Winner of last night’s debate was Lester Holt
by Jon Rappoport
September 27, 2016
(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, Exit From The Matrix, click here.)
As I wrote before the debate yesterday, it’s all about the staging.
I won’t go over everything NBC moderator Lester Holt did to tilt the debate to Hillary. Others are covering his performance. I’ll point out one vital thing. It happened right at the beginning.
Holt framed the debate by stating that the US economy, particularly employment, has recovered well since the 2007-8 meltdown. Of course, he lied. When you factor in how many people now have low-paying jobs who formerly had good jobs; and when you also consider that people who give up trying to find jobs are eventually no longer listed as unemployed, you get the true picture: the US economy hasn’t recovered. Not by a long shot.
Understandably, Trump was focused, at the moment when Holt lied, on Hillary and the audience in the hall. He was blindsided. From the get-go, he should have pinned Holt and denied Holt’s “facts.” He should have exposed Holt as an errant “fact-checker” and put him back on his heels. That could have changed the whole tone of the evening. Holt’s stone-faced “objective” calm would have been broken. He would have been under the gun.
The tight debate format does not suit Trump. The whole set-up goes against his style. Brief statements, the back-and-forth between candidates, the moderator questions and interruptions—it plays against his energy and rhythms.
Within that structure, Trump tended to talk to Hillary and Holt—instead of directly to the American people.
That created problems for him throughout the evening.
Trump’s whole campaign has been based on him going out there, from city to city, talking to large crowds.
In the debates, he has to maintain that position. He’s still speaking directly to the American people, even though he’s in a small hall, with network coverage, with Hillary standing near him, with a media moderator running the show. He has to make that clear—he’s speaking to The People.
The debate set-up is 2 against 1. Holt (or any network moderator) is the anchor. Hillary, with her polished delivery (she’s spoken these lines hundreds of times), functions, in a sense, as another anchor. That leaves Trump as the “disgruntled guest” on the show, trying to make his points and go against the grain.
An old word describes what Trump should be doing: “oratory.” It’s what elevates a speaker beyond his immediate circumstances and environment, imparting the sense that he’s talking to “everybody.” Forget Hillary. Forget Holt. Forget the people in the hall. Many of them are political pros. Talk to America.
Trump is supposed to be a populist. He’s supposed to be speaking to, and on behalf of, the citizens who feel they have no voice. If that’s true, he can’t leave them out during the debates.
For her part, Hillary was sheer empty perfection. She used all the buzzwords and generalities, while maintaining a cheery and bright attitude. She delivered exactly what she’s been delivering for years and years, straight from memory.
It doesn’t matter what the debate after-polls show. As this campaign moves to its final moments, her anchor-like gloss is going to make serious inroads on Trump, if he continues to be the disgruntled guest on the show.
Jon Rappoport
The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.
That was a good assessment of the debate, Jon. Thanks.
Leslie
I want to thank you for recognizing all the people who were dumped from well-paying jobs and are either employed for half or less or their former salary or have given up regular employment entirely. I am one of those people and I want to choke anyone who talks about our economic “recovery”. The numbers are fake, the jobs are junk and it’s all according to plans agreed to by our elected politicians.
I didn’t watch the debate last night and I’m glad I didn’t. I would feel differently if Trump had called out Lester Holt in the manner you outlined. That would be something to see on TV.
My sentiments exactly. I’m also among the group that has “given up” finding suitable employment. Been six years now. I get regular listings from LinkedIn, but not one of them are in the fields of my skillset. I didn’t watch the debate either–never have watched them. Not only are they a circus, a comedy of lies, they’re also nothing more than a repeat of the tired campaign euphemisms intended to poke the opposition in the eye. Historically, the advent of a political messiah has always been the harbinger of complete totalitarianism and subsequent collapse. We allow the overlords to divert our attention from the real solution to these political conundrums, which is to cease viewing government as the panacea for our social dysfunction.
I’d say he wasn’t prepared to ‘bring it.’
Did he not mock debate (enough)? Did he not have a wicked (good) advisor to deepen his game (in relation to The Game?) Did he reject (or not fully integrate) good advice? Did he discover his organic limitations (before ~100M ready to form a ‘first impression’)?
I don’t know. But he had opportunities. Open doors.
And no grand game to burgeon after walking through.
Absolutely right. Trump let himself be boxed in by the format and the false premises of the introduction. He was a caged lion. He should insist that at least one of the remaining debates be without a moderator, and allow much longer uninterrupted delivery. Just have a time clock that automatically cuts of the mic when time is up, and gives them a one-minute warning light. Who needs a moderator?
48% of american adults have a full time job. 51% of American workers make less than $30,000/year. One in five homes have nobody working but the unemployment rate is 4.9%. Anyone trying to tell you that everything is going well in America is either lying or stupid. If you can’t find a job when 1/20 people share that experience, you might think there is something wrong with you. If you can’t find a job and 1/4 people also can’t find a job, you might think there is something wrong with the system.
The USS Titanic has hit the iceberg. The ship is slowly sinking. Those in first class do not have their feet wet so they want to keep going in the current direction. Many people are underwater. When Clinton tells those who are underwater that everything is going well, they aren’t falling for the lie.
Sorry to disagree with you on this one. Hillary is far from polished in my perception. She was continually looking down at her podium to glean from notes to keep herself on track with her generic blather. And, at times it seemed as if she paused slightly while speaking, as though listening for a prompt word in an earpiece. He affect is to look down her nose all the time, like a haughty royal. Trump performed poorly, himself.
I agree, Jon.
I am a Trump advocate. At all costs I do NOT want to see Clinton become President, and finish the disintegration of the Republic that has been in process for decades and of course accelerated under Barry Sotoro.
That said, I am convinced that to the undecided voters tuning into the debate, Clinton was better than Trump by most debate metrics. Composed, clear, addressing the questions, answers that were of course often false or manipulative but superficially convincing. Trump was often on the defensive, often quite repetitive and he missed MAJOR opportunities to challenge and expose Clinton.
I think there were three obvious factors at play: 1.Clinton undoubtedly had advance information on EXACTLY what issues would be raised and was well-versed and ready to address them. (This is a given knowing how the MSM will always give every hidden advantage to their surrogate. We all– and certainly Trump– had to expect this.) 2. Which is all the more puzzling to me that Trump seemed ill-prepared. I believe his debate preparation was sorely lacking. He gave weak, repetitive and ineffective answers to his tax return issue, to the riots and civil unrest discussion and the matter of our foreign military conflicts, NATO, etc. Yet these were obvious issues to be raised, and he could and should have had specific convincing albeit canned responses but did not. Any diligent Trump supporter could sight myriad talking points wholly overlooked by Trump when responding to these issues; the opportunity to turn the issues against Hilary were simply overwhelming. I can only conclude he did not actually drill and prepare on these specifics. If that is true, it was utterly foolish on the part of Trump and his advisors. 3. Lastly Hilary did NOT look sick or failing in health. Whether she got some medical magic bullet to carry her through the evening, or the Clinton camp has just been engaged in some sort of grand, deceptive and sympathy-inducing psyop, I do not know, But she was game on ready.
Yes, Clinton has been talking the same false ‘stich’ for decades. Essentially, next time around, Trump needs to drill on responses to core issues, and he needs to talk past the moderators to the people.
Exactly Jon…personally I was taking notes. Mental physical cues from the idiot box. Being always the artist I was curious about the set-up, how the eye is moved through the cunning imagery. The staging, the lighting for this play of three characters.
I was unsurprised that Hilly was dressed in flaming red, an exact shade of red against a sea of blue with white words, the American flag in metaphor. Above her right shoulder emblazoned in the fond of the Declaration of Independence the word ‘Right’. As in ‘Right of the people.”..as in right candidate. The light bathed her in a divine warm glow. Furthering the tones and shifts in shade of the red dress. Red like blood, red like constrained passion ready to be unleashed. Red as determination, energy, desire and love. Red as drawing the eye away from Donald Trump and to the face of the great Mama on the hill who has persevered through the serial cheating of slick Willy. The dark cross shaped like a brest cancer ribbon, of the secondary microphone, centered on her brest, placed in away to appear at the end of the gold rosary of necklace. The divine mama.
She remained smiling and allowed herself room for play to her audience’s bias. Sticking to the script. The great Mother listening with a quiet temperance to the panderings of an unruly man-child beside her. With at times a polite use of humor to quell his accusations of “liar liar pants on fire”, and the use of humour in, “Donald you live in your own reality”.
Donald Trump was in a dark blue suit, with the same color blue tie against the blue background and a white words declaration style. Above his right shoulder the partially obscured word ending in ‘ong’ implying homonyms that rhyme with wrong, belong…the camera fidgets constantly to frame and presents this image of him…others words obscured in the blue back ground to imply derive, derivative, ‘men’.
The ‘Donald’ was lost in that passive blue picture frame, calming, restraining our metabolism and its tranquilizing our response to him and yet the constant movement, reframing, causing an easiness for us to listen and focus on his presence, in the end frustration us.
The tag teaming against one in this little staged play pro Hillary, par excellence. The camera fidgets during his responses. The presentation of DT against a dark wall at times with a dark grey cross, ominous and foreboding, authoritarian and predictive. Our subconscious is entrained to follow.
DT was interrupted by Holt continuously, politely chastised and attacked; whereas Hillary was allowed to continue freed from answering personal questions…”Donald you are unpacking too much.” Holt exclaims. Holt never quieted the audience when Hillary’s fans cheered or laugh at her personal quips about him. But chastised the audience on the mentioned emails, Donald should have taken that que, and pounded her into a tearful confession of her guilt.
Donald was suckered into searching for a street fight at times. He was purposely constantly cornered and frustrated, and drawn into defensed, his personal income became a point of contention rather the office responsibilities of the POTUS. Hillary’s income never questioned. The Clinton Foundation corruption never even mentioned. Email scandal deflected.
Hillary’s constant comparison to her working class father, an honest Gepetto who was a drapery artist and was as fucking honest as the day is long. Donald cornered and caught frowning, sniffling from an nearby irritant, sniffling from sniveling weakness and the discovery that he has been baited by a professional politician. By the MSM, co-conspirators in this mind fuck of the world.
Hillary is in the end perfected lines rehearsed over and over and over again, as you say… inflections streamlined in her words, gestures and responses to accusations tailored to the positive response. The great mamas response. Earned from the lesson of the slippery and ever slick Willy Clinton. Hillary is a refined and a mastered psychopathic liar and politician, she is very good at playing this part. She is the great biblical whore reveling to mount the throne of the world. Donald was let, emasculated, a refined tactic used on Bills lies in fornt of secret service agents. Either this was purposeful and he is a beard, or he was shocked and couldn’t respond. In his defeat he needs to take the gloves off with this woman, and realize this is not Marquis of Queensberry rules…this Donald…is bare knuckles. This is the dark side…wakey wakey. This is what she is good at, they pay her upwards of half a million dollars to do this all fucking day.
Talk to the voters, present her sins, out her, intelligently, do not mud sling. Push her hard, push Hillary to the edge, go right off script, don’t play by the rules, don’t listen to Lester the bum boy, turn it into entertainment, upset applecart, be “…sick and tired and your not gonna take it anymore.”, rev up the audience, break through the fix, push her till she breaks or walks of stage in fluster, put her in a cauldron and boil her up for soup. I guarantee she’ll cough, and will not stop coughing, she will fall down in a faint, metal things will fall off her body, or a big black man with an Eppy pen will run on stage and jab in that big fat…
Red like the blood of the kidnapped children she had intravenously pumped in to her body.
I wish I were kidding.
Great analysis.
Lester Holt, whom I have always admired was a huge disappointed to me. I thought he would keep his biases in check and act as a non-partisan and non-biased moderator. He did not.
Therefore, and due to Lester Holt’s bias and obvious favoritism for Hillary all my respect for him has gone out the window and completely down the tubes.
“In debate, Clinton gets no follow-up questions, Trump gets 6”
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/in-debate-clinton-gets-no-follow-up-questions-trump-gets-6/article/2602939
Yep! Lester Holt won the debate.
But:
Hillary has already unloaded her full ammunition in this first debate.
Trump hasn’t even touched his reserves. yet.
Can’t wait for the two remaining debates
Thank you for giving me another perspective to watch the debate, I was so sickened by Hillary and Lester that I switched it off. All staging all cues to support this evil woman. The Darpa augmented reality contact lenses and the flesh tone ear piece will have enough evidence to damn her to hell.
Cousin Lester, the munsters,How appropo, was right on cue, or rather fed the cue to Killary. Prison is too good for this (wo)man.
Yes…Me too! The stage set, lighting, and suggestive poses were as obvious as many other tv gimmicks. I’m still wondering why Georgetown U covered up the big cross behind Obama when he spoke there. Many locals in DC noticed it. This debate was as clever as a commercial for Nike.
My thoughts exactly. Trump had the opportunity to set the tone of the entire debate by correcting Lester. For whatever reason though he didn’t. I have listened to commentary all day. If any of the daytime radio talk show host hit on this glaringly obvious fact, I missed it. I driver a truck all day so all I can get is talk radio. By the end of the day I was beginning to wonder if I was wrong about what I saw. Thanks for the real analysis.
This was arranged in advanced between the Clinton campaign and NBC, just like Chuck Todd would email the DNC people, like Wasserman-Schultz, and ask them to send him questions they wanted asked on MEET THE PRESS. The whole thing was contrived in talks between the Clinton Campaign, the DNC, and NBC. All the interactions between the media and the DNC are still going on, but no one has hacked the communications yet.
Agree that DJT needs to readjust his target to the American people. However, the picture of a disgruntled American going against the grain will most definitely resonate with those of like stripes. Those dissed by the Dems are many and not a few of them see straight thru the “polish” HRC had applied to her false face. That’s Hollyweird, man, and people are on to it. It is time to put down the nice and go for the throat. If these aren’t the times to kick some ass, when will it be?
I admire your’ insight Jon, spot on as always, but in the end, will this election change the nations’ direction? I doubt it, the glacial inertia towards collapse seems inevitable, it only lacks the brand-name, place your’ bets!
But the “brand name” is already in place. It’s called the United (sic) Nations….!
Forgive me, I missed the “debate” (sic), Jon.
Though it would be remiss of me to comment on something I didn’t witness, I fear your eloquence transcends the occasion. If only you were to step up to the presidential plate, I would hark on everything you said worthy of my attention.
Best
OT
Jon,
Trump surely looked out of his element in this debate, but he did succeed in looking less than mean and crazy, which is helpful to those in the middle or relatively indifferent about elections. His ideas were much more those of a salesman than hers.
Personally, I think he seemed unable to decide whether to attack, which is his natural style, or play nice. His advisors are largely pushing the nice guy strategy, and it has been working for the last few weeks.
Not sure if how polished Clinton is will matter. Perhaps 40% of the country will back Clinton; 40% hate Clinton or like Trump; and then there is the rest. It seems to me that a better strategy for the Clinton camp is to try to destroy Trump one way or another. False charges, for example. Or some attempts to ruin his health. Whatever it takes. At the end of the day, undecideds break against the incumbent, and the economic and social situations inside the US are not so good. And she is really unlikable. So she needs to get enough fake polls and cheating on election day to overcome losing by 5-10%.
I don’t watch t.v., but this waste of time “debate” between “opponents” is a farce. Whomever wins the U.S. loses, Zionists shills (all candidates) will lead us down to the end game… N.W.O. . Waste of time and effort to watch this bad play acting, these puppets do what they’re told.