Trump-Harris Debate Aftermath: The Serious Issues Barely Came Up

What is the supposed purpose of a presidential debate? To discuss the critical issues of the day. That hardly happened last night. Here are the questions the ABC “moderators” failed to ask Trump and Harris:

1. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists warned in January under Harris-Biden, “Today, we once again set the Doomsday Clock at 90 seconds to midnight because humanity continues to face an unprecedented level of danger.”

Trump brought up the nuclear issue twice on his own, the first time mentioning Russian President Putin: “He’s got nuclear weapons. They don’t ever talk about that. He’s got nuclear weapons. Nobody ever thinks about that. And eventually maybe he'll use them.” The second time: “We have wars going on with Russia and Ukraine. We’re going to end up in a Third World War. And it will be a war like no other because of nuclear weapons, the power of weaponry.”

“They” is the brain-dead American establishment, including the “moderators.”

Isn’t it obvious this is the most important topic around? It went away for a couple of decades after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Now the threat of blowing up the world back.

2. Turkey soon will join BRICS, possibly meaning it will leave NATO, meaning the end of NATO. BRICS is the economic and political cooperation organization – not really an alliance – begun by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Now it’s BRICS+, with new members added this year: Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

CNBC on Sept. 10, the day of the debate: “Spook the West’: Turkey’s bid for BRICS both a strategic and symbolic step, analysts say…. For Turkey, a longtime Western ally and NATO member since 1952, the move to join BRICS is ‘in line with its broader geopolitical journey: positioning itself as an independent actor in a multi-polar world and even becoming a pole of power in its own right,’ George Dyson, a senior analyst at Control Risks, told CNBC.”

Maybe Ankara is miffed because nobody in the West is using their new spelling for their country: Türkiye.

3. BRICS expansion means more de-dollarization, leading to much higher inflation. This is happening slowly. But countries around the world are sick of the sanctions and tariffs imposed by the U.S. willy-nilly even on allies.

NASDAQ reported in July: “The potential BRICS currency would allow these nations to assert their economic independence while competing with the existing international financial system. The current system is dominated by the US dollar, which accounts for about 90 percent of all currency trading. Until recently, nearly 100 percent of oil trading was conducted in US dollars; however, in 2023 one-fifth of oil trades were reportedly made using non-US dollar currencies.”

Hankyeoreh, a South Korean news site, wrote in April, “From Russia to China and now Saudi Arabia, cracks are forming in the US’ dollar hegemony. The US’ weaponization of the dollar has impressed upon other countries the need to reduce their dependence upon the dollar.”

If that happens big time, all those extra trillions of sloshing around the world will wash back to the U.S. itself, flooding our country with unneeded dollars, pushing up costs even higher than under Harris-Biden.

In the debate, Trump unfortunately mentioned how he used tariffs as a trade weapons. But he did say the temporary tariffs used against China were supposed to be lifted once Beijing acted better. But Harris-Biden has kept the tariffs on. He also mentioned broad-based tariffs, “Other countries are going to finally, after 75 years, pay us back for all that we've done for the world.” Not a great attitude. The world doesn’t owe us anything.

But if broad-based tariffs are not too high, and are paired with strong income tax cuts, it would be a wash economically. The current tax system is labyrinthine and needs revision anyway.

4. Harris-Biden have pushed Russia, China, North Korea and Iran, the first 3 nuclear powers, into what some are calling an “axis of resistance” to the U.S. global order. Along with complicating nuclear peace negotiations, that obviously directly affects peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, a topic that did come up, with both candidates backing Israel.

Reuters on Sept. 10: “US says Russia received missiles from Iran, piles on sanctions.” The boys are laughing about that one in Tehran and Moscow. Both countries have been sanctioned so much they should have sunk into the ocean by now. But – see above – they’re forming new groups to bypass the U.S., such as BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), with about half the world’s population.

In return, reported the Times of Israel, “Russia said to be delivering advanced air defenses to Iran as Tehran touts ties. Two officials tell NY Times some systems provided following an Iranian request for weapons, as it threatens to attack Israel; Iran’s president hosts Russia’s security council chief.”

Iran is not the broken country of 1990 that almost lost a war to Saddam’s much smaller Iraq. It now is the dominant country in the region. It could get nukes in weeks. Last year, China brokered a deal bringing peace and cooperation between Iran, ruled by Shiite Muslims, and longtime rival Saudi Arabia, ruled by Sunni Muslims. See what’s missing? The United States under Harris-Biden, which was frozen out.

Here’s the number of engineers produced by the major countries in 2016, according to the Engineering Institute of Technology:

1.     China 1.3 million;

2.     India 1 million;

3.     Russia 454,400;

4.     U.S. 237,800;

5.     Iran 233,695.

That’s right, Iran produces about as many as the United States, Russia twice as many. On the other hand, the U.S. by far is the world leader in graduates in DEI, ESG, CRT and PC.

However, with China and Russia now deeply involved in the Middle East, due to Harris-Biden incompetence, that means the problems there can be resolved at the top level – if we ever again get a U.S. president who knows how to make deals. Know anybody with the right resume?

As to the average uniformed American voter’s perception of the debate, with the crucial issues above hardly discussed, and only if brought up by Trump, what is the verdict? Harris barked her prefab answers like a trained chihuahua. In that, she rose far above expectations. So in that, she won.

As to substance, when the questions above came up only by accident, the only one among the two moderators and two candidates who even showed up was Trump.