‘Unhinged’ Trump vs. ‘imperious’ Clinton
stein (D-Calif.) said, touting Clinton’s heavy mock debate schedule as a way to avoid missteps.
Both Al Gore and George H.W. Bush paid the penalty for appearing irritated and condescending during debates. Gore sighed with exasperation during his debates with George W. Bush in 2000. And the senior Bush drew ridicule for checking his watch during an audience question in the midst of a 1992 debate with Bill Clinton.
Hillary Clinton can come across as imperious as well, and her team worries that if Trump doesn’t become “unhinged,” as her communications director Jennifer Palmieri described it, reporters will give him a pass on substance. l How aggressively will Trump be fact-checked?
NBC moderator Lester Holt is under tremendous pressure from Democrats demanding that he call out Trump for any bald-faced lies. Republicans argue that’s not the role of the moderator.
“I think you have to have somebody that just lets ’em argue it out,” Trump said Thursday on Fox News. He said that previous fact-checks — like that of CNN’s Candy Crowley, who in 2012 called out a Mitt Romney falsehood — were “unfair.”
Holt is in an even tougher position after his colleague Matt Lauer, during a forum with both candidates this month, asked Trump a number of softball questions and failed to call him out for his repeated lie that he opposed the Iraq War before it began.
“Donald Trump is going to tell 40 little lies and five to 10 whoppers, and the question is, is he going to be called on it? Clinton can only spend so much of the debate calling him out when he lies,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told The News. “This is going to be an asymmetrical debate. He’s going to be lying and she’s going to be telling the truth. That’s hard to win unless you’re going to have people calling him out on the lies.”
Clinton’s team even held a conference call with reporters Friday just to highlight all the times Trump has lied — and demand that Holt and others hold him accountable during and after the debate.
But Republicans think an overly aggressive moderator could ruin the debate — and set up a backlash against “the media.”
“Unless it's a flagrant foul, let it go,” said Rep. Pete King (R-L.I.). l How will Donald Trump handle a one-on-one debate?
Trump had some huge moments in the GOP primary debates — but just as often faded into the woodwork as other candidates waded into policy. He won’t have that luxury this time.
Trump has shown a limited grasp on a number of policy issues, and while he’s stayed more scripted in recent weeks, he still has fallen into gaffes in recent days, like his calls for a national “stop-and-frisk” policy and blaming drugs for the protests following the police killing of a black man in Charlotte, N.C.
Without the teleprompter, it remains to be seen whether he can fill his part of the 90-minute debate without any major mistakes — or failing to show a grasp of information.
Clinton is a proven debater with a strong grasp of policy, while polls show the majority of Americans still aren’t comfortable with Trump as commander-in-chief.