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Ongoing Media Suicide
We are used to bias in debate moderators, even some grossly inappropriate interventions (here’s looking at you, Candy Crowley). But ABC’s David Muir and Linsey Davis did not even try to fake professionalism. When the late Tim Russert hosted Meet the Press, he invariably asked Democratic guests the tough questions on issues of the day. The difference was that he rarely pressed or followed up as he did with Republicans. He was the former campaign manager for George McGovern, and even he was vastly more professional and even-handed than the pair of miscreants provided by the Disney Corp.
Their boss, the Disney exec who oversees the news division of its ABC subsidiary, is not only a longtime friend of Ms. Harris, she introduced her to her husband. Hugh Hewitt and others have pointed out that there was not one question about China (a big Disney movie market), so no danger that the loyal ABC hitpersons might raise an issue that would upset The Mouse. No questions about the American recently murdered by Hamas that might upset the Democratic balancing act of catering to the anti-Israel vote while appearing not to. Not a single hard question or correction aimed at Willie Brown’s old girlfriend.
[Side note: Why is Mr. Trump’s rather sordid sexual history continuously, entirely relevant, and always fair game, whereas we do not explore the fact that Ms. Harris’ political career was entirely the result of sleeping with a married political kingpin? For Trump it was a deplorable distraction, not the basis of his career.]
Ms. Harris claimed that she had never advocated gun confiscation when she has previously done so—in an interview with David Muir himself!! It is not as if he needed to do a deep dive into his notes to call out that lie. Others have quantified the unchallenged lies Kamala has told. But some of that seems like picking the flys__t out of the pepper. The problem is larger than counting falsehoods and fact-checking the supposed fact-checkers.
In the old real world, the voters, the competing campaigns, and an actual news media would discuss the quality of content offered by the debaters rather than leave it to two self-appointed, rather poorly prepped judges in real-time. Unlike the candidates, the moderators know the question in advance. There is no excuse for bad info, inaccuracies or not knowing the candidates’ previous statements. The hack moderators repeatedly made wrong pronouncements (crime statistics, late-term abortions, Haitian dietary practices, etc).
The overriding problem is a format in which the moderators pick the topics, participate at will, and claim a presumption that their own take is the objective view. That is a level of authority that I would be reluctant to grant to an actual professional journalist and certainly not to those two.
It is one more instance in which it is universally clear that we do not have a professional news industry in major media or newspapers. They are third-string cheerleaders for a failed elite trying to hold off a global populist revolt. Like Baghdad Bob, they will lie until the office lights go out.
Kamala Harris could not exist in a legitimate news media environment. And our debased, increasingly pathetic journalism industry thinks it needs to support the uniparty to survive. A delusional symbiosis of mediocrity. How long can that survive?
Published in General
This just came up this morning:
Curiously, the RNC keeps allowing debates moderated by propagandists pretending to be even and truth-seeking. And, yet, they never seem to be pro-Republican. I have now heard from Clay Travis and David Harsanyi (sp?) a proposal that I would love to see tried. Each candidate picks a protagonist on his side to ask questions of the opposing candidate. At least both candidates would face potentially equal bias.
Except we could expect questions from the Left to be on the order of “when did you stop beating your spouse?”
We could always get Sean Hannity to ask a question. By the time he was finished.asking the debate would be over.
The Mouse is no longer the Big Cheese (ahem) at Disney. Mickey has been replaced.
Either Sean, or Peter Robinson…
Kamala came out of the gate with some story about Trump imposing a national sales tax or VAT. How do the moderators not know that was false? And Trump’s time is then taken denying an outrageous lie. Maybe referring to tariffs (the ones still in effect under Joe?) It would have looked a lot different if ABC’s moderators did their job.
A Clintonista thinks ABC should be investigated for rigging the debate:
https://www.newsmax.com/politics/mark-penn-abc-donald-trump/2024/09/12/id/1180149/?ns_mail_uid=f890f184-4825-4652-9e85-281d577b8a5e&ns_mail_job=DM680240_09122024&s=acs&dkt_nbr=010504lzr47y
Glad independents weren’t that impressed with Kamala. She was downright evasive. If her record was worth discussing, she’d never shut up about it. So it had to be a nonstop attack on trump. We might not have exactly gotten a classic Kamala word salad, but a better sounding variant. I think there’s a pretty substantial segment of the population that can smell BS and resent it.
A list of Kamala’s debate night lies:
Also some lower level employee at ABC has come forward to state that Kamala was indeed given the debate questions prior to the event.
On top of that, there was word put out that fact checkers would only be fact checking Donald Trump.
Supposedly affidavits will be filed concerning this.
It would have been racist to correct Harris for mistaking a tariff for a sales tax. She’s just a black woman. Her parents were the PhDs, not her. There are rules, protocols with DEI hires. Nice people know that.
Oh, the stories that I could tell!
Just once, I’d like to see a debate where the candidates ask each other questions, and are not allowed to dodge answering them. I would also use muted mikes so they don’t step all over each other . . .
I’d even watch
Gutfeld the next night had a bit about how the debate was the easiest time Kamala had since Willie Brown forgot to bring a condom.
Also note, the “moderators” asked ZERO questions about the CCP/China.
Disney (like the NBA and NIKE) does not want to piss off the CCP
“Supposedly.”
Anyone with 2 brain cells to rub together could guess the questions that were going to be asked. Same with the Donna Brazile “scandal” from a couple of cycles ago. There’s no “there” there.
Unless everyone was buzzing about how deftly she handled really, really tough questions (which she did not get) what benefit would there be if she did get a bunch of softball questions anyone could foresee in advance?
The outrage outpaces the common sense.
This X account, Docnetyoutube, is also claiming he signed an NDA with the “whistleblower.” And since there is no real legal concern here, the affidavit is not going to be “filed” with anyone. Oh, and he feels he needs to “team” with the conspiracy theorists at The Gateway Pundit for some reason.
I doubt I agree with any of his politics, but he is a very good speaker when it comes to explaining political issues.
Having said that, he really unleashed a monster. My god that Philadelphia channel 6 interview last night. Harris is going to be a disaster for the world if she gets elected. She never studies anything, under any circumstances. I haven’t replayed the video yet, but I guess she was obviously nervous in it. She is going to be absolutely terrible at meeting a lot of global leaders.
If a candidate can’t handle that and come out looking good, he should look for another line of work.
First of all the affadavit has been filed.
Several other pages – page 3 and 4 and 5 and 6 complete the filed submission.
However I agree that the questions were softball questions. Having watched at least one quite acrimonious press conference Trump handled superbly, where he remained calm and unperturbed by rabid reporters, I was amazed at how over-flummoxed he was on debate night.
Kamala said she had a plan. This perked the mods up so much they turned to Trump and said “So how about you Mr Trump. What about the details of your plan?” (Or maybe Kamala framed the question – I don’t remember.)
This should have been a walk in an assassin-free park for Trump.
How easily he could have said “I don’t need to offer up no stinkin’ details of my plan! I refer you to how I took over the nation on Jan 20th 2017 and brought an economy that was a total dumpster fire into the Number One spot in the global economy. I promise the American people that I will roll up my sleeves and do it again!”
Instead he weakly waffled on how he was so busy with campaigning that he didn’t have specific plan details worked out. On top of that his facial expressions conveyed anger and frustration, not a good look for any candidate.