MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow critiqued President Donald Trump’s performance at his NBC News town hall Thursday on her show, which followed the event on MSNBC.
She gave Trump low marks for his presence during the town hall, which was moderated by NBC’s Savannah Guthrie.
Former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said, “You masterfully went through all the lies, all the breaking news. But let’s talk about the race. Is there anybody out there who is currently undecided or who is leaning Biden but is thinking maybe I’ll go back to Trump, who saw anything in that, lies about the economy, he’s going to kill people because he continues to lie about mask-wearing? Clearly lied about his own health situation. Refusing to denounce QAnon. My guess is that’s what we’ll be talking about today and tomorrow. So I still think he’s going to debate next week. I assume, by the way, now we know he tested positive for COVID perhaps before the debate. Maybe that’s why he was so angry in the debate with Joe Biden. But, no, from a purely campaign standpoint, when you are behind, you have to maximize every moment, every interview. Today was a big, you know, perch for him, and I think he probably drove voters away to the extent there are any still open to him. It was a disaster. By the way, I thought he seemed small. I thought he seemed a little bit low energy to use a term he likes to use, almost defeated in a way.”
Maddow said, “Physically, I’m with you on that. I’m not much of a body language expert in part because I’m such a flailing octopus on TV. But I think of him as a person who likes to be sort of to pantomime physical dominance or whatever, and he got smaller and smaller and smaller physically, kind of curled up. He also looked sweaty, and his voice didn’t sound strong. I don’t think this is anything he wanted to project about himself. But, David, I was looking back at previous presidential matchups where the debates ran aground, where one candidate didn’t want to them or when they made sure there were third and fourth-party candidates in there in the mix so that it couldn’t be a head-to-head matchup. I feel like almost all of those.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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