The Patriot Post® · A Gutless RNC Abides Leftist Debate Moderators
Early last month, we recounted that the “non-partisan” Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) managed to select consistently leftist debate moderators in every presidential debate from 1980 through 2012. Last Friday, the CPD released the list of moderators for the upcoming 2016 debates. No doubt to the consternation of millions of Americans, the CPD’s “streak” remains very much alive:
First presidential debate:
Lester Holt, Anchor, NBC Nightly News
Monday, September 26, Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY
Vice presidential debate:
Elaine Quijano, Anchor, CBSN and Correspondent, CBS News
Tuesday, October 4, Longwood University, Farmville, VA
Second presidential debate (town meeting):
Martha Raddatz, Chief Global Affairs Correspondent and Co-Anchor of “This Week,” ABC
Anderson Cooper, Anchor, CNN
Sunday, October 9, Washington University in St. Louis, MO
Third presidential debate:
Chris Wallace, Anchor, Fox News Sunday
Wednesday, October 19, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, NV
Lester Holt is probably the most even-handed member of the group, but he is reportedly a Democrat. Even if one assumes that info is unreliable, he was rather effusive describing Barack Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention, calling it a “powerful arc embracing hope and optimism, a passionate endorsement of Hillary Rodham Clinton and at times an artful takedown of Donald Trump, [and] a call for Americans to participate in democracy.”
NBC itself is even more problematic. In 2015, the network partnered with TargetSmart, a firm founded in 2006 by Democrat operatives Jeff Ferguson and Paula Kowalczuk “to perform non-partisan analysis, research voting habits, and identify voting trends at the state and local levels,” NBC stated in a press release. As the firm itself announced in 2014, it was hired by the Democratic National Committee “to help elect Democrats up and down the ballot and across the nation.”
In other words, NBC knew TargetSmart’s primary objective a year before hiring the firm — and proceeded anyway.
Even that wasn’t enough. In 2015 NBC also pumped an astonishing $400 million into hard-left “news” outlets BuzzFeed and Vox.
Elaine Quijano is a relative newcomer to the scene, but the Media Research Center revealed in 2012 she “touted” a charge from Pennsylvania Democrats that the new voter ID law there “targets poor and elderly voters,” further noting that unnamed “Pennsylvania court officials” insisted there were no cases of “voters convicted of fraud in the last five years.” Yet Quijano either ignored or never bother to find out that in 2010, the Bucks County Board of Elections sequestered more than 8,000 absentee ballots based on allegations of voter fraud. The challenge was ultimately withdrawn because it didn’t change the outcome of the election, but as the Buck County Courier Express put it, “[A]ll of us would like to know what really happened.”
Everyone perhaps but Elaine Quijano, who also gave a bit more insight into her political leanings in 2014, when she insisted global warming “would submerge tunnels and subways here in Manhattan and parts of Queens and Brooklyn,” and “also put the entire city of Miami Beach and much of South Florida underwater.”
Martha Raddatz had Obama as a guest at her wedding to now ex-husband Julius Genachowski, who was Obama’s former FCC chairman. Her “unbiased” opinion of Hillary Clinton? “Let’s face it, Hillary is cool,” she stated in 2012. “Trending. From the dancing and drinking photos during her trip to Colombia, to the iconic shot of the secretary texting on her C-17.”
One might be inclined to wonder what Raddatz currently thinks about Clinton’s texting. We do know in June she read a Trump tweet on air that asked how the FBI could possibly not “recommend criminal charges against Hillary Clinton” to which she inadvertently added the word “crooked” before Hillary.
We also know that ABC scrubbed the word from its video going forward. Perhaps that’s because, as American Spectator columnist Matt Norcross wrote last February, “Disney-ABC Television Group chief Ben Sherwood wants to impose a radical-left agenda on their cable and broadcast networks, and according to that plan, they are making great progress.”
CNN’s Anderson Cooper’s “bona fides” include lying about Trump and Muslims and getting busted for it by the equally left-wing Washington Post; promoting a misleading fact check about the Clinton Foundation that referenced a positive review by Charity Watch, while omitting unfavorable reviews by other review organizations; and engaging in a contentious interview about LGBT issues with Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi following the Orlando massacre, aided and abetted by CNN leaving a critical exchange between the two on the cutting room floor.
As for CNN itself, its bias has been so transparent for so long, millions of Americans refer to it as the Clinton News Network. That would be the same CNN owned by Time Warner — Clinton’s eighth largest career campaign donor.
On the other hand, Republicans and conservatives can at least take heart in the selection of Fox News Anchor Chris Wallace, right? Wrong. On Oct. 11, 2006, The Washington Post reported that Wallace was a registered Democrat — and had been “for more than two decades.”
But wait, there’s more. The first-ever Commander-in-Chief Forum, hosted by NBC News and also broadcast on MSNBC, will take place on Wednesday, Sept. 7 in New York City before the first debate. It will last one hour and feature both candidates onstage answering questions on national security, military affairs and veterans issues posed by NBC News and audience members comprised mainly of military veterans and active service members.
The moderator? NBC “Today Show” host Matt Lauer. The same Matt Lauer once listed as a “notable member” of the Clinton Foundation. The one who asked Trump to make a pledge to “tone down the rhetoric” at the GOP convention.
The CPD was supposed to announce its selections in August. But they held off until now because of the “unprecedented challenge” it faced to select moderators who are “as immune as possible” to bias accusations. “Trump made it more challenging than ever,” Fox 59 reported.
It wasn’t Trump who selected an embarrassingly biased Candy Crowley for the 2012 debate. And there’s nothing remotely unprecedented about a reliably spineless RNC acquiescing to this leftist deck-stacking — for the tenth debate session in a row.
Fox also noted the CPD’s efforts were “complicated” by the reality that “Clinton has been a public figure for 30 years and has developed unique relationships with certain journalists.”
Like relationships with ABC Anchor George Stephanopoulos and the dozens of media organizations who made contributions to the Clinton Foundation totaling millions of dollars? How about a media stacked with relatives and former Clinton and Obama administration officials? Or one so in the tank for Clinton, New York Times columnist James Rutenbeg insisted the media have to “throw out the textbook American journalism” — as in objectivity — when it comes to covering Trump?
“Who is going to moderate these debates and how good are the Republicans going to be this time around?” asked Media Research Center President Brent Bozell the day before the announcement. Leftists and irredeemably gutless, Brent. Just like always.