Going toe-to-toe with 68-year-old Democratic nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, 70-year-old GOP nominee Donald Trump got another dose of media bias from NBC’s 57-year-old moderator Lester Holt. Trump remembers well his first go around Aug. 6, 2015 when Fox News Megyn Kelly accused Trump of misogynism, calling women “slobs and disgusting fat pigs,” causing a food fight with former Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes. Trump warned before yesterday’s debate about media bias, getting his prophecy confirmed when Holt went after Trump on the “birther” issue and New York’s once “stop-and-frisk” policy. Hillary lifted Megyn’s words, repeating her line about calling women “slobs and disgusting fat pigs.” Trump wasn’t sure how Holt would exercise his media bias, raising controversial issues for Trump but not Hillary.
When Trump was attacked by Kelly in the first GOP debate, he got a dose about how debate moderators can stack the deck against candidates. Nothing was more obvious than having Holt focus on the “birther” issue, questioning President Barack Obama’s actual birthplace. When Trump pointed out the “birther” issue was actually derived from Hillary’s 2008 campaign against Barack Obama, Holt did nothing to clarify, questioning why Trump would trumpet the issue over the last several years. Trump’s persistence with the “birther” issues forced Obama to release April 27, 2011 the long-form of his Honolulu birth certificate. Before that, the Internet went wild with speculation about Barack’s actual place of birth. When Trump conceded Sept. 16 that Obama was born in America, it should have been the end of the story, until Holt raised the issue in last night’s debate.
Trump dealt with the “birther” issue but Holt never asked Hillary anything controversial about her emails or pay-to-play scandal with Clinton Foundation donors while running the State Department [Jan. 20, 2009 to Feb. 1, 2013]. Holt raised Trump’s tax returns, accusing him of hiding something, including things like he paid no federal taxes or wasn’t as rich as advertised. Holt had no problems pressing Trump on releasing his tax returns until Trump said he’d release them when Hillary released her 33,000 deleted emails. Holt said they’d get into that [Hillary’s missing emails] but never followed up, showing he was out to get Trump from the get-go. “If I were Donald Trump, I wouldn’t participate in the another debate unless I was promised that the journalists would act like a journalist, and not an incorrect, ignorant fact-checker,” said Trump backer, former NY Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Now that Trump knows the debates are fixed, Giuliani has a point that more debates are left wing farce, designed to sabotage Trump’s campaign. Holt had plenty of time to ask Hillary about her emails or conflicts of interest at the Clinton Foundation. Holt did nothing to level the playing field, helping Hillary go after Trump whenever possible. “The moderators 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,” referring to Holt calling “stop-and-frisk” unconstitutional. Stop-and-frisk helped bring down New York City’s murder rate from 2,200 to 500 in 1993. “Stop-and-frisk was ruled unconstitutional in New York because in largely singled out back and Hispanic young men,” Holt said. “No you’re wrong,” said Trump, talking about the biased judge that stopped it.
When you consider Hillary’s one of the most seasoned politicians in modern U.S. history, it’s remarkable that Trump could stay on the same stage without getting blown away. While there’s were moments when the more polished, rehearsed Hillary got in her licks on Trump, he held his own for the most part. Hillary’s team hoped for a decisive victory, something that only happened on left wing media cites. With only 500 respondents for an online poll, CNN declared Hillary the winner, when most of the online polls showed Trump winning by wide margins. Expectations before the debate had Hillary beating Trump decisively. Many of Trump’s backers wished he’d clobbered her on the more obvious email and Clinton Foundation scandals. Left to the next debate, Hillary can’t feel too good knowing she couldn’t put away a political neophyte with whom she had a unfair debating advantage.
Stepping back into the debate arena Oct. 9 at Washington University in St. Louis, Trump knows what to expect now that he’s been baptized by fire in Long Island. When he gets back in the ring with Hillary, the gloves will come off, raising the most disturbing aspects of her various scandals. Shifting to foreign policy, Trump will get more a chance to itemize Hillary’s failures as Secretary of State, including deciding to topple the late Libya strongman Col. Muammar Gaddafi, spreading the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria [ISIS] and other terrorist groups in Libya. When you consider how Holt helped Hillary’s cause focusing on Trump’s Achilles Heel, it shows firsthand the kind of media bias that’s plagued the 2016 campaign. Whether or not ABC’s Martha Raddatz will be any different is St. Louis is anyone’s guess. What’s known for sure is that Trump knows what he’s up against in the next debate.
