Before you read this, it's probably important to know I am not voting for either major party candidate. I can longer buy into this tired lesser of two evils crap. My vote goes to Libertarian party candidate Gary Johnson. Had he been on the debate stage Monday night with these two stooges it would be a different conversation in America today.

That being said, I thought it was interesting when Trump said he would release his tax returns when Hillary Clinton released her emails. Okay Donald, since you went there...
Monday night's debate had Hillary Clinton owning up to the mistake she made of using a private server. No, I don't forgive her for it. And yes we can go round and round arguing whether there should have been criminal charges. But she admitted using a private server was wrong. She admitted it was a mistake. Compare that with Trump's cowardly running away from and double talking his way around his tax return questions. Moderator Lester Holt had to keep coming back to it to try to get a direct answer from Trump. The idea that one is not allowed to release tax returns while under audit is simply not true. He could, but he won't. He won't, because there are things in it he does not want you to know. Period. For all his bravado, there were many times in the debate last night that he looked very unmanly. Hiding from a direct question about tax returns is one of them.

Because of Hillary's debate skills, he hung himself anyway. Look at this exchange:

Clinton: "The only years that anybody's ever seen were a couple of years when he had to turn them over to state authorities when he was trying to get a casino license, and they showed he didn't pay any federal income tax."
Trump: "That makes me smart."

Okay then, so you just admitted it. You play the real estate laws to your advantage and you avoid paying income tax.

Later Clinton pointed out the probable reason he doesn't want the public seeing his tax returns was because this pattern has continued for a long time and "maybe...you haven't paid any federal income tax for a lot of years."

Trump: "It would have been squandered."

Bingo. Notice he didn't say it WAS squandered. He said it WOULD HAVE BEEN squandered. In other words, Trump fell flat on his face and stumbled all but admitting that yes, his tax returns would show he pays virtually nothing in income taxes. If Trump feels using the tax laws in the real estate game to his advantage doesn't make him morally shameful then why not man up and release those tax forms?

Another unmanly moment came when he stumbled like a blind man through a thick forest in trying to find his way out of the birther question. Again, he foolishly tried to play not the champion of the racist birther movement but the one who put a stop to it. He tried to blame Hillary and her campaign against Obama as the ones who started the birther movement. The fact is some lowly aide who sent an internal email about this stupid rumor was promptly fired from her campaign because they didn't want to be involved in such nonsense.

Trump, the lying moron, then claimed Patti Doyle went on Wolf Blitzer and confirmed that Hillary's past campaign was behind the birther movement. That he was simply the standup guy who put a stop to it. Right. Almost immediately after the debate they talked live with Patti Doyle and even showed the old Wolf Blitzer interview where she confirmed the campaign disavowed the birther movement and immediately fired the volunteer who forwarded the email regarding it. Nice try, Donald. Also, what makes his claim of being the one to put an end to the birther movement all the more ridiculous is that Obama released his long form birth certificate in 2011 yet Trump kept up the birther conspiracy in 2012, 2013, 2014. When Lester Holt pointed out to Trump that he kept the birther talk going for years after the birth certificate was produced, Trump ignored the point like a child.

It's sad that Gary Johnson was not in this debate, and sadder that one of these two unworthy people will be our next president.

--Jeff Deminski

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