The two major party candidates running for President of the United States appeared in a "Commander-in-Chief Forum" to discuss their qualifications for leading the most-powerful military the world has ever seen.  After the biased host confined Hillary Clinton to subjects she answered a long time ago, fascist demagogue Donald Trump was allowed to spout falsehood after falsehood without push-back, attack US military commanders, and praise Russian strongman Vladimir Putin.

The forum took place in New York City and was broadcast on the NBC network and its cable TV outlet MSNBC.  The host was Matt Lauer of the Today Show.  But pundits and his fellow journalists reacted with disbelief as Lauer failed to fact-check Trump on his claim he did not support the Iraq war in 2002 or the US action in Libya in 2011.  In both cases, Trump is on video supporting the US military actions he now claims he opposed.  And it doesn't take a lot of effort to find these videos, because Trump has been caught in this lie before - THIS YEAR, during the Republican party primaries.

After lying about his positions on the Mideast, Trump then suggested that current active duty military generals advising the White House have been "reduced to rubble" by the Obama administration and implied that there would probably "be different generals" to advise him on ISIS policy if he's elected president.  And then he set off red alerts in every Arab capital that questions why the US is so involved in the Middle East by declaring that the US should have taken the oil from Iraq after "winning" the war.  "It used to be 'To the victors belong the spoils,'" he said, confirming every anti-American's deep suspicion that US foreign policy is driven by rapacious imperialism.

What could Trump do to top lying, trashing his own commanders, and setting US Foreign Policy back by decades?  How about by furthering his bromance with shirtless Russian President Vladimir Putin - on the same day that a Russian fighter jet made an "unsafe close-range intercept" of a US aircraft over the Black Sea, coming within three meters of the American plane.  Trump congratulated Putin for being a "strong leader" with high approval ratings, ignoring Russia's alleged human rights abuses, invasions of Crimea and Ukraine among other foreign policy rivalries with the US, and allegations of hacking in the Democratic Party's computers.

With all of this ridiculousness, you'd think that the night was a coup for Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton, but Trump-loving host Matt Lauer steered a third of his questioning time on Clinton's private email server - a subject that has been asked and answered ad nauseum.  And yes, you do remember correctly that Hillary's primary rival Senator Bernie Sanders famously declared he was sick and tired of hearing about Clinton's emails - a year ago.  Lauer's mierable performance didn't advance the story one millimeter from that time.  And just like a year ago, there's still no "there" there - investigation after investigation has failed to uncover any actual wrongdoing.  But Lauer followed up with four more email-related questions, trying to create the impression that misusing a piece of office equipment is a disqualifying offense. 

The fix made it impossible for the former First Lady, New York Senator, and US Secretary of State to talk about actual issues facing a US Commander-in-Chief.