People are still crying foul about Chris Wallace’s handling of the first presidential debate. Days after the event, I started receiving photos of a mysterious wire being concealed under his jacket by Joe Biden and tales of his wearing earplugs that functioned as mini-receivers so that he could be fed the answers.

Everyone is trying to come up with a rationale for Trump’s poor showing.

Although I don’t mind admitting I have a man-crush on the President, I wave away all of the excuses. Biden wasn’t asked any questions he needed help answering. And the ones he didn’t feel like answering, such as the ones involving packing the Supreme Court and disclosing the judges he would consider nominating, he simply ignored, with Wallace’s blessing.

It all comes down to achieving goals. Trump’s goal was to prove to America’s soccer moms that after four years on the job, he was sufficiently housebroken to be trusted not to soil the rugs or scratch the furniture in the White House. Biden’s mission was to prove he could stay awake for 96 minutes and not drool on himself. Biden succeeded, Trump failed.

I know that some people decided that Trump was off his game because he was in the early stages of the virus.

I very much doubt it, but even if that’s the reason he came across like a barroom bully, it doesn’t matter. Would any of us have cut Biden slack if it was announced a couple of days later that he had tested positive for the Covid-19? No. Why would we? Professionals are expected to play with pain. Some days I write with pain. I very much doubt you can tell which days those are. A week later, even I can’t remember.

My own theory is that Trump was thrown by the fact that applause (as well as boos) had been banned. The rules favored Biden who is accustomed to being isolated and speaking to a camera or answering softball questions from left-wing reporters.

Trump, on the other hand, is used to speaking to huge crowds who applaud every 30 seconds and interrupt his speeches with chants of “Four more years!”

There is also a list floating around the Internet that is filled with statistics, claiming, for instance, that whereas Trump interrupted Biden only 140 times, Biden interrupted Trump 9,478,365 times.

What those glomming on to things like that don’t get is that it doesn’t matter. Life isn’t fair. And those calling for a level playing field are merely flaunting their naivety. This is a presidential race with the future direction of the nation riding on the outcome.

Croquet matches are played on level playing fields, not political elections. Especially not when one side controls the media, the schools, half the population, 90% of the Washington bureaucrats and pop culture.

That’s why every time a Republican, particularly one as controversial as Trump, appears on a stage with a Democrat, he can’t play for a draw. And he can’t show himself to be the loudmouth bully that the Left has portrayed him to be for the past four years.

So when someone like Ari Fleischer or Sean Hannity goes on TV and insists that Trump trounced Biden, he’s not doing the President any favors. On the chance there are additional debates, what Trump needs is a wakeup call, not a massage of his ego.

In conclusion, I will say I hope we are all praying for his and Melania’s rapid recovery. Because God knows that mine is not one of the voices He’s accustomed to hearing, I’m hoping it will get His attention.

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Had I not seen the tweets calling for the President’s death on Tucker Carlson’s show, I might have doubted their existence. I know it’s all for show when Nancy Pelosi said she’s praying for the Trumps, but at least it’s to be expected, just as when the President had to say all those nice things about Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

But what sort of creature hears that the President and the First Lady have caught the Chinese virus and immediately go public with prayers that they’ll die of it?

The one I found most shocking was the tweet by Zara Rahim, Hillary Clinton’s former spokesperson: “It’s been against my moral identity to tweet this for the past four years, but I hope he dies.”

Boy, talk about your sore losers. All this time, Ms. Rahim has been stewing because Trump’s victory prevented her from becoming President Clinton’s press secretary and now she’s letting it all out.

Frankly, I suspect that even Hillary Clinton would have recognized that Rahim wasn’t ready for primetime. I don’t believe that someone whose plan was to serve as a communicator for a president should ever refer to her “moral identity,” whatever the heck that is.

I mean, I’ve heard people say that something goes against their religion, but never a reference to something as nebulous as a moral identity.

Besides, anyone hoping that the President dies from C-19 shouldn’t even be allowed to use “moral” in a sentence.

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Something that only recently occurred to me is that those on the Left began attacking him as soon as they saw him coming down the escalator in the Trump Tower. At the time, I was also opposed to him. He was a rich Manhattanite who had contributed to the campaigns of Democrats, who invited Bill and Hillary to his wedding and whose daughter was good friends with Chelsea Clinton.

What’s more, he had announced that his uberliberal sister, a judge, would make an ideal candidate for the Supreme Court.

Like a great many others, I pictured him as a Bush-like alternative to Jeb. I voted for him because, as usual, the alternative was unthinkable.

I marvel at those who even back then realized what potential the man had. So, for me, his presidency was like opening a box on Christmas, expecting it to be a large lump of coal, and, instead, finding a pony.

Offhand, I can’t think of a single decision he has made that I opposed. He has so far exceeded my expectations that words fail me.

My question, though, is: What was it about him that the Left recognized so early? Why didn’t their feelings about him change in the reverse direction from mine?

I can understand their hating the Trump I have come to revere, but why did they hate the Jeb Bush-like establishment Republican so much from the very start? Schumer and Pelosi could have gotten along just fine with Jeb. He wouldn’t have been quite as compliant as Hillary, but they could have lived with him, figuring that even when it came to Supreme Court justices he would be Bush-like.

If you recall, when it came to one of the most important duties of a president, both Bushes took an eeny-meeny approach to nominating justices. George H.W. Bush appointed the conservative icon Clarence Thomas and then balanced it off by naming David Souter; in similar fashion, his son selected Sam Alito and then blew it by naming John Roberts.

To his credit, President Trump has seated three conservative jurists and his sister never even made the short list.

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When I was young, I knew that quotas were evil. Perhaps, I knew it better than others because I was Jewish and there were so many quota systems in place that kept Jews in their place. There were colleges, universities, med schools and law schools, that would only accept a limited number of Jews.

There were restrictions when it came to housing, where “gentlemen’s agreements” would preclude selling homes to Jews in certain communities.

There were hotels, country clubs and college fraternities, where Jews could not be members.

There were entire industries that refused entry to Jewish job-seekers.

Today, in many places and many areas of life, we have reverse quotas and they’re no better than those others. They merely pretend to be because whereas the old ones kept Jews out, these new ones serve to let other minorities in.

But any system that doesn’t treat all Americans as equals is corrupt. There is no reason why there should be quotas in place to make certain that a specific number or percentage of jobs with police and fire departments be set aside for blacks or Latinos.

In the same way, there should be no advantage given to specific minority groups when it comes to college enrollments.

Back in August, the U.S. Justice Department brought a lawsuit against Yale for discrimination, finding that Asian and white students have “only one-tenth to one-fourth the likelihood of admission as African-American applicants with comparable academic credentials.”

The problem, as the lawsuit points out is that once you begin discriminating in favor of certain groups, you are automatically discriminating against others.

Yale, which has more money than George Soros, is fighting back, claiming that the Justice Department, to use a legal term, is full of baloney.

Eventually, the case will arrive at the Supreme Court.

Even Asians, who don’t particularly care for Trump or Republicans, may find they’re very grateful that the President and Mitch McConnell are speeding Amy Coney Barrett through the process at what has come to be known as Trump-speed.

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Bob Hunt has passed along my favorite meme of the week. The caption is “The next Debate Moderator.” The picture is every Catholic’s image of the world’s meanest nun. Sister Helga is holding a wooden yardstick and she’s letting us know that she sees things that even God misses.