In what was arguably the most surreal moment during Monday night’s first presidential debate, Donald Trump, in effect, admitted to not paying taxes.

The well-prepared Hillary Clinton knew the moderator, Lester Holt, would bring up the issue of Trump’s returns and she was ready to pounce.

After Trump repeated his stock answer that he cannot release his returns while under IRS audit, Clinton said, “… maybe he doesn’t want the American people, all of you watching tonight, to know that he’s paid nothing in federal taxes, because 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.”

At that point, Trump just couldn’t help being Trump. He had to get a word in edgewise.

“That makes me smart,” interjected the Republican presidential candidate.

But he wasn’t finished.

Clinton went on to add, “So if he’s paid zero, that means zero for troops, zero for vets, zero for schools or health. And I think probably he’s not all that enthusiastic about having the rest of our country see what the real reasons are, because it must be something really important, even terrible, that he’s trying to hide.”

Clinton speculated, “and maybe because you haven’t paid any federal income tax for a lot of years.”

Trump, well-known for doubling down on his blunders, reinforced the belief he does not pay taxes by implying such a civic duty is a waste.

“It would be squandered, too, believe me,” said the purported billionaire.

Donald Trump brings to mind another flamboyant New York real estate developer who years ago was convicted of tax evasion, Leona Helmsley. Known as the “Queen of Mean,” she was notorious for stiffing her employees and contractors. A woman of immense wealth, she took pleasure in “nickeling and diming” just about anyone, from her housemaid to major construction companies. But her greatest joy, of course, was stiffing the U.S. Treasury Department. She will forever be remembered as having bragged, “Only little people pay taxes.”

Leona Helmsley was convicted and received a 16 year sentence. However, she was required to serve only 19 months in prison and two months under house arrest.

Why the media hasn’t made Trump’s admission of possible tax evasion a bigger story is hard to understand. In a normal world, a politician who refuses to release his tax returns and brags about being too smart to pay taxes would be the target of a criminal investigation and not be one step away from becoming the chief executive of the land.

Photo | hlntv.com

This coming Monday, September 26, the first presidential debate will take place at Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York. Americans will get to see the Democrat, Hillary Clinton, go mano a mano against the Republican, Donald Trump.

Well, that is what everyone was expecting until debate moderator, Lester Holt, announced the three debate topics he will be covering during the 90-minute event: (1) America’s Direction, (2) Achieving Prosperity and (3) Securing America.

Seriously? Could you come up with more vague or esoteric topics?

Why not just give the candidates paper and pen and ask for an essay on how they spent their summer vacation!

Each one of the subject areas leaves so much room for BS and allows the candidates to just offer up talking points that the event might just turn into one giant snooze fest.

This is made even more likely by having the mild-mannered moderator, Lester Holt, running the show. Don’t expect him to be tough on the candidates. It’s just not his style. Perhaps this was the price NBC had to pay to make Trump happy. It is a well-known fact Trump and Holt have been friends for years.

The Commission on Presidential Debates, a bipartisan organization that manages the events, has clearly dropped the ball, not only by picking the milquetoast Holt, but by not having a better debate format.

I’m afraid if you want two adversaries going at it with all they’ve got, you will have to opt for Monday Night Football on ESPN. If you want drama and excitement, the Atlanta Falcons and New Orleans Saints present a compelling matchup.

Photo | thehill.com

As I reported on this site not too long ago, Fact Checkers have shown that only 9% of what comes out of Trump’s mouth is true or mostly true. (If Prevaricating Were An Olympic Sport, Trump Wins Gold, Hands Down)

With numbers like that it is easy to see why the media is having a hard time calling out Trump on his my “equivocations and prevarications.” It’s like the game Whack-a- Mole … as soon as one lie is beaten back, three more pop up.

I actually took pity on poor Matt Lauer as he “moderated” the first ever Commander-in-Chief forum last week. Lauer got a lot of heat from almost every corner of the media world for not fact checking Trump. But with lies coming at a fast and furious pace, Lauer never had a chance.

Matt Lauer’s performance raises a fundamental question: is it the responsibility of the moderator to fact check a candidate?

Chris Wallace of Fox News will be moderating the third and final debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. He believes it is not the moderator’s place to call out a candidate on what he himself knows to be a lie.

“That’s not my job,“ said Wallace. “I do not believe that it’s my job to be a truth squad. It’s up to the other person to catch them on that.”

As much as I hate to say this, Wallace is right. In a debate setting, the moderator’s job is not to call out a candidate’s lying. It is his or her job to be a neutral referee: one who decides which questions to ask, makes sure candidates don’t go over their time, and keeps the conversation moving. That’s it.

The responsibility for correcting blatant falsehoods falls on the other candidate. If he or she fails to recognize the lie in real-time, the faux pas is not necessarily fatal. The odds are great that their campaign, professional fact-checkers, and reporters will catch the fabrication and blast it out on social media in the blink of an eye.

Matt Lauer’s questioning of Trump came not as part of a debate but as a set of separate interviews with the two presidential candidates. As such, there was no opposing party to fact check the lying candidate. That was Lauer’s job. In the forum setting, Lauer was the adversary and he failed in that role.

I believe any other moderator in Lauer’s position would have failed in the same way, especially in a time-sensitive format where each candidate had only 30 minutes of questioning.  Safe to say, during his presidential run, Trump has gotten the better of many a seasoned interviewer.

Have you ever played Whack-a-Mole?

Photo | drspikecook.com

From the moment he entered the presidential race, Trump has bragged about his great wealth. “I’m really rich,” said the real estate mogul and reality TV star the day he announced his presidential bid in the lobby of his swank Fifth Avenue Trump Tower.

While few financial experts believe Trump is as rich as he claims to be ($10 billion), there is no doubt he enjoys an opulent and glamorous lifestyle. He owns his own plane, helicopter, multiple homes, golf courses and his gilded Trump Tower penthouse – estimated worth $100 million – is rumored to have a gold crapper.

A look a Trump’s support base shows mostly white blue-collar Americans occupying the opposite end of the wealth chart. Back in December, a Washington Post analysis found that Trump’s support skews male, white, and poor. The male-female gap was 19 percentage points (47 percent support among men vs. 28 percent among women). He won a whopping 50 percent of voters making less than $50,000.

How did a very rich businessman, who may or may not do his business on a gold toilet, attract such strong support among low-income voters? What makes them think Trump is a “man of the people?” What causes them to believe a billionaire can not only relate to them, but also be their voice?

Ah, but therein lies the genius of the con man.

Playing mostly on people’s social fears and economic anxieties, Trump is offering the one commodity all great con men traffic in … hope. In this case it is not the hope that a secret elixir will cure your illness, but the hope of defeating what Trump calls a “rigged system.” It is the hope only a wealthy political outsider like Trump can offer.

Corporate greed has given us globalization that has taken away our jobs, says Trump. Illegal immigrants are scooping up work that should rightfully go to Americans, he tells his marks. Only an independently wealthy, successful businessman like himself, declares Trump, can reverse these trends thereby making America, and his supporters’ lives, great again.

Trump’s faux populism extends to “powerful corporations, media elites, and powerful dynasties,” who, as he said a few months ago in Pennsylvania while channeling his best Bernie Sanders, have “rigged the system for their benefit, will do anything and say anything to keep things exactly as they are.“

It doesn’t matter that Trump is himself an outsourcer of jobs. Most of the suits, ties and cuff links he peddles are made in China; his luxury line of furniture comes from Turkey; the crystal for his Trump Home line is produced in Slovenia. It also doesn’t matter that as a wealthy businessman he has personally benefited, and continues to benefit, from the very “rigged system” he rails against. His followers believe because they want to believe. They are blinded by the shiny bottle of magical potion Trump holds before them.

The con man Trump offers his elixir (hope) for a better tomorrow through a simple three-part narrative: America is losing; Donald Trump is a winner; and if Trump becomes president, America will become a winner, also.

George W. Bush, a man like Trump born into great wealth, also sold himself as a man who cared about the common folk. He was the kind of guy you wanted to have a beer with. But unlike Trump, at least Bush looked the part of an average Joe when he was clearing brush on his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

Trump is more the kind of guy you might want to have champagne and finger sandwiches with. But, attesting to his great skills, the man who stiffs his workers as a matter of course has convinced a great many desperate Americans he is a “man of the people” who actually cares about their plight.

Photo | independent.co.uk