Your One Trump Item for Today is this fact-check on Trump's Town Hall — which folks on Fox News described as an "ambush." Around Fox, if you ask Trump a question for which he doesn't have a good answer, it's an "ambush." I would recommend keeping an eye on Politifact because they really seem non-partisan and they do a good job of pointing out the fibs and errors of our politicians and pundits.
I am genuinely mystified why Trump's advisors don't steer him away from some of the lamer talking points he recites…or if they try, why he doesn't listen. The Cook Political Report, which is pretty good at gauging these things, currently says Biden's doing great. This PDF file there shows that if you tally up the electoral votes of states that are Solid Democrat, Likely Democrat and Lean Democrat by current polling, Biden has 290 votes — twenty more than he needs to win. That's without Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and one Congressional District in Maine that Cook says are presently toss-ups. Trump still has many paths to victory but where he is now is not where you want to be.
So he needs to do well in the debates. The topic of his administration's response to COVID-19 will doubtlessly arise and if he says, as he's said many times including at that Town Hall, "We have 20% of the cases because of the fact that we do much more testing. If we wouldn't do testing, you wouldn't have cases. You would have very few cases," does anyone think Joe Biden won't have a planned/rehearsed rejoinder to that? Maybe something about how that's like saying if we all stopped going to our dentists for check-ups, none of us would have any cavities.
And then if I were him, I'd say: "I was shocked when you began chanting, 'Slow down the testing!' Testing is good. It's how we determine where the virus is so we can isolate it and keep others from getting it, and it's how we determine where it isn't so we can open up businesses, get people back to work and begin normalizing our lives!"
And now having said that, I can go back to not thinking about this stuff…because nothing I read or write about it is going to change anything. This thing may be over. I'm surprised ABC could even find enough Undecided Voters to fill the bleachers at their Town Hall.
I just turned down an invite to a comic book convention that may be held in the mid-west next February. I'm optimistic that we'll get back to a world where we can go to conventions without worry but I'm not that optimistic.
But I don't think I'd accept this invite even in a COVID-free world. I asked the gent what he wanted me to do there and he said, "Oh, just sit behind a table, sign autographs and sell stuff." I don't like sitting behind a table, I don't sell stuff at conventions and while I don't mind signing things, I don't derive the joy that some do from being asked. One time when a writer-friend of mine returned from an outta-town convention, I asked him how it went and he said, "I had a lousy time. Almost no one wanted my autograph."