My respect for Tucker Carlson has hit a low point.

What he aired against the debate was a softball-laden pile of mush with Trump as, of course, the main course.

Yes, I had the temerity to listen to the whole thing.

There was not a word about the green energy scam and how Trump would fix it in a second term.  Nor a word about any of the pandemic failures, most-particularly in the medical field where hospitals were paid for toe tags -- literally.  Nor a word about the three platform planks that disappeared on election night in 2016.

As for Ukraine, which was touched on, what stick does the US have at this point?  We couldn't have a conventional war with Russia and not get our asses kicked. Oh sure, we could do plenty of damage, but how would we get the men and material over there?  Aircraft? They have missiles. Ships? They have submarines. Yes, we have both too, but realities of war aren't what they were in WWII or WWI.  Now virtually any nation of any materiality can "see" things from space or from far enough away via aircraft that wherever it is the other side knows it -- and knows what it is.  This means if its valuable enough it can be blown up or sunk.  This has been on display in Ukraine now for well over a year and it ought to be obvious to any casual observer; you can't mass a force somewhere without it being detected before you can complete the staging.  This is why you're seeing the sort of warfare that is in evidence; so-called "air superiority" is a bad joke in the modern era between reasonably-competent forces.  Sure, when we're fighting goat-herders it works.  Against a competent adversary with modern electronic warfare -- not so much.  Never mind that Zelinskyy has a serious problem too; do you intend to depose him and if so, how? How would you get him to agree that Crimea, for example, is going to remain Russian and Ukraine will be a formal DMZ with international monitoring and compliance enforced?  Good luck with that.

How about Nuland and the rest of the Gong Show brigade?  That includes Pence, by the way, who Trump selected as VP.  Where was that part of the questioning?  You did hear in the "debate" last night the old Vietnam-era trope about "we have to fight them there so we don't have to fight them here!"  Well, we lost in Vietnam; we walked out with our tail between our legs.  Did we fight them here as a consequence?  Just asking, because that was the justification for doing it.

I did hear "I will finish the wall."  That's nice.  What are you going to do about the 20 million or so who you and all your predecessors let in, along with the wild-eyed and very illegal exploitation of H1b and H2b visas -- in the latter case in active "cooperation" with literal hot-rack "conversions" for housing that recaptures a large part of the wages paid.  Yeah, not a word.

Nor was there one word about the 50% expansion of the federal budget, the inflation it caused and any acceptance of responsibility for it, despite it being his responsibility since Trump was the one who did it originally.  Well?  Pray tell how are we going to get rid of the inflation problem and recover affordability for average Americans without reversing that budget increase?  Not stopping further increases -- reversing it.  How and where will that be done and why wasn't it asked?  "Growing into it" will require a decade or more during which the average American gets screwed. Do you really think it will all stay together and be ok for that long?

I fully get it why Trump didn't want to show up at the debate.  Why should he?  He's up double-digits in the polls so there's no upside to his doing so; leave aside whether Fox is "biased" or not the fact of the matter is that when you are that far ahead you can only hurt yourself -- especially when there are myriad issues you could be curb-stomped over, and the above is a partial list.

Tucker, of course, knows all this.  Its probably reasonable to assume that as a condition of said interview Trump insisted that he get to preview the areas of question and discussion in advance, and that Tucker would not deviate from it.  Well, fine, but then did we really get anything other than a campaign speech, all burnished up?

Meh.