Moderator Bias Undermines First Presidential Debate
"Every question was shaped to frame a left-wing agenda."
9.27.2016
57
The first presidential debate between nominees Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump took place Monday night, and opinions differ, naturally, on who was the winner. But everyone seems to agree on the loser -- moderator Lester Holt, whose openly biased performance satisfied neither left nor right.
Liberals were frustrated that Holt didn't exert enough authority and control over the speakers -- allowing a 20-second Trump point go on for 55 seconds, for example. Talk show host Chelsea Handler summed up the left's impatience with this tweet:
Conservatives were angry at Holt's blatant bias and his fact-checking of Trump, which should not be the moderator's job. The Freedom Center's own Daniel Greenfield, for example, pointed out that Holt "was a good deal worse" than Candy Crowley, and that "[t]he debate was structurally biased":
Every question was shaped to frame a left-wing agenda. Holt hurled numerous attacks at Trump. He only passingly offered Hillary a chance to address her emails when Trump had already brought it up... It was a disgraceful and a biased performance.
Steven Kruiser at PJ Media explained that Holt's bias stemmed from a fear of being "savaged by the likes of WaPo, The New York Times and MSNBC" as Matt Lauer had been for daring to ask Hillary some fair questions at the Commander-in-Chief Forum. "Lester Holt made sure that he didn't end up being the story in the MSM tomorrow," wrote Kruiser.
Rudy Giuliani boiled over about Holt's bias, stating that the moderator "should be ashamed of himself":
“If I were Donald Trump I wouldn’t participate in another debate unless I was promised that the journalist would act like a journalist and not an incorrect, ignorant fact checker. The moderator would have to promise that there would be a moderator and not a fact checker and in two particular cases an enormously ignorant, completely misinformed fact checker. If you wonder why Donald Trump thinks that the press is a left-wing basically oriented group, Lester Holt proved it tonight."
As for the debate itself, Jim Geraghty at National Review summarized it this way:
Hillary Clinton... clearly had memorized a whole briefing encyclopedia on Trump’s controversial statements, scandals, lawsuits, and worked in most of them over the course of 90 minutes...
One could argue the topic selection played against him: a whole section on his birther argument against President Obama, extended discussion of his unreleased tax returns, whether he stiffed former contractors. The debate included nothing on immigration (!) border security (!), Benghazi, or the Clinton Foundation. The discussion of Hillary’s e-mails was brief.
So who won the debate? The left-leaning mainstream media outlets like MSNBC and CNN pretended to gauge the debate fairly but predictably declared Hillary the winner. Conservative pundits generally seemed let down by Trump's performance. Geraghty, for example, from the notoriously #NeverTrump National Review, concluded that "on issue after issue, it was one missed opportunity after another" for Trump. S.E. Cupp reported that Trump "mostly" did what he needed to do.
Pundits aside, Cupp's conclusion gets to the heart of the matter: "[I]f I'm looking at who moved the needle tonight with voters, it was Trump, not Clinton."
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