THE FIX NOTWITHSTANDING, TRUMP WAS ILL PREPARED COMPARED TO HARRIS

The Debate Was Fixed

But I wanted Trump to handle a few opportunities and challenges better. 

 

by Dov Fischer

 

The American Spectator

Sep 11, 2024

 

Harris was not pressed for specifics, here or otherwise, by ABC moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis, who otherwise fact-checked Donald Trump in real time.

Of course I am disappointed that Trump did not score another knockout. Expectations for Harris were low. Trump came in as the guy who just had knocked out the last guy.

In many ways, really, it was a good debate. It really was — in many ways. They got to talk. Trump did not have a crowd to play to, so he remained serious throughout the 90 minutes, without the showmanship and off-topic stories. The mikes were shut off while the other person spoke, so he could not interrupt her. That was great because it is terrible graphics to see a tall, strong, white man interrupting a weak, small, colored (black, Indian) woman. If anything, it was she who interrupted him — twice — and, as I had hoped, he responded with: “Excuse me, I am speaking.”

I hoped she would speak more extemporaneously, but she was well-scripted and rehearsed. Good for her. There are rules and tips, and she did what we recommend people to do when they cannot think under fire and speak wisely: just memorize your lines, as lunkheads do in Hollywood. The screenwriters and playwrights never get the full credit they deserve; no one gets to hear whom they endorse. Rather, the lunkheads at the award ceremonies get to lecture America. So she memorized her lines and spoke them well.

Trump was good, too. He memorized some lines and clearly entered with broad themes to pursue in his own way: unmitigated illegal immigration, government-sponsored free sex-change operations for illegals, prices through the roof, Harris’ role as the deciding vote in the trillion-dollar injection of government paper money that has thrown the economy into both a sky-high upward spiral and freefall at the same time.

The problem, as always — except in the prior Biden-in-a-Daze debate — was that the debate was fixed. Harris was asked easier questions. Trump was asked harder questions. The debate carefully did not end in the final minutes with the most crucial questions about the economy, gasoline prices, the impossibility of being a prospective new home buyer, Laken Riley and Rachel Morin and all the others, price controls, government defunding police and ICE, fracking, or the canceling of private health insurance. Instead, they saved the last half hour and final minutes for Jan. 6 and Harris’ skin color. Instead of getting that out of the way early, they wanted that to resound. Whereas Harris always was extended the courtesy of a response and a further response to a Trump response, Trump frequently was denied a similar response opportunity and had to call out to the “moderators” over his dead mike, demanding a fair chance to respond.

At least twice, a Trump response was met by a hostile “fact check” by a “moderator” saying, on the spot, that he was wrong. That is an incredible violation of debate protocol. I was chairman of my high school debating team, and we won our league debating championship. It is the only one of my trophies I ever have displayed. I know debate rules. It is absolutely unheard of for a “moderator” to fact-check a debate participant. If something must be challenged, that is the job of the other debater to call out the opponent. We Americans already have lived through that garbage at least once before when CNN’s Candy Crowley sabotaged a crucial Romney–Obama debate when, after Romney (finally) landed a real zinger, leaving Obama like a deer caught in headlights, “moderator” Crowley jumped in to save Obama by saying that Romney was telling a falsehood. That killed Romney’s momentum and confidence. The next day, it turned out that Crowley had been wrong, but the damage had been done.

Amid the debate, they called the town manager of the place where some illegal immigrant stole and ate a dog or cat? WT[]? Did they call Victor Orbán of Hungary, mid-debate, to ask him whether Harris accurately described her and Trump’s standing among European leaders? Did they call Laken Riley’s parents mid-debate to ask whether it is true that some illegal immigrants have raped and murdered females?

Or the thing where the “moderator” interjects that no state currently allows the killing of botched abortion children? First, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam is on record. Listen here. And what is Harris’ position on late-term abortion in the eighth and ninth month? The kid by then is just about ready to start crawling and smiling, but does the “woman still have the right to choose” even then? No follow up. Next question.

That is where the bias and media prejudice play out. Any truly impartial moderator would press a debater who evades a crucial question. ABC did that at least twice to Trump — and rightly so. So what is your Obamacare alternative? That’s fair. So were you wrong on Jan. 6? That’s fair. But they did not do it to Harris: “So where do you stand right now on fracking, since you have been on record all your years of public life to ban it? And, please — bottom line — will you take away private health insurance, as you have promised for all your years in public life? And will you truly decriminalize illegal immigration, i.e., making all border crossings — by definition — legal, which means there no longer is a point to having ICE or anyone guarding the border because, by decriminalizing unauthorized border crossings, 10 million people are doing nothing wrong by flowing in? Plastic straws — you’re on the record wanting to ban them, so what about now? Gun confiscations? Defund the police? And if you indeed have changed over the past 10 days on all these decadeslong beliefs of yours, all of which are on video record, yet you also just said on video that your views have never changed — please, puh-leez — explain.”

There was no moderator follow-up, as there was with Trump. They pressed Trump: “How exactly will you make Obamacare better?” They did not press Harris: “How exactly will you bring down prices and stop the Russia–Ukraine war?” They let her glide.

I felt she did well, with memorized pap and no cackling. I likewise felt Trump did very well. He mostly stayed on point, did not allow her to bait him too often with cheap shots about the lawfare cases or several personal attacks. But I wanted so much for Trump to handle a few opportunities and challenges a bit better. I think that is the part where I am disappointed. Not that he lost the debate, not at all. I think it was kind of a tie. But I am disappointed because I saw spots where he could have turned it to an outright win:

Challenge: “What about Jan. 6 and your speech and so on?”

Response: “Look, all I know is that on Jan. 6, 2021, food prices were 50 percent lower than they are today; families did not have to cut out a meal a day; gasoline prices were wonderfully low; American corporations were flooding back to Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan from China and Mexico; our southern border was secure; Laken Riley and Rachel Morin were alive; young people could afford to buy their first home; and there was no Russian–Ukraine war or Hamas terrorist war.”

Challenge: “What about Charlottesville”?

Response: “There you go yet again. That is a lie, and you knowingly are repeating a lie. That makes you a liar, plain and simple. I invite the two moderators here and every American at home to go to the website of ‘Snopes.com’ and to Google ‘Trump Charlottesville’ to see for themselves with their own eyes what a liar you are.”

Challenge: “What about the 2020 election?”

Response: “Tonight is Sept. 10, 2024. I am focused on the 2024 election. I hope it will be more honest and fair than the way the two of you are ‘moderating’ tonight’s debate.”

So it felt to me like a tie. The disappointment was not that Trump lost. It was just that he missed a few chances to seal the deal.

I expect the mainstream media to build up Harris as the winner, and that will impact the easily persuaded who have not yet figured out, at this late date, which way they are voting. (With two candidates so opposite, how is that even possible?) The biased spin may give her a bump of one or two points for a week, and then the bump will revert as it has done after her sudden DNC coronation. Once again, we will find all eyes focused on the next debate, if she dares accept.

I can hardly wait for this election to end. It is so dirty. In my lifetime, I do not remember any politician ever so unworthy, unqualified, and brazenly dishonest as to reverse every single policy and stand she ever took over decades, all in the course of two weeks, with it obvious as plain day that she will revert right back to her true agenda the moment the race is over. Her flip-flopping is so blatant and patently bogus that even the wild-eyed communist Bernie Sanders has assured his followers not to worry because she is just doing it to get elected, then will revert. I despise Harris’ brazen contempt for the American voter. And, truth to tell, I despise even more the American voters whom Bernie and Harris correctly know will fall for it — and then, if their votes G-d forbid put her over the top, will complain and moan for the next four years about how much worse things have gotten, how much more things cost, how they or neighbors have lost their jobs as their companies have moved to China, Mexico, and elsewhere; and how they personally know someone dear who was raped and murdered by an illegal; and how they no longer can send their kids to the public schools.