Perhaps Donald Trump should coin a phrase, “doing the jobs that the American press won’t do.”

Media Bias is Alive and Well at the Presidential Debate

The first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton has come and gone. So who won? That’s a harder question to answer than “who lost?” The loser in this case was journalistic integrity. The “performance” by so-called moderator Lester Holt could be likened to that of the interfering third party in a pro wrestling event. Anytime Trump was pounding away on Hillary, Lester Holt was there to jump in the ring and hit Trump over the head with a metaphorical chair or other foreign object. Vince McMahon couldn’t have scripted a better two on one match – especially as this added the plot-twister of the referee being the one who interfered.

Lester Holt fed Hillary Clinton softball question after softball question with virtually no follow-up to her scripted answers – answers that while sounding smooth, were also as often as not untruthful. Questions that should have been put to Hillary but were not, included the Benghazi scandal, the Clinton Foundation scandal and of course the illegal private server with 33,000 deleted emails. All of these concern Hillary’s actions in recent and current time and were extraordinarily relevant in terms of character. Despite how crucial these issues are, Lester Holt chose to ignore them completely. Apparently Lester Holt found Donald Trump’s tax return more important that Hillary compromising national security with her email debacle. And while he couldn’t find time to inquire as to the financial irregularities at the Clinton Foundation which seemingly is a conduit for influence peddling, Holt found time to dredge up some long ago settled real estate lawsuit against Trump – one that apparently was settled without any admission of wrongdoing – all for the sheer purpose of hanging the overused (and inaccurate) label of racist on the candidate.

Holt also let Hillary go completely unchallenged over her line “Trump stiffed people”, using nothing but innuendo and anecdotal information.

While Holt didn’t use the word “fact-check”, Mrs. Clinton did - ad nauseam. “Fact-check” evidently is the new leftist shut-down-the-argument term to supplement the rapidly wearying “racist”, “xenophobe”, “Islamophobe” type of labels. Ironically, Mr. Holt didn’t “fact-check” Hillary Clinton on any of the various assorted lies and half-truths she told. He didn’t even do so on her biggest whopper of the night, her stance on TPP. On this horrific trade agreement, Hillary Clinton pulled a “John Kerry” in that she was “for TPP before she was against it”. It was a flip-flop that had the curious timing of coming after Trump was pounding her on the issue, as was Bernie Sanders in her own party. Once the focus group polling showed her how unpopular the deal was, suddenly Hillary went from calling it the “gold standard” of trade agreements, to—presto—being opposed to it. Lester Holt was being the good little Clinton MSM lackey by not calling her on it, leaving Donald Trump to make the point. The final ten minutes turned into an inquisition of Trump by Holt that was so biased and one-sided, that it was stunning in its self-evidence.

There are two things about the debate that should help Donald Trump – one, that he comes across more as someone who loves his country and isn’t afraid to say so. The other is that the obvious media bias will make an impact on a number of independent and undecided voters. If there is one thing that Donald Trump should have learned from this first debate, it is that he will not be treated fairly - therefore he must counterattack by raising issues during his turns that the moderators will not. If it takes going “off-topic” in order to be heard, then that is exactly what he should do. Perhaps Donald Trump should coin a phrase, “doing the jobs that the American press won’t do.”



Chip McLean -- Bio and Archives © Copyright by Chip McLean, 2014. All rights reserved. Chip McLean is the editor/publisher for Capitol Hill Outsider. He is a former broadcaster and long-time sales professional whose interest in politics began in 1964 at the age of eight, when his parents took him to a Barry Goldwater rally during the presidential campaign. In addition to his work at CHO, Chip’s columns have appeared in a number of online publications.

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