The next generation of Americans and perhaps everyone all over the world should be thanking Mr. Cooper for his very successful cross examination of Donald Trump:
MODERATOR ANDERSON COOPER: The question from Patrice was about are you both modeling positive and appropriate behavior for today's youth? We received a lot of questions online, Mr. Trump, about the tape that was released on Friday, as you can imagine.
You called what you said locker room banter. You described kissing women without consent, grabbing their genitals. That is sexual assault. You bragged that you have sexually assaulted women. Do you understand that?
TRUMP: No, I didn't say that at all. I don't think you understood what was -- this was locker room talk. I'm not proud of it. I apologize to my family. I apologize to the American people. Certainly I'm not proud of it. But this is locker room talk. You know, when we have a world where you have ISIS chopping off heads, where you have -- and, frankly, drowning people in steel cages, where you have wars and horrible, horrible sights all over, where you have so many bad things happening, this is like medieval times.
We haven't seen anything like this, the carnage all over the world. And they look and they see. Can you imagine the people that are, frankly, doing so well against us with ISIS? And they look at our country and they see what's going on. Yes, I'm very embarrassed by it. I hate it.
But it's locker room talk, and it's one of those things. I will knock the hell out of ISIS. We're going to defeat ISIS. ISIS happened a number of years ago in a vacuum that was left because of bad judgment. And I will tell you, I will take care of ISIS.
COOPER: So, Mr. Trump…
TRUMP: And we should get on to much more important things and much bigger things.
COOPER: Just for the record, though, are you saying that what you said on that bus 11 years ago that you did not actually kiss women without consent or grope women without consent?
TRUMP: I have great respect for women. Nobody has more respect for women than I do.
COOPER: So, for the record, you're saying you never did that?
TRUMP: I've said things that, frankly, you hear these things I said. And I was embarrassed by it. But I have tremendous respect for women.
COOPER: Have you ever done those things?
TRUMP: And women have respect for me. And I will tell you: No, I have not. And I will tell you that I'm going to make our country safe. We're going to have borders in our country, which we don't have now. People are pouring into our country, and they're coming in from the Middle East and other places. We're going to make America safe again. We're going to make America great again, but we're going to make America safe again. And we're going to make America wealthy again, because if you don't do that, it just -- it sounds harsh to say, but we have to build up the wealth of our nation.
COOPER: Thank you, Mr. Trump.
[Credit, L.A. Times: Debate transcript: The nastiest, most important exchanges of the presidential town hall debate, annotated. Emphasis, underlining and boldface added.]
I predict that this will go down in political history as the single most critical and defining moment of this year’s Presidential Debates.
A courageous gay man (one of the first national journalists to “come out”) nailed one of the nominees of the two major parties on a critical point. A nominee, it should be added, who has gone out of his way to build his candidacy on sexist, misogynistic, ethnicist, racist, xenophobic and hateful rhetoric. (And who just happens to be a clear and present danger to our American Republic.
Mr. Cooper nailed Orange Menace Jello to the wall, because Cooper followed the first rule of cross-examination: never ask a question of a witness unless you already know what the answer will be.
Anderson Cooper knew that Donald Trump would lie, and that Trump would be caught in the lie, over and over, and over again.
I just lost a $10 bet with my old college roomie, and will happily pay up.
Because now we are almost certainly going to have at least 50 Democrats in the Senate. (Technically the wager-in-Q didn’t specify what would happen if there is a 50-50 tie, but I’ll be delighted to pay him anyway :-)
Moreover, this is the end of Trump’s attempt to destroy the American Republic. We have not yet suffered the fate of Rome, or myriad erstwhile Twentieth Century European Democracies.
Please join with me in congratulating Our Favorite Lawyer and Journalist.
Mr. Cooper, Sir: YOU DA MAN.
P.S.: Most of us here at DKos spend a lot of time reading news and blogging. I’m not above that. But after knocking 10K doors this cycle, I’ve talked to a lot of apolitical voters here in Tippecanoe County, Indiana. Most voters don’t care about any of the things that we care about — such as whether Trump might be a dictator who will abuse the power of the Presidency and end the American Republic. (Since many of them don’t actually vote and are proud of the fact that they hate politics. Many view their steadfast refusal to participate in our democracy or any form of political discourse as a variety of Angelic Halo: i.e. they think they’re better human beings because of it.) Nor do they care whether Trump will put Muslims, Jews, and/or POC into concentration camps. (Well, he at least wants to register Muslims, which we all know was the first thing that the Nazis did to the Jews in 1930s Germany.) And no, they don’t care about his stupid taxes, or whether he defaults on the public debt, starts a trade war, or if we pull out of NATO because Putin invades the Baltic states, or even whether a zillion other nations get the bomb and/or give highly-enriched uranium to terrorists (since they view these things as as irrelevant to their lives). But they do care about groping and sexual assault, because they understand what it is and can relate to it on a human level. (Unlike nuclear war, or human extinction, which are extremely abstract notions to them.)
P.S.S.: The floodgates are now open. See: Trump Civil Child Rape, Sexual Abuse &c. *FILED* SDNY Fed'l Ct 1:16-cv-04642 6/20/16