“You shall not bear false witness…” (Exodus 20:16)
“Therefore whatever you have said in the dark will
be heard in the light.” (Jesus, in Luke 12:3)
At the recent Vice-Presidential candidate debate on 10/7/2020
between Mike Pence and Kamala Harris, she stated to the audience, “The
President of the United States took a debate stage in front of seventy million
Americans and refused to condemn white supremacists. And it wasn’t like he didn’t have a
chance. He didn’t do it.”[1]
The question of whether Harris’s statement was accurate can
be objectively established since both Trump’s and her words were not only aired
before multiplied millions of people, but also officially recorded by the Debate
officials so as to become a matter of public record. The printed transcript of the relevant
portion of the earlier, Presidential debate, is as follows:
WALLACE:
“Are you willing tonight to condemn white supremacists and militia groups…”
TRUMP: “Sure.”
WALLACE: “And to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of these cities as we saw in Kenosha, and as we’ve seen in Portland”
TRUMP: “Sure,
I’m prepared to do it, but I would say almost everything I see is from the
left-wing not from the right-wing. I’m willing to do anything, I want to see
peace…”
WALLACE:
“Then do it, sir.”
BIDEN:
“Do it, say it.”
TRUMP:
“What do you want to call them? Give me a name.”
WALLACE:
“White supremacists and right-wing militias”
BIDEN: “Proud Boys”
TRUMP: “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by. But I’ll tell you what, somebody’s got to do something about Antifa and the left.”[2]
The fact that this transcript indicates that Donald Trump answered both of Wallace’s opening questions with the reply, “sure” (in boldface) indicates in no uncertain terms that he was condemning racism, thereby putting the lie to Harris’s assertions. Yet the transcript ought further to raise an obvious question. Since Trump already vocally met Wallace’s demands, then why did the latter continue, “Then do it, sir”? The audio record makes it perfectly plain that immediately after Wallace had posed his questions, he proceeded to talk over him by entering into an oration of his own, to the end that he didn’t bother to listen to Trump’s replies to him.
To be continued...
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/10/07/pence-haris-spar-over-systemic-racism-breonna-taylor-vp-debate/5919398002/
[2] https://www.newsweek.com/fox-news-host-baffled-why-trump-didnt-condemn-white-supremacists-thats-like-are-you-against-1535285. I added the boldface to the transcript.
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