By: John Daniel Davidson – September 11, 2024 – The Federalist
By disorienting and demoralizing us with endless, brazen lies, these ‘debates’ make it even harder for Americans to practice self-government.
My cmnt: Even with Camela being spoon-fed questions and answers she still looked like the dope she is. No way will she be our next president.
Tuesday night during the presidential debate between former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, the fact-checks were flying, but only in one direction. As expected, ABC News moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis were criminally biased, making the debate effectively three-on-one against Trump and practically amounting to an in-kind donation to the Harris campaign.
The lying and gaslighting were so brazen from Harris, and the “fact-checking” from Muir and Davis so lop-sided (they failed even once to push back or correct any of Harris’ obvious falsehoods), that the entire spectacle eventually took on an air of unreality. It was bizarre to see it happening live on the air. By the end, my main takeaway was that the purpose of these debates, besides the media’s obvious goal of boosting Harris and hurting Trump, is to confuse and demoralize the American people by distorting reality and flooding the internet with lies, making it impossible to know what’s true and what’s not.
At one point, Harris recited a litany of the most obvious, thoroughly debunked lies about Trump, from the “fine people on both sides” comment on Charlottesville, to the “bloodbath” remark about the auto industry, to claiming he “incited” the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6. Anyone can go online and check for themselves that these things are all hoaxes; they never happened. But the moderators said nothing.
They again said nothing when Harris lied about her views on fracking, gun control, and defunding the police. Nor did they say anything when she erroneously claimed there are no American troops in combat zones (three U.S. soldiers were killed in a drone attack in Jordan earlier this year, and seven were injured in a raid against ISIS in Iraq last month), that police officers died on Jan. 6, that third-trimester abortions never happen, or that the Trump tax cuts disproportionately benefited the wealthy. On and on, lie after lie.
With Trump, it was of course much different. Muir and Davis routinely inserted themselves into the debate under the guise of “fact-checking” the former president, even on trivial matters, to the point that at times it devolved into a side debate between Trump and the moderators.
But again, media bias is baked in, and wasn’t a surprise. As Megyn Kelly noted, “The person who runs ABC News,” Dana Walden, “is a close personal friend of Kamala Harris,” and the moderators “did exactly what their bosses wanted them to do.” We’ve known all along that Trump isn’t just running against Harris and the DNC; he’s running against a machine that includes the entire corporate press, the administrative state, the intelligence agencies, Big Tech, and even Taylor Swift.
What was different about this debate, though, was how brazen the bias was, how unconcerned ABC seemed to be even with presenting the appearance of journalistic integrity or fairness. It was shocking to see it. And the effect of it isn’t necessarily to move the needle on the election one way or the other. It’s unlikely that anyone, whatever his views, will be persuaded by anything that was said or done during this farce of a debate.
No, the real effect is to erode our ability to function as a coherent polity, to maintain a democratic form of government or anything close to self-government. You can’t do it like this, especially not in our digital era. The lies and distortions and undisguised bias get fed directly into social media, which instantly becomes a feeding frenzy of claim and counterclaim, replete with clips and commentaries that serve only to compound the distorting effect of the debate itself.
That’s what happened Tuesday night. Corporate media commentators like Chris Hayes of MSNBC declared Harris was “cleaning his clock.” California Gov. Gavin Newsom later used the exact same phrase. Meanwhile, commentators on the right were apoplectic about the bias from ABC and the dishonesty from Harris, and they furiously posted evidence debunking her lies and omissions.
You can’t engage in meaningful debate this way. You need a bare minimum of shared reality for that. The conduct of ABC and the rest of the corporate press is making it impossible, which is why we would be better off without these presidential debates.
If they’re going to be like this, then they’re just contributing to the disintegration of our polity by distorting reality and making political discourse impossible. Instead of a necessary and salutary part of our national elections, they are poison in the bloodstream of our national life. Trump, at least, should refuse to take part in them going forward, and the rest of us should refuse to watch if he does.
John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. He is the author of Pagan America: the Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.
25 Lies Kamala Harris Told In Her Debate Against Trump
By: Shawn Fleetwood – September 11, 2024 – The Federalist – 9 min read
Here are some of the biggest falsehoods Harris told during her debate with Trump.
Taking a page out of her boss’s playbook, Vice President Kamala Harris told major whoppers during her Tuesday night debate against Donald Trump. With help from left-wing activists masquerading as debate moderators, Harris whitewashed her extreme record, lied about Trump’s policy positions, and more.
Here are some of the biggest falsehoods she told throughout the evening.
1. ‘Middle-Class Kid’
Harris claimed that she grew up a “middle-class kid.” That is not true. As previously noted by journalist Megyn Kelly, Harris’ father was a professor at Stanford University, while her mother was a biomedical scientist at UC Berkley.
2. Trump’s Tax Cuts
Harris falsely insinuated that the 2017 tax cuts approved by the Trump administration disproportionately benefited America’s billionaires and corporations.
That is not true. Data produced by the IRS has shown that “on average all income brackets benefited substantially from the Republicans’ tax reform law, with the biggest beneficiaries being working and middle-income filers, not the top 1 percent,” according to Justin Haskins, writing in The Hill.
3. Trump ‘Sales Tax’
Harris claimed Trump will implement a “sales tax.” Trump has not pledged to do such a thing if elected president.
4. Jan. 6
Harris contended that the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol was the “worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”
Contrary to Harris’ claim, the J6 events did not put American self-governance in jeopardy, nor did it expose Americans to risks like those experienced during World War I, the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor, or World War II, to name a few.
5. Project 2025
Harris claimed Trump will implement Project 2025 if elected. Trump has repeatedly said he has nothing to do with Project 2025.
6. Just Restoring Roe
When asked whether she supports any restrictions on abortion, Harris dodged the question, instead claiming that she “absolutely support[s] reinstating the protections of Roe v Wade.”
Moments before that, however, Harris pledged to sign legislation such as the ill-named “Women’s Health Protection Act,” which would codify abortion through all nine months of pregnancy. In addition to her history of co-sponsoring the original version of that legislation, Harris also voted against protections for babies born alive after botched abortions.
7. Pro-Life Laws Criminalize Miscarriages, Ectopic Pregnancies
Harris claimed that several states have “Trump abortion bans” that “make it criminal for a doctor or nurse to provide health care,” threaten women with prison time, and “make no exception, even for rape or incest.”
The lifesaving laws designed to protect thousands of innocents every year from elective abortions, however, do not criminalize treatments for spontaneous loss or complications. In fact, every single pro-life policy on the books includes exceptions for abortion when it is deemed necessary to save the life of a pregnant woman.
8. Trump’s Abortion Stance
Trump, Harris told Americans on Tuesday night, will sign a national abortion ban and hire a national “abortion … monitor that would be monitoring your pregnancies, your miscarriages” if he is elected.
The Republican’s 2024 abortion platform, however, explicitly states decisions about ending life in the womb should be left “up to the states” and mentions nothing about crowning a national pro-life coordinator. The GOP presidential nominee has also sworn multiple times that he would not sign federal legislation curbing abortion.
9. Ninth Month Abortions Don’t Exist
Harris also used her time on the debate stage to assert that “nowhere in America is a woman carrying a pregnancy to term and asking for an abortion.”
“That is not happening. It’s insulting to the women of America,” Harris claimed.
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, however, shows that thousands of abortions are performed after 21 weeks gestation. The CDC’s findings do not include reporting from at least four abortion-friendly states (California, Maryland, New Hampshire, and New Jersey), which suggests the number of late-term abortions in the U.S. is likely much higher.
10. Border Bill
Harris claimed a congressional border bill proposed earlier this year would have stemmed illegal immigration and fentanyl at the U.S. southern border.
That statement is categorically false. The bipartisan measure would have enshrined the existing invasion into federal law.
11. SCOTUS Immunity Ruling
Harris mischaracterized the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity, claiming the decision would mean that Trump “would essentially be immune from any misconduct if he were to enter the White House again.”
The vice president’s claim is misleading at best. While a majority of justices determined that a U.S. president possesses “absolute immunity” for “actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority” and “at least presumptive immunity” for “official acts,” they separately noted that “[t]here is no immunity for unofficial acts.”
The justices further remanded the Biden-Harris Justice Department’s get-Trump lawfare back to the lower courts to determine whether the actions alleged by Special Counsel Jack Smith constitute “official acts.”
12. Fracking Ban
Kamala Harris claimed she made herself “very clear in 2020.”
“I will not ban fracking,” she said.
But her position was clearly against fracking as she ran for her party’s 2020 presidential nomination when she said, “There is no question I’m in favor of banning fracking.”
13. Minnesota Rioters Bail Fund
Harris seemingly denied that she undertook efforts to bail out left-wing rioters following the 2020 death of George Floyd.
“She went out in Minnesota and wanted to let criminals that killed people, that burned down Minneapolis — she went out and raised money to get them out of jail,” Trump said, as Harris shook her head.
As The Federalist’s Jordan Boyd previously noted, “Accused rapists, repeat offenders, and rioters alike benefitted in June 2020 when Harris encouraged her social media followers to donate to a bail fund dedicated to those arrested for their months-long, $2 billion siege of cities like Minneapolis.”
14. Trump’s Role in J6
Harris claimed that Trump “incited” the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
That is false. Trump specifically told protestors to “peacefully and patriotically make [their] voices heard” and sought to deploy 10,000 National Guard troops to the Capitol ahead of Congress’s certification of the 2020 election results.
15. J6 Deaths
Harris claimed that “some” police officers died as a result of the demonstrations at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
That is false. For example, medical examiners determined that Officer Brian Sicknick died of natural causes — not from the violence perpetrated on Jan. 6.
16. ‘Fine People’ Hoax
Harris repeated the debunked lie that Trump praised white supremacists marching in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 when he said there were “fine people on both sides.”
This is false, as Trump was referring to both sides of the debate on whether to allow historic monuments to remain standing.
17. ‘Bloodbath’ Hoax
Harris regurgitated the false narrative that Trump claimed there would be a “bloodbath” if he loses this November.
The vice president took Trump out of context. The 45th president was not calling for violence but was discussing the economic disaster that awaits Americans if Democrats win the election.
18. Trump’s NATO Comments
Harris distorted the former president’s remarks by claiming he told Russia it could “do whatever the hell [it] wants” regarding Ukraine.
Harris took the former president out of context. Trump’s remarks came during a South Carolina rally, during which he recounted a story from when he was president and speaking with a NATO member. Trump purportedly indicated that he would withhold U.S. support if the member didn’t pay its minimum defense spending obligations.
“‘You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent?’” Trump recalled telling the unidentified NATO member. “‘No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You gotta pay. You gotta pay your bills.’”
19. Autocrats’ Preferences for President
Harris claimed that the world’s autocratic leaders are pulling for Trump to win. While there is no definitive way for Harris to know this for most leaders, Russian President Vladimir Putin did publicly throw his support behind Harris’ presidential bid last week.
20. Combat Zones
Harris claimed that “there is not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone in any war zone around the world [for] the first time this century.”
That isn’t true. As noted by former U.S. Rep. Peter Meijer, R-Mich., the United States has “troops in Syria and Iraq who are routinely attacked by Iran-backed militias.”
“Three soldiers were killed in Jordan earlier this year!” he wrote on X.
21. Blaming Trump for Biden’s Botched Afghanistan Withdrawal
Harris attempted to pin the Biden-Harris administration’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal, which got 13 U.S.service members killed, on Trump.
“Donald Trump, when he was president, negotiated one of the weakest deals you can imagine,” Harris claimed.
That isn’t true. According to a report recently released by Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, “The evidence proves President Biden’s decision to withdraw all U.S. troops was not based on the security situation, the Doha Agreement, or the advice of his senior national security advisors or our allies. Rather, it was premised on his longstanding and unyielding opinion that the United States should no longer be in Afghanistan.”
22. Gun Confiscation
Harris claimed that she doesn’t support mandatory gun confiscation.
That is false. She has openly expressed support for such a policy.
23. Trump’s Foreign Policy Record
Harris claimed, “Donald Trump is weak and wrong on national security and foreign policy.”
That is false. Under Trump’s administration the U.S. southern border was secure, and America facilitated multiple peace agreements between Israel and Arab states. Under the Biden-Harris administration, Russia invaded Ukraine, Iran-backed Hamas launched a terrorist attack on Israel, and China has ramped up its threats toward Taiwan, the Philippines, and Japan.
24. Defunding the Police
Harris shook her head and claimed, “That’s not true,” when confronted by Trump over her past support for defunding the police.
As noted by ABC News, however, Harris previously expressed support for “reimagin[ing]” policing and “redirect[ing] resources” from police toward what the outlet described as “other areas of government [such as] schools and small businesses.”
25. IVF
In an attempt to link Democrats’ abortion goals with in vitro fertilization, Harris claimed that “under Donald Trump’s abortion bans … couples who pray and dream of having a family are being denied IVF treatments.”
Trump, however, has openly touted IVF and even promised that he would make taxpayers fund it.
The Federalist’s Jordan Boyd, Logan Washburn, and Tristan Justice contributed to this report.
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
The Media’s Hyper-Enthusiasm For Kamala’s Debate Performance Is, Of Course, Fake
By: Eddie Scarry – September 11, 2024 – 3 min read – The Federalist
It wouldn’t be a hard sell that Kamala Harris “exceeded expectations” or “over performed” in last night’s debate, but the surest sign that she did neither is the immediate sticky, slavish post-debate media coverage. I’m convinced all of it was pre-written and they were going to call Kamala a warrior queen even if she had literally soiled herself on stage.
New York Times “The Daily” podcast host Michael Barbaro said Kamala “dominated and enraged Donald Trump.” Mike Allen at Axios said Kamala “delivered for Democrats.” The Washington Post heralded her “sharp, fiery” performance.
Politico embarrassingly dubbed the night an “alpha female debate,” and its “Playbook” newsletter laid it on so thick, you’d swear they let Kamala write it herself. “HARRIS WINS,” it said. “If there’s any one word to describe the secret to Trump’s success in business and politics, it’s dominance.” In case you missed it the first time, Politico wrote again, “there was a dominant presence on stage in Philadelphia, and it sure wasn’t Trump.”
A normal person who actually watched the debate, regardless of party affiliation, might have come away thinking either candidate eked out a win or possibly neither did. Without accusing him of being normal, Elon Musk, who has endorsed Trump, said Kamala “exceeded most peoples’ expectations.”
But what it wasn’t was a decisive victory for Kamala. Even with non-stop, highly generous help from the host network’s two Democrat moderators, literally turning the affair into a three-against-one brawl, the vice president struggled. How could she not? Her campaign is attempting to make her appear new when she’s not only currently occupying the White House but she wholeheartedly champions her administration’s dismal record. She’s pushing the triangle block into the circle hole with hopes that the media will help even if the whole thing cracks.
Reuters, to its credit, ran a story on 10 American voters who said before the debate they were undecided on the candidates, but afterward, most of them, six, said they were either committed to Trump or leaning towards him.
So much for “DOMINATED.”
The New York Times the next morning ran an unusually self-aware story under the headline, “Pundits Said Harris Won the Debate. Undecided Voters Weren’t So Sure.” At the very bottom it described the sentiment of a Trump-leaning voter who watched the debate.
“As he watched post-debate commentary on cable news, Mr. Henderson said he bristled at the pundits who widely panned Mr. Trump’s performance,” the article said. “Had they watched the same debate, he wondered?”
A media with the slightest capacity for self-reflection would say to themselves, “Hmm, maybe we’re a little too preoccupied with our personal political preferences and not considering a wider variety of possible perspectives.” But that’s not our media. They’re doing the same thing now that they’ve tried doing in the last two presidential elections — declare a winner before a single vote is even cast. They’ll say and do everything they can to drag Kamala across the finish line.
Eddie Scarry is the D.C. columnist at The Federalist and author of “Liberal Misery: How the Hateful Left Sucks Joy Out of Everything and Everyone.”
Lord Buckbeak: "Will you come into my parlor?," said the Spider to the Fly. 