In sports it’s well-known that if you’re complaining about refereeing you must have lost. Judging by the tsunami of criticism launched by Republicans at ABC News’s moderators after Tuesday night’s presidential debate it would tell you that Donald Trump lost his first— and likely only—debate with Kamala Harris.
“Three against one” was the persistent complaint about the work of ABC’s David Muir and Linsey Davis. And you could make the case for that criticism. A media analysis of ABC’s leftist news coverage before Tuesday showed that it gave Harris positive coverage 95 percent of the time, while Trump received just six percent positive coverage (most dedicated to his being shot). Further, Harris is a close pal of the woman who runs ABC News. Davis is Harris’ sorority sister. Really? Where were Trump or viewers informed of these conflicts?
Muir thought moderator meant fact-checker and inserted himself by debating Trump on his claims. On at least a half dozen occasions an unctuous Hume debated Trump about, among the topics, the eating of family pets by Haitian immigrants in towns and cities overrun by migrants. (A claim supported by Ohio’s attorney general.)
Snippy co-moderator Davis challenged Trump’s assertion that Harris was in favour of unlimited abortion until the moment of delivery (Davis was wrong) and then quickly moved on to softball Harris. Fair enough, if you or your bosses think your job is to correct in real time the assertions of the politicians.
Except they never upbraided Harris on a series of her own whoppers that have clearly been debunked. (“Fine people”, “bloodbath”, etc.) With that comfort zone, Harris lost her jitters and avoided mistakes. It was now a home game. Hence the chorus of “Unfair” that followed.
But let’s be honest, what was Trump expecting? This was Trump’s charge of the Light Brigade expecting another outcome. After the past decade, making a headlong charge into cannons is not a wise career move. But like the doddering generals of the 1850s British Army, an aging Trump has reached peak self delusion after dodging a bullet himself this summer. He is like the psychotic Maggott character Telly Savalas played in Dirty Dozen. Everything is going well on the mission till he sees a German woman he likes. Then he abandons the script. And hell breaks loose.
Sadly, his lieutenants now do a better job articulating his talking points these days. (It wouldn’t be a surprise if the GOP let RFK Jr. and VP candidate J.D. Vance do the more talking from here on in.)
Whether this debate was a missed opportunity or a campaign turning point will be decided in the coming weeks. For those who think it’s going to change the polls, remember that Biden’s epic debate meltdown from June only cost him a couple of points in popularity. Trump advanced but one point. Still, the DEMs panicked in June, launching a coup against the man who’d overwhelmingly won the primaries. (Mirror to January of 2017 when they launched a three-year attempted coup to remove Trump.)
Trump mentioned Harris not getting any primary votes, but ABC wrinkled its nose at a real story, preferring to delve into how Trump’s father made money 50 years ago. What was definitive about Tuesday is that the DC Media Party is again in the tank. The son of the President of the United States of America had just pled guilty to tax evasion for bribes he received from foreign adversaries in exchange for selling access to his father, the vice president at the time. This should have been the first, last and every question from ABC’s Mod Squad. Nope, let’s talk about E. Jean Carroll.
There’s no price to pay for burying uncomfortable stories. Example: Here’s John Kirby, spokesman for the Defence Dept., “Was anyone ever held accountable by the president directly for what happened with the withdrawal in Afghanistan?” KIRBY: “We have all held ourselves accountable…”
Oh good. Let’s move along. As Louisiana senator John Kennedy noted, “I know many people in Washington D.C. that would unplug your life support to charge their cell phone.” That explains a media mob that now talks openly of banning anyone who doesn’t sing from their anti-Trump hymn book..
This cheerleading has metastasized in the past generation. As veteran journalist Matti Friedman wrote this week on Substack in When We Started to Lie: “The practice of journalism—that is, knowledgeable analysis of messy events on Planet Earth—was being replaced by a kind of aggressive activism that left little room for dissent. The new goal was not to describe reality, but to usher readers to the correct political conclusion…
The activist-journalists, I found, were backed up by an affiliated world of progressive NGOs and academics who we referred to as experts, creating a thought loop nearly impervious to external information. All of this had the effect of presenting a mass audience with a supposedly factual story that had a powerful emotional punch and a familiar villain.”
What’s interesting is that no one in the U.S. has had to pay journalists to do this. In Canada the Trudeau federal government is taking no chances. It has taken to threatening media outlets it now supports through its media slush funds. Here’s Taleeb Noormohamed, parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage dressing down a media critic who mentioned Noormohamed’s sketchy real estate flipping history,
