President Trump and Joe Biden each held a town hall on Thursday evening following the cancellation of the second presidential debate. The debate was cancelled after President Trump’s COVID diagnosis led to jumbled schedules. A virtual debate was offered, but Trump declined. So in place of a debate, the two candidates held town halls on competing networks. The President’s town hall was aired on NBC while Biden’s was carried by ABC.
The two events were very different in tone, however, as Trump was assailed and interrupted from start to finish. The moderator of the town hall, NBC’s Savannah Guthrie, made Chris Wallace look impartial. Guthrie spent the first ten minutes of the night essentially lecturing Trump about masks. She singled out his rallies and the Rose Garden meeting as super spreader events and asked if the President would be in favor of another round of harsh lock downs. President Trump was repeatedly interrupted by Guthrie, but he was well prepared and was countering well.
After what seemed like an eternity spent on how Drumpf is single handily responsible for the pandemic and how only his supporters, not rioters, can spread COVID-19; Guthrie asked two patently absurd questions. She first asked the President to condemn white supremacy, stating that he “took a little bit” to do so last time. “You always do this,” Trump said in response to the question. He then denounced white supremacy for what seems like the 1,000th time.
The President has ushered some variation of the phrase “I condemn white supremacy” dozens of times since 2016. He said it numerous times while campaigning in 2016, he said it after Charlottesville and he said it after the debate. Still, no matter what Trump says, he is still asked to “denounce” white supremacy time and time again. It’s such a dishonest, dangerous smear that can easily be debunked. Anyone with the most remote sense of objectivity can simply watch any of the numerous videos of Trump specifically denouncing white supremacy, but Guthrie pressed on anyway.
Guthrie then pushed on with the interrogation style interview with an even more ridiculous question. She asked Trump about Q Anon and asked him to disavow that as well. This question was even more absurd than the white supremacy smear on multiple levels. “While we’re denouncing, let me ask you about Q Anon. It is this theory that Democrats are a satanic pedophile ring and that you are the savior of that. Now can you just, once and for all, state that that is completely not true?”
Yup, that is the question being asked amidst a global pandemic and accompanying recession.
For one, most Americans don’t even know what Q Anon is. For most people that do, myself included, they’ve seen it as cringe and inconsequential. In need of a boogeyman, the mainstream media has been elevating Q conspiracies to the mainstream. Q Anon supporters haven’t been burning and looting cities, but it’s all about framing with the MSM. They command that conservatives “denounce” something that 75% of the base isn’t even aware of and weak kneed GOP lawmakers oblige them.
Keeping true to form, Trump pushed back against such a ridiculous question. The President has never endorsed or even talked about Q Anon, yet he must be forced to “denounce” it anyway. “I know nothing about Q Anon,” Trump began to reply. “I just told you,” Guthrie aggressively barked back before he could even finish a sentence. “I’ll tell you what I do know about, I know about Antifa and I know about the radical left,” said Trump after again stating that he doesn’t well versed on Q Anon. Guthrie then read a statement from Ben Sasse and demanded that Trump once again denounce. “Why not just say it’s crazy and not true,” Guthrie more or less shouted.
“He may be right,” Trump said in regards to the statement from Sasse. “I just don’t know about Q Anon.”
You do know,” Guthrie again shouted. Trump then pushed back at Guthrie for wasting so much time on something that he has limited knowledge on. “What I do hear about it is they are very strongly against pedophilia, and I agree with that. I do agree with that and I agree with that very strongly.”
These exchanges, especially the Q Anon segment, were Trump at his best. He is a master of turning mainstream media framing on its head while pushing back. Trump didn’t go the route of most traditional Republicans, who kneel on command. Instead, he fought back and brought up Antifa and the radical left. He stated that he is “anti pedophilia”, which Guthrie didn’t even acknowledge.
While Trump being in top form is all well and good, the main takeaway from these town hall events was the rabid, mask off media bias. Savannah Guthrie came off as an interrogator and injected herself into the conversation multiple times. There were hardly any questions from voters, it was just a non-stop grilling of Trump.
Contrast Trump’s town hall with Biden’s Philadelphia event and the contrast is stunning. Moderator and former Clinton press secretary George Stephanopoulos hardly ever interrupted Biden. The former VP was allowed to discuss his plans in detail with hardly any interjections, fact checks or demands of “denouncing” increasingly violent radical left wing elements. Not one question was asked about the bombshell revelations regarding his son Hunter leveraging Biden’s influence for financial gain.
Biden isn’t asked about his son’s shady dealings with U.S. adversaries but Trump is forced to condemn internet groups with which he has no affiliation.
When asked if he would ban fracking, Biden was allowed to completely sidestep the question and instead ramble on about the millions of green jobs he’s going to create. The whole town hall more or less followed this same format; softball question followed by Biden’s unchecked plans.
The comments for the Biden town hall have since been turned off.
The contrast is so stark to anyone truly objective. Each town hall was simply red meat for those already indoctrinated by mainstream media narratives. NBC got their harvest of sound-bytes where they can portray Drumpf as pro cancer while Biden gets to look “presidential” hitting off a tee. Twitter will “yas queen slay” over Savannah Guthrie’s face-plant, but the majority of Americans were turned off by her demeanor and bias.
The respective town halls simply validated Trump’s criticism of the mainstream media, only he did it with more eyes on him than most occasions. For this reason, the town hall was certainly a victory. It may just have been “classic Trump” for his supporters, but for the “normies”, what Trump says about media bias was on full display. As many Trump supporters who weren’t always that way can attest to; it only takes one questioning of the narrative around Trump for everything to come crashing down.
Given how mask off the MSM was with each town hall, coupled with Twitter and Facebook’s blatant censorship of the Hunter Biden story, I’d be shocked if there aren’t thousands of Americans who are asking these questions for the first time.