Chris Wallace’s lack of impartiality as Debate Moderator.

For my main reaction on the first 2020 Presidential Debate, see this article.

For the most shocking examples of the lack of impartiality of the moderator Chris Wallace, these examples should suffice.

1. Wallace insisted on a very long segment about the triviality of Trump’s tax returns. There is no allegation of tax evasion, and obviously as a businessman Trump did not set his own tax rate nor tax rules, so it is no more than an attempt to appeal to people’s jealousy about how much or how little taxes a rich man paid. On the other hand, Wallace urged Trump to get back to the important issues the American people want to hear when Trump raised Hunter Biden’s allegations of corruption. Of course Trump had to raise them since Wallace never would have. Here, Trump wasn’t picking on a 16 year old son of the candidate for wearing braces, as Wallace tried to paint it, but rather raising very troubling issues of corruption at the highest levels, involving many millions of dollars, Joe Biden, his adult son, Ukrainian oligarchs and Chinese communist party officials. Joe was free to deny these, explain them or respond to them as he saw fit, but Wallace wouldn’t even allow them as a topic. For anyone interested, Mayor Rudy Giuliani has done some excellent work in uncovering some of these activities. Glen Beck also has hit some it on the nail.
2. In literally back to back questions, Trump was accused of causing the economic recession by “his” lockdown, and then immediately accused of wanting to open up the country, while Biden, who is “responsible” wants to keep it locked down. The obvious hypocrisy if not insanity of the left criticizing the right about the lockdowns and the inevitable economic damage the right endlessly warned about (myself probably among the very first) should have been prime target for further questioning from any moderator of caliber. Instead, Wallace helped Biden set up this double punch on Trump without allowing Trump the chance to properly defend the absurd accusation. The most shocking part of this charade was Biden asking how many people had to experience an elder parent or grandparent die without having been allowed to see their loved ones (leveraging the fact that many older people die on a daily basis, with or without covid19). The left is the god of lockdowns and the very source of this scenario playing out countless times, including having occurred closer to me than I would have liked. Even for politics as usual, there is a great shamelessness in spreading undue panic and demanding lockdowns despite their consequences including economic ones (“lives, not economy” remember?), then continuing to demand never ending lockdowns (at least while Trump is President) and then criticize the other side not only for the very same economic damage he warned about but of the lockdowns themselves! Now, in this topic in general, Trump is in a delicate tight-rope, because he has paid lip service to the Covd19 hype and in fact locked down the country to begin with. He has been unable to take a hard opposite line to the leftists on this issue, and so it is difficult to defend himself on some of this. Had he read more of the Lighthouse early on, perhaps he would not have that issue. On all of this however, Wallace was complicit with Biden.
3. The pretentious call on Trump to denounce white supremacists and right wing militia (without ever of course asking Biden to denounce antifa or anyone else). I addressed this in the main article, and show what an appropriate response from Trump could have been, but this was nothing more than bait for misquoting headlines against Trump, and that is precisely what it became. While the debate was chaotic and painful to watch in general, Trump was not bad on message at all, and the only thing that the mainstream leftist media is able to quote.. I mean misquote over and over about is from this segment. It was a mere setup to allow pundits to declare that Trump refused to denounce white supremacists. The lack of impartiality was in the debate was not even subtle, it was glaring and shameful, though not surprising.