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Vance delivers a master class in how to deal with biased moderators

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The traditional TV networks continue to offer obvious home-field advantages to Democrats in this year’s election debates, as they have for as long as I’ve observed politics.

But Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, delivered a master class in how to deal with biased moderators in his vice-presidential showdown Tuesday night with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat.

Not only did Vance handle obviously skewed questions, but he refused to allow the moderators—“CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell and “Face the Nation” chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Brennan—to live “fact-check” him without calling them out on it.

More on that in a bit.

There’s no doubt that the CBS News moderators of Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate were nearly as biased as the ABC News moderators in the Sept. 10 presidential debate. Their questions were mostly cherry-picked to be more of interest to a left-leaning audience, and they clearly steered the discussion toward topics to benefit Democrats.

Climate change is a bottom tier issue in poll after poll for the American people but is super important to a narrow band of highly engaged liberals. So, we get a climate change question in every single debate, while somehow issues like the threat of Communist China seemingly never come up.

This kind of bias has been a problem for a very long time, though the media is far more shameless than they used to be. Long ago, CNN host Candy Crowley actually apologized for live fact-checking Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in the 2012 election. A lot has changed since then.

They don’t just ask biased questions these days; they now actively participate in the debate to help whatever Democrat is on stage.

There was a funny moment, at least to me, when Vance pushed Walz on a Minnesota law that allowed babies to be killed after a botched abortion. It was a law that he signed. Walz didn’t and seemingly couldn’t answer the question. Instead, he just pointed to the moderators and said that they “fact checked” it last time. He clearly wanted the “moderators” to step in and help.

They didn’t deliver the life preserver this time, but it’s understandable why Walz thought they would.

Presidential and vice-presidential debates shouldn’t be like this. The media should be letting politicians speak for themselves. But it appears that the network channels can’t help themselves.

To a certain extent Republicans are in a tough spot. It’s clear that Democrats are simply unwilling to have a debate that isn’t on their home field at this point. And having no presidential and vice-presidential debates at all—especially given that Walz and Vice President Kamala Harris so rarely have to answer tough questions—would be bad for the country.

Given this challenging environment, Vance did a remarkable job of staying on message, answering questions seriously—but on his terms, and delivering clear, logical answers to every question.

And when the two moderators became obnoxious about interjecting and live fact-checking (even though NBC said they wouldn’t), Vance didn’t just let it go.

Trump said after the ABC debate that he regretted not going after the biased moderators, and Vance seemed to have learned from that.

When Brennen tried to interject with a comment about Haitians and Springfield before moving on to the next question, Vance stopped her. She tried to cut him off with a “we just don’t time with all these questions to allow you to respond,” but Vance wasn’t having it.

“Margaret, the rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact check, and since you are fact checking me I think it’s important to say what’s actually going on,” Vance said. He went on to explain how illegal aliens can use an app to apply for legal status, which he said was a part of the Biden-Harris open border policies.

The moderators continued trying to cut Vance off, but he kept speaking. They even cut his mic off. But Vance didn’t look reckless or like a boor. He looked like a guy who took the discussion—and the intelligence of the American people—seriously.

This is how it should be done. The only people who looked bad in the exchange were the moderators.

Vance is clearly quite good at this, but one way or another he provided the model for how to walk into a biased debate and come out looking better at the end of it.

It will certainly be difficult to convince the American people that Vance is “weird” after that.

The post Vance Delivers a Master Class in How to Deal With Biased Moderators appeared first on The Daily Signal.

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