- Mixed reviews on Trump performance / missed opportunities
- Consensus — Lester Holt is all in for Team Hillary
Debate Recap from Gary Bauer at Campaign for Working Families
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton met last night at Hofstra University for their first one-on-one debate of the 2016 presidential campaign. There were pluses and minuses throughout the exchange. Here’s my take:
Donald Trump accomplished what he had to last night. He stood on the debate stage for 90 minutes with a career politician. Hillary Clinton is a lawyer. She has participated in dozens of debates as a Senate candidate and as a two-time presidential contender. She is one of the most prominent political figures of our age, and Donald Trump held his own. He showed that while his arena is the business world, he can handle the serious issues confronting our country.
Trump reiterated that America is on the edge of an abyss and that Hillary Clinton is part of the problem. Because of the failed policies of career politicians like Clinton, America is $20 trillion in debt, our manufacturing base has been gutted, race relations are deteriorating, crime is rising and after eight years of Obama/Clinton foreign policies the world is a far more dangerous place.
And while Hillary Clinton is campaigning on her experience, Trump repeatedly asked her, “Where have you been for the past 30 years?” She has virtually no accomplishments. Even her supporters struggle to name them.
Trump hammered the point that if voters want change — REAL CHANGE — you don’t put someone who is a fixture of the political establishment in charge. You do what major corporations do when they need to shake things up — you bring in someone from the outside. In this election, Donald Trump is the agent of change who will make America great again.
The Lauer Effect
The Clinton campaign and its left-wing allies obviously succeeded in their campaign to browbeat the debate moderator, NBC’s Lester Holt. You will recall that the left was furious with Matt Lauer’s performance at the Commander-In-Chief forum when he dared to ask Clinton some tough questions about her mishandling of national security secrets.
Holt got the message loud and clear. He gave Hillary a pass on Benghazi, her email server and the Clinton Foundation. Yet he asked Donald Trump about his bankruptcies, birtherism and his tax returns.
Holt pressed Trump with six follow-up questions, but failed to ask a single follow-up of Hillary Clinton.
Holt “fact checked” Trump on the constitutionality of New York City’s stop-and-frisk policy, but failed to “fact check” Hillary on her past support for the Trans Pacific Partnership as “the gold standard” of trade deals.
Donald Trump wasn’t debating just Hillary Clinton, he was debating Lester Holt too!
So Bauer is kind to Trump. The following article, from someone that is no fan of Trump, and criticizes his debate performance and the debate as a whole. As to excerpting, we found the description of Hillary and “moderator” Lester Holt compelling.
Grading the First Debate by Nate Jackson at Patriot Post (excerpt)
Arguably, Clinton prepared too well, because her vibe was one of robotic rehearsal. You could almost see her thinking, “This is the part where I smile and wait.” She awkwardly delivered insults (“Trumped-up trickle-down economics”) and was oddly impersonal in recounting her personal story of her father’s small business record. Hillary is a lying phony, and that came through loud and clear.
Finally, Lester Holt was both obviously and discreetly on Clinton’s side throughout the night. (What else would we expect from Leftmedia moderators? He ran interference for Clinton several times — twice with overt “fact checks” on Donald Trump, and once by admonishing the audience after many cheered for Trump’s attack on Clinton’s email. Holt did not similarly admonish the audience for cheering for Hillary. In one confrontation on “stop and frisk” policing, Holt was visibly angry with Trump as he challenged the candidate — and Holt misrepresented the facts, to boot.
Holt’s influence was also blatantly obvious in the topics he chose (and didn’t choose). He asked Trump about Obama’s birth certificate, Trump’s questionable position on the Iraq war (but not Hillary’s), and his tax returns. Holt did not ask either candidate about ObamaCare, immigration, the Clinton Foundation, Benghazi, Clinton’s email (except to invite her to respond to Trump) or her “basket of deplorables” slander of a quarter of the American population. Holt steered clear of anything that would be inconvenient for Clinton. More than that, one of his questions essentially boiled down to this: “Secretary Clinton is historically awesome. Why don’t you think so?”
Holt clearly got the Clinton memo appealing for such help, and he heard loud and clear the message behind the Left’s eviscerating of Matt Lauer after the NBC forum. …
R Mall
