September 25, 2016

Here's one of your "fair and balanced" 2016 presidential debate moderators on this weekend's Fox News Sunday:

CHRIS WALLACE: I want to start with a fascinating poll from "The Wall Street Journal" this week. Let’s put it up on the screen. People were asked their top concerns about the two candidates. About Trump, 33 percent said not the right temperament for commander in chief. I talked about this with Mike Pence. Twenty-seven percent said his language about women, immigrants, and Muslims. For Clinton, 36 percent said her dealings with Syria, Iraq, and Libya, 29 percent, her private e-mail server.

Gerry, when I saw that, my reaction was, well, Trump's got an easier challenge because it's all about how he acts, and with Clinton it's about what she's done. And then Trump went ahead and played the Gennifer Flowers card.

GERALD SEIB, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Well, OK, there you have it. So you -- you sort of have actions versus attributes, you know? Some actions that trouble people, some attributes that trouble people. I don't know -- I think, by the way, those questions frame pretty well the -- the debate that -- that we're going to see them on Monday night because those are the attack points, I think, for both sides. But I don't know which two people think are easier to swallow, actions, which might have been mistakes, or attributes, which might never -- never change. It's very difficult to know for sure.

But I do think the -- that in a sense Hillary Clinton has a problem in the -- in that the, you know, the e-mail debate is not going away. I think Donald Trump, as you just suggested, has a problem because people think the temperament maybe isn't changing contrary to what was said earlier this summer.

WALLACE: Do you -- do you think that the Gennifer Flowers invitation was a -- a gaffe and that he was wise to get out of it?

SEIB I think probably so, yes. And, I -- you know, it was a classic Donald Trump tweet, wasn't it? I mean, you know, it was thrown out there to kind of like change the subject and then it was pulled back fairly quickly as well. So I think that one will be blown over by tomorrow.

Never mind the litany of Trump scandals that the press has largely ignored for months on end now, his racist, sexist and xenophobic remarks on the campaign trail, his shady business dealings and the host of other issues that should have already disqualified him as a candidate in a sane world. None of that matters and Hillary Clinton is the only one that has to answer for her actions.

h/t Media Matters

Can you help us out?

For nearly 20 years we have been exposing Washington lies and untangling media deceit, but now Facebook is drowning us in an ocean of right wing lies. Please give a one-time or recurring donation, or buy a year's subscription for an ad-free experience. Thank you.

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.
Mastodon