After weeks of hype, Clinton and Trump met in this year’s first presidential debate. The politicos went mad afterwards, calling it surreal and bizarre, proclaiming Hillary the clear winner, Donald a big fat liar, and shocked-shocked I tell you by the spin by Trump surrogates came up with after it was over.

I got caught up in the hype and actually held out hope that both candidates would tell us something new.

My bubble got popped pretty quickly.

No surprise, Hillary spoke policy like she knows what she’s talking about – nothing new – and Donald spoke like an egomaniac without a clue about how the real world works.

It went exactly like I feared it would go. Just two folks repeating what they’ve said on the campaign trail for months, with one of them so enamored of his ideas that truth is of no concern.

I’m writing this right after the debate, so have no polling data. I predict no big changes – maybe a point or two in favor of Hillary because Trump’s supporters heard what they wanted to hear about Trump’s alternate, and fictional, world where he is brilliant, wise and he has all the right answers.

I watched and listened to the debate, but totally missed Trump’s sniffles. I didn’t know anything about it until afterwards when the talking heads went on and on about it. Former Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean apparently even speculated, jokingly, that Trump might have cocaine snorting problem – which I gather explains both the sniffling thing and Trump’s insane policy statements.

I don’t think so. Can’t speak for the sniffles since I didn’t notice them, but Trump’s ideas for creating a better America sounds like more of a hallucinogen than just coke.

Of course, Trump says he got a bad microphone as some sort of vast conspiracy to make him look bad. Well, whoever devised this devious plot succeeded beyond their wildest expectations.

A tad more seriously, I was very disappointed in both candidates’ tax plan. I want radical changes to the tax code. Instead of a tax code that goes on and on and on for tens of thousands of pages, filled with tax breaks for special interests, I’d like to see a tax code under 25 pages long, large print.

No more special interest tax breaks. I want rich corporations and billionaires pay their fair share of taxes, just like the rest of us.

For all the people hoping for a fair deal and who want Trump for president, who has an army of tax lawyers to make sure he can legally make hundreds of millions of dollars without paying a cent in taxes – why?

You are voting for a system Trump will never change that is the most corrupt and unfair aspect of the federal government.

Trump says he’s your defender, which is just another lie he tells you. Trump is all about himself. He’s doing this to make himself more money and to boost his ego.

He doesn’t care about you and he does not care about this country. Trump cares only about Trump and his deplorable children.

He’ll take this country over a cliff even taller than the one “W” Bush took us over, but unlike “W” who at least wanted to reverse, Trump will abandon the nation and continue to brag about how great he is to his good buddy Pootie-Poot.

Keith Hoggard is a Staff Writer at Roanoke-Chowan Publications. Contact him at keith.hoggard@r-cnews.com or 252-332-7206.