“Dirty Jobs” host Mike Rowe tore into Thursday’s “kabuki” CNN debate Wednesday on “The Megyn Kelly Show.”
President Joe Biden and presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump are set to face off Thursday evening in a 90-minute debate moderated by CNN’s Dana Bash and Jake Tapper. Rowe told Kelly that he was “not sure” if the debate would take place because the “situation is fluid” before launching an attack on untrusted media.
“Sure, I’ll watch. I might even make popcorn,” Rowe said. “What else can you do but bear witness? And there’s a lot to watch.”
Rowe said he’s “not quite sure what to think” about reports that Biden is “hunkered down” at Camp David preparing for the debate with the help of several of his White House and campaign aides.
“When I think about the people in this movie. When I think about our Founding Fathers and how they would prepare. And how people spoke back then. And just the, the sheer poetry of so many of these people, their mastery of the, the language. Their control of rhetoric. Their ability to make a case in the fly. To make a point. To be understood. That stuff. I don’t know where that went,” Rowe said. “I mean, now, our ability to write a letter… if you go back and read the letters from soldiers during the Revolution and the Civil War. Even in the First World War, it was, we, we had such a better control of — even common people had a seemingly more facile control and understanding of how to be understood.”
“It’s just, this thing has been reduced on all sides — especially on the media’s side — to a kind of, uh, kabuki, you know?” Rowe said. “I don’t even know what to watch when I look at a debate like this because all of it reeks of preparation, performance, and a moment. It just, it’s drenched with it.”
Rowe said “we should be skeptical” of the media because “our media has never been less skeptical.” The “Dirty Jobs” host told Kelly that “we need more people like” the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. (RELATED: ‘Don’t Want To Underestimate Him’: Donald Trump Calls Biden A ‘Worthy Debater’)
“Nobody can look into the lens now and tell you the way it is. I mean, they try, but you can almost hear the masses giggling from sea to shining sea. ‘What do you mean that’s the way it is? Who are you to tell me that’s the way it is? What do you know?’ We don’t trust anybody in front of the camera anywhere close to the degree that we used to,” Rowe said.
“Our media’s just not doing our job, and so it’s incumbent on the rest of us to embrace this, like, level of skepticism,” Rowe added. “Which means that Walter Cronkite is not only dead and gone, but any attempt to say, ‘Trust me’ is over.”
“This is impacting every single thing in our world, Megyn, from paid spokespeople like me from time to time to journalists to politicians,” Rowe said. “I would suggest to you that anyone who stares into the lens of the camera and speaks with great earnestness about a thing and then concludes with something along the lines of ‘Take my word for it’ is about the most unconvincing, unpersuasive — that’s not for sale anymore. In my view, the way to be persuasive today is to say, ‘Don’t take my word for it. I actually wasn’t there. But this is what I read, and this is what I think, and this is what I believe, and that’s why.’ Whether it’s a product that you use or a fact that you’re reporting, or a headline that you’re calling into question, we’ve entered into a place where people are now so skeptical and so dubious about that, and in many cases so cynical, that I honestly don’t think there’s any upside in being persuasive by trying to be persuasive.”
Rowe said he “can’t wait to see what happens” during the debate because he does not know how Trump or Biden can “fundamentally overcome the deep suspicion” held by “many viewers.”
