Trump-Hillary debate reactions

I'm very bad at political predictions. Watching the debate, I thought Hillary did great, and Trump was Trump. In other words, nothing to change how Hillary is evaluated on her scandals and Trump on his ability not to punch people. Barring perhaps the 'Stamina!' rant, All that I thought would really matter would be whether Trump could keep a lid on his tweeting for the rest of the week.

But I'm getting the sense I'm pretty wrong about that. The networks say Hillary won pretty handily. And, more importantly, Free Republic is a roiling mass of denial and misery.

At the moment, Freepers seem to be divided between 'debates don't matter,' 'Trump won based on irrelevant straw-grasping,' and 'Trump lost due to moderator bias but will win the next one for sure.'

Last night there was a lot of tin foil about Hillary being given the questions in advance, but I'm not seeing so much of that this morning for some reason. Hopefully it makes a return - I wouldn't bet against it!

Jim Robinson started a whole thread to calm Freepers down with his always effective off-topic formulaic patrio-bluster:

Actually, it makes no difference who "won" the debate. Who cares? Keep hammering on the issues that matter.

It's freedom vs socialism.

Law and order vs anarchy and chaos.

National security, national sovereignty, national survival.

Constitution and the rule of law.

Consent of the governed.

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

God, family, country.

Hillary represents the enemy within regarding all the important issues.

Recovering Ex-hippie takes solace. Or just kisses up, hard to tell.

thanks so much Jim!

You are always the ray of hope in dark times...what a wonderful mission God has sent you on—to keep the Warriors morale uplifted!!!!

MEG33 triumphantly recorded the debate and then deleted it. Take that, Hillary!

I cannot watch Hillary for over a minute so I recorded in case something important happened.. I deleted the recording unwatched.
May this nation be saved from Hillary as CIC.

GO TRUMP GO!

CitizenUSA thinks Hillary came out ahead, but it doesn't matter because imaginary Hillary lost, so this Freeper was unswayed!

I think Hillary “won” the debate, or it was a tie. She was more polished and got her talking points out. Trump missed several excellent opportunities to hit her hard. He was more often on defense rather than taking the fight to her. Cybersecurity, for example, should have been a slam dunk for him.

However, I agree with you. It doesn’t matter who had a better technical performance in the debate. What matters is what the candidates stand for, and Hillary Clinton is clearly for more of the same. They are diametrically opposed in where they want to take the country on immigration, trade, taxes, etc. By investments, Hillary means more power to government to pick winners and losers. She means more taxes so that government can distribute to special interests. She wants to take on evil corporations who make the jobs Americans need.

Sorry, but I trust Trump. He’s got a much better vision of where the country needs to go.

Cvengr just plans to be super spiteful to all suspected Hillary voters. Because that'll be a big change:

This is a good election.

Those who have integrity have no problem seeing through the charade and will never opt for Clinton.

It’s almost better to observe who sides with Clinton, for we all know they have no integrity whatsoever.

FWIW, where I had doubts in Trump, he manifest his honesty tonight. Hillary is more and worse of the same I have come to expect of liars.

Trump may have lost the debate. But he won The Westerner's heart!

Trump is inarticulate on intellectual ideas. The last part of your post is articulate.

He seems unable to articulate the wider philosophical issues because he is at home in the world of engineering, numbers, deal making, strategy, winning.

He’s a man you can trust, but can he defend us on ideological grounds? No. But we needed a fighter, and he fought the roughest fight of his life tonight against these sweetly polite ivy league bullies.

I respect his passion. I understand his sense of outrage. He made it through with his dignity in tact. He pulled his punches by not speaking to what he must know about her health diagnosis. Smart move that didn’t go unnoticed by me...he has a good heart.

I also like the ant-intellectualism of 'sweetly polite ivy league bullies.'

lacrew - Trump was selling on a level you don't even understand, man!

For Trump this was a 90 minute infomercial. The notion of scoring points and winning/losing matters to the media...but thats not what this was about for Trump.

I guess spending time on some other Internet than the one I'm on, toddausauras is bullish based on his liberal friends not gloating:

I can tell you this…my leftist friends and acquaintances are very quiet right now.

KC_Lion starts by lamenting Hillary's low expectations, but then rallies because everyone has got to hate Hillary now:

Our threds are filled with "Trump should have said this, this, this and this"

And as toddausauras, the Libs are sitting silent.

Killary didn't keel over or commit seppuku.

But now a huge Audience has seen her and they know so many didn't like what they saw.

AbnSarge's daughter likes to please her daddy:

My 14-year old daughter saw through the BS and did NOT like her

trebb thinks Trump might have injured Hillary's feelings, which is the real victory:

Yep - while I was talking to my TV to try to get Trump to say a few things, I also saw what everyone else did during the several times when his comments wiped the 'joviality" right off her face - you could almost sense the "kick in the gut" feeling she was experiencing.

Time to triple down on support for Trump...

dp0622 is all over this thread. He starts joining the 'we reaffirm our Freepness!' crowd:

Tonight’s bias sealed our fate. If we lost it’s war.

But let’s win

dp0622 soon goes off, as he does:

as an ex boxer, when the guy/HILLARY (SAME THING) just leaves his jaw hanging out there, BREAK THE MOTHER ####ER INTO A THOUSAND PIECES AND LEAVE HIM TO BLEED!!!!

I'm glad he's found a safe space to rant. But I worry about his blood pressure.

HamiltonJay explains that expectations for Trump are so low that nothing matters:

Did Trump con across as reasonable? Or as the dangerous racist that Clinton and the Media keep telling everyone he is.

End of the day, I feel he can across looking reasonable, and that’s all he needed to do. He didn’t need to win the points game, just look reasonable and he did.

Debate will not change the strong Trump momentum of the race, and will likely see an increase, but it will likely be hidden as the press push polls and gas lights polls for about a week trying to convince voters Hillary got momentum and Trump is losing... Until it becomes obvious that isn’t what happened and their biased propaganda didn’t work on swaying the race and return to the reality that Trump has solid momentum and the race well in hand.

Gideon7 thinks Trump secretly won the debate, because that happened to Reagan once:

In the weeks leading up to Reagan’s first debate the media had painted the retired Hollywood actor as an ignorant bumpkin who had no business being in the White House. The undecideds wanted to know who this ‘scary’ conservative really was, and whether he had what it took to become President of the United States.

In the first debate he didn’t do all that well. Carter caught him flat footed a few times and laid in some well-rehearsed attack lines. The media then promptly declared Carter the winner.

A week later the media couldn’t believe that Reagan’s polls went *up* afterwards. They were absolutely flabbergasted.

Why did it happen? It was because Reagan knew that America was going in the wrong direction, and he spoke about it with conviction and with heart. Meanwhile Carter was stiff and rattled off his well-rehearsed talking points.

Hillary in comparison is a robot. The empathy just isn’t there, and that is a big factor for the LIVs and undecideds.

stars & stripes forever is one of the few to don the tin foil:

Did anyone notice that HILLARY would spontaneously burst out in a GIANT grin? It was as though she was responding to a conversation with someone who was NOT TRUMP or THE MODERATOR.

jazusamo grasps at inconsequentialities:

When the debate started it was evident to me Mrs. Bill Clinton lost it when the witch addressed Donald Trump as “Donald” and he came back and addressed as Secretary Clinton.

Respect is a quality a person seeking the presidency should have.

HiTech RedNeck shows up to speak for God, as he does:

Hillary was a pretty good bullshit artist, and Donald couldn’t embrace the whole in a mere moment. She was more varied in her bullshit at Donald than Jimmy Carter was in his malaise before Ronald Reagan, and therefore there wasn’t any really easy “there you go again” rejoinder to be made.

But so what? Donald is not one to let traditional boxes define or confine him. From his viewpoint, she just fed him a ton of red meat to cook up and serve up as commercials.

This is a God-class battle, and sometimes God lets the enemy come on only to fall into hell forever.

HiTech RedNeck then gets Pentecostal, and I'm loving it!

She is most definitely being the witch.

In the face of witchcraft, patience and wisdom is worth more than the quick apparent smackdown, because that puts the game onto God’s turf. God is the master of time; the devil has to get his work done in a hurry because the boom is being lowered on him right as he speaks.

Resettozero also finds the natural world cannot hold the hatred he has for Hillary:

I noticed she almost came out of her hypnotized state three times but the demon in control snapped her back on track and right quick.

But...that phony phony smile: almost an inhuman smile.

TTFlyer just vents, because Hillary was the unPresidential one:

Bullshit. Hillary lied through her buck teeth with assistance from a biased hack who LIED in saying “Stop & Frisk” was “unconstitutional.”

The frickin’ bitch called him a racist. That’s an ad hominem attack that would have made you an automatic loser in ANY High School debate class. That’s not “baiting.” That’s low-class trolling that is COMPLETELY “un_Presidential” and shows “temperament” that’s “unfit.”

This “debate” was a farce that based on who told the truth and nothing but the truth Trump won going away.

Godzilla has the meme of the thread - this is Trump lulling Hillary into a false sense of security!

Keeping his powder dry the first round. The fact that he stood toe to toe is a win. She exposed weaknesses and trump is one to exploit those weaknesses. There are two more debates. Let her feel cocky. All the better when he sees her next time.

mbrfl agrees - Trump only seemed to lose, he was forming a rapport with the Low Info But Still Debate Watching Voter!

This campaign is largely a battle for the LIV`s at this point. Let`s not under estimate Trump`s ability to see the big picture while his opponents are stuck in a narrower strategic vision.

Trump likely views this as a best of three series and doesn`t just look at each debate in isolation. If the goal of the first debate was to establish trust and rappore with the LIV`s, who up till now have been judging him from the sound bytes spoon fed to them by the media, then he was probably sucessful.

right way right is also turning expectations to the next debate:

I saw Trump let Hillary reveal her card technique and still came off more likable and trustworthy.
He will smote her in the next debate.
This is sales (like) for Trump, he is negotiating, watching his opponent.
It's the people who will choose to buy.
It will be Trump.

Even HarleyLady27 starts out lukewarm, looking to the next one. But soon works herself back to a froth for Trump:

Trump did what he had to do in the first debate, he didn't take anything from ROTTEN or her puppet...

He has two more debates to go, he has his footing under him, he knows what lies she told and so do all of us...

All she was there to do in the first fifteen minutes was to sell her worthless book...

I am mighty proud of Trump, a person who is NOT a ‘polished politician’ for 40 years and have done nothing but lie, make a mess of the Middle East and ruin our Nation's reputation...so I say Trump won this debate...

TRUMP WON TONIGHT!!! AMERICA WINS ANOTHER ROUND!!!

And finally, from a different thread. Most of these are for Monday, but I could not sit upon horrrible violent fantasist LeoWindhorse's misery:

God let me down......with millions watching ,I was praying so hard that He would make her swoon and lose consciousness.it was the perfect opportunity, but He chose not to. Again

in the old days the Lord God Almighty used to dispatch or effect evil doers right and left. But not anymore. I have to wonder,why not? For God nothing is impossible. small prayer requests such as this could easily be answered. Again I ask, why not?