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Partisan media this week has been fixated on Thursday night’s first presidential debate — and how their favored candidate might prevail.
Many conservative media outlets have parroted former President Donald J. Trump by questioning the fairness of the debate, which CNN will host, and President Biden’s suitability for it. Several publications piled on Trump’s longstanding criticism that CNN is biased against him. Many also echoed Trump’s baseless claim that Biden was under the influence of performance-enhancing drugs at the event.
Liberal media criticized Trump and his campaign for making claims on CNN and for the jabs about medication, saying both were thrown out of desperation. They also suggested the debate could show Americans that Trump was an erratic candidate.
Below you can read how some of these media reported on the run-up to the debate:
FROM THE RIGHT
Newsmax
Trump has long criticized CNN for reporting he sees as hostile to him. Those concerns were stoked by the political right this week when CNN abruptly ended an interview with a Trump campaign spokeswoman on Monday after she criticized the network’s commentators.
During the interview with CNN host Kasie Hunt, the Trump campaign’s Karoline Leavitt accused Jake Tapper, a CNN host who is one of the debate’s two moderators, of being biased against Mr. Trump. She said Mr. Tapper had often compared Mr. Trump to Adolf Hitler.
Numerous right-wing media outlets, including Fox News and The Daily Wire, ran stories attacking the network for silencing Ms. Leavitt’s campaign and Mr. Trump.
On Newsmax, hosts and guests suggested the incident was a signal that the network was treating Trump unfairly during the debate.
“This is a precursor to Thursday,” Hilton Beckham, communications director for the America First Policy Institute, said at a meeting on Monday interview on the Newsmax show “National Report.” “I think the eyes should be a little more on the CNN moderators.”
“The way they shut her down so quickly and actually ended the segment gave me a strange feeling that they were orchestrated, that they had to end it,” said Bianca de la Garza, a Newsmax anchor. said Monday in another program, ‘Newsline’. She has not presented any evidence to support this claim.
FROM RIGHT
Breitbart
Mr Trump has repeatedly suggested that Mr Biden needs medication to perform well during Thursday’s debate.
Trump’s campaign also asked Biden to submit to a drug test before the debate. Biden’s campaign rejected the request, saying in a statement that Trump “resorted to desperate, patently false lies.”
Breitbart, a conservative outlet, suggested in an article on Tuesday that Mr. Biden was not in good health. Under the headline “Debate Prep: Donald Trump Will Agree to Drug Test if Joe Biden Does,” the writer, Wendell Husebo, pointed to several ailments noted in Mr. Biden’s latest physical exam, such as a mild heart rhythm disorder and elevated cholesterol.
“The health problems could explain why he has trouble staying upright,” Mr Husebo said wrote, referring to instances in which Mr. Biden had stumbled or fallen during his presidency. The physical person described Mr. Biden as “healthy.”
FROM THE LEFT
Slate
Some progressive media outlets have portrayed Mr. Trump as desperate and fearful that he would lose to Mr. Biden in the debate, even suggesting that his campaign was trying to raise expectations for Mr. Biden’s appearances.
Jim Newell wrote Tuesday for Slate, a liberal news site, that the Trump campaign was trying to avoid the “trap” of attacking Biden so hard that it would ultimately lower expectations for his opponent’s performance. If that happened, voters might think Biden won the debate.
“Members of Team Trump, as well as the candidate himself, have recognized this trend and are trying to raise expectations for Biden,” Mr. Newell said. wroteHe pointed out that after repeatedly doubting Mr Biden’s suitability for a lengthy debate, Mr Trump recently changed his tone and said he did not want to “underestimate” his opponent.
FROM LEFT
The New Republic
The New Republic, a liberal outlet, has published more than a half-dozen articles critical of Trump’s approach to the debate in the past week.
An article on Tuesday appeared with the headline “Panicized Trump tries another card to get out of debate.” In the article, Edith Olmsted writes wrote that Mr. Trump’s call for Mr. Biden to be drug tested was an attempt to skip the debate entirely.
“All this fabricated drug drama, as well as claims that CNN will host a biased debate, definitely stinks of desperation to get the former president out of Thursday night’s presidential showdown,” Ms. Olmsted wrote.
Other headlines on the site included “The Insanely Idiot Ways Trump Is Prepping for the Biden Debate,” “Trump’s Wild Biden Debate Conspiracy Exposes Its Own Hypocrisy,” and “MAGA’s New Conspiracy to Defend Trump from the Biden Debate Is the Wildest Yet.”
