CNN TANKS FOR TRUMP, REFUSES TO FACT-CHECK HIS LIES

Donald Trump and CNN. The decision to not fact check the fire hose of lies that is Donald Trump, that is the entirety of his existence and the entirety of his campaign. The decision to not fact check any one of those lies by CNN was one of the most immoral decisions in the history of the free press in

this country. Literally, I am suggesting that at some point tonight CNN should it will not go off the air in shame, fire everybody, seal off the buildings, make sure everybody's out, and burn the goddamn place to the ground. There was nothing in that entire coverage of that debate that suggested for a moment that the truth mattered. To CNN. They answered none of Trump's lies, even the one promise that was made that if Trump talked about the twenty

twenty election and questioned the outcome. There would be pushback from Dana Bash and Jake Tapper did not come to pass. CNN had set the bar for itself about here. It didn't even make to the top of the table. As I warned in Wednesday's Countdown podcast, it was impairve that there be some fashion of fact checking. You could not simply allow what happened to Caitlin Collins at the town hall last year in twenty twenty three to happen again

in a presidential debate. And yet that is exactly what CNN and its new boss, Mark Thompson allowed to happen tonight, and he and the political director David Shalian, and Jake Tapper and Dana Bash should at minimum be suspended or fired for journalistic malpractice at the highest level of failure in American media and journalistic history. It was an extraordinary event. CNN not just let Trump lie, They let him slander the president of the United States repeatedly. They let him

lie about every aspect of his own presidency. They let him lie about his coup, they let him lie about January sixth, They let him lie about his goddamn golf scores. The list of lies exceeded, I think by Trump just in the approximately forty five minutes he would have been on camera in this first debate, exceeded the lies that he told against the Caitlyn Collins push back in twenty twenty three in the town Hall, CNN broadcast live to

great criticism. That broadcast looks like it deserves a Pulletzer, an Emmy, two Oscars, and a Grammy Award Compared to this in terms of the journalistic quality that was done by Kitlyn Collins, who simply tried to say the truth and tried to push back. Jake Tapper and Dana Bash sat there and read their questions off cards and did not do follow ups, and did not question Trump in

the slightest and they let him lie. If Trump is reelected and this country goes fascist as Trump intends it to do, part of the responsibility is as of this night on the heads of CNN Jake Tapper and Dana Bash. It was an appalling performance. And as I speaking to here, I'm someone who was not only once the moderator, in effect the host or facilitator. To use the CNN term, tonight of a Democratic presidential primary debate in Chicago in two thousand and seven, So I have some idea of

the preparation for these events. This wasn't some sort of accident that they didn't push back. This wasn't some sort of random occurrence in the heat of the on air broadcast, as I will stumble over a word, or as Joe Biden would stumble over a word tonight, or as Donald Trump stumble over about five hundred words tonight. These were

not accidents. We prepared for this primary debate in two thousand and seven in Chicago, where I believe seven Democratic candidates, including President Obama, future President Biden, the Secretary of State at the time, Hillary Clinton, and five other candidates. I believe the total was eight. We had them all, and we began to prepare the questions, writing them out, memorizing them, deciding who should get which question. We started to do

that a week beforehand. There were twenty five people involved in selecting what would be asked of the candidates in that format. In this format, an actual presidential debate, the first of only two scheduled in the entirety of this campaign, the earliest in the history of this country. In the most important election we have faced, certainly since the eighteen sixty four election in the middle of the Civil War.

They planned this out. The decision was made by CNN, no fact checks, and if there are no facts, Donald Trump will win every time because he is a goddamned liar. I took notes as we went through of the Trump lies, and I don't think this is one third of what was said. He lied about COVID and the entire history of COVID under his misleadership, and CNN said nothing. He lied about everybody wanting Roe v. Wade overturned and the decisions about abortion sent back to the States, and CNN

said nothing. He lied that the founding fathers somehow would have posed Roe v. Wade or would have demanded that it be decided by the States or by the Supreme Court the way the Supreme Court overturned it at his direction. He lied about that, and CNN said nothing. He lied about post birth abortion. Let's again remind everybody what post

perth abortion actually means. Trump suggested that people in this country, doctors and mothers of newborn children due to incomplete abortions, that the mothers of the children and the doctors and other officials there murdered living infants who had just been born. There was no fact check. According to CNN, that's true. Jobs to illegal immigrants. Trump lied about that and CNN said nothing. Biden to destroy social security. Trump lied about that,

and CNN said nothing. Trump at one point said he would not say something about the Border Guard's endorsement, and then he said it by saying he wouldn't say it. He lied about that. He lied about terrorists coming across the border and CNN said nothing. He ted lied about many American citizens being left in Afghanistan and CNN said nothing. He lied about how he was congratulated by Europe and NATO by demanding more money, and CNN said nothing about that.

He lied about the ocean protecting us against a European war, which was last postulated, I believe, by Woodrow Wilson in nineteen sixteen, and CNN said nothing about that lie. He lied about getting NATO to pay and CNN said nothing. He lied about offering troops to Nancy Pelosi and CNN said nothing. He lied about how some unknown, unidentified they asked him to speak on January sixth, when the entirety of the January sixth public event was his idea and

his scheme and his attempted coup. CNN could have, at that point simply said one of those idiot anchors Jake Tapper or Dana Bash should have said at that point, at minimum, to possibly save this debacle from going any further, could have just said, mister Trump, who's the they who asked you to speak? Just to follow him up once with a follow up question, to ask what it was he was saying, because these were a series of lies that went unquestioned. And Trump's villainy and Trump's role is

the greatest criminal in American history is one thing. But tonight he has an accomplice. It's called CNN. Pelosi. He said, acknowledged that she asked for the troops. Trump lied about that. CNN said nothing about it. The January sixth evidence being destroyed, trumpled about that. CNN said nothing about that. He lied about Charlottesville. CNN said nothing about that. He lied about Biden somehow making up the Charlottesville story about good people

on both sides. CNN didn't say anything about that. He lied that he didn't call the dead soldiers losers and suckers. He made up a number of people who said it was not true, and CNN didn't call him on that. He lied that Biden caused the inflation after COVID, and CNN didn't say anything about that. He lied that Biden had called Black's super predators, and despite an understandable dropped jaw from the President of the United States when that happened,

CNN didn't say anything about that Trump lie. He lied about his environmental numbers, how he had the best environmental numbers. Ever, presumably he's talking about environmental numbers based on what the polluters liked. I'm sure he got those right, but in terms of environmental numbers, that was another lie CNN said nothing about. He lied about migrants taking jobs of minorities, Blacks and Hispanics in this country. CNN said nothing about that.

He lied about Biden getting money from China and called him a Manchurian candidate, and CNN said nothing about that. He lied about Biden paying for hostages, and CNN said nothing about that. In point of fact, off the top of my head, I know what that was. That was the United States of America unfreezing frozen Iranian assets as part of a deal to get people back from that country. He lied about the country failing. He lied about acing a cognitive test. That's probably the thousandth time he's lied

about that. The cognitive test, by the way, is the screening one to determine whether or not they need to put you in a straight jacket when you come in, and of course Trump needs to be in a straight jacket, and CNN said nothing about that lie. He lied about winning at golf, He lied about the golf tournaments. He lied about not being a supporter an inducer of political violence. Someone there should have said, had anybody thought about stochastic terrorism?

Did anybody at CNN suggest that perhaps that should be said? No? Trump lied, and CNN said nothing in response. He lied about the police ushering in the coup members his stochastic terrorists. On January sixth, He lied about accepting the election results, and then later came back and explained how he was lying about accepting the election results this November, and CNN said nothing about that. He lied about why he had

been indicted and who was responsible for being indicted. The answer, of course to that was he who was responsible for him being indicted by committing crimes? Andn said nothing about that. He lied about again the United States being a failing nation. He lied about fraud in the twenty twenty election. As I mentioned earlier, CNN had promised that of all the lies Trump could say, that would be the one they would not let him get away with, and Dana Bash

and Jake Tapper let him get away with it. He lied about somehow going to Europe in his closing statement. Apparently the vets are supposed to go to Europe for treatment. It wasn't clear, and he lied, and CNN said nothing about it. And as I suggest, I believe the actual list is probably about three times as long as the one I've just read you. Those were the low lights in an extraordinary performance, and extraordinary meant in the worst

possible way in that word could meet. The lies are on the record now, and the lies have been resonating through this country through social media for the last two hours because CNN did not do its job. I'm telling you this from personal ex experience. It's not an easy thing to sit there and try to run a television show while you are asking two presidential candidates or eight presidential candidates questions that are vital to the future and the security and the safety of this nation. It's not

an easy task. It is not as difficult as those

two idiots made it look tonight. And you can, in fact make a few moral judgments and judgments that are responsible to the American people, and judgments that are responsible to your oaths that you take internally in your own soul about what you're going to do if you get the big anchor job, Dana Bash, or if you get the big anchor job Jake Tapper, if you go Jake Tapper from being a guy who once went out with Monica Lewinsky, is the greatest and most famous thing in

your resume to being the anchor or co anchor of a presidential debate. If you get that dream come true, where you go from running joke to the role of anchor of the first co anchor of the first presidential debate in the most important election in this country in at least the time since eighteen sixty four, probably in

the whole of our history. If you go from that one laughingstock to this position of importance, you should take it goddamn seriously and not let a bastard intent on putting your network out of business putting you behind bars, putting in the rest of us who depose him and in some way have fought against him these last ten years.

Donald Trump wants Jake Tapper in jail or at least unemployed, or at least in his employ servicing him as he turns the media of this nation into a bunch of nodding head dolls agreeing with him as fascism comes to the United States of America. And Jake Tapper and Dana Bash and the new CNN chief Robinson were too stupid to know, are too stupid to know that they were

out there slitting their own throats and building their own gallows. Tonight, I want to give one piece of news that ordinarily would have been the lead story, and it may be the lead story going from this first debate. If debate is the right term. This is closer to another live town hall than anything else. It might have been described as Joe Biden according to several sources. It was first reported by NBC, who's quoting two unnamed sources, and then

by the Associated Press. Joe Biden went through this debate despite the fact that he was diagnosed. If diagnosed is not too strong a term with it with a cold before this event, so that when he came out sounding as hoarse as he did, and sounding rehearsed and looking kind of blank at the beginning, and he did not really get started. Nobody will question that he did not get started for the first twenty or thirty minutes of this. He did leave a bad impression, there's no getting around that.

But there is a mitigating factor that he had a cold. And as silly as that sounds, oh, he's going to blame it on having a cold. Let us remember that in nineteen sixty it was absolutely the case that John F. Kennedy, who was a little known senator from Massachusetts, was elevated to basically equality with the sitting Vice President of the United States Nixon in the debates, the first debate when Nixon, who had had I believe it was it was not pneumonia,

it was a staff infection. He'd been hospitalized. He looked

gray as anything. They didn't make him up very well, and he came on television and he looked like death warmed over without the without the warmed over part, and he faced Kennedy robust, glowing, tanned, apparently on several medications, as it later turned out for his various diseases we did not know about if you talk about jacked up, but Kennedy came out of nowhere and was given at the end of that debate essentially equal status thereafter with

Richard Nixon in the nineteen sixty campaign, because Richard Nixon had been hospitalized and looked bad on camera. So the idea that Joe Biden had a cold as a bad excuse, it rings kind of hollow. It can be the sort of thing that changes American history, especially if you combine that with the network doing the debate, violating every principle

of journalism. And I'd add, if you want to go a little bit further than this, one of the great metaphors for failure, for decisive, career ending failure in the history of this country, in the history of the world for the last two hundred odd years is Napoleon losing at Waterloo. It's been in everything from long movies to two long movies to Abba songs. Waterloo. Napoleon apparently had a gastro intestinal attack on the morning of Waterloo. We

can't discount this. The idea that Joe Biden had a cold tested negative for COVID by the way he had the test, and like the debate in twenty twenty, when Trump went on stage with an active COVID infection, told no one and exposed Biden to it. The COVID test was taken by President Biden and he tested negative and

proceeded with the debate. History will judge whether or not that was a good decision or a bad one, but it was an honest one and it had consequences that Joe Biden will have to deal with, as the rest

of us will for the rest of this campaign. I did want to start to review some of the things that were said and use some of the clips that we have gotten for you that I think exemplify what we saw both from the CNN failures and the unstopping, ceaseless sophistry and sophistry, or the highlights, the legitimate parts, the relatively honest parts of Donald Trump's performance, and then talk about what they mean and what the reaction would be.

And remember that you and I, who have been living and breathing this for a year, two years, ten years,

we have one viewpoint of this. Consider how many of the one hundred and ten, perhaps million people who watch this just now in some form, we're seeing these two men for the first time in the context of even beginning to think about who they're going to vote for, and what the impact would be not just of Joe Biden halting at the start and coughing at the start and being rehearsed at the start and having a cold, but what the effect would be of seeing Donald Trump

for the first time doing what he did tonight. And one of the things that perhaps will resonate for those who were still watching by that point was Trump threatening Joe Biden, calling him a potential convicted felon, and saying that he was the innocent one and that if he became president again, yes, all of our worst fears are in fact accurate. He will try to prosecute Biden.

the night. There is no getting around that. As bad an impact as Joe Biden and his cold and the initial halting nature of his performance tonight will have on his campaign, whether it measures as one to one millionth of a percent or it measures as five percent, it was matched by the fact that because again this format not only allowed Trump to concentrate on his lies and his performance, but there was no pushback. There was not going to be any pushback. The pushback could only come

from Biden. He had to devote about half of what he was saying. Half of his time had to be devoted to doing the fact checking job that CNN should have done, as and again that CNN did even in its failure in the town hall with Caitlin Collins last year. But that look Trump throughout was sweating and sneering. Not only if that line of the night from Trump was

not I didn't have sex with a porn star. He also had an infamous quote about how we had great H two oh at some point that environmentally we were better off under him, when he's just demanded a billion dollars from the nation's oil producers in exchange for rolling back all possible restrictions on them polluting the planet and taking this next five year period which we'll decide whether or not life survives on this planet, and selling it for one billion dollars so he can go to the

White House instead of the Big House. There was a succession of these events. There was a succession of these comments. There was a succession of Trump failures and Trump revelations about who he is and what he intends to do. But I think we do need to look at what where we started, which was the President of the United States essentially getting lost within the first ten minutes of this having sounded rehearsed, having been coughing, and trying to

explain the issue of improvements. It did not go well. You will see this clip again. There will be a need to explain this, and we will need to do or the president will need to do damage control about how this sounded.

five hundred million dollars billion dollars. I should say in a ten year period, we'd be able to write wipe out his debt. We'd be able to help make sure that all those things we need to do, childcare, elder care, making sure that we continue to suppreent it stand in our healthcare system, making sure that we're able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I've been able to do with the with the COVID, I was could be with dealing with everything we have to do with.

are beginning to explain. As I see that clip again, I think that the initial impact of where we thought we would be compared to say, the night of the State of the Union address, I think the initial impact was far worse than the clip looked like. The clip

is a lack of success. The clip is a little bit lost in the number of details, all the good and good for the country that he's trying to get out over his own sense of I may have to cough again, as we saw him repeatedly bring his closed hand to his face to clear his throat and to cough. So I think again there will be an impact on this. But I believe the ship which was rocking on happily in the first twenty minutes of this debate steadied itself.

As time went by for the President of the United States, and in fact, as people began to hear more of what Trump was saying and what he was planning, I think things got worse and worse. If this had been a twenty minute debate, there would have been no question that Trump would have come away with a complete triumph. It was not a twenty minute debate. It was an hour and a half, and I actually think that Biden managed to pull off at least a tie against Trump

and his partner CNN. We have a further update. And it's ironic because one of the best people working in media today, who was in a Toronto newspaper. I don't think I got him a better job, but in twenty sixteen I repeatedly pumped his work. His name is Daniel Dale, and he's an excellent fact checker, and he is now with CNN and he has posted, along with his colleague Holmes Librand, a commentary essentially a full detailed analysis of the one fact check. Here it is. It should have

been on CNN during the debate. In fact, it's just here. I'm holding it in my hand like I'm Lauren Bobert, CNN fact Check. Trump falsely claims Biden has used the term super predators. What he's done to the black population is horrible, Trump said, including the fact that for ten years he called them super predators in the nineteen nineties. We can't forget that. Facts first Trump claim is false.

Biden never publicly deployed the phrase super predators or endorsed the criminological theory behind it, which held that there was a new breed of highly and remorseless, violent young offenders. Biden, however, did refer to predators on our streets who were beyond the pale while promoting the nineteen ninety four crime Bill. There is an extraordinary difference between that, because there are at any point in American history, there have been predators

on our streets. I'm going to do the commentary here. That's why you're tuned in. I presume unless something has gone wrong with your YouTube experience and you're looking for well Lauren Bobert video. But if you would mind for a moment while I bring in somebody else's comment from Twitter. Ex Megan McCain, who has periodic bouts of common sense amid most of what she does, which is complaining about

how the world has mistreated Meghan McCain. Meghan McCain said, this is the most stressful debate I've ever watched, and my parent was a nominee against Obama. I think we can for once hold hands with Megan McCain and say, yes, it was pretty damn stressful the failure of the CNN approach to this. And again, I don't want to claim that I am some sort of savant, because I suggested in the podcast on Wednesday that this was absolutely imperative that they not do what they announced just in passing

that there would be no fact check. That's not some sort of extraordinary insight. That's not some sort of I'm the only person in the world who could have thought that. We saw just now for an hour and a half the consequences of not living up to journalistic responsibilities. For whatever reason, I've speculated before that CNN's new right wing ownership is preparing for a Trump presidency and it's trying

to mitigate the damage he will do to them. As all the networks and all the news organizations have had the meeting, what do we do in the worst case scenario where Trump is president again and comes for us.

What can we point to to save ourselves? It is presumably similar to what those who criticized Hitler in the German press in the twenties and thirties began to wonder in nineteen thirty thirty one, in nineteen thirty two, and so perhaps and I don't know that this was behind the decisions by David Shalien and the new heads of CNN to do it tonight, but I do know that

they've had these conversations. What can we do to at least show that we are not opposed to Trump, that this environment was behind the worst part of their abrogation, their failure to fact check when they pumped Trump or should have pumped Trump about January sixth, when they finally got around thirty nine minutes into this fiasco about some question about Trump's culpability, Trump's attempt to overthrow the government, Trump's attempt to bribe people into testifying that he won

in twenty twenty, and Joe Biden did not his continuing lies, his continuing fostering of conspiracies, his continuing attempt to undermine the very concept of truth itself. They asked him about January sixth, and he simply did not answer about January sixth. He took it and changed it into a date that might have been something randomly picked out of a calendar. January sixth became to him December the seventeenth.

the correct order. However, this did emphasize a point that I made earlier that Trump brought to the table and was allowed to continue to use it throughout the ninety minutes by CNN, perhaps the maximum of his sophistry with the minimum insanity, until he started to get cooking and began to accuse, as I said, Joe Biden of being a criminal and promising or threatening to promise to prosecute him.

And again the term was coined. The terms were coined by Brian Boitworth, great writer, political writer who's called it trump Nesia, in which the events of twenty twenty and twenty nineteen, eighteen, and seventeen are turned into some sort of rosy glow because that's what Trump is selling. He also used several other terms which perhaps will skip here. But asked about January sixth, Trump simply applied sophistry. There was no January sixth, It was just a random date.

It didn't happen. I wasn't home, the suit didn't come back from the cleaners. There was no answer to question, and CNN never followed up.

and defend unquote the Constitution. What do you say to voters who believe that you violated that oath through your actions and inaction on January sixth and worry that you'll do it again.

And then he comes in and we're now left at we're like a bunch of stupid people that what happened to the United States' reputation under this man's leadership is horrible, including weaponization, which I'm sure at some point you'll be talking about, where he goes after his political opponent because he can't beat him fair and square and.

can avoid jail. The man will say anything. The man lives in a kind of fugue state in which none of you out there are actually real, and nothing he does has any consequences attached to it whatsoever. And CNN said, sure, we'll play by your rules. We won't follow it up. We ask about January sixth, and the next thing you start talking about the borders. January sixth was the equivalent of Donald Trump committing nine to eleven all over again

on this country, or at least attempting to. And CNN waited until the debate was nearly half over to even approach it, and once having approached it, got away from it as quickly as possible without demanding an any kind of answer from Donald Trump. I keep going back to this because even now, an hour and forty five minutes after the debate, or excuse me, two hours and fifteen minutes after the debate started, I cannot believe that CNN actually went through with the idea that there would be

no fact checking. In contrast to other debates, there were commercial breaks in which somebody should have run onto that stage with as the saying goes their hair on fire, saying my god, my god, what have we done. You need to start fact checking him. You need to stop

promulgating his lies. We need to stop helping Donald Trump take over the government of the United States and turn it into another failed Trump property, and the rest of us become his contractors or his slaves, one who don't get paid and two who meet the fate of all slaves. There is another SEGM here that was repeated without any

pushback from CNN. Another thing that I would bring up when we look about the impact or look into the impact this would have with people, the low information voters, the polsters, darlings this year, the deciders, the ones who voted differently in twenty sixteen and twenty twenty, the ones who were under the age of thirty five, other not necessarily undecided voters, but voters who were not attached already to one of the two parties or one of the

two candidates. In looking at that, what did they see. This is what they saw from Donald Trump talking about Joe Biden in apocalyptic terms. And obviously we wish that this had been phrased in as strong language, with as strong a voice by the president. It was not to any great degree. He did hit it on a couple of occasions. But Trump said this, and again, no one in a position of responsibility pushed back.

unfortunate and extraordinarily ungifted individual. You helped. Honest to god, it would have been better if Katie Turr had been the moderator of this debate. And you can read into that anything you want if they tell you the debate does not change a single mind or a single vote. And this may be viewed entirely as a negative. I'm not sure it's entirely as a negative. It may be

a wash. Ultimately, Morning Consult did research on this which I quoted yesterday, but the actual numbers are actually pretty relevant right now. They read this as few voters believe debates will change what they think about candidates or their vote choice. Shares of voters who said it was very likely they'll change whom they plan to vote for based on the debates all eleven percent eleven percent of one hundred and twenty million viewers say, which could have been

how many were expecting to watch, whether or not. That's the ultimate number between television and streaming and listening in some audio way online or actually in radio or in a live podcast, perhaps one hundred and twenty million. Ten percent of that is twelve million, So we are talking about thirteen million people willing to change their vote based on what they saw tonight. That's not a small few voters. That's eleven or twelve million people. That's enough to create

a landslide if they all moved in one direction. The most important part of this was that twenty one percent of voters under the age of thirty five said they were in that group that would be willing to change or expected or thought it was very likely that they could change their vote after what happened tonight. Seventeen percent were in the group of voters between the ages of thirty five and forty four, so thirty eight percent of everybody in there between under the age of forty five

is a potential switch after this. Among black voters, twenty one percent said they considered it very likely they'd changed their vote after this debate, again before the debate happened, and twenty seven percent of hispanic It's an extraordinary impact. And again I'll go back to where we started with the reference to nineteen sixty and Richard Nixon's hospitalization in the fact that he came out poorly made up and gaunt looking, and where the whole story of the five

o'clock shadow, the Richard Nixon perpetual beard originated. He went on and did a debate in which he, because of his health, managed to elevate his opponent, the unknown junior senator from Massachusetts, to essentially the equivalency of a man who'd been, for good or ill, the vice president of the United States under one of its most popular presidents ever for a period of eight years. And he gave that away, that advantage away because of essentially bad makeup.

A couple of questions before we get to one lighter bit of video from the debate itself. This is from Garrett NYC. Would be incredible to see you moderate other than you, who would be your ideal moderators, anybody but Annabash and Jake Tapper, literally anybody else in that studio. And I might add we could resume that debate with anybody who's ever worked in that studio previously having done

a better job. That's Studio D on Techwood Drive in Atlanta, the ancestral home of Ted Turner's broadcasting station, Channel seventeen in Atlanta, which BEGAT Turner Broadcasting, which BEGAT CNN, which BEGAT TVs or TBS was originally Channel seventeen, but which BEGAT TNT and all the other properties under the Turner name. I used that studio in nineteen eighty two when I was with CNN Sports in my first job, and in twenty thirteen I anchored the baseball coverage for the postseason

in that very studio. It's the size of three airplane hangars, and anybody who's ever worked there, including myself, Gary Sheffield and Pedro Martinez, would have been better moderators. The other thing. In the nineteen seventies and eighties, those studios were used for professional wrestling, not just professional wrestling, but the Georgia Wrestling Federation or whatever it was called local professional wrestling.

They put bleachers in that thing and they had the wrestlers come in and sometimes you could hear them being slammed against the walls through the walls that adjoined the CNN newsroom, and any one of those wrestlers would have been better as moderators for this debate. Corneill waters, Why didn't he bring up Project twenty twenty five an important question and one I was going to raise later. One of the leaked for warnings about which topics were going

to be addressed by President Biden and by Trump. One of the leaked hits, as I phrased them, was Biden pushing Project twenty twenty five. They saw how the John Oliver segment on Project twenty twenty five, which I've been harping on for several months, went viral five million views. They had their own website Biden does about Project twenty twenty five. They had QR codes. And then you're not expecting the President of the United States to suddenly pull a barcode out of his pocket and flash it at

the camera, although why not there were no rules. CNN should have let him get away with that. They let Trump say that January sixth was about the border, and that Nancy Pelosi acknowledged that she wouldn't have troops that Trump didn't send. I don't know why this didn't come up.

I imagine we're perhaps looking at a question of Joe Biden's advisors and the President himself deciding that in the hours before this debate, presumably as his cold and his hoarseness increased, that there would have been some need to drop a few of the packages along the way. Don't burden him with additional details like hitting Project twenty twenty five. There are, however, a lot of things that can I believe,

be done between now and November fifth. I mentioned this before, and I saw it and was astonished by it because I was in ESPN at the time. I was politically aware, I knew what was going on in the world, and

I had no memory of this whatsoever. To give you an idea of where we stand in terms of the polls relative to the actual election, there are two elections that were cited by the great journalists the Hall of Famer from The Atlantic and other publication, Jim Fallows who put these out I think earlier today, in nineteen ninety two, and I'll read what he put out the New York

Times version of this. In a three way general election matchup, ross Perot has moved to a clear lead over both President Bush and Governor Bill Clinton in the latest Gallop poll, in a telephone poll of eight hundred and fifteen registered voters nationwide, conducted June fourth to June eighth. This is nineteen ninety two. This is not fiction, This actually happened. This is actually in the New York Times. There's a screenshot. Mister Perrot was supported by thirty nine percent, Bush by

thirty one, Clinton by twenty five. The margin of error was four percentage points. The man who was elected President of the United States in November of nineteen ninety two and went on to two popular and largely successful terms with controversy, controversy that produced greater affection for him than he had beforehand and circles back to Jake Tapper Biomonica Lewinsky,

but will leave that alone this point. At this point in the election in nineteen ninety two, Bill Clinton, soon to be President of the United States, was in third place behind George H. W. Bush and Ross Fing Perrot, and also from Fallows. He reminded us that at this point in twenty twelve, all of the polls were essentially tied between President Barack Obama and who ran against him. In twenty twelve anybody remember anybody remember his vice president?

Anybody Republicans who had met Romney? The Economist you gov poll of early July Obama forty three, Romney forty four. Reuter's ipsos Obama forty nine, Romney forty three. Also July June twenty eighth to July ninths Pew Research Obama fifty, Romney forty three looked pretty good. Washington Times, jay Z Analytics Romney forty two point eight, Obama forty two. ABC News, Washington Post had it forty seven forty seven. Funny there's no CNN poll here. Did they do them? A couple

of other questions? Was there a question for either candidate that you thought was either unfair or a layup? I do think that in assessing the questions and how the candidates were expected to answer them, there was a slight imbalance here because it was believed by the moderators and by CNN going into this, that President Biden would have to give substantive answers that included truth. On the other hand, Donald Trump was able to say whatever came out of

his ass and Bash and Tapper let him. I feel like they both missed the mark. New Newish rights to us appealing to younger and diverse voters. How should the candidates rethink their strategies. This is an extraordinarily important point. I hit it before slightly on the issue of what happens when people who are not exposed to this see a debate for the first time, and we saw the large numbers where a fifth or more of those minority

group voters are willing to change their votes. At this point, they are very soft, and that is much more of a danger for Trump and the Trump campaign than it is for the president because so much support had shifted in the last few months towards Trump out of an understandable sense of frustration. I don't know how this will play in those communities. I am not of those communities, and I think it would be pretentious of me to say this is what they will say in the black

community or the Hispanic community. I'm not Donald Trump. I'm not going to lie to you about what other groups that I am not a part of will respond to. But at some point, when the President was asked about the disappointment in those communities over inflation, over jobs, records, over other issues of American life, Joe Biden said they should be disappointed, and here's what we're going to try

to do to fix it. There is at least, I would think, in ordinary circumstances, in some sort of generic group that has just been felt itself wronged and has been cited, recognized, seen on national television, I would think that a president of the United States saying you're right, we haven't done enough is such an extraordinary answer, especially in our times, especially with that monster standing across from him,

a man who does nothing but lie. Here is someone who is assuming responsibility and saying we should do better. I think more of that from Joe Biden perhaps will provide a greater outcome for him and for the people that are in question here, the people who need that help, in those Hispanic and Black communities. Who is hosting the second debate, Marchandreff asks, if it happens, of course, Trump

may just choose to stop while he's ahead. That is, presuming he is still ahead, because that's September tenth, which is as I suggested before, based on Bill Clinton's poll numbers from nineteen ninety two and Barack Obama's poll numbers from twenty twelve September tenth on ABC is several lifetimes from now. All right, We had one more clip that I wanted to make sure we got in, and I have a few other thoughts before we close this off.

Towards the bottom of the out it is an extraordinary thing to contemplate how Donald Trump must see the rest of us and the world. I often think of those very popular in the eighties and nineties RoboCop style movies in which some sort of robot armed with artificial intelligence.

If you'd like to worry about something else tonight, one of those robots is seen reading what he's looking at, and he gets a huge computer print out on the side that identifies that as a dog, and that as the president of the United States, and you see it in an on camera display inside the robot's mind. I tend to think of Trump in those terms. I've suggested it recently. I think this is finally the correct description of what's going on where he is. He's in a

fugue state. I had the misfortune to have somebody very close to me actually go into a fugue state in which that person did not know and did not care that they had decided to take off all their clothes and go from one side of Manhattan to another in a uber at two o'clock in the morning with no fear and no worry whatsoever. That was a fugue state.

That is that period of time in which you don't worry about what's going to happen because you have made this potentially fatal mistake, as this person did happily by accident. There was no harm to the person or to me. But I wonder about what is going on other than

the mouse in the wheel getting stuck there. At some point when Trump is asked a question and comes back by boasting about how he did on again cognitive test given to you to determine whether or not you need a straight jacket, and then segues into how well he plays freaking golf.

was quote really disappointing. Former aid Biden campaign admits he started off slow Trump versus Biden debate. Latest pauses and stuttering from Biden in first TV debate with Trump as

team claims he has a cold. Obviously, if Trump claimed he had a cold, if Trump made up that he had a cold, most of the news organizations would simply state that it had been appeared that statement had appeared that Trump had a cold, that that was one of the eleventh or twelfth commandments on the Ten Commandments that broke as mel Brooks brought them down the side of the mountain. If you know the movie reference, if you don't,

If Biden says it, it's a claim. If Trump says it, and it's preposterous and a lie, CNN says, who We're going to commercial break right now, we'll be back to do something, as Dana Bash said. Dana Bash said on the way out, one more question and then we'll wrap it up. Eight of Wand's asked, Keith, is it too late to replace Biden? The word replaced, The verb replace implies some kind of action in which he has no

choice in the matter. It is too late to replace Joe Biden if he were to voluntarily step aside that's another series of questions and another series of complications that you did not ask. It has not happened in American history. But if Biden did not want to go, there is literally no way to take him off the ticket. And as to whether or not it would be wise, and again the sky News headlines the clips that you saw.

The reality of what you saw at the beginning of this debate can't simply be erased from the world's memory. It was not a good start. I think the Biden campaign is smart to go in that direction, to say he did not start well, but did in fact finish up fairly strong and came to a tie given what

was weighing against him. The fact that seeing and let Trump lie early, often and repeatedly, whether or not it would be wise is something else altogether, And what the impact of this debate will have on these numbers is something else all together. But as I examined back in, I believe it was late March when my friend Bob Costas made a couple of appearances suggesting that there was an urgent need to remove Joe Biden. This was before the State of the Union address, I pointed out, and

it was pointed out by others. I don't claim exclusive knowledge on this either, that there is no process by which you can take the president of the United States and force him off the ticket. If he doesn't want to go, then you enable it to happen. And that's an entirely different set of circumstances. But also is it the right move to make, even under the most dire of circumstances, Even if you concluded from watching that debate that you had to get another candidate in there, who

is that candidate going to be? All the polling of all the other Democrats against Donald Trump shows Trump winning by ten or more points. And you then have the entire question if somehow managed to force the president off the ticket, he would immediately become a lame duck. And

what do you do about the vice president? If the vice president, if Kamala Harris is not your choice to replace Biden on some sort of force them off or even voluntarily leave, what do you do with the vice president of the United States, whose numbers against Biden against Trump rather would in fact be worse than Joe Biden's are And again they have been. Joe Biden's numbers have been growing to the point where it is a statistical tie going into this debate, the question again, is it

too late to replace Biden? Legally, Yes, if he doesn't want to go, if he wanted to go, if he retired, certainly, But even this question needs to be raised in your mind, in my mind, and in the President's mind, and in

everyone connected with democratic leadership tonight. Is it even under the most dire of circumstances and a droit move because of all of the other components, all the polling, which can be as I suggested before, based on where Bill Clinton was in nineteen ninety two, The polling is not only fungible and flexible, but it can completely mislead you

as to what's going to happen. If Bill Clinton and the Democrats had looked at those polls and said, we've got to get somebody else in here, let's hurriedly nominate Tom Dashel, do you think he would have beaten Bush in the fall. The advantage that Bush would have had would have been double what he seemed to have had going against Clinton in nineteen ninety two. And there is the final part of that conundrum. If you take Joe Biden off the ballot or Joe Biden takes himself off

the ballot. The man who is on the ballot, who has been president of the United States and gets the default support of anyone looking for someone with experience, he gets one hundred percent of that support would be Trump.

Do you want that or would you rather have this man, Joe Biden, who, as we saw at the State of the Union, as we've seen in countless other speeches, and we've seen in countless other venues, can bring it better than Trump can, and is also an honest man and a good president, perhaps at points hinting as he would be judged historically a great president. Do you want him? Or do you want somebody who concedes the territory of who is seen as the incumbent? Do you want that

to be seeded to Donald Trump? So it's not just a practical question, legal question or a political question. Is a question of strategy, and I think it would be bad strategy and failing strategy. In any event, the picture

will change how much. It's hard to say. The numbers that were presumed after the Trump convictions, the numbers that were assumed that Biden would not gain anything, the initial polling numbers that suggested Biden had not gained anything from the Trump convictions, that Trump was the one who had gotten a slight bump. Those poll numbers turned out to

be inaccurate. The surge by which Joe Biden has tied or pulled ahead and come close to swing in the swing states in which he moved ahead in two and got fifty percent closer in the other four key six swing states. That all happened as a result of the convictions of Donald Trump. It took a while, it went well. We'll see what happens at the end of this. We'll see what happens tomorrow. We'll see how the media takes it.

But I would walk away with this. It is a terrifying thing to count the number of guardrails that have broken since Trump came down the escalator in twenty fifteen. So many things that we thought were permanent and inviolable in the United States of America turned out to be paper mache, turned out to be fake sets. The most disappointing to me on a personal level, and perhaps the most impactful other than the idea that an entire party would become literal whores to Donald Trump simply to stay

in power. The one next to that was illustrated again tonight. Somewhere along the line it was prophesied, and many of us heard it forty years ago, fifty years ago. That eventually, as television and other video and electronic communications completely surpassed the newspaper organizations with their rigid standards and their extraordinarily

competitive relationships with one another. As that happened, as deadlines got tighter, as the news cycle dropped, from well, we're going to publish this story at eleven o'clock six hours from now two, We're going to publish this story as soon as you finished typing it. The predictions were made that so much of the journalism would drop out of journalism. I think we have seen the low point of that.

I began to worry about this and to talk about it on my first MSNBC show in nineteen ninety eight, when, because the ratings were good, the networks, the news organizations of this country, we're willing to let a special prosecutor named Kenneth Starr do something as illegal as making public the secret videotaped grand jury testimony of the sitting president of the United States. That was what sent me fleeing back into sports because I didn't want to have anything

more to do with it. Every time I brought it up, and every time I brought up the principal role of organizations like Fox News and Breitbart and the others of that time, every time I brought them up, every time I criticized the people who appeared on those networks are on those websites. I was accused of trying to be the left wing version of fill in the blank. I was accused of doing this for the ratings. This is

why I did it tonight. Is why I did it in hopes of staving off the fiasco that we saw tonight. You cannot put a man whose profession is lying on national television in a debate for the most important job in the world, at the most important moment in the history of the world for at least the last eighty years. You cannot put a professional liar on television and never say you are not telling the truth. Fact Checking is the essential element of journalism. It's where you begin. Is

it raining or is it not raining? All you have to do, Jake Tapper, all you have to do, Dana Bash is walk over to the window and get us an answer or if you can't get us the answer, if your IFV coord is not long enough, if you're not wearing a mobile mic, if you can't get over there, at least ask the guy who just said, not only is it raining, but it's raining up from the ground. You have to ask him why he has said this, what is his evidence? You have to fact check him.

CNN failed, They should go out of business tomorrow. We'll be back with a new edition of a podcast on Tuesday. Thank you for being with us. I'm sorry the results are not better. I think I am repeating myself at this point, But damn you to hell, Jake Tapper, Damn you to hell, Dana Bash, Damn you to hell. CNN. You blew your job tonight, and may you never get the opportunity to do it again. Keith Oldruyman, thanks for being with us. Night Countdown with Keith Olderman is a

production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.