Edward Luce of the  Wall Street Journal and David Frum of The Atlantic were interviewed by Fareed Zakaria on his show the Global Public Square.  After the recent debate between Trump and Biden, only about 25% of Americans, including about half the Democrats believe Joseph Biden is competent to be president compared to about 44 % who believe Trump is competent. Both bad numbers, but Biden is now in a much worse position. Trump is 19 points ahead on this important issue.

Many believe Biden performed very badly in the debate. From what little I saw I agree he performed badly. But in my view Trump performed even worse, but in a different way.  Trump released an avalanche of lies and absurd hyperbolic remarks which clearly demonstrate that Trump is entirely separated from the truth. He has been called unhinged for good reason.

Who is less worthy of being president of the United States?  The liar or the incompetent?  According to David Frum,

“What we have here is a debate between the fire brigade and the arsonists. We are in this jam because the Republican Party is rallying around somebody who tried to overthrow an election thus the constitution…Who is a proven fraudster. Who has half a billion dollars of claims against him for civil frauds and who is a convicted criminal in New York with many more trials to come.”

Zakaria pointed out that “even by Donald Trump’s standards it was really extraordinary how much he lied. He was totally unconstrained by even pretending to doff his cap to the truth. In the good old days, there had to be at least a kernel in there somewhere of the truth. ” CNN counted 30 major lies he made during the debate. Trump even claimed to negotiate insulin prices down for seniors when that was something Biden did, not him.

Luce agreed entirely. He said, “There was an unhinged unending Orwellian stream of lies from Trump, even by his standards…We have watched Mitch McConnell call Trump ‘a despicable human being there on stage.”

Luce said you could basically pick any one of his statements to look at if you wanted to challenge the truth. He lied from start to finish.

What really surprises me is how Republican supporters at least fail to take this into consideration. They know he lies, but they don’t care.

When 2 political candidates are considered, we must always remember such comparisons are not made in a vacuum. We must compare who is worse or who is better. This is because, as one political pundit said, “Mother Theresa is never on the ballot.”

No matter how competent he is, I would rather have Biden as the American president than Donald Trump.