Wednesday night NBC’s Matt Lauer held “Commander in Chief” pre-debate interviews in the USS Intrepid, with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the first almost-debate of the 2016 general election.
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Lack, in an email obtained by BuzzFeed News, didn’t address any of the criticism but instead focused on the news made out of the event.
He credited Lauer with “driving one of the most serious discussions to date on these topics”. “Classified material has a header which says, ‘Top Secret, ‘ ‘Secret, ‘ ‘Confidential.’ Nothing – and I will repeat this and this is verified in the reports by the Department of Justice – none of the emails sent or received by me had such a header”.
“I think that when you serve in the armed forces, that’s a very special situation”, Trump said.
In a nutshell, Lauer put the screws to Clinton, nearly berating her over her emails, which have nothing to do with the event’s topic, while he effectively pour Trump a beer and sat back watching football.
The Clinton campaign was not pleased with the event.
The Republican also repeated an incorrect claim that he was opposed to the war with Iraq before the invasion.
The reviews are in for Matt Lauer’s presidential forum performance, and they are far from pretty.
Even some NBC executives, speaking anonymously, were sharply critical. Rachel Maddow, whose MSNBC show is the new network’s crown jewel, and who literally wrote the book on the evening’s topic, was literally on deck to mop up at 9 PM after Lauer almost sunk the ship.
But Lack, who was intimately involved in the production of the forum, weighed in on Friday via the internal memo.
“Against all odds we were able to bring the two presidential nominees together for the first time”, he said.
During the first half of an hourlong event, Hillary Clinton pointed out to Lauer that Republican nominee Donald Trump had expressed support for the Iraq War prior to the 2003 USA invasion, even though he’s falsely claimed throughout his entire candidacy to have been staunchly opposed to it.
Both campaigns supported the choice of Lauer as moderator. She vowed to defeat the Islamic State group “without committing American ground troops” to Iraq or Syria.
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“Because of our event, national security has dominated the news cycle for days”, Lack wrote.
