The MRC's Biased Debate 'Research'

The Media Research Center predictably worked the refs before the first presidential debate -- then pounced on Joe Biden's shaky performance and whined that Donald Trump was critiqued.

The Media Research Center has a long history of working the refs in presidential debates — that is, lashing out at debate moderators for purported and imagined “liberal bias” — and it went into work-the-refs mode almost as soon as the first presidential debate was announced for June. In a May 15 post announcing the CNN-hosted debate, Curtis Houck huffed as he speculated about moderators: “Time to start taking bets. Fake News Jim? Jake Tapper? Anderson Cooper, who co-moderated one of the Trump-Hillary Clinton 2016 debates? Erin Burnett, who just conducted a softball interview with Biden? Late-night liberal hack Abby Phillip? Or do they run it back with Chris Wallace?” (“Fake News Jim” is Jim Acosta, about whom Houck has a serious complex.)

Nicholas Fondacaro was mad that the debate would have no audience and the ability to cut off the microphones of the participants, and even more angry that the co-hosts of “The View” liked those provisions, huffing in his daily hate-watch of the show that “the liberal ladies of The View cheered the rules with one saying the quiet part out loud and admitting that an audience would hurt President Biden.” He then tried to advance a conspiracy theory: “No one questioned the suspicious timing of the announce since it came shortly after the Biden campaign put out a highly edited video of the President challenging Trump to exactly two debates.” Fondacaro rehashed this on the May 15 NewsBusters podcast.

Houck fired up the ref-working machine in earnest in a May 15 appearance on Fox News:

NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck returned to the Fox News Channel Wednesday on Fox News @ Night to react to the sudden agreement between the Joe Biden and Donald Trump campaigns to hold presidential debates on June 27 with CNN and September 10 with ABC. Speaking to host Trace Gallagher, Houck urged caution on the part of the Trump team and be prepared for the debates to be rigged.

Asked by Gallagher to explain why he doesn’t “think that CNN moderators” Jake Tapper and Dana Bash “will give Trump a fair shake,” Houck explained “you got to watch out for shenanigans” and said it was reminiscent of what this site warned ahead of the “infamous CNBC debate back during the 2016 election cycle.”

“Jake Tapper, he received awards for pushing the fake Trump Russia collusion case. So, as you point out in your Common Sense [commentary], and Erin [Perrine] and Amber [Duke] pointed out as well [in the previous segment], you know, the demands that President Trump is willing to meet, yeah, you want to see these debates happen, but did you do that at the expense of a fair show for you,” he added.

[…]

Houck followed up with more concerns about this CNN debate, such as the possibility they’ll engage in “live fact-checking” with the sniveling Daniel Dale “and who knows about snarky chyrons.”

To remove the possibility of any nonsense being fed to the moderators, Houck also suggested “Dana Bash and Jake Tapper and then, Lindsey Davis and David Muir and ABC shouldn’t be wearing earpieces” in order to keep the debate as organic and “free flowing” as possible.

Houck didn’t explain what was supposedly “fake” about the Trump-Russia investigation in which credible evidence of collusion was found, and he didn’t discuss why nobody with a differing viewpoint was allowed to appear during the segment.

With the announcement of the moderators, Geoffrey Dickens served up more ref-working in a May 16 post:

On Wednesday it was announced that CNN anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash will moderate the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden on June 27.  

Based on their reporting and analysis over the years at CNN, Republican supporters of Trump should expect Tapper and Bash to question not just his policy positions, but his judgment and even behavior. 

Both had harsh reviews for Trump’s performance after the first presidential debate in 2020. 

Tapper blasted Trump: “That was a hot mess, inside a dumpster fire, inside a train wreck….worst debate I have ever seen….it’s primarily because of President Trump.” Bash agreed: “You just took the words out of my mouth. You used some high-minded language. I’m just going to say it like it is: that was a shitshow!”

On Election Night 2020, Tapper provided a nasty epitaph to Trump’s presidency: “For tens of millions of our fellow Americans, their long national nightmare is over.”

On the other hand, both have profusely praised Biden. 

Fondacaro targeted Tapper in a May 17 post:

Alongside the concerning announcement, this week, that CNN would be hosting the first general presidential debate next month was the equally concerning announcement that Jake Tapper would be tapped to be one of the moderators. The expectation of moderators to fact-check the candidates made Tapper’s selection was particularly concerning. In addition to his left-wing bent, Tapper has exhibited a truly disturbing lack of discernment of who to trust for sourcing facts, including claiming that propaganda from Hamas was trustworthy.

As NewsBusters reported last year, just 10 days after the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas against innocent Israeli civilians, Tapper openly suggested that “there’s no reason to doubt” Hamas figures about the death toll in Gaza.

[…]

Tapper was suspicious of IDF claims that Hamas was in U.N. school while we know multiple U.N. workers took part in the October 7 attack and accounts from former hostages show U.N. workers aided the terrorists.

Meanwhile, we’re supposed to believe Tapper is an honest broker of facts for a presidential debate?

Jeffrey Lord served up his own ref-working in his May 26 column, while expressing disappointment that Trump agreed to the CNN debate at all:

The inevitable quadrennial debate announcement has been made. There will be two presidential debates, and Donald Trump let Joe Biden set the rules. This time around CNN will host the first, and ABC the second.

And the CNN selection — with the announcement of moderators as CNN’s own Jake Tapper and Dana Bash — raises a curious question.

That would be: Is the selection of CNN a “Trump Trap”? A trap set by the former President himself?

[…]

CNN’s ratings have not been good. Leading, among other things, to this barb from the Tonight Show’s Jimmy Fallon, “Biden and Trump will meet on June 27 on CNN, and one of Biden’s debate conditions was not having an audience, so that explains why it’s on CNN.”

Which brings us round to the “Trump Trap” that may be the CNN debate.

Full disclosure: CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, the debate moderators, are former colleagues. I like and respect both.

But the point here is what is certainly obvious. There is one video clip after another here at NewsBusters of Jake deriding Trump, calling his presidency a “nightmare” and worse. Dana, plainly, is no Trump fan either. God Bless America — I believe in free speech for Jake, Dana and every other American.

Yet the fact here is that this debate will quickly be seen by millions of Americans as Trump versus not just President Biden, but against two left-leaning, Trump-despising members of the Trump despising “mainstream” liberal media as well. 

In other words, this debate can be seen as being set up as a “Trump Trap.” Putting the former President on a debate stage with, as noted, not one opponent, but three.

And in the current, decidedly heated political environment where Trump’s antagonists at his New York trial as well as his other trials have ignited a tidal wave of support for the former President. His treatment at the hands of Jake Tapper and Dana Bash in this debate could easily do even more of the same.

As the debate drew closer, Dickens served up even more ref-working in a June 24 post:

Watch out for shenanigans on Thursday night from CNN’s debate moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash! Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden — by rule — can have their microphones muted if they go over time.

But who can mute Tapper and Bash when they talk over Trump and hit him with unfair and slanted questions? 

Based on their reporting and analysis over the years at CNN, Republican supporters of Trump should expect Tapper and Bash to question not just his policy positions, but his judgment and even behavior. 

Tim Graham tried to justify his employer’s “low expectations” for the debate on his June 26 podcast:

We’ve been clear that our expectations for Jake Tapper and Dana Bash in this CNN debate are low, considering their years of Trump-trashing antics. Under Jeff Zucker, Tapper and Bash and all the rest were relentlessly warning that Trump was dangerously inept, mentally unfit, and temperamentally authoritarian.

It’s a little amazing CNN political director David Chalian told the AP that they don’t plan to “fact check” the candidates. Chalian left a door open: “Obviously, if there is some egregious fact that needs to be checked or the record needs to be made clear, Jake and Dana can do that,” he said. “But that’s not their role. They are not here to participate in this debate. They are here to facilitate a debate between Trump and Biden.”

Don’t hold your breath this pledge will be observed. Fighting with Trump is in CNN’s DNA. They’ll find the “egregious” lines and pounce. They will predictably ask if the 2020 election was stolen, and then dispute him when he says yes. They can’t abide his claims that Biden had his fingerprints on Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of Trump in New York. There are all kinds of rhetorical tripwires for them.

Graham didn’t disprove the assessment that Trump is “dangerously inept, mentally unfit, and temperamentally authoritarian.”

On June 27, the day of the debate, Bill D’Agostino got in one more bit of ref-working:

According to CNN’s Reliable Sources newsletter, moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash will be pushing back against Donald Trump’s “dishonest talking points” during Thursday night’s debate, effectively making the contest a 3-on-1. But how can a network like CNN, which has aired enough fake news to fill a library, deign to crown itself the arbiter of truth?

[…]

CNN may have crowned itself the “facts-first” network, but that title has absolutely no bearing on reality. Indeed, the network has pushed so many false stories and partisan narratives that it’s hard to keep track of them all.

The MRC, meanwhile, was silent on the fact that fellow right-winger Hugh Hewitt had praised the “professional” behavior of Tapper and Bash and that “I don’t share concerns about CNN or Jake and Dana.”

Post-debate pouncing

After the debate, the MRC said nothing about the performance of Tapper and Bash — not even to apologize for its baseless attacks on them — and it was completely silent on the fact that even top Trump aide Jason Miller praised their performance. Because the MRC had to find something to criticize the debate over in order to maintain the narrative (though it had bigger fish to fry in pouncing on Biden’s performance), a May 28 post by Fondacaro insisted that CNN was “skewing the debate questions in Biden’s favor. According to a NewsBusters analysis of the questions, there were 11 from the left, seven neutral questions, and only three from the right.” But even he had to serve up a complement that must have severely pained him to do: “Surprisingly, moderator Jake Tapper launched out of the gate with one of the right-leaning questions.”

Graham slipped in one more complaint about things beforehand:

Just before noon on Debate Day, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer worried out loud about how Donald Trump may “go after Biden’s family.” That’s how they describe raising the topic of Hunter Biden’s international influence-peddling, with the millions in foreign money being distributed around many members of the Biden family.

Republican analyst Scott Jennings suggested that’s not a “mover” for voters. Democrat analyst Ashley Allison said raising Hunter makes Joe sympathetic, but it will be great to tag Trump as a “convicted felon.” 

Nobody has any shame that Democrats can play the “felon” card with Trump, but it’s a mistake for Trump to throw the “felon” card back in Biden’s face.  

The difference, of course, is that Trump is indisputably a convicted felon while President Biden is not (Hunter Biden is a convicted criminal but, unlike Trump, is not a politician and is not running for office). Graham didn’t want to talk about that crucial distinction, though he did expand on it a bit in his June 28 column:

They also claim Hunter Biden is “not running for office” and never took a White House job like Ivanka Trump, so you can’t connect the father and son somehow. On the morning of the CNN debate, CNN’s screen graphic implied any attack on Hunter is unduly personal: “Biden prepared for Trump to attack his family.” It’s painted as rude to bring up Hunter Biden. It was never rude to attack Trump’s sons and daughters.

Again, Graham is being deliberately obtuse. Trump’s children are prominent and vocal advisers and surrogates and have worked in his White House, while Hunter never had any formal campaign or White House job and has never served as a campaign surrogate.

After the debate, of course, the main thing it wanted to do is serve as a Trump campaign surrogate by hyping President Biden’s shaky performance. So in the day or so afterwards, it flooded the zone on that subject:

• CNN PANIC: Biden was ‘Dismal,’ ‘Not Coherent,’ Dems Want New Candidate

• Republican Calls Out CNN Panel Propping Up Biden, ‘Lying’ to All Americans

• MSNBC’s JOY REID PANICS: Biden ‘Extremely Feeble’, ‘Weak’, Had One Job

• ABC, CBS, and NBC Raise the Alarm Over Biden Debate Disaster

• Chuck Todd Admits Debate Disaster: ‘There Were No Clips Tonight’

• Cope: ‘CNN This Morning’ Rips WH Hiding Biden, Asks If He Was ‘Overprepared’

• Post-Debate, Martin Short Helps Liberals Cope By Singing ‘Cranky Doodle’

• Sad Scarborough Suggests: Time For Dems To Tell Biden It’s ‘Over’

• Jon Stewart Mourns ‘A******’ vs. ’25th Amendment Face’ Debate

• MSNBC’S BIDEN MELTDOWN CONTINUES: ‘We Are Confronting A Crisis’

• After Disastrous Debate, PBS’s Barron-Lopez Parrots Biden Campaign Happy Talk

• CBS Torches ‘Stumbling’ Biden for ‘Painful’ Debate, Argues Dems Can’t ‘Move Forward’

• Debate Disarray: The View Blames CNN, Wants New Candidate, Attacks GOP

Even though the MRC had plenty of partisan fodder for the right-wing grist mill, it still wasn’t happy — people were talking about Donald Trump’s performance, which was not all that great. Houck whined:

On Friday morning, NBC’s Today acknowledged reality that Thursday night’s CNN presidential debate showcased a “tough night” for President Biden, who was nursing not only a “hoarse and raspy” voice, but showed he’s in serious cognitive decline with “concerns growing” about his fitness for office. 

That said, however, the Comcast network shamelessly minimized Biden’s porous night by bemoaning it “overshadow[ed]” a “torrent of lies” and “grievances from former President Trump”.
[…]

Senior Washington correspondent Hallie Jackson played Biden spokeswoman by kvetching that “Biden’s struggles in some ways overshadowing the multiple lies an grievances from former President Trump as both candidates now look ahead to rallies today”.

“On stage in the presidential debate, missteps from the current president and misleading attacks from the previous one. From President Biden who is battling voter concerns about his age, a shaky start with a raspy voice, seemed to lose his train of thought when asked about the national debt,” she then added.

After conceding “First Lady Jill Biden escorting him off stage” once the debate ended, she deployed a classic conservative drinking game word: “Former President Trump pouncing on his rivals slip ups.”

She then reiterated the focus of the debate was also “a series of dodges and lies about the 2020 election” from Trump.

Houck didn’t dispute the accuracy of anything said about Trump — he was just angry that it was said.

Sarah Butler similarly complained that Trump’s performance was critiqued:

On Friday morning after the presidential debate, ABC’s Good Morning America claimed that former President Donald Trump made more mistakes than President Joe Biden. One of the biggest focuses in this debate was if Biden was mentally fit to serve another four years; however, he was not able to meet this hope Thursday night.

Co-host and former Clinton official George Stephanopoulos admitted that “from the start, Joe Biden struggled to answer questions”, but unsurprisingly added that “Trump launched a series of lies and misleading attacks.” He stated that “key figures from across the [democratic] party [are] talking about replacing Biden on the ticket.”

[…] [Correspondent Rachel] Scott explained that from the beginning of the debate, Biden spoke with a “raspy voice” and “at times stumbling and trailing off” even acknowledging that he was “unable to finish his thoughts.” Abortion, one of the key issues for the Biden campaign, was even a topic that the President didn’t speak clearly about.

Scott then professed that Trump “deflected and he would not say whether he would accept the results of the November election.” She then played a clip of Trump clearly stating, “If it’s a fair and legal and good election, absolutely. I would have much rather accepted these, but the fraud and everything else was ridiculous.”

[…]

Scott concluded by declaring that “Trump did make several false and misleading claims, many of which went unchecked or challenged on that debate stage.”

Chief Washington correspondent and three-time anti-Trump author Jonathan Karl wanted to take a jab at Trump saying it “was a rapid fire lie after lie, untruth after untruth.”

He continued to rant saying Trump had “ridiculous” claims like how “Nancy Pelosi turned down his effort on January 6 to send 10,000 National Guard troops to the Capitol” which was proven to be true from a video leaked a few weeks ago.

Butler didn’t dispute the correspondents’ claims that Trump lied throughout the debate.

Alex Christy groused that the candidates were fact-checked with Trump being found false more often, then trying to parse away one false rating:

After Thursday’s debate between Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden, the fact-checkers at PolitiFact and USA Today gave their recaps of both men’s most controversial claims. On the statements the two Facebook partners examined, Trump was rated false 100 percent of the time, while Biden was rated false only 44 percent of the time.

PolitiFact fact-checked Trump 16 total times, giving him a “mostly false” rating three times, a “false” rating on 12 occasions, and one additional “pants on fire” rating.

Some of PolitiFact’s evidence was quite puzzling. For instance, in the portion dealing with Trump attacking Democrats’ radical abortion stance, Trump mentioned Democrats support abortion “in the eighth month, in the ninth month,” which PolitiFact responded to by claiming, “Many of these Democrats have also said they support abortions past this point [24 weeks] if the treating physician deems it necessary.”

PolitiFact didn’t mention it, but some states (Alaska, Oregon, New Mexico, Colorado, Minnesota, Michigan, Maryland, New Jersey, Vermont, plus D.C.) also have no limits on abortion, and yet Trump was still slapped with a “false” rating.

Christy did not cite any example of a woman who has ever aborted a healthy fetus at or near the time of birth. He also refused to consider the possibility that Trump simply lies more often than Biden does.