Posted on 08/11/2015 10:34:48 AM PDT by Conscience of a Conservative
But many conservative commentators, led by Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin, have criticized Fox over the debate. What’s telling is that some portion of the Fox audience, at least according to Twitter and Facebook, is also unhappy.
Now some of these are fierce Trump partisans who are ticked when anyone challenges him on anything. Others were disappointed with the overall tone of the Cleveland event.
“The only reason Fox had high ratings was because of TRUMP and he’s the very one they tried to tear down. Thanks for Trump for your ratings, it sure wasn’t the so-called journalists,” one person said.
Another wrote that “those questions were inappropriate and vicious by Fox.”
These were offset by many others who praised the moderators’ performance, but let’s look at what some found “vicious.”
Trump was asked whether he would pledge to support the GOP nominee (after raising the potential for an independent bid in numerous interviews); about his own derogatory words about women; why he once supported single-payer health care; his evidence that Mexico is sending rapists into the United States; the Iran nuclear deal, and why he once supported abortion rights.
Jeb Bush was asked what he would say to families of those who died in “your brother’s war.” Scott Walker was asked about flip-flopping on immigration. Ben Carson was asked about his political inexperience. Marco Rubio was asked if abortion should be allowed in cases of rape and incest. And on and on.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Lost in the Trump thing, was Bloody Megyn’s swipe at Cruz with the, ‘Any Word From God?’ comment.
And the disrespectful way it was asked.
The sarcasm could have been bottled.
And the insulting way she implied Rubio would let a woman die.
Yep, She's so bloody rude she should die her hair blood Red
She hammered Walker for signing an abortion bill and claimed he wanted women to die. Yeah, fair and balanced.
They didn’t blow it, they did it on purpose.
They were there to destroy any Republican seen as a threat to Hillary.
Any lawyer or journalist knows that an open question asks who what where when how and why. A leading question suggests the answer and is specifically designed to suggest a particular answer to the Jury, without regard to the answer the witness might wish to give.
What Kelly and Co were trying to do was a cross-examination using questions which would never be allowed in a Courtroom.
If they wanted to hear answers from the candidates without deliberately building a whole raft of slanderous and pejorative inferences into the question, they could easily have asked them differently.
Such as:
How would you answer Democrat claims that the Republicans are Waging a war on women? Do you think you are vulnerable to such an allegation and if so why or why not?
What steps, if any would you take to improve the economy and the nations finances? Do you think your past business bankruptcies make you personally vulnerable to the suggestion that you do not have skill to improve Americas financial problems?
Have your positions on abortion changed over time and if so, how?, etc., etc.
If Kelly and Co wanted to be fair to the candidates while still getting the opportunity to allow the audience to see how they perform in the face of unfair, slanderous, leading questions, they might have prefaced with something like: how would you respond to a loaded, agenda driven, unfair question from hard left media, such as the following...
Instead they set the candidates and especially Trump up in a “fair and balanced”, professionally moderated “debate” on a network that was supposed to be conservative or at the very least neutral, and then repeatedly and viciouly asked them the most loaded, unfair questions possible, specifically designed to make them look, as Linsay Graham said, like the biggest bastard[s] on the planet, no matter what answer they gave, excluding Bush.
They even made specific plans to escort Trump off stage if he became angry about their little throat cutting game. They grimaced and smiled and rolled their eyes for the camera and did all they could to anger him so they could pull that trigger, but he was too smart for them.
It was the nastiest, ill-intentioned political assassination plan I have ever seen and other than Graham and Trump not one other candidate has called them out on it.
Well guess what Fox, Kelly and Co? You have mail!
I doubt very much that I could have stated it as well as you have.
And ATROCITY is the most accurate description I have heard to date.
I actually received two replies directly from Bret Baier, to an email I wrote to him about the debate debacle today.
I replied to his response, as additional comments needed to be addressed based on his response.And he replied back, very civilly.
We discussed these questions and the genesis for them. He insisted he came up with the first one himself, the one where he asked for the candidates to raise their hands if they would support the party’s nominee.
I let him know I respected him for replying to me directly, but the Fox audience is owed an apology for the debacle last Thursday night, and the way it was handled.
And that Fox stays off in my home until the apology is made.
He said he would work to regain my trust.
I have to give him props for replying to me twice. That was unexpected.
But Fox is still off the TV.
Reading the article and responding to specific points ought not to be allowed on this thread. It's much more fun to indulge in ad hominem and ad feminem attacks. So shame on you for trying to spoil the fun by being rational.
The remark by Wallace “your line” is NOT what I heard that night. I thought he said to Trump, “you’re lying”. I went looking for transcripts later and couldn’t find that remark.
It’s possible he said “your line” but that sure isn’t the way I heard it.
I wondered why there was no outrage over that...so maybe I just mis-heard it.....?????
Tough Questions provide a candidate a chance to knock it out of the park
“What kind of ice cream do you like?” is not a tough question.
Trump was in the #1position ..He gets the most tough questions
Bush did a poor job
Trump did an ok job but not great
Most candidates held their own
Plenty of research went into all the questions to all candidates.
The issues raised about Trump should make his supporters nervous..
He has a poor track record for anything but making money using bankruptcy laws.
Rather than ask more hard questions his supporters are having a fit because we have not yet discovered what flavor ice cream he likes,
Fox should be applauded..... not denounced.
The next time they hit Obama with a tough question it cannot be said they are only hard on those who are on the left.
Will they hit those on the left hard ?
yes they will .....
#1 was out of place. It was a personal question without context or specifics.Of these, really only #5 seemed out of place. #1 was aggressive, sure, but (as Kelly noted) it is an issue that Clinton (or whoever is the Dem nominee) will surely raise, so I see no problem asking Trump how he would respond to that...
When Trump mentioned Rosie O'Donnell, Kelly took it over the line and got more personal saying there were others.
Also, the reference to the incident on Celebrity Apprentice was taken out of context and refuted by the contestant. Kelly was intentionally trying to brand Trump as anti-women using inflammatory language. It could have been less confrontational and accusatory.
Let’s consider a counterfactual.In this alternate universe Donald Trump knows what is coming and has ready the response he probably thought of in hindsight. Instead of coming back instantly with his “Only Rosie O’Donnel,” he holds it in reserve and sets Megyn Kelly up first:
Let’s put this in context. Here we are, about a dozen of us up on this stage, thousands of Ohioans in the in-person audience, and over 20 million people - about the size of Rush Limbaugh’s radio audience - watching remotely. We ten candidates here on the stage are promoting our credentials for a job that that huge audience cares passionately - in some cases desperately - about. Every person up here has significant standing in the public for that high honor and huge challenge. We have executives, governors, senators, a distinguished physician in this group, and the audience care little which of us is more adept at dodging smears and they care everything about who restore America to where it was when George H.W. Bush left office. Hillary Clinton couldn’t do that if she tried, and if given the opportunity she wouldn’t even try.He would have gotten so much support from the live audience for that that the moderators would not have been able to interrupt and prevent him from saying it.You can suggest that somewhere down the line, when one of us - it will be I - debates Hillary our non-policy “issues” will come home to roost. But for you, or Hillary or anyone else to suggest that is, frankly, so deeply unrealistic as to be fraudulent. Starting with Servergate and going all the way back to Whitewater, she has more baggage, and more real scandals, than all ten of us put together. And because it will be me facing Hillary, the public can be secure in the knowledge that if the Republican candidate is challenged with that sort of garbage he won’t go into the fetal position over it.
If that didn’t force Kelly to back off, he would then have said,
Your audience, and certainly not this distinguished pannel, didn’t come hear to hear my opinion I expressed about Rosie O’Donnel. It is disrespectful to the audience and it is disrespectful to the governor of Ohio and as well as the rest of us. (cheers) You don’t know your audience, you don’t know your country, and you are damaging the brand of Fox News for the sake of getting applause from people who don’t belong to your audience.What would Trump’s ratings have been after that!You’re Fired!
(exits to the spin room, to thunderous applause.)
That line is a bald-faced lie. My Facebook news feed EXPLODED during that debate with seething anger towards FOX News and especially Megyn Kelly. Rush and Levin didn't comment until the next day. They added their own flavor to the subject but they were only following the crowd on this one.
and BTW, it wasn't just Trump supporters who were angry. That debate was a travesty no matter how some namby pamby idiots try to sell it.
What I wanted to know in this debate is: What is your plan for immigration reform. Do illegals stay? Do they get welfare, housing and food stamps? What about the Obama invasion - do they all stay? How and when will you secure the border? How will you make sure government employees carry out the immigration laws of this country?
What is your plan for tax reform?
What are your foreign policy priorities?
Will you reform Obamacare, replace it or what? What will you replace it with?
Do you support America’s constitution and Bill of Rights over foreign and domestic opponents? What do you think is the current state of the constitution and rule of law in this nation? What will you do to strengthen it?
What will you do to heal the damage of Obama’s far left race baiting and divisions and violence the radicals have organized and caused? What about the hate crimes they have incited against white people and the NOI’s call for a race war?
Do you support the free exercise of religion guaranteed by the first amendment over any special rights assigned to people of minority sexual practices? What if a Christian baker does not want to serve a gay wedding because it is against their religion or a doctor does not want to commit abortion because of religious obligation not to kill the unborn?
What does equal pay for equal work mean to you and are you committed to that concept and do you practice it?
What does the “New World Order” mean to you? Do you support a UN that has the power to rule over nations and tax nations?
What do you think about Sharia law being introduced in the US among Muslim populations/cities or communities as they have done in Europe?
What do you think of proposed climate change policy?
What do you think of Federal based education power and what do you think of the DOE’s common core requirements?
Are you a strong supporter of property rights for the rich and powerful versus the middle class?
What do you think about men being falsely charged and punished by University committees outside the court system on sex crimes?
What do you think about the UN’s agenda 21? Give an example of where it is being introduced in the US.
What will you do with Obama’s illegal Executive Orders and regulation excesses?
Do you want the US to be more like Europe? Why or why not?
How will you bring jobs and wealth back to the US?
After the debate where real issues are addressed the media show boats can fact check and let the public know TRUE information not covered in the debate about the candidates that the public needs to explore, in the journalists’ opinion.
Instead of a debate on real issues, we garbage and gossip from journalists who could give a hoot about the issues because they are too stupid to understand the issues of interest to voters themselves! They just want to elevate themselves and I don’t care about them and what they think during the debates. We all know Trump is a trash mouth, Cruz believes in God (Does God talk to you?)...that was not up for a real debate on issues. It was infantile.
He always justifies bad and badder journalism.
Is your Conscience of a Conservatives still intact or are your conscience more like Red State Fatman Erick Erickson???
Again, care to respond to the article itself, or are you satisfied with slinging personal insults? F'in Trumpettes....
I’m pretty satisfied “slinging” the truth the Trump way that you just don’t like to hear like the rest of spineless GOP weak establishment!!!
Well, what you call “slinging the truth” is, in reality, slinging childish and incoherent personal insults. Just like your savior, The Donald. So you’re learning well, FRiend.
And very clearly YOUR Conscience is the column of FATman Erickson and your cool-aid drinking spineless RINO’s column. Good luck!!!
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