The more I process what happened during the CNN moderated June 27th televised presidential debate, which was viewed by 51 million voters, the angrier I get.

From my point of view, the democrat POTUS Joe Biden who’s competing to be reelected, was placed in a “mission impossible” situation with the CNN News organization’s failure to provide real time fact-checks.

On debate night, CNN won the ratings war but at what cost to US democracy?

CNN should have figured out a way to do real time fact checking, like hiring an independent panel of nonpartisan fact checkers to provide immediate truth assessments. By not taking on this duty, CNN disrespected and did a disservice to all its viewers who’re deciding on who to hire for the top US job with their votes.

If Americans can’t succeed in applying for jobs with resumes full of distortions because companies do fact checking, then how come the GOP MAGA ex-president gets a free pass? The duty of CNN to do fact checking shouldn’t have been evaded by passing the buck to the democrat POTUS Biden who was busy trying to figure out how to respond to the ex-president’s nonsensical fabricated tirades.

CNN’s failure to provide on the spot fact checking, ensures that any professional experienced TV reality performer will always win because in the absence of any evidentiary burden, debaters are free to spew utter nonsense, or even outright lies, without providing any valid, veritable support for their assertions for 90 minutes. Under these circumstances, anyone with less TV showmanship skills always loses. In high school debates, judges would have automatically disqualified the GOP MAGA ex-president from even being a debate team member based on his rude, bullying behavior alone.

See: To serve his country, Donald Trump should leave the race | Editorial

Like numerous previous GOP MAGA presidential contenders, all at younger ages and many who would’ve governed from the White House better than the GOP MAGA ex-president, these political back seat drivers would have been destroyed in this type of debate. Even CEOs like Jeff Bazos would have floundered to where he appeared foolish. Getting beat up by a professional bully is traumatizing and is far from the optimum way to determine who’s best for a very tough job.

Now put yourselves in POTUS Biden’s shoes who’s older, who was suffering from a cold while probably taking cold medication and who had yet to recover from a recent multi-day of meetings in Europe with world leaders. He did what even most competent, younger folks would’ve done; he fell flat on his face.

My next question is, how did the democrat party infrastructure supporting the reelection of the democrat POTUS Joe Biden allow him to be in this no-win set of circumstances called a debate?

For example, POTUS Biden would have much been better off by just calling out his opponent as the liar-in-chief. He could’ve responded that since CNN refuses to adequately do real time fact checking that viewers should go to a particular website for analysis of the GOP MAGA ex-president’s falsehoods.

It was a waste of precious time to overly prep POTUS Biden with lots of data, statistics to be shared on the debate stage instead of how to handle the microphone and how best to deal with a puffed-up buffoon spouting forth an avalanche of outrageous talking points with no basis in fact. The advisers would’ve done much better to just let POTUS Biden be himself.

For the future, democrat operatives should be more empathetic about President Biden’s age at 81 as they figure out a better way to pace his intense campaign schedule. As for the September 2024 scheduled debate, the president’s campaign aids need to demand that real time fact checking occur as a minimum requirement. Then the GOP MAGA ex-president will probably be the one to voluntarily bow out of debating.

Barring any serious medical issues that could interfere with POTUS Biden’s decision-making capabilities and post one poor debate performance, President Joe Biden, a decent, honorable, truthful man with 50+ years of admiral governmental service, deserves to be given the benefit of the doubt if he decides to continue to vie for the presidency. At this point, any non -Trump voter should ignore all the commentary by the pundits prematurely writing his eulogy.

See: Biden’s Doctor Says He Is ‘Healthy’ and ‘Vigorous / NYT

Yes, he and his advisers will have to work overtime to convince the debate’s 51 million viewers that this debate fubar by POTUS Biden was a one-time event and not at all a true reflection of how he typically performs his job by competently fighting to protect US democracy, keeping the coalition of world leaders intact who’re backing democracies, continuing to improve the living conditions of all Americans while propping up the US economy that’s still in recovery from the COVID pandemic era.

 

As per “Letters from an American,” dated : June 27, 2024, Heather Cox Richardson writes:

“Immediately after the debate, there were calls for Biden to drop out of the race, but aside from the fact that the only time a presidential candidate has ever done that—in 1968—it threw the race into utter confusion and the president’s party lost, Biden needed to demonstrate that his mental capacity is strong in order to push back on the Republicans’ insistence that he is incapable of being president. That, he did, thoroughly. Biden began with a weak start but hit his stride as the evening wore on. Indeed, he covered his bases too thoroughly, listing the many accomplishments of his administration in such a hurry that he was sometimes hard to understand.”

“In contrast, Trump came out strong but faded and became less coherent over time. His entire performance was either lies or rambling non-sequiturs. He lied so incessantly throughout the evening that it took CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale almost 3 minutes, speaking quickly, to get through the list.”

(The GOP MAGA ex-president) “responded to the calling out of his own criminal convictions by saying that Biden “could be a convicted felon,” and falsely stating: “This man is a criminal.” And, repeatedly, Trump called America a “failing nation” and described it as a hellscape.”

“It went on and on, and that was the point. This was not a debate. It was Trump using a technique that actually has a formal name, the Gish gallop, although I suspect he comes by it naturally. It’s a rhetorical technique in which someone throws out a fast string of lies, non-sequiturs, and specious arguments, so many that it is impossible to fact-check or rebut them in the amount of time it took to say them. Trying to figure out how to respond makes the opponent look confused, because they don’t know where to start grappling with the flood that has just hit them.”

This blog was updated on 7/1/2024.