#2024 Debates

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Matt Gertz at MMFA:

ABC News anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis received plaudits from their peers for their efforts moderating the debate earlier this month between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. Many journalists praised ABC’s decision to forcefully rebut a tiny fraction of Trump's false claims, which provided “a model… for real-time fact-checking of the candidates that we have not glimpsed in previous debates,” as New York Times reporter Michael M. Grynbaum put it. But CBS News has decided that moderators Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan will not follow that model for Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate between Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance. The network said that “the onus will be on Vance and Walz to point out misstatements by the other, and that ‘the moderators will facilitate those opportunities’ during rebuttal time,” The Associated Press reported Friday. 

In other words, if a candidate offers an obvious and easily debunked falsehood, the moderators will presumably turn to their opponent and say some version of, “Your response?” This amounts to “basically off-loading one of your journalistic responsibilities onto the candidates themselves,” as a critic put it to the AP. The CBS decision to renounce moderator fact checks will leave the national debate audience all the poorer. For instance, it will turn an inevitable and easily anticipated lie from Vance that Harris allowed thousands of migrant murderers to run rampant into a he-said/he-said conflict. And the plausible explanations for why CBS is telegraphing its unwillingness to do so bode ill for the state of the news media.

[...]

Why is CBS doing this?

There are two explanations for why CBS has decided not to follow ABC’s model and have its moderators fact-check the debate, and both are dispiriting. One is that CBS simply does not believe it is the network’s job to separate truth from fiction during high-profile, heavily viewed political events. Under this interpretation, while ABC News showed that such fact-checking can be done well, and that it adds to the debate rather than subtracts from it, CBS is simply opposed to doing that. The other is that CBS has been scared off of fact-checking by the right’s furious response to ABC. Right-wing pundits melted down in real time, castigating the ABC moderators and denouncing their network. And Trump himself repeatedly lashed out at the network in the days following the debate, even threatening to use federal regulatory power to retaliate against it. By contrast, Trump praised the CNN moderators, who had adopted a far more passive style, following his June debate with President Joe Biden. Perhaps CBS brass have decided they’d rather not risk angering Trump and have him take a hammer to the network if he returns to the White House, or perhaps they simply want to avoid the hassle that comes with such complaints. Either way, it means authoritarian threats have proved effective in compelling the media to change behavior. That is a dire incentive structure for the press.

Sounds like CBS moderators are caving into the right-wing bullying campaign against fact-checking lies being told at the debate stage, particularly from JD Vance.

[trump666traitor]

[irnhero]

if i see one more article, post, or news anchor talking about how joe biden is old, i'm putting my fist through a window. i feel like i've gone through the fucking looking glass.

this is project 2025, trump's plan for what he'll do if elected. whatever you think is in there, it's worse. watch a breakdown of the highlights here. this man wants to unravel the fabric of our democracy for good - this all aside from his vitriolic hatred of poc, his determination to start ww3, and the fact that he can't string a sentence together without telling outrageous and easily verifiable lies. his administration will start their crusade to exterminate trans people on day one, and they won't stop there.

do not talk to me about how joe biden is old, as if that could ever matter to me more than my life or the lives of my friends and family. my little sister is 14, she's trans, and i don't know what to tell her when we talk about politics, because one of these people wants her dead and the other one is old and some of you are still acting like those problems are equals.

i can't fucking stand this. i'm not hearing it this time, we are not repeating 2016. refusing to vote is not an act of protest, it is an act of complacency, and our most vulnerable will suffer for your negligence. vote like your life depends on it, because for some of us, it really fucking does.

[bilboyagathechickenfootedhobbit]

“I have concepts of a plan”

My dude the election is less than two months away did the dog eat your fucking presidential homework??

[nightqueens-world]

[buggotbrain]

everybody knowing kamala almost called him a motherfucker is SENDING me

[mismaxx]

Save us.

[always-rolling-my-eyes]

[twodotsknowwhy]

Not to Both-Sides last night's debate, but I really think both candidates on that stage did an excellent job highlighting how Donald Trump is too much of a deranged lunatic to be president

[thegunslingerletmedrop]

Bruh. He tried not to shake her hand. He didn't look at her. He didn't say her name. Harris did the opposite.

We've all worked with a dick like that who thinks he's better than you, a woman. Fuck that noise.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

President Joe Biden dug himself a hole and now he is trying to climb out. But many fellow Democrats and some in the media keep shoveling dirt on him. One 20-minute TV interview was never going to swing the race back in Biden’s favor after his halting debate performance against Donald Trump — whose own shambolic showing was largely shrugged off. Legitimate questions remain as to whether Biden, 81, or Trump, 78, are up for the grueling campaign and four more years of a relentless job that has aged past Oval Office occupants. Biden insists he is staying in the race. He must now convince voters he has the mental strength and stamina to do the toughest job in the world. The same bar does not apparently exist for Trump, who loses no points for incoherence or incompetence. The country is not electing the next debate champion. Biden is a decent and honorable man with a substantive record of accomplishment. But to make his case, Biden should hold more unscripted events, including town halls, press conferences, and interviews. At each stop there will be no margin for error. The media is tracking Biden’s every move with an obsession greater than the 2016 focus on Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. The rules have always been different for Trump. Recall when seven members of Trump’s team used private email accounts, including his daughter and son in law, it barely caused a ripple. [...] But little attention has been paid to Trump’s incoherent debate performance because he is often incoherent. Trump told more than 30 lies in 90 minutes during the debate like it was another day at the office. [...] Apparently, it’s OK for Trump to spew nonstop nonsense, but Biden can’t ever lose his train of thought. [...] Trump’s list of flubs is long and more frequent. To be sure, anyone on the public stage will have occasional gaffes. But stringing words together is not what should worry voters the most. Some pundits have suggested that it’s time to take away Biden’s keys, but any fair-minded American should know by now that Trump is unsafe to serve at any speed. Four criminal indictments, two impeachments, one guilty verdict, a sexual abuse judgment, and a civil fraud finding should have sent Trump to the ash heap of history.

Philadelphia Inquirer Editorial Board on the hypocrisy of media coverage between President Joe Biden's cognitive decline and Donald Trump's cognitive decline (07.06.2024)

The Philadelphia Inquirer Editorial Board is on point here as to why Joe Biden's cognitive decline is getting all the coverage but Donald Trump's is being ignored with this phrase: "Apparently, it’s OK for Trump to spew nonstop nonsense, but Biden can’t ever lose his train of thought."

[super-oddity]

me watching someone dig their own grave in an argument:

[batcavescolony]

Non-Americans please look away, this is private family matter.

[just-a-cup-of-anxietea]

“They’re eating the dogs in Springfield!!”

“There are no credible reports of that”

“I’ve seen people on television saying it”

[javaelemental]

I have a few thoughts on last night's debate, which I watched the entirety of while sober. Not sure that was the best plan.