Ahead of what could well turn out to be a nasty encounter between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump at their first presidential debate on Monday night, their respective campaigns are sparring on what the debate moderator should or should not be doing.
leading the charge, the Clinton campaign wants the moderator, NBC News anchor lester Holt, to fact-check Trump’s assertions and hold him to account, while the Trump campaign, disputing the very premise, also argues that it is not the moderator’s job to get involved in any fact-checking.
In an unprecedented move, the Clinton campaign released a list of 35 questions which it says Trump has not answered to date and would want Holt to draw upon at the debate that will go on for 90 minutes at New York’s Hofstra University. “lester, feel free to borrow them,” the Clinton campaign said.
The questions which it wants Trump to answer centre on his failure to release his tax returns, alleged misuse of a quarter of a million dollars received in charitable donations to pay his legal bills, filing for bureaucracy several times, demonizing immigrants even while hiring foreign workers to build Trump Tower, claiming plan to defeat ISIS without disclosing how and inviting the late libyan dictator Qaddafi to stay in his home once.
Quizzed on the fact-checking issue, Trump’s vice-presidential running mate Mike Pence commented on Sunday that while Trump will “speak the truth”, it is not for debate moderators to actively correct the candidates during the debate.
Trump for his part has been calling Clinton a “liar” at his campaign events, notably on her email saga following her controversial use of a private server as Secretary of State.
Both campaigns are also trying to set the bar low for their own candidates in terms of performance expectations. The Trump campaign has sought to reinforce his image as an “underdog” when it comes to the political world where Clinton has been a major force for nearly three decades.
The Washington Post, meanwhile, followed The New York Times with its own editorial board comment on why Trump should not be elected, arguing: “It is beyond debate that Donald Trump is unfit to be president.” Over the weekend, The Times had endorsed Clinton on the basis of her “intellect, experience, toughness and courage over a career of almost continuous public service”.
Following the endorsement with a separate editorial comment on why Trump should not be elected, The Times on Monday recalled his “bluster, savage mockery of those who challenge him, degrading comments about women, mendacity, crude generalisations about nations and religions” and said: “Our presidents are role models for generations of our children. Is this the example we want for themIJ”
Amid the talk which Trump will be seen at the debate – the “real Trump” or a “new Trump” – The Post commented: “It’s way too late for that. The real Trump has been before the citizenry ever since he announced his candidacy in a rambling jeremiad that blamed Mexico for sending rapists to the United States as illegal immigrants. It has been said that the true test of an ordinary person’s character is how you behave when no one is watching.”
“The corollary standard for a presidential candidate could be: how you behave repeatedly in public, before the one big night when everyone is watching. Even by that more forgiving standard, Trump has already flunked,” The Post asserted.