CLINTON: “Well, Matt, first of all, as I have said repeatedly, it was a mistake to have a personal account”.
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– Erin Gloria Ryan (@morninggloria) September 8, 2016 Matt Lauer managed to get played by Ryan Lochte; I don’t know why y’all thought he’d actually challenge Donald Trump.
Lauer, trying to find humour in his situation, made a knowing reference during an interview with comic Dana Carvey on Thursday. Lauer’s performance and the reaction proved that moderators and panelists had better be prepared to show up with more than a list of prepackaged questions that let the candidates determine the debate.
“You’ve got to make sure you’re doing it to both candidates with the same set of rules”, Jamieson said. It’s also a warning to the moderators of the three scheduled debates to pile on Trump and go easy on Clinton, unless they want to be targeted as viciously as Lauer was.
Emphasizing the importance of getting at the truth, Fox News Channel on Thursday afternoon had this headline onscreen beneath Trump as he talked about the forum: “Trump: I opposed the Iraq War from the beginning”. Later this month the debates will continue, and voters will learn even more about all of the other ways Trump is not ready to be the president. “Most moderators, in the stress of the situation, don’t have the capacity”.
FBI Director James Comey, a Republican, told Congress it was reasonable that Clinton may not have understood that the emails were classified, and while he characterized her handling of the emails as careless, he recommended that she not be charged with any crimes, and she wasn’t.
The most galling moment came when Donald Trump repeated his demonstrably false claim that he was “totally against the war in Iraq”, and Lauer never pressed him on it. The crux of their argument is that the email scandal-in which Clinton either purposefully or incompetently mishandled classified information, making it likely USA secrets were hacked by foreign governments-is much ado about nothing. “… It was sort of a question in the form of a statement”. But then, look where he’s coming from, writing that people like Lauer “are failing to convey the fact that the election pits a normal politician with normal political failings against an ignorant, bigoted, pathologically dishonest authoritarian”. Mr. Trump, do you understand the implications of that, and how North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is one of our most important defenses as a nation?
“That’s not my job”, he said earlier this week.
“It is impossible to moderate anything without being criticized”, said Lehrer, who did 12 presidential and vice presidential debates. “It’s just not possible”.
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