College, but in the popular vote. And then you see things like not only is the Senate in play for Democrats, but the House as well. And it really is pretty much an unmitigated disaster of epic proportion for the Republicans. So I don't really see this debate as an act in and of itself changing much. It's these other dynamics that are so much bigger, have so much bigger play. But still, if we're going to look at the debate, there were some interesting things. Donald Trump says so many wildly outrageous things all the time that sometimes he'll say something and it just kind of slips by. You don't even notice. It is different because it doesn't stand out compared to all the other wacky things he said. One of the things he talked about tonight was if he's president, he's going to try to put Hillary Clinton in jail. Well, folks, that's what they do in third world dictatorships. That's what they do. In banana republics. That's just not how American style democracy is typically played out. Trump once again shows very, very little respect for American traditions. Okay? The people who are for Trump, no matter what, they saw the tapes Friday, heard them, they saw them Saturday and they said, you know what, I'm still with Trump, I still hate Hillary, no matter what. I predict those people are just as happy with Trump as ever after the I don't think he lost a single vote among people who were not bothered by the tape. The problem, of course, is there's so many politicians now with their fingers in the wind who kind of sort of maybe endorsed Trump and now they're getting such a backlash from their constituents. They're going to continue to get more and more vocal criticism from their constituents saying, unless you repudiate Donald Trump, I'll never vote for you again. I'll never contribute to you again. So I think we're going to see hundreds, if not thousands of Republican elected officials from Water Conservation Board Dog Catcher on up in the next week or so repudiating Donald Trump. This is going to cause a further downward spiral in Trump's polling and it's going to really change the fundamental nature of this race. And then it gets to the point where Hillary, she's got a lot more leeway, she's going to have a lot more comfort. Thanks for joining me. I'm TJ Walker. Take just a couple second break there. I just finished the YouTube video portion of the show, but I want to continue with those of you joining me on itunes. By the way, thanks for joining me. If you have not subscribed yet, please do. You can subscribe on itunes, you can subscribe on Overcast, you can even download at no charge the Speaking with TJ Walker app in the App Store. And this way you can get our updates on a regular basis. As I mentioned over the last couple of days, we're going to start and we're going to resume are long form interviews with experts, top communicators, with industry leaders about how they communicate effectively. But I will take certain time, like major political debates, major political crises, to analyze those events and give you my perspective from a communications vantage point. Let's delve a little deeper into some of the events of the last 48 hours. One of them was Donald Trump's apology for his video audio tape release. I've got to say that was one of the worst apologies I've ever seen in my life. Donald Trump, for as much experience as he has on television, is horrible at reading a teleprompter he was obviously reading a teleprompter because his head went stiff. And when you don't move your head and you're looking at a camera, it makes you look scared stiff, phony. Unbelievable. And it was just such a bad apology because he said, like, if I offended anybody. Well, of course you offended people. You talked about how you brazenly feel entitled to grab women's genitals anytime you want and using more, more vulgar language than that. So he made it suggest. He sort of suggested, like, you know, I said Merry Christmas, but I'm sorry if any of you are offended that I didn't say Happy Holidays. He made it sound like it was something that innocuous. Then he talked about it was over 10 years ago. Meanwhile, he's talking about things that Hillary Clinton did, allegedly awful, 40 years ago. This incident just happened 11 years ago when he was 59 years old. And he made it sound like it was some youthful indiscretion. And then his message was basically, well, everybody does this. And then his message was, well, Bill Clinton's worse. And again, just the all time worst apology I think I've ever seen. No sane, rational person could see that and say, oh, okay, well, now I feel better. If you're Rudy Giuliani or Chris Christie or someone trying to work in the Trump White House and you're all ready for Trump no matter what, and you know, you could see him shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and it wouldn't change your opinion, which Donald Trump said is many of his supporters wouldn't change their opinion. Sure, you might like the apology because you think it checks off a box, but if you were someone, a voter, a Republican voter, or someone who would vote for the Republican of Donald Trump, but were genuinely bothered and upset by the revelations of this tape and you saw Trump's apology, I guarantee you there's not a single voter in America who felt better about Trump after seeing that apology. You just didn't happen. In other news, this fallout is hitting other people, too. Billy Bush, the commentator, I shouldn't say commentator. The host at the time of Access Hollywood, who's now one of the anchors at NBC's Today show, has received a tremendous amount of criticism. I think rightfully so. His bootlicking and enabling was disgusting to many. Initially, NBC stood behind him. Now they're like, we're gonna put him on leave. Prediction. I don't think you're gonna see Billy Bush anchoring a prime real estate position on NBC's lineup like the Today Show. Will they keep him on somewhere or put him on some celebrity show. Maybe so. I mean, the guy's got great hair. He makes celebrities feel comfortable. He certainly made Donald Trump feel comfortable. He's got family connections. He's a cousin to George Bush and Jeb Bush. But I think his anchoring days are over, and I'm not sure many people will be very disappointed by that. Do you have an upcoming crisis? Maybe you haven't told people that you like to run around grabbing women's or men's genitals, but you still might have a crisis. If so, Media Training Worldwide would like to send you a no cost, no obligation online media training school to help you get through these times of crisis. All you have to do is click on the link below in the show notes. Or you can just send me an email. I'll make sure you get it. Tjediatrainingworldwide.com what did you think of the debate? I'd love to hear from you. Please post your comments in the discussion section on YouTube, on LinkedIn, Facebook, our blog, or anywhere you are seeing or hearing this program. I'd like to hear from you. Also send me a tweet. Jwalker thanks for joining me. Hope to spend time with you tomorrow.