DC Trawler

Are You Ready For Some Presidential Debateball?

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All Donald Trump has to do during the debate tonight is avoid falling into old habits. All Hillary Clinton has to do is avoid falling.

This is it, America. The day we’ve all been waiting for helplessly dreading numbly resigning ourselves to. Finally, it’s Grandma Faintsalot vs. the Great Orange Hope. The Arkansas Cougher meets the Queens Combover. Face to wrinkly, doughy face. His team hopes he can stay focused, and her team hopes she can stay conscious.

It’s the first debate all year that I plan to watch. This is like having advance warning of a massive train wreck in which all the passengers are really awful people.

So of course, our moral, ethical, and intellectual betters in the media are panicking. What if Trump does well, or just doesn’t screw up as badly as she does? What if her Robitussin wears off? What if Americans start leaning toward the liar the gatekeepers hate, instead of the liar in which they’ve placed an emotional investment?

Time to work the refs!

Jill Disis and Brian Stelter, CNN Money:

The Commission on Presidential Debates has some advice for debate moderators this fall: leave the fact-checking to the candidates…

But many others — including a wide array of journalists — want the man moderating Monday night’s debate, Lester Holt, to intervene if egregious lies are said on stage.

As a result, fact-checking, normally a pretty staid subject, is now the focus of a roiling debate in political and journalistic circles.

Which is why we’re seeing all these “news” stories about what a huge liar Trump is. That’s true, but it’s only half the story. They’re both huge liars. It’s just that one liar’s lies help Democrats get what they want, so those lies are considered acceptable.

That’s why all the smart fellers are yelling at Jimmy Fallon for ruffling Trump’s intricate follicular apparatus, and then turning right around and cooing with delight as Hillary exhaustedly mumbles her way through a joke interview with that guy from The Hangover. They’re nervous. And as unsettling as the idea of President Trump is to me, I can’t help but enjoy the schadenfreude as he drives these weasels up a tree.

I mean, this man is a journalism professor, and he’s saying things like this:

Both candidates are a real and present danger. The public needs to know as much about both of them as possible. But it only seems to be a problem when it might hurt Hillary’s prospects.

Another real and present danger this election is people like CUNY Professor Jeff Jarvis: political partisans pretending to be unbiased journalists.

I don’t have a dog in this fight. I can’t believe one of these two people is going to be the next president. Either way, Nov. 8 is going to suck. But as with every other election I can remember, the media is openly biased against the Republican. This time, they don’t even care that he’s a big-government liberal whose career has been boosted for decades by an entertainment industry that’s utterly controlled by Democrats. That doesn’t matter. Trump decided to put an (R) after his name when he ran for president, and therefore he’s the enemy. Therefore, anything goes.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are both shameless liars who have no business sitting at the Resolute desk. Anybody who says differently, about either one, is a hack.

In other words:

P.S. Sonny Bunch at the Washington Free Bacon writes: “I don’t know what will happen tonight. You don’t know what will happen tonight. No one knows what will happen tonight. Not even the candidates know what will happen tonight. I’m 80 percent sure that Donald Trump just makes it up as he goes.” Which means that for once, Sonny is only 20% wrong.