Debate Smackdown

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All right, debate, smack down. Now, I want to make this perfectly clear to everybody out there. Listen, I’m not a fan of pundits. And some would say, well, Markowski, aren’t you a pundit? You go on and you give your opinion. Little different. And I’m gonna explain to you why. I said, yeah, am I gonna give you my opinion? Absolutely. I’m gonna try to present a myriad of different facts, try to lay out what my belief

system is, but I’m not a part of some group or some team that’s pushing a narrative. And that’s how our media works. And it’s quite effective. We’ve watched it in the run up to wars, to whatever the government’s pushing, to COVID lockdowns, you name it. It’s everybody getting on board, pundits pushing an issue. And this can go all the way back, and I’ll never forget it, back to journalists

when I first discovered this and there was an actual back at the time, I remember they had little chat rooms on the internet. It was more the internet infancy stages, where the various different pundits from different publications would all get on board. And they would all discuss how they would go about covering an issue. And if you recall, everybody listened to the rush limbaugh program.

Um, he would do this montage. Uh, I remember when, when George W. Bush picked Dick Cheney as his running mate, and all of a sudden every media outlet in the country was using the phrase or the Latin term gravitas, Dick Cheney brings gravitas to the Bush ticket and they were exact same verbiage. Okay. This is the direction that they’re heading.

This is the narrative that they’re pushing. We push back against narratives. We push back against conventional wisdom. And last night, we watched a debate, and it got heated at times. It did get some back and forth, in particular Vivek taking on Haley and then Chris Christie stepping in and a little bit of name calling there. And we’ll get into all of that.

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However, first I want to talk about News Nation. I don’t really know much about this network. You know, the way it looks right now, even though they did a great job, I thought they did a pretty good job with the debate last night. And I wasn’t that disappointed quite frankly with the pundits last night, the post debate and the table. It was interesting. It was the first time.

You actually watch Chris Cuomo, he was actually, he actually did a great job, my opinion, trying to play it straight and play it down the middle if that’s what they’re trying to accomplish there. I’m gonna pay a little bit more attention. It does look like a little bit of the Island of Misfit toys there, Rudolph the reindeer sub-reference, where you’ve got all these cast offs from other networks that are on there. I’m just like, my God, it’s Geraldo.

Bill O’Reilly is back. It was like old timers day at Yankee Stadium for crying out loud. But anyway, neither here nor there. All right. So I’m gonna go candidate by candidate. I wanna start with, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t drop out of the race shortly. Chris Christie, I don’t recall him actually, and again, maybe it was based upon the questions.

try if you watch debate, try to come up with yourself. Did he talk any policy at all in regards to what he was gonna do? He made some very good points on why you shouldn’t vote for Donald Trump. Many of them, I agree with many of the points that he made. Another big point that he made that stuck out in my mind is when he disagreed.

with Nikki Haley. Nikki Haley said that Trump was good on trade and Christie was like, he wasn’t good on trade. And again, he echoed what we’ve been talking about here on the podcast explaining what tariffs are and what they do. So no, Trump was not good on trade. And the thing is, is Biden hasn’t done a damn thing. He’s doing everything that Trump was doing when it came to trade policies. But other than that, you know, again, this little

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forth with Vivek stepping in to defend Nikki Haley because he felt that the gotcha question was insulting her intelligence. I mean, gotcha questions happen from time to time. And again, a point was made by one of the pundits. And I didn’t really think about it at the time is that, you know, he shouldn’t have stepped in to defend the girl.

And this was again, this was Republican consultant saying, you can’t do that. She’s got to stick up for herself. I don’t know. OK, like I said, I’m not one of these consultants. And quite frankly, I couldn’t do anything like that. Because again, I do my best to be brutally honest here. And quite frankly, I’d rather lose if I was in one of those situations than bullshit and lie, quite frankly. But anyway.

Um, let’s go on. Let’s, let’s go on to who’s in, uh, we’re going to Vivek. And Vivek is not, is not a part of the big club. He’s not an establishment character. And again, I’m going to, I’m going to fast forward to the, uh, post debate analysis and watching some of, again, these insiders, Mick Mulvaney.

Yeah, Mick Mulvay, Sean Spicer, then you had Larry Hogan at a different panel. Oh, oh man, Larry Hogan, I wanted to punch him in the face. Another pundit there. I reminded me of the kid back in school, the smartest kid in the room kept raising his hand for everything, as he knew all the answers. And I’m saying to myself, so, you don’t like people that are smart? That are intelligent? Yeah, again, it frightens them.

Vivek Ramaswamy is, it frightens the establishment. It frightens the powers of B, the way things work, much like in many respects, like Trump.

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But very much like Trump in the same way, he is an outsider. And one of his main attack points when it came to Nikki Haley, and this is where, again, he could have in my opinion, I would have handled it differently. I again, I always bring up that George Carlin skit from years ago. It’s a big club. You ain’t in it. And Nikki Haley is part of that club.

And he pointed out and said, OK, you know, you are a public servant, public servant. You were the governor of South Carolina. And then you worked as the ambassador to the United Nations and you left and you had no money and all of a sudden look at you now, you are a multi, multi millionaire. How does that happen?

How does that happen? It’s magic. The magic of Washington, D.C. You show up there, you work for a while, and whoo, you leave transformed, or you are, you’re a millionaire, you’re a millionaire, you’re a multimillionaire, and that’s basically what it was trying to get across, that she is an establishment candidate, she is.

She is the establishment. She is in this race right now. She is DJ Bush.

She’s the Jeb Bush of this race. And he talked about her ties to military contractors. And he’s not wrong. But the pundits, the ones that push the narratives, the ones that push the wars, every single newspaper in the country, every single analyst out there, Fox News, CNN, they all wanna send more money.

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I want to send more money to Ukraine. This morning I was going by the tell Fox News. Brian Kilmeade and Vivek going at it with one another. Well, Kilmeade, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Advocate, we need to send more money to the Ukraine. And the people in the background are cheering on Vivek.

They’re all in, okay, on this war nonsense. We’ll get in that a little bit differently. But again, he pointed that out. He brought up policy positions that made sense. He talked about the problem with healthcare here in this country in the same way that we have been talking about it. You know how many clients that I have that are doctors around this country are all saying the same thing? We got sick care.

in this country. We don’t have health care in this country. The system’s a disaster. And he was spot on. It was a brilliant points that he was making. And you’re right.

You’re right, he’s the smartest guy at the table. I mean, can anyone argue that?

anyone argue that? And again, the establishment, the big club hates them, hates him for that. Which is, again, it’s fascinating to watch. So again, where people said, you know, I wouldn’t have done what he did. I wouldn’t have held up that pad of paper where it said, you know, Nikki Haley equals corruption. I don’t think that was necessary. He should have done it with a little bit more humor. But again, he is who he is.

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But again, let’s be honest here.

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presidential races, elections, or popularity contests. And do I think that he’s going to be able to make it through that? No, I don’t. I don’t. But would he be someone if I was, I’d hire him instantly, absolutely. He is a wealth of absolutely great ideas. Say this because we brought up many of these things over the years, they’re just great. They’re outside the box type of thinking.

Non-establishment, non-bought idea. And again, it’s wonderful, wonderful stuff. Move on to Nikki Haley. She’s done some, had some good debates here and there, but again, she didn’t shine much. Outside of talking about spending, to some degree she did a little bit on that. Again, did anything stick out?

to you in regards that she said that really made her shine in any way, shape, matter? No.

No, I again, I the whole foreign policy thing, she scares the hell out of me. She really does scares the hell out of me when it comes to it. And again, I think she had a didn’t have a very good night for her. Again, we’ll see. I could be wrong. I’m giving you my opinion. OK, you everybody’s going to have a different take on it. Ron DeSantis, I thought did very well. He did very well again. People say that he might.

feel a little bit uncomfortable up there on stage. Yeah, you are what your record says you are. And his record is phenomenal. Some of the things that he brought up as well in regards to student loans and people not being able to afford it in colleges and forcing colleges to have skin in the game, which I’ve said for the longest time, need to have skin in the game. These colleges, universities, need to backstop student loans.

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They got to have some skin in this. It was a great point that was made. Also made some great points when it came to the border. Talked about spending. He got heavily involved as well, along with Vivek as well, and the need to shut down the damn administrative state here in this country. Making the point that, again, people in Washington, D.C. don’t do, they don’t.

It’s downright embarrassing. They punt. All they do is raise money. They don’t legislate, they raise money. That’s all they do. But again, is it enough to change the needle? I don’t know. I don’t even know if I believe the polls at this point in time. I really don’t. I don’t know if I even believe the polls.

Again, the overwhelming support for Trump. Again, I’m trying to get my arms around it. I really am. But again, I think Chris Christie’s job, Chris Christie’s job, and I think he kind of, he knows he’s not gonna win, but he did mention he’s got a book coming out, and that’s gonna help on the book tour when that book comes out as a book about Reagan.

Former presidential candidate, many times over, yeah, he’ll be able to push his book out, just fine. Again, it’s gotta make a living, whatever. I’d rather have guys make money selling books than working as lobbyists. But it seems to be coming down right now, as far as the polls are concerned. Again, I don’t know. I don’t know what the youth vote is gonna be when it comes to Vivek, whether he’s gonna be able to garner some support. But those are the three that are left.

And then there’s Trump, who again, in my opinion is, sorry, give me my opinion. You might not believe me, he’s chicken shit.

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afraid to show up at the debate. It was funny. Again, I stayed up way past my bedtime. Again, I thought the post-debate analysis was great. I really did. It was kind of funny. It was funny. I haven’t seen Bill O’Reilly commentate on this stuff for a while, but he’s a bit of a Trumpster, but had to listen to what he had to say. But I think when they had Tim Burchett from Tennessee on.

And Tim Burch is one of those guys that pushes back against the establishment. Um, was talking about the, you know, the debate, how nonsensical it is. And he doesn’t really think that it really moved the needle much gave a lot of kudos to the VEC and what he was saying and doing admitted that he was friends. He’s been friends with Nikki Haley talked about the Sanis made the point that man, if his wife was running, uh, she’d be, you know, killing Trump.

right now because of her personality. And again, you know, DeSantis does look a little uncomfortable on stage. It is what it is. I’m not voting on whether or not somebody’s comfortable at a podium or not, but some people do. Nature the beast, it’s how politics work here in this country. But he actually talked about, you know, he made the point, he said, you know, in Washington, DC, he said, you know, we don’t do anything. All we do is raise money.

And again, he’s from Tennessee. He said if Peyton Manning, he said, well, he said if Congress was the NFL, it’s a funny point, Congress was the NFL. He said Peyton Manning still wouldn’t even be in it yet. And talking about how long it takes and how you gotta work your way in the system, the amount of butts you gotta kick, the amount of money you gotta raise before you get in. He said Peyton Manning wouldn’t even be in it yet. That’s how ridiculous.

our government is at this point in time. But anyway, neither here nor there. There’s your debate, SmackDown, not a pundit. You decide. You decide what’s important to you. Watchdogonwallstreet.com.