October 10, 2016

It's not easy to unpack all the Trump-fueled insanity of Sunday's Second Presidential Debate. Who could have predicted Donald Trump would be at odds with his own running mate, Gov. Mike Pence?

Here's the exchange during the debate between Raddatz and Trump. The topic was Syria and the possible fall of the ravaged city of Aleppo.

RADDATZ: Mr. Trump, let me repeat the question. If you were president...
... what would you do about Syria and the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo? And I want to remind you what your running mate said. He said provocations by Russia need to be met with American strength and that if Russia continues to be involved in air strikes along with the Syrian government forces of Assad, the United States of America should be prepared to use military force to strike the military targets of the Assad regime.

TRUMP: OK. He and I haven't spoken, and I disagree. I disagree.

RADDATZ: What do you think will happen if Aleppo falls?

TRUMP: I think Aleppo is a disaster, humanitarian-wise.

RADDATZ: What do you think will happen if it falls?

TRUMP: I think that it basically has fallen. OK? It basically has fallen. Let me tell you something. You take a look at Mosul. (Iraq) The biggest problem I have with the stupidity of our foreign policy, we have Mosul. They think a lot of the ISIS leaders are in Mosul. So we have announcements coming out of Washington and coming out of Iraq, we will be attacking Mosul in three weeks or four weeks.

Well, all of these bad leaders from ISIS are leaving Mosul. Why can't they do it quietly? Why can't they do the attack, make it a sneak attack, and after the attack is made, inform the American public that we've knocked out the leaders, we've had a tremendous success? People leave. Why do they have to say we're going to be attacking Mosul within the next four to six weeks, which is what they're saying? How stupid is our country?

It's hard to follow Trump's word salad in which he abandoned Aleppo for Mosul (Iraq) faster than you can say 'disaster.'

There were rumors flying around Twitter that Gov. Pence was ready to abandon ship. Here's one of the many Tweets circulating during the town hall debate:

Alas, at the conclusion of the debate, Pence (or someone in his campaign) tweeted this:

There's no way Mike Pence would dream of enraging the Breitbart-loving fans of Trump by jumping ship now. Campaign CEO Stephen Bannon engineered that sham of a pre-debate 'press conference' which featured discredited Bill Clinton rape accusers from the 90's. That clearly shows us who is in the driver's seat. The Alt-Right will always have an unwavering fan base that will support homophobic bigots like Mike Pence, and he knows that.

This is the first election where we see open dissent between a POTUS and VP of the same party, prior to the election. Insane news from the Trump camp is coming at us at breakneck speed, so hang on for more turbulence ahead. Mike Pence is sticking with this scorched-earth strategy. But then again, he's a big proponent of the Alt Right and their deplorable tactics, so why would he go elsewhere? And how could he afford to?

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