I don’t watch the right-wing propaganda that is served cold on Fox News 24/7, but I’ll bet a lot of it sounds like what was inflicted on America during Tuesday night’s vice-presidential debate on CBS-TV, where they let it be known beforehand that both the truth and their audience were going to be the only two guaranteed casualties by night’s end.
This ratings-grab featured Donald Trump's running mate, JD Vance, and Kamala Harris’s No. 2, Tim Walz.
The show was moderated by two bought-off news-readers at CBS, Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan, who willingly agreed to surrender their dignity and journalistic chops for the honor of asking scripted questions, and ignoring the answers, no matter how completely absurd they were.
Vance is a clear-eyed liar, er, lawyer, who proved beyond all reasonable doubt that he will say literally anything, especially when given the license to do so by an alleged news operation that wants us to believe they care about their journalistic credibility.
In this sorry case, Walter Cronkite’s old stomping grounds, CBS-News.
Tim Walz on the other hand, is a former school teacher, coach, and community do-gooder, who seemed a bit over-prepared, nervous, and far too polite to effectively handle what was coming at him from the guy the Grand Wizard of Lying tabbed to replace his former vice president on the ticket, Mike Pence, who he now wants dead.
Before briefly wading into this two-hour assassination of journalism and the truth many of us witnessed Tuesday night, I will hit you with this bold proclamation: I will never watch another so-called “debate” in which the alleged journalists who are supposed to be moderating the thing agree beforehand not to do their jobs. It is truly incredible what these TV people will subjugate themselves to just to get their sweet, shiny mugs in front of a camera.
I willingly allowed myself to be suckered, though, and if you were smart enough not to be, I want to highlight two instances of this horror show that slowly melted the screen of my TV.
In the first, and perhaps most grievous instance, Vance wanted us to believe that the America-attacking Trump participated in the peaceful transfer of power after losing the election by seven million-plus votes to Joe Biden in 2020, and then quietly vacated the White House on January 20, 2021, just like he was supposed to.
Well, my ears almost fell off when I heard that one.
This was like bragging that after taking down the Twin Towers, a very reasonable Osama bin Laden didn't impede with the cleanup efforts.
That the doe-eyed O’Donnell and Brennan had nothing to say about this was truly incredible.
Vance spent the entire evening seemingly emboldened by his ability to say literally anything he wanted and never be called on it. Finally, it was Walz who did his best to do the job of the hosts, and directed this question at the serial liar to his right: “Trump is still saying he didn’t lose the election. Did he lose the 2020 election?”
Vance then shed his seventh coating of snake skin by refusing to answer, and instead bizarrely said this: “Did Kamala Harris censor Americans?”
Walz: “That is a damning non-answer.”
It certainly was, though none of that made the slightest impression on the two dimwits hosting the show, who had made it clear they had places to be besides the vicinity of the truth Tuesday night.
So disgusting was that exchange, I’ll leave it to perhaps the only TV person I can stand these days, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, to speak for me to finish this one off:
“He (JD Vance) will be remembered for that final exchange about, ‘Did Trump lose the election?’ and he doesn’t answer. His technique is to not answer. It makes him the very first vice presidential candidate in history who doesn’t know who won the last presidential election.”
Well done right there, Lawrence.
The second instance that left me literally screaming was when Vance wanted us to believe Trump saved the Affordable Care Act even though he was on the record at least 27,000 times saying he wanted it dead.
And he still wants it dead, to be replaced with the “concept of a plan” that has been orbiting around the wreckage inside his fat head.
“(Donald Trump) could have destroyed the program,” Vance said with a straight face, “Instead, he worked in a bipartisan way to ensure that Americans had access to affordable care."
It’s amazing the paint didn’t melt on the walls of the studio after that whopper. And again, this outright lie went completely unchallenged, and left the perplexed Walz to do his best to politely try to correct all that complete nonsense for the record.
What was really chilling about how this gory evening unfolded was just how easily the blue-eyed Vance knowingly told these outrageous lies. He did it eagerly, and if the Grand Wizard of Lies he is working for didn’t give him a raise after that dastardly performance, he really is that cheap.
(He really is that cheap.)
Most likely, though, Trump is a green-eyed monster today, because he knows the days are long over when he can spin the kind of nuclear-powered slop with the ease and twinkle his young running mate flashed at the cameras Tuesday night.
I am also struck today by the fact that in the wake of January 6, 2021, Trump’s Republican Party appears to have successfully cultivated an entire generation of completely soulless, election-denying psychopaths, who have absolutely no regard for the truth, or our democracy.
It wasn’t so long ago that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was at the head of this (low) class, and was supposed to be the face of the disintegrating party. Well, last night the tiki torch was passed for now to the vice-presidential poser from Ohio, who will say and do literally anything to slide on the ring of power.
None of this would be possible without Fox, and an increasingly failing corporate media, who weigh their success on the size of their bank accounts instead of the golden currency of the truth.
Real irony then, that real news was actually broken by CBS-News in the hours before the debate when they announced that Trump had abruptly dropped out of his scheduled interview with the news program “60 Minutes” Monday.
This was no real surprise, because the fading Trump has been deteriorating before our eyes. His grotesque handlers are doing everything they can to keep their candidate inside the toxic bubble of his repulsive rallies, where he is free to projectile vomit all over his audience whatever it is that is consuming him in that terrible moment.
It is Harris who will sit for her interview with “60 Minutes” Monday, because despite what too many in our broken media have alleged, she is the candidate who has been doing everything possible to make good and damn sure that America hears something it has never needed to hear more:
The truth.
(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. Follow @EarlofEnough)
No Democrat ever, ever again should agree to debating a Republican without live fact checking.
I think … JD Vance is a smooth talking liar without even flinching. Just the kind to pull the wool over daft MAGA supporters. A huge future danger in the event of a deranged Republican Party win.