NBC News Townhall Thread

[GeneralMacArthur]

What townhall on NBC?  #BoycottNBC

[GeneralMacArthur]

OK, so, I was told this was going to "compete" with the Biden ABC town hall, but now it looks like the Biden ABC town hall is at 11 PM.  Maybe that's just in my timezone.  So I'm watching Trump.

Right now he's refusing to condemn QAnon.  He's being extremely belligerent.  He accused the interviewer of lying about what QAnon is even though "he doesn't know anything about it."  He keeps interrupting her and just laughed at her and said "so cute."  He also refused to answer the question about "herd immunity" and said "the cure can not be worse than the disease" and now he's refusing to denounce the "Biden killed Seal Team Six" thing because "it was a retweet, not my opinion."

So, pretty normal one thus far.

[GeneralMacArthur]

It seems like Savannah really wanted to debate Trump herself so they set this up.  Kind of weird.  Trump is self-destructing, of course.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Can the moderators please mute solidcoalition?  My god.

I'm watching the Trump one since the Biden one is delayed until 8 PM PST.

He's wriggling so much.  Surely voters can tell how much he's dodging these questions.

Who is this black woman in the background who keeps nodding along with everything Trump says?

[GeneralMacArthur]

This weirdo lady is in love with the president.  She asked him if he was going to continue trying to get rid of DACA, and he said "you're going to like what I do" and she was head-over-heels for that non answer.  This is your brain on QAnon.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Aaaaaaand it's over.  Seems like it can only be a net negative for Trump.  The only headline is going to be "Trump pretends he doesn't know what QAnon is" in the exact same dodge he used on the Proud Boys.

I'm switching over to the YouTube stream of Biden and starting from the beginning.

[GeneralMacArthur]

I appreciate Guthrie's needling, but I really wish, just once, just once please, a journalist would take one of these questions and just hold Trump down and force him to answer it.

Trump squirms out of tough questions by saying things like "I don't know, maybe" or "we'll have to see" or "I don't remember that" or "we're going to do something really great, you'll see."



For instance, there was the following exchange:

"Just this week, you retweeted to your 87 million followers, a conspiracy theory that Joe biden had Seal Team Six killed to cover up the fake death of Bin Laden.  Now why would you send a lie like that to your followers?"

"That was a retweet.  That was an opinion of somebody.  I put it out there and people can decide for themselves."

"I don't get that, you're the president, you're not just someone's crazy uncle who can just retweet whatever."

"That was a retweet, I do a lot of retweets, and frankly because the media is so corrupt, if I didn't have social media, I wouldn't be able to get the word out.  And the word is, we're building our country stronger and better than it's ever been before."



Guthrie lets it go here, but I want to see someone really hold him down on this.  Follow-ups like:

"So do you believe, as you retweeted, that Biden had Seal Team Six killed to cover up the fact that Osama bin Laden is still alive?"

and if he says "I don't know", say

"How can you 'not know' that?  Because most people read something like that and say, well that's obviously not true, but you look at it and say, maybe it is true?"

ask him whether he actually read the article, if there are any arguments he remembers from it that were particularly compelling.  Ask him "do you think it's appropriate presidential behavior to tweet out this crazy conspiracy theory to the entire nation when you don't even have an opinion on whether it's true or not?"

"I mean if I tweet out something similarly crazy like that Melania is a spy working for North Korea, would you see that and also retweet it out so your followers can 'decide for themselves'?  How do you decide what you want everyone to see and what's too crazy to share?"

and so on.

[GeneralMacArthur]

I don't think Guthrie was unfair, but Trump more than held his own throughout. 

Guthrie acted the way she did to mollify NBC employees who resented NBC giving Trump debate time at the same time as Biden.  They did not want the Trump event to detract from Biden's attempt.  That ought to tell people something about the depth of the bias of the media. 

Trump held his own against a moderator with both a political and a personal agenda.  He's had to debate the moderator in his first two (2) events.  Joe Biden hasn't had to because the tough questions (Hunter's corruption and how Joe is part of that, giving Antifa and BLM free passes on violence, court packing, our policy on China, and specifics of Biden's COVID-19 plans that are actually different from Trump's, and disclosure as to his own health information) were not asked by Biden's moderator on the other network.  The "undecided" voters on Biden's "town hall" included a former speechwriter for the Obama White House.  (That man should be confronted by reporters and asked why, as a member of the inner Obama White House is he "undecided".)

Why can't Joe Biden be in a nationally televised event vigorously questioned by a Republican journalist who's not a #NeverTrumper?  Why can't he be asked about why he won't condemn BLM and Antifa for their violence?  Why can't he be asked about Hunter Biden and the corruption that is beginning to may Biden look like Spiro Agnew?  Why can't he answer questions about his role in the Presidential transition during which he suggested application of the Logan Act against Michael Flynn; about what he knew and what Barack Obama knew about these events?

The answer is that Biden CAN, but he WON'T.  He won't because he's a fading coward who now (apparently) has something to hide that will contaminate his Administration from Day One.  And now he's all about the money.  The Big Tech Companies won't be able to hide this, and it's going to be awful if (and, IMO, when) the Hunter Biden issues cause people to see Biden as Agnew, "the big guy", "my guy" taking payments.  Taking kickbacks from his own son is how the e-mails read. 

An interrogation for Trump.  A friendly interview for Biden.  That's what happens.  Is that honest?  Is that putting first the interests of honestly undecided Americans who are seeking honest answers to serious questions?  Biden is getting a free pass, and now the free pass is on Spiro Agnew-esque behavior while VP that is coming back to haunt him, but that Agnew-esque legacy of Biden will also haunt all of America if he's elected.

What journalist would you suggest?

According to Pew Research, Democrats have at least +10 net trust in the following sources of journalism:

NPR, PBS, BBC, NBC, CBS, ABC, NYT, Time, WaPo, CNN, Newsweek, Politico, MSNBC, WSJ, USA Today, Univision, The Guardian.

Meanwhile, Republicans have at least +10 net trust in the following sources of journalism:

Fox News, Hannity, Rush Limbaugh

(even Republicans only have +3 net trust in Breitbart).

So what journalists would you trust?  Limbaugh isn't a journalist.  Hannity isn't a journalist.  We tried getting Fox News' top journalist to do the debate and you all have been at war with Chris Wallace ever since.  Who's your guy who's gonna give Biden a fair shakedown?

[GeneralMacArthur]

Bret Baier wouldn't be the worst choice.  After all he did interview Obama once.  Bret is pretty clearly a conservative though.  I've watched his show and it's always the same -- he reports straight news with Fox spin, and then he has a panel of 2 or 3 conservatives on to say the crazier stuff, with no pushback, that he legitimizes with his presence.

So what Fuzzy wants isn't a fair, middle-of-the-road, unbiased guy.  He wants Biden to do an interview with a partisan Republican, and we're just discussing how partisan is too partisan.