MORNING GLORY: The VP debate shows Kamala Harris’s awful judgment picking staff

The controversy between the candidates for vice chairman — GOP nominee Ohio Senator JD Vance and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz — was dominated by Vance, and all however a handful of hardened partisan pundits agree on that conclusion. 

Walz wobbled and panicked from the primary query — which everybody on this planet knew can be about Iran’s ballistic missile assault on Israel earlier within the day. But Walz nonetheless fumbled his response, and it obtained worse from there till the CBS moderators invoked the unwritten mercy rule for left-wing moderators watching the Democrat soften and tossed Walz some softballs on J6 on the debate’s shut, by which era the web was howling and laughing on the Minnesota governor. 

There have been three necessary takeaways:  

NEW YORK POST CALLS OUT CBS FOR ‘RIDICULOUS’ FACT-CHECK OF JD VANCE: ‘SHAMEFUL MOMENT’

First, Vance is an outstanding and calm debater and a reassuring determine on the nationwide stage. 

Ohio Sen. JD Vance (L) and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz confirmed a fantastic deal in regards to the competence of the presidential candidates who selected them.

Second, Walz is just not, and he represents the one massive choice Vice President Kamala Harris has needed to make since President Joe Biden dropped out. It was a horrible choice. Think about her Cupboard and White Home employees if in some way, she wins.  

Third, legacy media is irretrievably damaged and can’t be reclaimed from its lurch into rote leftism and excessive partisanship, and even pulled again to a minimal degree of seriousness on massive events.  

Do executives at these networks — ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC— not see what has occurred? People don’t belief the information divisions on the legacy networks. It’s as if these divisions are run by a mix of fresh-from-campus-demonstration interns and hardened partisans from the Obama years.  

The CBS debate was not, nonetheless, as overtly biased towards Vance as ABC’s earlier debate was towards Trump, nevertheless it was nonetheless very, very biased towards the center-right and conservative viewers. Viewers noticed the query set veer shortly from a world disaster and the border disaster to get to the left’s favourite situation of abortion.  

With the world tuning in solely hours after Iran launched 180 ballistic missiles at Israel, the moderators Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan did open with an compulsory spherical of questions on that disaster. However, after 10 minutes, they plowed on to a fast alternate on immigration and the Biden-Harris huge fail on the reduction efforts within the aftermath of Hurricane Helene’s savaging of North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia and Virginia with a view to get to … abortion, which had been mentioned at size within the ABC debate and about which there are zero mysteries.  

Three rounds of questions on abortion, actually? And three rounds marked by the rote framing favored by the laborious left? Predictable however nonetheless surprising.  

The controversy led to a morass of childcare questions after which the compulsory “Wasn’t January sixth horrible?” questions.  

What a farce. Not one query on China’s huge navy build-up and its risk towards Taiwan and the Philippines. Not one query on the Chinese language Communist Celebration spies shot via our nation, together with the workplace of New York’s present and previous governor.  Not one query on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  

The vice-presidential debate did not go effectively for CBS or the remainder of the legacy media. CBS Information anchors Norah O’Donnell (L) and Margaret Brennan moderated the talk between Republican vice presidential candidate, Sen. JD Vance, R-OH, and Democratic vice presidential candidate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on the CBS Broadcast Middle on October 1, 2024, in New York Metropolis.  (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Photographs)

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Sure, there was a fast sprint via the implications of greater than 10 million unlawful immigrants flowing throughout the southern border underneath the Biden-Harris regime, but additionally a fast cut-off when Vance started what was an clearly embarrassing factcheck of the CBS factcheck on the “authorized standing” of the Haitians in Springfield, Ohio. “Now we have rather a lot to get to,” was the set off for slicing off something uncomfortable.  

Walz was requested about his mendacity about his journeys to China — type of. It was left hanging. A knuckleheaded reply for a knuckleheaded workforce of debate organizers. Chinese language President Xi Jinping is a type of Voldemort for the networks — by no means to be named — maybe as a result of ABC and CBS all have company ties to corporations that should do enterprise there?  

Look, no matter votes had been moved by the talk moved towards the GOP as a result of Vance hammered that the prices of all the pieces from meals to fuel skyrocketed underneath Biden-Harris, gave a fast tutorial on why building prices have soared and thus the value of homes, and repeatedly reminded the viewers of Harris’s failure in her job as “border czar,” whereas additionally stressing the necessity for extra home vitality manufacturing. Tim Walz supplied comedian reduction.  

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The loser wasn’t simply Walz although. It was additionally CBS, which joined ABC in a legacy media corridor of disgrace. Once we get again to debates in 4 years, the excellent news is the “debate fee” is already lifeless and that, by 2028, the concept of the massive networks internet hosting debates unchecked by center-right moderators shall be as effectively. The candidates will name on C-SPAN and discover some truthful moderators. Siri might have executed a greater job in our previous two debates this 12 months.  

What needs to be dawning within the C Suites of networks — if they’re in any respect self-aware — is that their product and their expertise are terrible, and their audiences have already left or will quickly depart. Tuesday night time was simply the newest instance of why. 

Hugh Hewitt is host of “The Hugh Hewitt Present,” heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Community, and simulcast on Salem Information Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 associates nationwide, and on all of the streaming platforms the place SNC could be seen. He’s a frequent visitor on the Fox Information Channel’s information roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard School and the College of Michigan Regulation College, Hewitt has been a Professor of Regulation at Chapman College’s Fowler College of Regulation since 1996 the place he teaches Constitutional Regulation. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio present from Los Angeles in 1990.  Hewitt has often appeared on each main nationwide information tv community, hosted tv exhibits for PBS and MSNBC, written for each main American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a rating of Republican candidate debates, most lately the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and 4 Republican presidential debates within the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio present and his column on the Structure, nationwide safety, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of 1000’s of friends from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that may drive his radio/ TV present as we speak.

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