Donald Trump vs. Hillary And Biased Lester Holt

Well, the first debate is in the books.  Hillary came out very prepared and polished.  It was obvious she knew all the leftist media talking points against Trump was prepared to throw them in whenever she could.  Trump is not a politician.  He didn't speak in political speak, and he did well the first part of the debate (and this was agreed on CNN - Clinton's own network).

Lester Holt Was Biased

What did Lester ask Hillary that was tough? He asked Trump four tough questions:

1) He asked Trump about his taxes.

2) He asked Trump about the birth certificate.

3) He pressed Trump on his opposition to Iraq.

4) He asked Trump about his comments on Hillary not having the "look" of being President and then proceeded to repeat Meghan Kelly's point about Trump calling women pigs, etc.

5) He rebuffed Trump on stop and frisk (saying that stop and frisk was found unConstitutional). He responded, but to it, but still...

Also, I don't know how many times Hillary Clinton was allowed to ramble on, but Trump would attempt to respond, and Lester would say something like, "Only a few seconds, Mr. Trump," or "We really have to move on, Mr. Trump, and get to the next question."

CNN keeps saying that Trump went into the weeds. Well, Trump was responding to Lester's questions.
Things you didn't hear:

1) He never asked Hillary about Benghazi.

2) He never asked Hillary about her emails.

3) He never asked Hillary about pay for play.

In fact, after I wrote this post right after the debate concluded, the RNC themselves put out a list of 10 things that Lester neglected to bring up to Hillary.

The list went as follows:

1. The 5 Aides Given Immunity By The FBI Or Her Reckless Secret Server
2. The Multiple False Statements About How Her “Extremely Careless” Actions Endangered Our National Security
3. Her “Basket Of Deplorables” Insult Toward Millions of Americans
4. Clinton Foundation Pay To Play Accusations
5. Her Failures And Lies On The Attacks In Benghazi
6. Her Support For Obamacare
7. Her Deep Support From And Ties To Wall Street
8. Veterans Affairs Scandal She Arrogantly Called “Not Widespread”
9. Her Comments About Wanting To Put The Coal Industry Out Of Work
10. Her Deception And Lack Of Transparency On Her Health

 Various outlets did stories on the biased coverage.  This is key from Breitbart:

A close analysis of the transcript of the first presidential debate on Monday night shows that moderator Lester Holt of NBC News asked 15 questions exclusively of Republican nominee Donald Trump, and only 2 questions exclusively of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

The analysis, posted on social media and drawing intense attention on Reddit, walks through the entire 90-minute exchange and notes Holt asked six questions of both candidates, in addition to Trump’s 15 and Clinton’s two.

(Snip)

Moreover, most of Holt’s questions prompts were overly friendly to Clinton’s point of view, while hostile to Trump. In one of the last exchanges of the debate, for example, Holt strongly implied Trump was a sexist when asking about a past criticism he had made about Clinton lacking a “presidential look.” He also introduced the opening topic of the debate by praising Obama’s economic performance, ignoring the fact that growth never reached 3% under Obama and labor force participation has fallen.

Breitbart News noted that Holt intervened several times to “fact-check” Trump — often erroneously — while never checking Clinton’s facts, even when she was completely wrong, as in her claim that she had never flip-flopped on the Trans-Pacific Partnership. In addition, the Washington Examiner‘s Eddie Scarry notes Holt asked Trump six follow-up questions, and none of Clinton, leaving Trump “having to debate the highly anticipated event’s moderator as well as his Democratic opponent.”

http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2016/09/27/lester-holt-asked-trump-15-questions-clinton-2-questions/

This is from the Daily Caller:

Holt interrupted Trump a whopping 41 times, either to “fact-check” the Republican nominee, or to ask a follow-up question. Clinton was only interrupted seven times during the course of the 90-minute debate.

 http://dailycaller.com/2016/09/27/holt-interrupted-trump-way-more-than-clinton-in-debate/#ixzz4LZUQ0jYu

 

 

Moderator Lester Holt interrupted members of the crowd who cheered on Republican nominee Donald Trump Monday, but allowed the crowd to cheer for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the debate.

 
http://dailycaller.com/2016/09/26/holt-hushes-crowd-cheering-for-trump-lets-crowd-cheer-for-clinton/#ixzz4LZVit6xr

As I said, she was polished and rehearsed. Trump dropped some opportunities with regard to this. Here are some:

One example is how he handled the birther issue being called racist. There were other ways that could have been addressed like bringing up white Presidents questioned over their birth, explained he questioned Ted Cruz, explained why it wasn't racist, explained concerns with why people questioned birth certificate, etc.

Another example was about his comments about women. That was not good that he went for the Rosie O'Donnell line. He should have talked all about how he hires women at the Trump Organization and his record there, about the women who support him, about how she takes money from countries that are terrible to women, about the Benghazi and angel moms, about the woman whose life is ruined because Hillary defended her rapist when she was 12, etc. He should have talked about what he will do for women and how his policies will help women.

A third example was about Saudi Arabia when she said he wanted them to get a nuclear weapon. He should have talked about how she takes money from them. That could have led into pay to play.
A fourth example was taxes where he let her get away with saying he doesn't pay taxes. After the debate they asked him, and he said that he does pay federal taxes. He should have talked about the waste with our tax dollars too.

Benghazi, the emails, and pay for play weren't brought up by Lester, but Trump should have tried to work them in more. Of course, that's hard when Lester seemed to let her drive the conversation by always telling Trump he had to move on.

The focus groups on two networks, one being CNN, showed Hillary winning the debate 18-2 and 16-6. The CNN poll after the debate which had a much larger Dem sample, showed her winning by a large margin.  That said, 10 online polls from various news organizations overwhelmingly showed him winning.

Trump's Online Debate Polls (from Trump's own Twitter)

It was his first debate. CNN's panel universally agreed he did a great job at the beginning on trade and the economy. His team a couple weeks to prep and be ready for the next one. She is a good debater, but she has a lot of canned lines. He has a good feel now for how she is going to handle things, and I think he can prepare for the next one. Hopefully the moderator is more balanced and puts her on the defensive more with some tough questions her way. Watching her smirk as he got tough questions while she got none was disgusting.