Countless opinions are being expressed this morning, most of them garbage, about the first presidential debate Tuesday in Cleveland. In polls following the event, an unprecedented result emerged: A third said President Donald Trump won, a third said former Vice-President Joe Biden won and a third said neither won.
I propose a fourth option: Chris Wallace won. But that isn’t a good thing, by any means.
Wallace kept referring to “the format both campaigns agreed to,” usually in silencing President Donald Trump. In the end, it seemed that was Wallace’s objective.
The format Wallace kept referring to was one in which each of six topics got a 15-minute segment that opened with Wallace asking each candidate the same question and allowing two minutes each for uninterrupted response. That was to be follow by what the Presidential Debate Commission described as “free and open discussion,” Wallace could interject questions, but each candidate could also address one another with questions.
Beyond the two-minute responses, the format was abandoned, under Wallace’s guidance. Wallace took it upon himself to prevent President Trump from directly addressing Biden while allowing Biden to fill the “free and open discussion” segments with what amounted to two- and three-minute campaign ads.
The fix was in. This was no debate, it was an effort by the Biden campaign — apparently with Wallace’s assistance — to hijack the process, avoid actual issues and use the format as an electioneering event.
Wallace’s most shameful moment came when he asked President Trump if he would “denounce white supremacy here and now?” Immediately, Trump responded, “Sure!” He has done so numerous times in the past, but Wallace and Biden did their best to overshadow his positive response. Wallace ignored that and pressed the issue, with Biden interrupting and causing the whole segment to collapse into confusion.
Wallace was the best hope that President Trump would get a fair treatment in the debates. One of the other moderators is a former Biden aid, so the question of fairness is no question at all in that final event. Chris Wallace cooperated with the Left in propping Biden up and trying to make the president look bad.
He succeeded only in destroying whatever remnant of a reputation for fairness and balance he ever had.
Chris Wallace has been roundly criticized for "losing control" of the debate Tuesday night, but the real criticism should be his obvious bias against President Trump. (Photo/Fox News)
Still, there are a few takeaways worth noting, despite Wallace’s interference in President Trump’s ability to actually score points in this fiasco.
Law and Order:
President Trump made the valid point that the American public is concerned about law and order, keeping the public peace while many cities have experienced three and four months of rioting by Antifa and BLM. Law enforcement organizations from across the country have endorsed the president, but as he pointed out, Joe Biden can’t name a single such group who has endorsed him.
The NYPD police union has endorsed Trump, as has the National Association of Police Organizations, the International Union of Police Organizations, the Colorado Fraternal Order of Police and the National Fraternal Order of Police, among countless others.
Biden has no significant law enforcement support.
Court packing:
President Trump asked Biden point-blank, “Will you pack the court?” Biden flatly refused to answer, saying instead, as he stared into the camera, “You should go out and vote.”.
Biden couldn’t answer the question, because it is an avowed strategy of the ultra-Leftists now dominating the Democrat Party. Should Biden win and the Democrats gain control of the Senate — a highly unlikely scenario at this juncture — they have said they would overcome the Originalist majority by adding at least three additional justices to the Court.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to do the same thing when the Court during his administration limited his socialist-leaning economic recovery efforts by ruling them unconstitutional. Roosevelt’s efforts failed.
Biden gaffs:
The former vice-president stated early in the debate that “I am the Democratic Party right now,” but when confronted with the question, “Have you contacted the governor of Oregon or the mayor of Portland [both Democrats] about getting control of the violence in Portland?” Biden said he doesn’t hold public office now, implying such a call would be futile.
Biden also refused to answer a question about whether he would condemn Antifa and BLM, going so far as to claim Antifa “Is an idea, not an organization.”
Biden disavowed the Green New Deal late in the debate, prompting President Trump to exclaim, “You just lost the Left.” But the former vice-president then contradicted himself, defending the radical socialist environmental plan and saying, “It will pay for itself.”
Biden had obviously been coached to fall back on campaign rhetoric when he was losing traction in the subject at hand. Numerous times he lapsed into campaign stumping rather than actually addressing a question he had been asked.
Finally, Biden embarrassed himself with direct insults to the president, calling him at various times “a food,” “a clown” and at one point saying, “Oh, will you shut up, man.”
There was one other interesting outcome of the debate. Immediately after the debate, Google searches for “How to become a Canadian citizen” and “How to move to Canada” spiked three-fold. Most of the searches came from liberal states.
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