Top O’ the Briefing
Happy Tuesday, dear Kruiser Morning Briefing friends. Branzygwa was thought to be the only collector in the southwestern United States to own the entire catalog of The Cowsills on both 8-track and Zune.
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People have been noticing that, of late, I’ve been less than enthusiastic about how I think the election will play out. As I have mentioned, however, those feelings are fleeting and I often find myself in a state of guarded optimism. Just to prove that I’m not always curmudgeonly and don’t want people to be in a bad mood, I thought I would pass this along: on this day in 2016, Hillary Clinton had a 6.3 point lead over Donald Trump in the RealClearPolitics Poll Average.
Stephen Kruiser, bringer of cheer. Tell your friends.
When Donald Trump and his campaign people first agreed to two debates with then-candidate President Joe Biden, I was not shy about expressing my displeasure with the fact that CNN and ABC were chosen to host them. This is something I wrote in the Briefing in mid-June:
Trump, after all, is fresh off of a primary season where he told his opponents and the debates to go stuff themselves (do people still say that?). The party is his now, so he could have pushed for more favorable debate conditions. There are a variety of alternatives to traditional media outlets for exposure now. That’s doubly true where Donald Trump is concerned. Cameras will show up wherever he is. He could easily have pressed for a venue and moderators who weren’t veteran water carriers for the Democrats.
Even though the first debate worked out in Trump’s favor for a while, I stand by the statement. He could have pressed to have some friendlier moderators thrown into the mix.
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Matt wrote yesterday that, after insisting that Trump stick to the original schedule and debate rules, Team Cackles is getting cold feet. Because the Dem propagandists in the mainstream media are horrible people, Harris’s flip-flopping is somehow all Trump’s fault.
The rule that Harris’s camp is desperate to change is having each candidate’s microphone muted when it’s the other’s turn to answer a question. Trump wasn’t able to interrupt Biden like he did in the 2020 debates and, predictably, that allowed Biden to destroy himself.
He needs the exact same gameplan with babble-prone Harris. My RedState colleague Bonchie explains why Harris’s handlers are desperate to have this rule changed:
The Harris campaign isn’t nearly as confident behind the scenes as it projects to the public. They want a viral moment where Harris goes full girl-boss on Trump with her “I’m speaking” routine she’s trotted out so many times in the past. With hot mics, she will get at least an hour and a half to fit it in, even if that means interrupting Trump first.
It’s more than a lack of confidence — Harris’s people have to be terrified. This sham of a campaign has been conducted in a media cocoon that’s protected Harris. A debate will be the first time that she’s really exposed, even with the ABC hacks running interference for her. The potential for a catastrophic embarrassment with Harris off-script is just as great as it was with Biden, but she doesn’t have the old and tired excuse to fall back on.
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Harris had one good primary debate in the last election cycle, then fell apart so badly in the next one the big money people immediately began fleeing her in droves.
As Bonchie pointed out in his post, ABC is awful enough to give Harris free rein to change the rules. The good news so far, is that Trump doesn’t seem to be in the mood for the network’s nonsense. Over at our sister site HotAir, my friend Ed Morrissey highlights Trump’s legitimate beef with ABC, including Jon Karl’s recent journalistic malpractice whilst covering for Madame Veep. In a month full of new, bottom-feeding lows for American political media, it was one of the lowest.
Trump seems to have shaken off some of the confused malaise that hit him when his old foil Joe Biden was tweeted under the bus by the party he’d been dedicated to for half of a century. He’s not going to let Kamala Harris steamroll him from her cocoon. Naturally, no matter how this debate drama plays out, the cretins in the MSM will blame Trump for something.
It’s cool; he looks like he’s back to drawing energy from their lunatic attacks on him
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