September 11, 2024 - 7:40am
It’s worth wondering whether last night’s presidential debate was the last we’ll ever see on traditional media.
Vice President Kamala Harris started strong. She tacked to the centre, riffing on the lab leak and small businesses and tax cuts for billionaires — all without serving up one of her signature word salads. Harris also managed to set traps for Donald Trump, baiting him, for example, into quibbling over crowds at his rallies when he could have been hitting her on immigration.
She sounded serious and appeared likeable. For a woman whose approval ratings were lower than Dick Cheney’s not long ago, that’s a feat. Trump, by contrast, seemed angry. As the debate wore on, however, that anger seemed increasingly justified.
Moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis of ABC News made the controversial decision to perform fact checks of the candidates in real time. Not once did they check a claim from Harris. All four of the moderators’ live corrections were made against Trump, some of which were highly subjective.
Of course, that’s why many moderators — including Jake Tapper and Dana Bash in June — choose to trust that voters can check facts on their own. Campaigns are built on exaggerations. Nobody is happy about it, but it’s true of both Republicans and Democrats. While Trump is uniquely freewheeling, to say the very least, Harris provided plenty of openings for the moderators to offer just one easy correction.
She repeated a claim about the racist Charlottesville rally that even Snopes debunked. What about her implication that Trump’s “bloodbath” comment was related to something other than the auto industry? Her claims on late-term abortion? (Davis hit Trump with a somewhat dubious fact check on that one.)
During Tuesday’s debate, conservatives immediately invoked the notorious decision by Candy Crowley in 2012 to incorrectly fact-check Mitt Romney during a debate with Barack Obama. “Tonight’s moderators made Candy Crowley look fair,” Sean Spicer, Trump’s former press secretary, posted on X. Ann Coulter wrote: “Trump is having to fight all three other people on stage. I’ve never seen such an unfair debate. This is worse than Candy Crowley ‘correcting’ Romney — and then admitting she was wrong … hours after the debate.”
Why did Republicans agree to it in the first place? Trump-era conservatives have been calling on the RNC to starve legacy networks of their lucrative access to debates. The momentum became so strong that former Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel led the party’s decision to withdraw from the storied Commission on Presidential Debates. Back in November, Vivek Ramaswamy used part of his time in a primary debate to critique the format. “This should be Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan and Elon Musk,” he said on NBC. “We’d have 10 times the viewership asking questions that GOP primary voters actually care about, bringing more people into our party.”
More than a decade after the Crowley dust-up, Republicans clearly have permission from their voters to ditch the legacy media. Independents? Their trust in the press is close to a record low. The eruption of independent journalists leaves both parties with no shortage of technically feasible alternatives.
Even Trump himself — an undisputed master of television — explained recently on Lex Fridman’s podcast: “From a political standpoint, you have to find out what people are doing, what they’re watching and you have to get on.”
“I just see that these platforms are starting to dominate — they’re getting very big numbers,” he said. “I did Spaces with Elon and they got numbers like nobody’s ever heard before. So you wouldn’t do that on radio. You wouldn’t do those numbers, no matter how good a show, you wouldn’t do those numbers on radio; you wouldn’t do on television.”
There were two losers last night: Trump and ABC News. Because the former president avoided an outright disaster, it’s likely ABC will suffer much more in the long run. So will this be the last time we see both candidates duke it out on a major network? Harris is already demanding a second debate in October. Trump, for his part, responded to the challenge on Truth Social by saying his opponent “is going around wanting another Debate because she lost so badly”.
If ever there were a time for the GOP to break up with the networks, it’d be now. But as one Republican strategist told me early this morning: “ABC News to Republicans is the ex-girlfriend you drunkenly text. You know you shouldn’t do it, but you do it anyways and regret it immediately.”
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SubscribeDidn’t watch it, but I trust Emily’s judgment. My guess is the reports in Politico and CNN and elsewhere are overblown, precisely because they put too much stock in MSM.
But my big takeaway is that this Harris’ debate win provides cover for the Dems to credibly sell this rigged election as ‘democracy’.
What “Harris’ debate win”?
You admit that you didn’t even watch it! Sheesh.
Put away the knives! I already admitted I didn’t watch it. But everyone, left and right, seems to be saying Harris won.
Kamala Harris did win the debate. Not by a knockout, but on points.
Kamala did a rope-a-dope by dodging questions and filibustering with vague bs answers.
Why did a massively leftist organ of propaganda fact check Trump and not Harris??? Does it really need to be asked?
I really wonder if they also made sure Kamala had the questions well beforehand.
Really, it’s hard to imagine that they didn’t.
It happened before with Hillary and Bernie.
Once Harris got to lie with impunity, and all the Democrats who identify as journalists ignored Trump’s closing argument, it came out the way you would expect from crooked referees. According to them, Harris won. She did so without having to answer Trump’s final question: If she realy planned to do all these great things, why hasn’t she done them already? She’s been in office 3.5 years. She was the tie breaking vote in the Senate for lots of inflation. Why should we expect her to change?
However, as one independent voter commented, We’re not voting for who we want to invite to a party, or to a wedding, we’re voting for who we want to run the country. We were better off when Trump ran the country.
Time to start preparing for leaving into one of the BRICS countries. The choice is getting larger. The west is unrecoverably doomed if Harris wins.
ABC moderators had no problems with the idea of a town of 60,000 (Springfield, Ohio), having to accommodate 15,000 Haitians after the Biden/Harris administration decided to welcome people who had turned their own country into a gangster state.
If Harris is elected, there will be plenty more where they came from.
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out. Every election has overwrought partisans on each side threatening to leave in the event the election doesn’t go their way. No one acts. Welcome to the club.
They do. I know three Americans who left the US after the first Trump win – two went to Canada, one to the UK. I don’t know how this translates across the entire population, but if I know of three, there must have been many, many more!
Please tell me of all the conservatives who said they would the country, because we all know that half of Hollywood have been threatening us that their bags are packed
Is the Pope a Roman Catholic? Why do bears stick close to their dens rather than use public conveniences?
These kind of complementary questions come to mind.
Because Trump was the one spewing lies
Kamala Harris: “report on Joe Biden’s mental fitness ‘gratuitous and inaccurate…US Justice Department report that raised questions about Joe Biden’s mental fitness is politically motivated””
February 2024.
You know you’re lying.
Trump was lying when he said that Democrat politicians considered the viability of babies after birth to be an open question?
Tim Walz helped repeal the state’s law that required physicians to try to save the life of a baby born during an abortion, meaning that abortionists can just let the baby die even if it has already been born. To be specific, Walz’s law explicitly deleted the former requirement that doctors try to “preserve the life and health” of infants born alive
This from the National Catholic Register, obviously anti-abortion:
“A Minnesota law that had been on the books since 1976 required “responsible medical personnel” to use “[a]ll reasonable measures consistent with good medical practice” to “preserve the life and health of the born alive infant.”
The legislation Walz signed in May 2023 got rid of the word “preserve” and replaced the previous wording with a revised requirement “to care for the infant who is born alive.”
What you seem to be assuming — an assumption this change in law apparently was meant to address — is that keeping a severely compromised infant alive is in the child’s best interest. I think that call is best left to physicians and parents. Abortion laws being what they are, the number of infants far enough along and robust enough to be born alive after an attempted abortion is vanishingly small, and these infants so premature and compromised as to face serious lifelong deficits even if heroic efforts somehow kept them alive. I’d think anyone who really cares about the welfare of an infant at the point at which this law becomes relevant would want doctors and parents making that decision, not the state.
From the same article, stats from Minnesota between 2015 and 2023:
“…the state’s health agency reported 24 babies born alive after an attempted abortion…. All the babies died. Ten of the 24 cases involved a fatal fetal condition “incompatible with life,” according to the reports. Four babies were medically “pre-viable,” meaning they were deemed too underdeveloped to live on their own. Two were barely clinging to life: one in 2016 had “transient cardiac contractions” and another in 2017 had a low Apgar score, suggesting little chance of resuscitation.
Eight other cases were described in vaguer language. For seven of them, the reports say, “comfort care measures were provided as planned.”
You are correct that cases of third trimester abortions where an attempted abortion results in a live birth are very rare. But they do happen and the law in some states allows doctors to lay these newborn babies aside and let them die. So Donald Trump’s statement was correct and the moderator’s correction incorrect.
Myself, I wish both sides would calm down and reach the same compromise reached throughout the great majority of the world, including Europe and Japan, where first trimester abortions are allowed without restriction but later abortions are restricted. The idea that all abortions, whether in the first few weeks of pregnancy or in the last few weeks, should be treated the same makes little sense to me.
Sounds like TDS to me. Talk to your doctor about that new drug….Independence. It might help you.
I think lies should be challenged.
Not by debate moderators. They should be referring, not throwing punches themselves.
You’ve got the whole internet to do that. So has everyone else. The channel itself, ABC in this case, could get people to check and put a full list on their website within 24 hours of the debate. And we could all go off and check that too.
It’s for the candidates to challenge each other, that’s what a debate is.
I’ve only watched highlights, but Trump’s temperament let him down.
If he’d stuck to the policy failings of the Biden/Harris administration he should have walked it. But he allowed himself to get rattled.
Surely to God everyone on his team would know that the Democrats could hardly stick to policy wins, and that Kamala would try to get under his skin.
He has always had a rather brittle ego, and will not/cannot take criticism. His debate-prepping team should have stood him in a room whilst they insulted his policies, his record, his character, his manhood and even his golf game, and trained him not to react.
From the bits I’ve seen, the moderators were clearly looking to needle him as well, jumping in to fact-check things that were debatable statements rather than factually incorrect. Trump would surely have known that the deck would be stacked against him, and that Kamala’s only hope was to goad him into showing his worst side.
They baited the world’s most obvious trap and he walked slowly right into it.
Maybe when I watch the whole debate a different picture will emerge, but most American voters won’t watch the debate in its entirety, they’ll see only what the media chooses to play as clips, and Trump gave them plenty of moments that they can use to show him looking flustered and petulant. So, by that metric, he lost the debate.
I actually watched the whole debate and I happen to live in the US, and moreover in the DC greater metropolitan area. My take is that this debate was effectively 3 on 1 against Trump, and I suspect that most fair minded people (i.e. undecided independents) will see it that way. As for who won the debate, I would say that Harris came off as a straight off liar simply repeating debunked or plainly untrue talking points, whereas Trump at least seemed half way reasonable. So I certainly wouldn’t come to the conclusion that Harris won the debate and Trump lost it. Rather it was a big meh…
It’s just the media doing what they always do. The Trump/Clinton “debates” were the same: she was brilliant, he was an angry loser. And then he stunned the world and won the election. Obviously, they can’t let that happen again.
Well, they wouldn’t resort to another assassination attempt..or…would they?
Ever-Trumpers and Never-Trumpers don’t matter at this point. Their vote is guranteed, regardless. The cohort who matters in this election are the undecided, and debate performances can definitely move the needle for them.
Trump’s primary goal last night – you could say his only goal – was to deny the Dems and their supportive media any fresh ammunition. Instead he offered up plenty. Clips from the debate will fill peoples’ media-channels and, with the targetted ad campaigns becoming evermore sophisticated, these will get blanket coverage.
I hope you are right, but my right wing friends in uk, who watched debate (I didn’t) claim otherwise.
When pushed they say 55% to 45% for Harris.
There were so many open goals for Trump to shoot at (as I posted) but he must have missed a few.
I’m intrigued by the downvotes, without any attendent explanation.
What are these people objecting to, that I didn’t pretend that Donald Trump was the knockdown winner, or that I didn’t flatter Kamala as a brilliant debater?
Or are they enraged that anyone might suggest the moderators weren’t scrupulously fair?
I think, sadly, you are spot on.
Great post.
I did not watch the debate, but I wonder if Trump even tried very obvious attack lines:
1) quote Harris policies from her 2020 Presidential primaries and ask if there are still her policies and if not why not?
2) why was she supporting Biden presidential bid despite his obvious mental decline? Basically fraud on American people.
3) How many illegals were allowed into USA on her watch?
4) Use crime statistics in all the Democrats run “sanctuary cities”, especially in California.
5) point out how many major businesses and people moved out from California?
6) Highlight terrible optics of USA withdrawal from Afganistan and use plight of Afghan women against Harris claims she is feminist.
7) Point out how Russia moved against Ukraine after administration she was part of was in office.
I hope Trump wins, but he is clearly struggling after Harris replaced Biden.
You are absolutely correct, but this is Trump we are talking about. Trump is not a 15-rounds boxer. He throws haymakers. I wish we had someone else with the task of systematically demolishing the putrid house of horrors that is the Democrat administrative state, but Trump is who we have.
The best we can hope for to get the truth out there are video ads which make your points. It’s all about independents now. The party bases are set. I hope some Independents actually look below the clownish antics on display by ABC and Kamala’s handlers and realize that Trump is angry about a grim future for millions of middle Americans if the Dem establishment gets back in.
Any one who participates in a competition can only do so much preparation, and that doesn’t change their basic abilities or experience. Everyone is affected when they get on a big stage and they have to perform.
And a lot of luck is involved when you go up against an opponent and have to react to what they do. It’s a different event than when you are competing against a clock or a distance in sports or speaking at a rally in politics.
So I wouldn’t give too much blame to Donald Trump or those who assisted him in preparing, and I wouldn’t give too much credit to Kamala Harris or her aides.
Losing this debate will be a blow to Donald Trump, but I hope not a fatal one. Kamala Harris as president would be as mediocre or even incompetent as she has been in every other job she has held. She gets ahead not by merit but by the assistance of the machine. We deserve better.
(Deleted as posted twice)
Is anyone else noticing that it seems to take longer and longer for a comment to appear on the site – or is it just me?
Not just you
Not to mention, two picture selections (which squares have a motorcycle? A bus? Plus the robot check underneath. Overkill for sure. (And a third one in this instance. Stairs).
A debate with Matt Taibbi and Emily as the moderators would be honest. Both have offered criticisms to both candidates.
ABC did what it was told to do. Whether that directive came from the DNC or whoever sits above that organization, does not really matter. The establishment cannot allow Trump to win. They’re tried everything including attempted murder.
Interesting take.
Former Pres Trump should insist on the second debate being on online platforms not legacy media.
It can be on X space and multiple podcasts on both sides.
Half of the debate can be curated questions of moderators while the other half can be random questions from the electorate.
The design should be to cover as much ground as possible not just on domestic/foreign policy issues but also personal ones and plausible what-ifs.
“There were two losers last night: Trump and ABC News.”
You forgot to add America to the count Emily.
The author makes legitimate points.
Can anyone please explain why these debate formats are generally so ineffectual, allowing candidates to evade questions? Why not:
–Cut a candidate off if s/he does not begin within 15 seconds a specific answer to the specific question. The question would then be posed to the other candidate(s), with the same condition. If a candidate actually answers the question and still has time left, then s/he may take the conversation elsewhere, but only then. Moderators would assess this.
–Forbid rebuttals of rebuttals.
–Allow candidates to say “fact check” to alert moderators to assertions they want checked, which the moderators would do and make available to viewers after the event. The candidates can then use their time not in accusing each other of lying, but in responding to the questions being asked.
–Other equally sensible conditions that would achieve the desired end of revealing and vetting for voters the positions of candidates on important issues.
Is this so hard? Is it impossible to find intelligent, unbiased moderators up to the job of not only asking pertinent questions, but enforcing that they be answered, and later checking the accuracy of challenged assertions?
Anyone who wants an experience of intelligent, relevant discourse between well-informed, articulate presidential candidates should listen to the Nixon-Kennedy debates. I’ll warn Americans, though: You’ll be further depressed by the diminished quality of our candidates and the degraded condition of our democratic process.
Myself, I don’t put much stock in debates. You are right that the John Kennedy-Richard Nixon debates are more engaging, but they were no more meaningful. Even the Lincoln-Douglas debates did little to change opinion. Words just don’t mean much.
In my opinion, debates should be done away with. They are just entertainment, like beauty contests or sports events. They have no relation to the real world. We should as voters pay attention to actions rather than words. We should look at past records, that cannot be falsified, rather than words that can be fake and don’t mean anything even if they are not.
So you people actually believe that babies are being “executed” and that immigrants are eating cats and dogs?
Amazing! No wonder you are willing to vote for a halfwit like Trump if you are that stupid!
Is any of that any more ludicrous than your belief that a man can chop his willy off and become a woman?
I’m not sure that I ever articulated such a belief, old chap, but you people are especially ludicrous when you see your idol take an utter hiding like fatso did last night!
Facts are not your friend
There are many stories from doctors who used to provide abortion services as to what goes on in the process. Many are in testimony or videos where you could- if you wanted- hear how grim and horrifying it actually is. Last one I saw finally (meaning the doctor) gave up after seeing a baby struggle for life in the garbage can after being ripped from the womb while all the attendants were pretending not to see…. and in the next room everyone was trying to save a baby of the same (premature) age that had come too early. The doctor said that was the last abortion she ever performed. I remember another doctor going into detail about how late term abortion services are provided in New Mexico. The girls or women are sent to a roadside motel to take drugs that induce labor and just sit on the toilet to expel the baby, then call and someone comes to help them with the after procedures. They are told not to look in the toilet because someone else with deal with that. You can ridicule that as execution but it does happen and the vast majority of the American people do not want that to be legal. Most people think the first trimester is enough time for pregnancies without physical complications.
CS I’ve got two words for you: Kermit Gosnell.
The Alphabet Networks –ABC, NBC, CBS — have been the information arm of Democrats abd government for decades. Think of them as the combined BBC and you’ll get the idea.
I believe the better comparison is the old Pravda/Izvestia combination….”No news in Pravda, no truth in Izvestia”….
Reuters organized a panel of 10 undecided voters in key states and asked afterward who they would vote for. Six said Trump, three said Kamala, and one was still undecided. I believe that one was found under a rock.
ABC did exactly what Commisar Stephanopoulos directed them to do.
When the President of ABC News introduced Kamala to her husband, what did everyone expect? He had already helped the Democrats make their biased J6 hearings into a Hollywood prime time production. Republicans are nothing if not fools in going to the same apparatchiks every single time. If I was Trump I would have suggested David Muir get himself a podium to stand alongside Kamala on the stage.
I honestly think JD Vance would have wiped the floor with Harris.
( Or Vivek. Or RFK Jr. Or Marco Rubio. Or Musk. Almost any Republican Senator. )
Anyone who was nimble and ready for the predictable cheating. Trump wasn’t ready for the below the belt fact checks or the bear-baiting jabs at his ego. This is so clever from the Dems. They know that the most passionate advocate for justice and freedom in America is Trump. But he is too passionate to dismantle cunning verbal traps.
Subjective indeed. There was absolutely nothing likeable about Harris. She came out of gate in full-on attack mode, with a condescending smugness and a body language which just screamed insincerity. And proceeded to lie through her teeth unimpeded.
It was quite clear from the get go that she had the questions provided to her long before (by her Sorority Sister, no doubt), and had rehearsed nice sounding but ultimately shallow and content-free responses, alongside some real below-the-belt cheap shots at Trump and his supporters. Vicious and petty, let her undefined policies.
And it all blew up in her face. She’s done.
“The Democrats are the evil party and the Republicans are the stupid party.” This truism was abundantly displayed in the 3 on 1 Trump/Harris debate. The stupid ability of Republican managers to screw things up with bad advice to Trump and continuing to treat with the MSM is astounding. And—I hate to say it—Trump seems stupid for agreeing to it.
Donald Trump doesn’t do well in debates because of his style. He uses his trademark device of “truthful hyperbole” to give speeches that are in the genre of farce or satire. He gets some comic effect out of it, but he mainly uses absurdity to make points. That works in rallies, not in debates.
No use fact checking his statements or accusing him of lying because he’s not using his answers to inform but to persuade. He’s like Marcus Tullius Cicero. Or Luigi Pirandello with his Six Characters in Search of an Author. Or Joseph Heller with Catch-22 or Stanley Kubrick with Dr. Strangelove.
They use hyperbole, lies, exaggerations, and absurdities to make their valid points. So does Donald Trump.
Question from UK. What are Kamala’ Harris’ policies going to be?