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This week’s Viewpoints: Previewing the final 2016 presidential debate

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viewpoints logoThis week’s guest on Viewpoints on WVPT is Bobbi Gentry, a political-science professor at Bridgewater College and roller-derby enthusiast.

Perhaps on a future show we can get into the roller derby, but this week we’ll have Gentry helping us with our pregame of the third and final presidential debate of the 2016 campaign season.

Our show airs at 7:30 p.m. on WVPT, leading in to the national PBS pre-debate coverage at 8 p.m., with the fireworks show at 9.

I don’t call it a fireworks show facetiously. You can almost guarantee that the debate will generate buzz, if only judging by how the first two went.

The opening debate last month served us up with the first salvos at Donald Trump regarding treatment of women, with Hillary Clinton invoking the name of a former Miss Universe.

It was Trump scoring points in the second debate with his promise to send Clinton to jail if elected.

What we can expect from the third get-together is anybody’s guess. Does Trump dig up the dead body of Vince Foster to make the claim that the Clintons are real-life Francis and Claire Underwoods, not above killing a few dozen people on their way to the White House?

Does Clinton, to borrow from Mike Pence, “whip out that Mexican thing again,” or worse, produce a hologram of Trump sexually assaulting someone in the ‘80s?

Or do we actually get a debate on the issues of the day, with in-depth discussions of income inequality, Syria policy, workforce training, civil rights?

It’s much more likely, sadly, that we get more of the former, and little to none of the latter.

We’ll look with Gentry at how it’s probably going to go, and also talk about the role that Millennial voters will play, or not play, in the final outcome, and also examine whether or not Virginia is even a swing state anymore, in light of the Trump campaign’s surprise move last week to redeploy its resources in Virginia to other, more competitive states.

Should be interesting. Do your best to tune in.

Preview by Chris Graham

Contributors

Contributors

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