“If they were wise, Republicans should never agree to any televised debate moderated by ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNBC, PBS, NPR, or CNN again, given the history of liberal moderator bias. The names of Donna Brazile, Candy Crowley, David Muir, and Linsey Davis should serve as sufficient warnings.” Victor Davis Hanson
Hanson could not have summed up my feelings better! On September 10th the nation was treated to another installment of the multi-decade farce commonly called “presidential debates.” The dictionary definition of a debate is a formal discussion in which opposing arguments are put forward. Having been born far too late to have witnessed the real debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas in person and not having personally participated in one since my high school days 60 years ago, I must conclude that this form of political debate is now relegated to formal debate contests in educational settings. It certainly has been wholly absent from the American political scene for a long, long time. I have some suggestions moving forward and will outline them toward the end of this article.
As to the ABC event itself, there were numerous instances of the “moderators” attempting (inaccurately, by the way) to call out and “correct” claims made by Mr. Trump whereas, as noted below, over 20 clearly false statements made by Vice President Harris went completely unchallenged.
For example, on the issue of the border, Harris claimed that Trump had urged his “minions” in the Senate to vote “no” on what she called the most comprehensive bipartisan border bill ever in the U.S. Senate. This failed monstrosity proposed that the Department of Homeland Security close the southern border “during a period of seven consecutive calendar days, [if] there is an average of 5,000 or more aliens who are encountered each day.”
Over 1.8 million illegal aliens a year still would have been permitted to enter the United States under this now twice-failed legislation. According to Senator Ted Cruz, the Senate border bill would have codified in law Joe Biden’s open border.
For some odd and inexplicable reason, the otherwise conservative Senator James Lankford (R-Oklahoma) had led the way in negotiating the terms of the bill with Democrats. Lankford was one of the few Republicans who appeared to support advancing the border and foreign aid bill, along with a handful of usual suspects among “Republicans” in the Senate, namely Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, and, of course, the inimitable Mitt Romney of Utah.
Even if the Senate had successfully passed this bill, Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson said it would have been “dead on arrival” in the House. Instead, the GOP-led House passed its own border bill (HR2) which would have indeed closed the border and cut off the flow of illegals. Democrat Senate Majority Leader Schumer stifled it by not permitting it to be taken up or even debated by the Senate. So, Madame Harris, which party is blocking border enforcement? The “moderators” failed to ask her that question.
The so-called debate’s putative moderators immediately called out Mr. Trump for a claim that Haitian illegals have been eating people’s pets. A wildly important issue compared to the violence being inflicted on Americans across the country as part of what Trump calls “migrant crime,” right? Never mind the growing number of innocent victims of this outrage! ABC News had dutifully “fact checked” the matter of pets ahead of the debate, obtaining a denial of the alleged facts from the City Manager of Springfield, Ohio. Chalk up yet another serious instance of a major “lie” uttered by the evil Donald Trump! Hardly.
Of course, it must be said that Trump would have been much better served had he emphasized that the Biden administration had granted special immigration status to Haitian “migrants” and had flown many to destinations inside the USA, thus resulting in an estimated 20,000 of them having been relocated to Springfield, Ohio – a small city of about 58,000. But that wouldn’t have deterred the “moderators” from their task since they were clearly on a mission.
Mr. Muir indeed played his intended role by calling out Trump for minor issues such as the aforementioned trivium while failing to call out Harris on numerous hoaxes she continued to spew out, to wit: Charlottesville, Trump’s “bloodbath” comment, his supposed “abortion ban,” an alleged and unproven link to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, the allegation that Trump was opposed to IVF, and the lie that police officers died on January 6.
On the never-ending, eternally divisive issue of abortion, in answer to a question about it, Harris said no women are carrying their babies to the ninth month of pregnancy and then termination their pregnancy. In response to a question posed by Mr. Trump whether she supported any limitations on abortions, she said she would restore Roe v. Wade. That ruling allowed abortions up to and including the ninth month of pregnancy. In 2019, then-Senator Harris voted to block a bill that would have required medical care for babies born alive in botched abortions. She also voted to codify Roe v. Wade into federal law.
Here’s another instance of the so-called moderators failing to correct Harris (which happened throughout this so-called debate). Trump claimed of Harris, “Now she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison.” She did not rebut his claim.
As with most issues, Harris has not directly stated her position on this issue in the 2024 election. However, she explicitly endorsed it in 2019 during the lead up to the 2020 election. Harris, then a senator from California and candidate for president, told the American Civil Liberties Union that she would use her executive power as president to ensure that transgender and non-binary individuals “including those in prison and immigration detention” receive access to “all necessary surgical care.”
As California attorney general, she pushed for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to offer transgender surgeries to inmates. She wrote: “I support policies ensuring that federal prisoners and detainees are able to obtain medically necessary care for gender transition, including surgical care, while incarcerated or detained.” She added that “transition treatment is a medical necessity, and I will direct all federal agencies responsible for providing essential medical care to deliver transition treatment.” In other words, not only does she support this nonsense, but she would as president, God forbid, have taxpayers foot the bill!
This position is also the logical conclusion of her support for Democrats’ proposed Equality Act and the gender operations euphemistically referred to as “gender affirming care.” Under Biden and Harris, the federal Bureau of Prisons reissued a Transgender Offender Manual that the Obama administration had begun. The manual’s latest version states that surgery for prisoners who claim to be transgender is “generally considered only after one year of clear conduct and compliance with mental health, medical, and programming services at the gender-affirming facility.”
And, on the effect of the open border, more than 50,000 criminal illegal immigrants have been discovered between ports of entry at the southern border under the Biden-Harris administration. About 21,000 illegal aliens with criminal records were encountered during the four years of Trump’s administration. Under the current administration, more than 350 illegal aliens on America’s terrorist watch list have been encountered between ports of entry at the southern border. There were fewer than a dozen such instances under the Trump administration.
Harris proudly boasted of being the tie-breaking votes for the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act, which economists blame for setting off historically high inflation rates. And although she’s promising more federal money allegedly to spur housing, the cost of new houses have more than doubled on her watch. Inflation is eroding family budgets and the printing of money supporting Democrats’ ridiculous spending has resulted in a deficit in the current fiscal year of over $2 trillion dollars. Although we’re now adding $1 trillion of debt every three months, the “moderators” apparently didn’t want to touch that issue for fear that it might force their favorite candidate to justify current and proposed policy.
On the issue of America’s embarrassing and tragically flawed withdrawal from Afghanistan, Harris dissembled significantly as to the facts of that action and even suggested that the failure was due to poor negotiating tactics of then-President Donald Trump. After the debate, retired Lt. General Keith Kellogg (who was actually an eyewitness to the DORA negotiations) called Harris’ allegations completely false. Again, ABC’s debate “moderators” were silent on this distortion of the factual record made by Harris. Are you beginning to see a pattern here?
When Donald Trump attempted to bring up the rising crime rates in America, the ABC team interrupted him and claimed that, according to FBI statistics, crime is actually decreasing. Aside from being simply blatantly false, these paragons of facts, evidence, and truth failed to determine the actual state of crime in America. A few days after the debate (how convenient) the Department of Justice issued statistics which confirm Trump’s allegation as to rising crime. But, as with most such deflections of the “mainstream” media, the facts came out after the damage has been done, i.e. after the debate left a lie uncorrected during the event.
This list could go on and on but suffice it to say that this was likely the most egregious example of rigged “debates” in our history. Even some “mainstream” media outlets have called out ABC News on this.
As with many facets of life, the longer a societal malady is allowed to go untreated, the worse it gets moving forward as it metastasizes into something truly despicable, as has now become the case with “presidential debates” as witnessed by the following examples.
Here’s what CBS News (hardly a “right wing” operation) wrote following the embarrassing October 2012 second debate as to the antics of debate moderator Candy Crowley: “She was supposed to be the moderator – not a participant! …. In post-analysis of the debate, it is obvious that Crowley inserted her comments and blatantly interjected an untruth regarding Mitt Romney’s absolutely accurate claim near the end of the debate that President Obama did not, in fact, tell the American people that the attack at the Libyan consulate on September 11 was a terrorist attack on the day after the attack. …. Romney was correct …. (and) Crawley should have let Mitt Romney have his say instead of blatantly stopping a key-Mitt Romney moment.” [1]
Fast forward to 2016 when then-CNN “analyst” and so-called debate “moderator” Donna Brazile was caught supplying Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton with debate topics and specific questions prior to the presidential “debate.” When confronted on this gross violation of ethics, Brazile was reported to have said that she only regretted getting caught! [2] Interestingly, since none of these “untouchables” is ever held accountable for any wrongdoing, Ms. Brazile is now a “contributor” to ABC News – the crew that torpedoed the recent debate!
More recently, in 2020, Chris Wallace appeared to (as one source phrased it) “spar” with President Trump over Obamacare and Trump’s move to eliminate the individual mandate. Washington Examiner correspondent Andrew Mark Miller noted a quote from Trump directed at Wallace in which the President said, “I guess I’m debating you, not him” (referring to candidate Joe Biden).
And then the most recent example of this obviously rigged game took place on ABC News on September 10th “moderated” by two obviously biased, completely ideological ABC personnel. Clearly, the longer the Republican Party continues to take a weak and feckless position as to these clown shows, the worse the silliness will get. While it appears we’ve finally reached the bottom of the debate barrel, I see no relief from this indefensible folderol in sight. So, what can and should be done about it? Glad you asked. Read on.
For a debate to have even a minimal appearance of objectivity and reality, the first step it to remove this procedure from the arena of media control. Given the never- ending state of media bias and total lack of objectivity or journalistic standards, America can’t endure any more of this claptrap. Even some journalists themselves are becoming highly critical of the process.
We need to examine the entire foundation undergirding our political debate process. By way of suggesting a radical transformation of this clearly flawed methodology, I will use a comparative model from the judicial system of various countries involving what we in American jurisprudence call “discovery.”
This process involves the sharing of evidentiary materials between parties in the dispute process. In many European countries, this is done by what is called an inquisitorial system, i.e. the judge elicits evidence from the parties.
In our American adversarial system, the parties (usually through their attorneys) seek to discover evidence from each other.
Interestingly, our methodology of presidential debates is inquisitorial since it involves outsiders (exclusively media types) questioning the candidates. As we’ve seen multiple times, this invites bias into the process. It also devolves into silly situations which involves questions such as “What would you do to solve the ongoing problems in the Middle East? You have one minute for your answer!”
These are not genuine debates, but TV productions which inevitably involve candidates’ parading out sound bites and spin rather than factual evidence. As to how this nonsense can be avoided in the future, I will again quote scholar and social commentator Professor Victor Hanson:
“If the presidential candidates still insist on debating their opponents, they then should agree only to the classical rules of debating—and with only mute timekeepers present instead of loud-mouth, egocentric moderators in the following fashion:
An opening 5-minute statement;
A 3-minute rebuttal of opponent’s similar statement;
A 2-minute rebuttal of the rebuttal;
All to be repeated over eight or nine topics in a 90-minute debate, with mouth-shut timekeepers keeping each candidate within his time limits.”
I would add one additional facet to those listed above, i.e. question selection. This has been a vehicle used by the “oracles” of the media to steer debates in a direction most likely to favor their preferred candidates. The eight or nine topics, as suggested by Hanson, could alternate between the two candidates with the candidates themselves selecting topics they wish to discuss. This would not only eliminate the favoritism inherent in the current process but would also show the breadth and depth of each candidate’s knowledge and preparedness to serve as President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Military.
It remains to be seen whether the RNC will finally, after decades of abuse, recover sufficient sanity and courage to stand behind such an approach. We shall see.
Submitted by Charles Cole.
[1] Crowley’s Obama Favoritism Completely Discredits Her as a Journalist, by Scott Paulson, CBS News online, October 18, 2012.
[2] Donna Brazile is Totally Not Sorry for Leaking CNN Debate Questions to Hillary Clinton, The Washington Post online, by Callum Borchers, November 7, 2016.
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