[TheRealThing]

Following the debate, I hope my conservative friends across this nation have finally come to their senses about FOX and certain of their news anchors and the groupies in orbit around them there at the news agency. In this case, Chris Wallace. Inexplicably Wallace, who is about as left as they come, continues to enjoy 'sacred cow' status among a large segment of conservative leaning media. In fact, Kiron Skinner was just on the Varney and Co show moments ago and attempted to 'out' Wallace for his biased line of questioning and for "inserting himself into the debate, creating a debate between himself and the President." During the debate Wallace's thinly veiled disapproval had been evident in his over the top criticisms of MR Trump, which by way of comparison, made Candace Crowley's 2nd debate collaborative shenanigans against Mitt Romney seem almost excusable. Now I like Varney. But Varney felt compelled to defend Wallace, out of a sense of fraternity or something. Skinner had it just right in my view, and MR Varney's errant rebuff of MRS Skinner for calling Wallace out to that end, just goes to show the privilege to which many of the more established media imagine themselves to be entitled. And the degree to which their own un assessed biases bear on factual analysis.

Immediately after the debate even Neil Cavuto, who is certainly no friend of the President, said that his team had charted Wallace's interruptions of the two candidates, and found that Wallace had interrupted Trump 37 more times than he had Biden. And maybe somebody could explain to me why Wallace would ask the President to denounce white supremacists while letting Biden completely off the hook by not asking him to denounce the riots and the antagonist organizations like Antifa and BLM? No white supremacists have been out taking the streets by storm, committing all sort of mayhem, looting and burning down towns and major cities, and destroying thousands of small businesses and the lives of their owners, and/or assaulting and making terroristic threats to Trump rally goers to include even the like of sitting Senator Rand Paul, or setting fire to the residences of people with Trump signs in their yards that I know of. AFWIW, MR Trump is on record clearly condemning white supremacists more than once during his tenure. Most notably after the events in Charlotte. The cheerleaders of the mayhem, many of them Dem members of the US Congress, are openly calling for the people to 'rise up' in even more civil unrest. And in representation of all that they stand for and call for who is their candidate? Joe Biden. But it was softball all night out of Wallace for him.

Wallace did manage to ask MR Trump about the NYT story (for which there is no documentation in support BTW) about his having paid only 750 dollars in income taxes for the 2 years preceding his election. Even pressed him a number of times on how much he'd paid by way of income tax for 2 years in particular. To which Trump said "millions." There are however, the actual recovered bank records in existence to prove Hunter Biden got a wire transfer for several million dollars from the Mayor of Moscow of all places. Yet Wallace refused to ask a thing about it, even allowing MR Trump's statement about Biden's having been the one who'd come up with the idea to prosecute Lt Gen Michael Flynn in that now famous Oval Office meeting during which the plans to launch the Russia Hoax were set in motion.

[WideRight05]

I didn't even watch it for that reason. The thing I can never figure out is why Republicans agree to go along with the formats. In 2012 as you mentioned Romney was set up horribly. The forum was supposed to be neutral with undecided voters although you could see that it wasn't after an erupting cheer when Candy Crowley defended Obama.

That moment with Candy Crowley ruined the second debate in 2012 even though it was a close debate and Romney even was still declared the winner in some of the nonpartisan forums. Any kind of scene involving the moderator ruins the whole point of it. That little part is what the entire focus of the debate is about and overshadows the issues. Most of the coverage for the 2012 debate went at that one part.

I'd rather just turn the two loose and let them shout each other down unmoderated than have the people that have moderated the debates the past few years.

[TheRealThing]

The format was completely inadequate. The idea that they would take on what was it, 6 different topics in 90 minutes in two minute response segments was absurd. Barely afforded Biden time to squeeze in his rehearsed talking points, much less come close to giving the President time to respond.
ARTICLE----
"Wallace even took knocks from some of his colleagues at Fox News. However, they criticized him not for his inability to exert control over the proceedings, but for what they saw as a bias for Biden."
https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/09/30/d...olleagues/

Duh, ya think?

But I'm with you, I warned people that Wallace was in the tank for Biden and started not to watch the debate either, but my wife was interested. Her take was that the whole thing was an embarrassment. And frankly I thought Trump was taken a bit back by how things were handled. I mean, one minute Biden doesn't know the difference between 200 thousand and 200 million, and the next he's ready to spout statistics for 45 minutes straight on 6 different impromptu areas of Chris Wallace's particular interest.

When it was  the President's time to go first Wallace would ask a question favorable to Biden and when it was Biden's turn to go first he would ask a question favorable to Biden's cause as well. To wit, for the final question which came out of left field, Wallace asked the President to denounce white supremacy. Which left Trump scratching his head. Then Wallace excoriated him while he was yet speaking. Which of course set the stage for Biden to land uprightly with jaw all jutted out, on White Supremacists.  I know why he did it, but I don't know that Wallace could have picked a more irrelevant question. But that was the way things had gone all night.

[WideRight05]

It definitely had an odd feel to it. Chris Wallace moderated one of the debates between Trump and Clinton in 2016 but he seemed to do a solid job if I remember right. This time he definitely seemed to be in Biden's corner.

I'm curious how the remaining debates will go with Trump contracting COVID-19, if they happen. Hopefully they will happen over an electronic forum.

[Spirit100]

Wallace has chosen a side and has difficulty hiding it. Most all objective journalism left the building before President Trump took office. It's a shame !

[Hoot Gibson]

What bothered me more about the first debate than the interruptions was the questions that were asked. How many times must Trump answer the same question about white supremacists? Where were the questions about Biden's support for Black Lives Matter and Antifa? Wallace let him off with the lame explanation that Antifa was an "idea" and not a group. That "idea" has committed a lot of crimes, destroyed a lot of property, and killed or injured a large number of innocent people.

I knew that most of the media would back whoever the Democrats' nominated, but I did not expect that Fox News would support them as well. I know that several Fox News talk show hosts support Trump, but the actual news seems to be presented to make Biden look like a credible alternative and he is really not mentally fit to run a hot dog stand.

[TheRealThing]

Hoot GibsonWhat bothered me more about the first debate than the interruptions was the questions that were asked. How many times must Trump answer the same question about white supremacists? Where were the questions about Biden's support for Black Lives Matter and Antifa? Wallace let him off with the lame explanation that Antifa was an "idea" and not a group. That "idea" has committed a lot of crimes, destroyed a lot of property, and killed or injured a large number of innocent people.

I knew that most of the media would back whoever the Democrats' nominated, but I did not expect that Fox News would support them as well. I know that several Fox News talk show hosts support Trump, but the actual news seems to be presented to make Biden look like a credible alternative and he is really not mentally fit to run a hot dog stand.
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^^ It gets even worse than that in my opinion. The questions Wallace posed to the President were asked in view of legitimizing the chaos which is surely coming pre and post election day. I don't know how anyone could not see the disrespect shown MR Trump during the debate. And the most serious was blowing off the threat, as MR Trump outlined, of sealing the election. But the most ridiculous among the charges were to blame Trump for the CV epidemic. I mean, there are 214 countries with CV 19 issues. There are 37.7 million cases, and over 1 million deaths as the result. If we're going to be idiotic enough to blame Trump for the coronavirus epidemic in the US, why stop there? Might as well figure out some way to blame him for the whole world while we're at it, right? And, as you say there was a continual pass afforded to MR Biden all evening, no matter how lame and inept his response. And in my opinion his responses defined the term 'lame.'

I agree with you about FOX. Incredibly they're in the tank for Biden, and not that I've watched all that much of FOX lately, but I've yet to hear the first word of rebuke coming from FOX anchors directed at Wallace. Even Maria Bartiromo went so far as defending Wallace directly to the President on her Sunday Morning Futures show. I was very disappointed in hearing that.

Further, Wallace's insistence that the President's campaign had agreed to stipulate to all the innuendo and 'couching' of which Wallace was so guilty, is absurd. Wallace set the soft ball up on the tee for Biden and when the President didn't go along with it like some kind of a soap opera idiot on daytime TV, Wallace openly excoriated him for doing so. Meanwhile, while doing his best to continually lead the conversation away from the President's many accomplishments, which btw just happen to be a matter of public record, we get instead a steady diet of Wallace making some kind of categorical statement, (which was factually anything but) and then finish leading Trump into an obvious trap by saying, "but you say" as if Trump has lied in some way about the matter at hand. The idea that the entire left, and certainly includes Wallace IMHO, can continually accuse Trump of lying or being a liar without a shred of reality to back it up is proof positive how far down the drain this nation really is, is.