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Trump has been relentlessly trying to make excuses for Biden performing well as the Thursday night debate appoaches, for example suggesting he take a drug test to see if a good performance could be due to his taking performance enhancing drugs or even resting up in a log cabin prior to the debate. He was referring to Camp David where like the young Abraham Lincoln people live in log cabins. This was an odd reminder from Trump who compares himself to Lincoln.

If Trump is preparing for the debates at all it has to be in between rallies where he makes joking threats about “the ovens” to Jewish people, fantasizing about setting “up a migrant league of fighters,” swerving into his sharks and electic boats story, and reminiscing about the “late, great Hannibal Lecter” and asking his audience which Trump they would like to see in the debate, the one where he calls Biden the worst president ever or being calm and collected.

There are two basic kinds of vitally important decisions presidents must make. One kind is those that allow for carefull consideration and consultation over a period of days or weeks. The others are driven by sudden events which, although hopefully not coming out of the blue, aspects of, or the timing of which, may be unanticipated. These are events that lead the president and top officials to meet in the White House Situation rooms.

These don’t have to be rapidly developing international crises. The West Coast could finally have the predicted devasting earthquake called “The Big One” or there could be a an incident of homegrown terrorism where dozens are killed.

The most well known photo of a real meeting in the Situation Room (really the room adjacent to it) is, of course, the raid which resulted in Navy SEAL Team Six killing Osama bin Laden. Trump has to hate this photo and the story that goes with it..

While this raid took place at 1:00 AM in Pakistan and this was watched at 4 PM in Washington it could very well have been in the wee hours of the morning here if if was in another part of the world.

American voters must consider who they trust to be president if, for example, Russia used a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine. They could decimate Keiv with such a weapon. They might time this to occur very late at night here, or coincide with the president being in Air Force One in the middle of the night on an overeas flight, where there is an airbourne version of the Situation Room.

With radioactive fallout drifting into one or more NATO countries and Ukraine having basically lost the war Trump could decide to do nothing, or he could launch a massive nuclear retaliation depending on his state of mind at the time. Biden likely would already have a plan in place for this and similar eventualities and defintely not make a decision based on his mood.

Thanks to his posts on Truth Social, and previously on Twitter, we know what Trump’s state of mind is when he’s rage tweeting when most of us are sound asleep. We also have seen how in the recent year or two these posts have become more and more unhinged.

The closest we will come to seeing how Trump functions under pressure at 1:00 AM is the debate which will be between 9-10:30 PM. Ideally I’d like to see him debate Biden at one in the morning after both of them were surprised and taken to the debate stage, but of course that won’t happen.

If it did Trump would have the edge in alertness since he’d probably already be awake and Biden would, like most people, be a bit groggy and have to get the cobwebs out.

I’ve written before that if Trump has early dementia he will be sundowning during the debate. However, even if he doesn’t have dementia we will see him in a time period he isn’t used to public speaking except for having interviews with Trump friendly media hosts.

Biden, of course, did well in his prime time State of the Union Address but this was rehearsed and not a debate.

I’d watch the debate even if was live at 1:00 AM although for me being in Oregon it would only be 10 PM, still past my usual bedtime, but that’s what naps are for. I’d like to see both candidates functioning as if they were dealing with a crisis at 1:00 AM.

You can read this and previous blogs on two websites. One may look better than the other because of how the platforms present the page.

Read on the WordPress Stressline.org

or….

Read on the Google Blogger platform HalBrown.org This version has a Disquis comment section which makes it easy to post links and images.