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Former President Donald Trump accepted the first debate without any conditions. President Joe Biden’s Team And CNN did nothing to help the weakening and frail sitting president. Nor did a week of rest and debate preparation help. Nothing can help a very old man who is declining from frailty to incoherence and then incompetence before our very eyes.
(The Supreme Court’s ruling on Monday halts the trial of special counsel Jack Smith for at least months, derailing the Democrats’ “fail-safe” option. The Supreme Court’s ruling should also overturn the former president’s conviction in New York because the prosecution proceeded without the black letter legal guidance provided by the Supreme Court yesterday. Manhattan trial judge Juan Merchan botched the entire proceeding on several levels, and it should be resumed, if ever, with an assessment of whether Then-President Trump (For which he was prosecuted by Alvin Bragg; he is completely cleared of investigation.)
If Biden remains the Democrats’ nominee, or if he agrees to be replaced by Vice President Kamala Harris or via an “open convention,” Trump would be within his rights. Reject the rebuttal Either with a faltering Biden or someone else. Trump demonstrates every day the energy and ability to be president. His policy choices are well known. Not another series of questions about abortion and January 6th and China, Iran, the skyrocketing rise of anti-Semitism in the United States? No, he doesn’t have to do that.
I have no complaints about Dana Bash and Jake Tapper and their work as moderators. As has been written here and stated repeatedly on my program and any program I was invited to appear at, Dana and Jake are professionals. I co-moderated four GOP presidential candidates’ debates with Bash in the 2015-2016 cycle, two with Tapper and two with anchor Wolf Blitzer. I know the CNN debate process just as well as I know the NBC debate process from the GOP presidential candidates’ debate last November, which I moderated with anchor Lester Holt and “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker.
President Biden and former President Trump debated on Thursday night. (Getty Images)
It is a long and complex process that gives rise to the questions of the final debate, and this process inevitably reflects the biases, good and bad, of the entire network involved and especially of the moderators.
When Salem Media named me as moderator eight years ago and again last year, it was done because I am a center-right Republican with a bias toward national security issues and questions related to them. Since I have moderated my questions in the five debates I have helped moderate, my questions have been primarily about national security issues.
The weakness of every network, including every radio, legacy television network and cable news channel, is that the culture of every such organization, regardless of the platform they operate on, influences the choice of priorities of questions for debate. When a news organization is left-wing, the question set is inevitably left-wing.
Few – in fact almost none – conservatives, moderate Republicans or genuine “independents” work for legacy “news organizations,” whose collective view of what matters to voters is always to the left and sometimes far to the left (as is the case with MSNBC). Of the major television networks, only Fox News has a staff that represents all of America, including “red America.”
The questions asked in debates reflect the collective culture of the host organization, and that means that legitimate, genuinely important, or even urgent questions get left out of the discussions that travel through networks if those networks lean left. If everyone on your team is liberal-to-left leaning, all questions will reflect that leaning.
Another consequence of systemic bias in a news organization is that the questions asked in a debate avoid all but the most obvious questions on the minds of that half of America, broadly defined as “Red America.”
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That many questions were raised Thursday night about “abortion” and “January 6th” was fine. These are big issues for many Americans. But where were the questions about the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party? Where were the questions about the threat posed by Iran’s religious leaders, who are in a position to “breakout” in a matter of days and have a nuke (or six or more)? What about the rampant anti-Semitism on our campuses and in our streets? Where was the discussion about our defense spending, which is now less than 3% of GDP, or about our Navy, which is struggling to provide necessary maintenance to our existing submarines, let alone build new “Columbia class” nuclear submarines in time to replace Ohio class submarines, which will soon be obsolete?
Liberals ask about issues of concern to liberals and leftists. This is expected. Conservatives ask about issues of concern to liberals and conservatives. Not once in the modern era has a presidential debate featured an avowed center-right moderator who isn’t presumably openly Republican. This needs to change. If it doesn’t, Trump should cancel another debate.
Trump won Thursday night, and in such a decisive fashion that Democrats panicked and blurted out everything. Law students learn the evidentiary value of “excited statements,” which carry weight in judicial proceedings. (An explanation Here it is.) On Thursday night after the debate and throughout the weekend, we saw a flood of “upbeat statements” from nervous Democrats — both official and unofficial — on post-debate shows aired on all the networks.
“When everybody says you’re drunk, you better sit down,” is an old saying, often attributed to the Irish but applicable to cultures and people everywhere. Nearly everyone said the same thing Thursday night, without naming Biden: Biden is too old for a second term.
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The truth is they know the president should resign now because he has clearly had a prolonged period of time when he is unable to think clearly. All of our enemies probably already knew this, but didn’t know the severity of the problem. Now they know. President Kamala Harris will be a better president for the next seven months (shudder). Trump will reinstate some degree of deterrence once he is sworn in again.
Let’s not deny reality. It’s time for Joe to go. And not because he lost the debate, but because he has lost the trust of the American people to do the hardest job in the world.
Click here to read more from Hugh Hewitt
Hugh Hewitt is the host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” heard weekdays from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on the Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes America up on more than 400 affiliates nationwide and all streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on Fox News Channel’s News Roundtable, hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6 p.m. ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a professor of law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996, where he teaches constitutional law. Hewitt began his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major U.S. newspaper, written a dozen books and moderated numerous Republican candidates’ debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and the Guardian. Hewitt has interviewed thousands of guests in his 40 years on the air, from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump, and this column previews the main story that will drive his radio/TV show today.
