Here Are The Worst ‘Questions’ From Trump-Era Debate Moderators

Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump will face off in what is likely to be their only presidential debate Tuesday night. But if past debates tell us anything, Harris can count on friendly debate moderators to toss her softballs while brow-beating Trump with loaded questions that fail to understand major voting issues.

And based on the conduct of past moderators during the Trump era, viewers tonight can also expect biased and useless questions designed to malign the propaganda press’ number one enemy.

2020

Chris Wallace hosted the first presidential debate of the 2020 election cycle. His abysmal moderation and time management skills were only overshadowed by his politically charged questions. Wallace unironically chastised Trump for bringing up Hunter Biden’s lucrative business relations (and Joe Biden’s alleged involvement), saying, “The American people would rather hear more about substantial subjects.” Those “substantial subjects” included asking Trump why he was “holding big rallies” during election season.

Wallace also asked Trump about his administration’s decision to ban training that teaches racist and anti-American ideas like “white privilege” and “critical race theory.”

“What is radical about racial sensitivity training?” Wallace asked after a summer of nationwide race riots fomented by ideology and exemplified by Trump-banned federal workplace training claiming white people are worse than black people due to the color of their skin.

Wallace also demanded Trump rebuke white supremacists for the umpteenth time.

“You have repeatedly criticized [Biden] for not specifically calling out Antifa and other left-wing extremist groups,” Wallace began. “But are you willing tonight to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of these cities as we saw in Kenosha and as we’ve seen in Portland?”

There is no evidence to support Wallace’s claim that violence in Kenosha stemmed from white supremacists, as previously noted in The Federalist. Further, Trump had admonished white supremacists in the past. But that wasn’t good enough for Wallace, who was desperate to create fodder for the propaganda press and Democrats.

“Sure,” Trump immediately responded. But that wasn’t good enough for Wallace, who then further demanded Trump “specifically” condemn white supremacy and “right-wing militias.”

Trump obliged once again, telling the “Proud Boys” to “stand back and stand by.”

That’s all the left needed, with headlines springing up immediately after the debate falsely alleging Trump “refuses to condemn white supremacists.”

Wallace dredged up Trump’s tax returns to ask the then-president how much he “paid in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017?” As my colleague Jordan Boyd noted, in the same debate Wallace “never asked Joe Biden about his son and brother profiting from foreign governments while he was vice president, even though the information about said profiteering came from official Treasury Department reports that were obtained by Senate investigators.”

Wallace also suggested that Trump may not accept the results of the election, asking Trump what he would be “prepared to do to reassure the American people that the next president will be the legitimate winner of this election?”

But as Boyd noted, “What Wallace failed to mention was that many Hillary Clinton voters in 2016 claimed they did not accept the legitimate results of the election” and that Clinton “has claimed that the election was ‘stolen‘ from her.”

2016

Four years earlier in 2016, NBC News’ Lester Holt did a slightly better job moderating, though his performance was not without unabashedly propaganda-type questions.

“Mr. Trump, for five years you perpetuated a false claim of the nation’s first black president was not a natural born citizen. You questioned his legitimacy…can you tell us what took you so long?”

Trump responded by bringing up Sidney Blumenthal, who The Federalist’s Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway previously described as “the Clinton aide who pushed Obama conspiracy theories on reporters.” Trump then tried to refocus the conversation to topics that were actually “very important to the country.”

But, much like Wallace would in 2020, Holt would not let up until he could elicit some answer that could be used by the left to malign Trump.

“But I want to get the answer here,” Holt pressed before eventually trying to link the issue to “racial healing.”

But Holt’s biggest blunder wasn’t the questions he asked, but the ones he missed. As Hemingway pointed out following the 2016 debate, “[t]here was not a single tough question” for Clinton; “Nothing about her questionable judgment in foreign policy, from Libya to Russia. Nothing about her mean comments about ‘deplorables,’” Hemingway noted.

Notably, Holt made sure to question Trump’s comments about Clinton.

“Earlier this month, you said she doesn’t have a presidential look. She’s standing here right now. What did you mean by that?” Holt asked.

“She doesn’t have the look. She doesn’t have the stamina. I said she doesn’t have the stamina, and I don’t believe she does have the stamina. To be president of this country, you need tremendous stamina,” Trump said.

As expected, Trump’s honest answer wasn’t good enough for Holt, who further wasted time prompting Trump to explain in even greater detail what he meant.

2015

It isn’t just the general presidential debates that see abysmal moderator performance. John Harwood “couldn’t handle doing his job during the [2015] Republican Presidential debate,” as noted in these pages. Harwood — who, as Hemingway aptly noted, is openly liberal — decided to flat-out lie about presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio’s tax plan, going so far as to cite false statistics.

Perhaps accustomed to the bureaucratic inefficiency that defines Washington D.C., Harwood insultingly asked Trump if he was running a “comic book version of a presidential campaign” after Trump pledged to cut taxes without raising the deficit, building a border wall paid for by Mexico, and deporting illegal immigrants.

Then there was Megyn Kelly’s infamous 2015 debate moderation moment.

“You’ve called women you don’t like, ‘fat pigs,’ ‘dogs,’ ‘slobs,’ and ‘disgusting animals,’” Kelly began. “Your Twitter account has several disparaging comments about women’s looks. You once told a contestant on ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees. Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president?”

The attempt to paint Trump as politically incorrect was a waste of time. Ironically, Trump’s political incorrectness was what resonated with voters fed up with establishment elites.

Tuesday’s debate will be moderated by David Muir and Linsey Davis, who have both made their political affinities abundantly clear, according to an analysis by the Media Research Center.

Davis has tried to link Trump to the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacists, asking Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer for her reaction to Trump holding a campaign event in Howell, Michigan, despite President Joe Biden having also previously visited the town. The Harris campaign absurdly tried to link the Trump campaign to a group of white supremacists that chanted “We love Hitler. We Love Trump” in July. Davis also asked Stacey Abrams in 2019 whether she would classify Trump as “a white supremacist or a racist?”

When not painting Trump as a “racist” or “white supremacist,” Davis can be found salivating over Harris. “To have potentially a woman who’s been able to crack this second-highest glass ceiling in this country is profound,” Davis said on Good Morning America on Nov. 6, 2020. “It’s powerful.”

Muir also recently praised President Joe Biden for stepping down and accepting the coup launched against him, in the name of “democracy.”

“[G]ratitude is the word for so many people in this country, pointing to Joe Biden now and calling him a patriot who stepped in when democracy needed it,” Muir said.

Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2