Trump’s Biggest Debate Opponents Are The Media, Not Biden
The article discusses an incident on CNN involving Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt and CNN host Kasie Hunt. Leavitt was cut off and her microphone was turned off during a live interview after she accused CNN’s debate moderators, specifically Jake Tapper, of having a bias against Donald Trump. Leavitt was responding to a question about Trump’s strategy for the upcoming presidential debate when she referenced past comments by Tapper that she viewed as biased. The host, Hunt, warned Leavitt against attacking her colleagues and eventually ended the interview when Leavitt persisted.
Leavitt later expressed on the social platform X that her termination from the interview highlighted an expected unfair treatment towards Trump in the upcoming debate. Additionally, she criticized CNN for allegedly silencing the truth and mentioned the broader context of perceived bias by CNN moderators against Trump, including contentious historical episodes involving the network.
The article also notes that the Biden campaign had a significant role in determining the networks and conditions for the debate, with CNN being a preferred choice due to past favorable treatment towards Biden and negative portrayals of Trump. Critics argue that this continues a trend of media bias and manipulation in political debates and coverage.
CNN cut the microphone of Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt on Monday after she correctly pointed out the network’s debate moderators’ long history of anti-Trump bias — proving the former president’s biggest opponent during the Thursday presidential debate isn’t President Joe Biden, but the media.
CNN’s Kasie Hunt first asked Leavitt “what Donald Trump is going to do differently on the debate stage,” before asking Leavitt what she expects from Biden.
“It would take someone five minutes to google ‘Jake Tapper, Donald Trump’ to see that Jake Tapper has —,” Leavitt said, referencing that the debate would be moderated by Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, before Hunt cut her off.
“Ma’am, we’re gonna stop this interview if you’re gonna keep attacking my colleagues,” Hunt said.
“— for example, consistently likened Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler,” Leavitt continued.
“Ma’am, I’m gonna stop this interview if you continue to attack my colleagues,” Hunt said. “I would like to talk about Joe Biden and Donald Trump, who you work for. If you are here to speak on his behalf, I’m willing to have this conversation.”
“I am stating facts that your colleagues have stated in the past. Now, as for this debate —” Leavitt tried to say before her mic was cut and Hunt ended the interview.
Hunt said Leavitt could rejoin the show if she would answer the question about the debate.
Leavitt later posted to X that the point she was trying to make — and succeeded in doing — is that Trump would “not be treated fairly on Thursday” by the network.
CNN’s decision to abruptly remove Leavitt from the air for factually noting Tapper’s anti-Trump bias (including his comparing Trump to Adolf Hitler) effectively sent the message that the truth would be silenced at all costs. Should Trump say something entirely factual that CNN happens to dislike during the debate, he will be shut down (probably by Tapper himself).
Unfortunately Biden’s team forced Trump’s hand in conceding to a CVS-receipt length list of demands for Thursday’s unprecedented debate. One demand was that the Biden team would choose which networks could moderate the debate.
What better network for Biden than the one that peddled the Russian collusion hoax, defamed a high school student for simply smiling at a protest, and leaked debate questions to then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016?
Both Bash and Tapper have made their bias about Trump well known, with the latter — former Hooter’s spokesman whose wife shills for Planned Parenthood — notorious for being the first corporate media reporter to state that Trump faced “claims of Russian efforts to compromise him” uncovered by U.S. intelligence officials.
In fact, as my colleague Jordan Boyd wrote, “Tapper didn’t merely treat Trump’s presidency with contempt and unfairness. He repeatedly wondered if Trump’s tenure in the White House was illegitimate.”
When Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 election, Tapper said in his monologue that “for tens of millions of our fellow Americans: their long national nightmare is over.”
It’s a time of several significant and utterly avoidable failures, most tragically, of course, the unwillingness to respect facts and science and do everything that could be done to save lives during a pandemic. It has been a time where truth and fact were treated with disdain. It is a time of cruelty where official inhumanities such as child separation became the official shameful policy of the United States. But now the Trump presidency is coming to an end.
After the first presidential debates in 2020, Tapper said Trump was the cause of the “worst debate” he had ever seen because he was “maliciously attacking” Hunter Biden.
Tapper later ran defense for Biden and his son Hunter during Biden’s first year in office, claiming “there’s no evidence that Hunter Biden has done anything wrong.”
“There is no evidence that anybody did anything illegal regarding the Bidens and Ukraine, and Joe Biden was carrying out US policy,” Tapper said.
While news that CNN would moderate the debate rightfully drew immediate rebuke, the network’s decision to cut Leavitt’s feed for stating undeniable facts simply because it didn’t like them is the final proof that Thursday’s debate will be 3 to 1.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist.
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