Who is Donald Trump complaining about now? This week's debate moderator.
President Donald Trump in Reno, Nev. on Sunday. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Another debate. Another complaint from President Donald Trump.
He complained about moderator Chris Wallace in the first debate. He bailed on last week’s scheduled debate because he didn’t want to do it virtually.
And now, days before the next debate, he’s griping about the next moderator: NBC News’ Kristen Welker.
Barring any last-minute events — and that certainly isn’t out of the realm of possibility in these topsy-turvy times — Trump will square off against Joe Biden on Thursday in Nashville. That’s expected to be the final debate before the Nov. 3 election.
But before the first question has even been asked, Trump has brought up Welker’s name in rallies and has called her “extremely unfair.” He also criticized her on Twitter, tweeting, “She’s always been terrible & unfair, just like most of the Fake News reporters, but I’ll still play the game.”
Some of Trump’s beef seems to come from a flimsy New York Post story that mentioned Welker’s parents are Democrats. (By the way, the Post seems to be in a full-force mode to get Trump reelected, and questioning someone over their parents’ politics seems especially pointless.)
Anyway, for what it’s worth, Trump senior adviser Jason Miller had high praise for Welker during a recent interview with Fox News’ Martha MacCallum.
“Look, I think I have a very high opinion of Kristen Welker,” Miller said. “I think she's going to do an excellent job as the moderator for the third debate. I think she's a journalist who is very fair in her approach. And I think that she'll be a very good choice for this third debate.”
The scheduled topics for this debate are “Fighting COVID-19,” “American Families,” “Race in America,” “Climate Change,” “National Security” and “Leadership.”
Meanwhile, the biggest question shouldn’t be about who the moderator is. Welker is a superb and respected journalist who will prove her objectivity. And the topics are legitimate ones.
No, the biggest question is what’s the debate commission going to do to keep this debate from spiraling out of control with interruptions like the first Trump-Biden debate when Trump ignored Wallace and talked over Biden?
After that fiasco, the debate commission said it was going to have “additional structure” to make sure future debates went smoothly. But as CNN’s Brian Stelter pointed out on his “Reliable Sources” show on Sunday, the commission has yet to announce what those measures are and we’re only three days away. Will they cut microphones? Do something else?
“We don’t know,” Stelter said.
As Biden told CNN’s Arlette Saenz after the first debate, “I just hope there's a way in which the debate commission can control the ability of us to answer the questions without interruptions.”
Post problems
Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani (AP Photo/Jacqueline Larma)
Speaking of the New York Post, the tabloid ran a front-page story last week that tried to suggest Joe Biden used his influence as vice president to help his son, Hunter, with a Ukrainian energy company. Almost from the start, the story seemed full of holes and it wasn’t taken seriously by anyone outside of diehard Trump supporters.
Now there is a report of just how much of a mess that Post story appears to be.
New York Times media reporter Katie Robertson reports that the article was written mostly by a staff reporter who refused to put his name on it. Robertson wrote, “Bruce Golding, a reporter at the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid since 2007, did not allow his byline to be used because he had concerns over the article’s credibility.”
There’s more. Robertson reports that “many Post staff members” questioned the authenticity of the hard drive that supposedly held the smoking gun emails and that Golding wasn’t the only one who refused to put a byline on the story. At least one other reporter also refused.
Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who was a main source for the Post story, told the Times he took the story to the Post because “either nobody else would take it, or if they took it, they would spend all the time they could to try to contradict it before they put it out.”
Uh, in other words, it sounds like other news outlets would have responsibly vetted the story before just publishing it.
It should be noted that The New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal all looked into the story and could not independently verify what the New York Post reported. A New York Post spokesperson told Robertson that the story was vetted and the Post stands by its reporting.
When people at your own paper have an issue with a story and refuse to put their name on it, it’s likely full of problems. And that’s why it never gained traction among other media outlets, despite the outrage from many Trump supporters.
And, if Robertson’s story is true, what kind of newspaper presses staffers to put their name on a story?
Most insightful segment
Practically every poll out there right now shows Joe Biden with a solid lead over Donald Trump. But we also remember this time four years ago when practically every poll out there showed Hillary Clinton with a solid lead over Trump.
There has been plenty of hand-wringing, soul-searching and back-to-the-drawing-board thinking to not repeat the mistakes of 2016. There also has been some revisiting of 2016 that showed maybe the polls weren’t that wrong, but misread. And we certainly paid more attention to the horse race of the national polls without considering the electoral college in 2016.
Anyway, that’s why it’s good to see shows like “Meet the Press” help explain polls in a bit more detail. On Sunday, during its “Data Download” segment, the show explained why 2020 might not be exactly like 2016.
As moderator Chuck Todd explained, at this point four years ago, Clinton had a 10-point lead in national polling. Biden currently has an 11-point lead. But here are the differences:
In October 2016, 65% of registered voters thought the country was headed in the wrong direction under President Barack Obama. Now? That number is at 62% — not a good sign for the incumbent president.
In addition, it appears voters like Biden more than they liked Clinton. Four years ago, in the “positive feeling” poll, Clinton sat a negative 10. But now, Biden is at a plus one.
And finally, in 2016, Trump had leads in polling among independents (+1), 65-and-older voters (+1) and white voters (+9). Today, Biden has leads among independents (+7) and 65-and-older voters (+10) and trails Trump among white voters by only four points.
“So even if 2020 might look like and feel a bit like 2016 with a surprise ending possible,” Todd said, “these numbers suggest there are substantial differences this year.”
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