Kudos to Kristen: Trump Praises Thursday Night's NBC Moderator

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

 

If you’ve watched most any debate involving Donald Trump, you’ve perhaps at some point had the impression he was debating not only the Democratic opponent, but also the moderator.

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Last month’s one-on-one with Chris Wallace in the midst, for example, didn’t go wholly swimmingly:

But Thursday night’s refereeing by NBC News White House correspondent Kristen Welker left many on the Right impressed.

Among that number: Donald Trump.

The 90-minute contest held at Nashville’s Belmont University was a very different experience than that of September 29th’s dust-up.

The President was certainly less aggressive; so goes it as well for the media mediator overseeing the extravaganza.

Trump seemed taken aback — he even offered kind words along the way:

“By the way, so far, I respect very much the way you are handling this, I have to say.”

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And while speaking about Biden Friday afternoon at a rally in Villages, Florida, the Commander-in-Chief paused to give Kristen her due:

“By the way, I got treated, I thought, very fairly by the anchor. I thought. Right? Kristen. I was surprised. She’s been a little bit rough on me over the years. I was surprised.”

Not that NBC’s gone soft:

“But her…network has been crazy. NBC. Concast. CON — Concast. But I thought Kristen did a very good job yesterday. Some people said she interrupted me more than she interrupted sleepy Joe, but that’s because he didn’t have that much to say…”

Twitter saw much of the same, from both sides:

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CNN’s Chris Cillizza put it this way:

There’s no question that the NBC White House correspondent was the most effective moderator of this debate season. (I am including both the other presidential debate as well as the VP debate.)

Back to Chris Wallace, he expressed envy over Presidential Debate #2. But not necessarily in a non-partisan way:

“First of all, I’m jealous. I would’ve liked to have been able to moderate that debate and get a real exchange of views instead of hundreds of interruptions.”

Oh, well — he’s a moderator…not a moderate.

Personally, I agree with the President. I was quite surprised by Kristen’s performance, and between her measured involvement and the tone of discussion, I found the final debate of 2020 to be a breath of fresh air.

The national media are clearly in the tank for Joe, but at least they broadcast a pretty evenhanded display of America’s two very different choices.

Politics has always been polarizing, but this election, it seems to me, is one of particularly extreme options and will decide our trajectory in an unprecedented way.

Hopefully, voters understand the position of both candidates and the real-world effects if their agendas are put into practice.

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That’s wishing for a lot, but so was hoping Thursday night would go so agreeably well.

“It’s not easy,” Trump said Friday. “I thought [Kristen] was fair. I said it to her on the show. I said, ‘I think you’ve handled it very professionally.'”

Do you think Welker was on point? Do you believe the debate changed many minds?

Let us all know in the Comments section.

-ALEX

 

See more pieces from me:

LA Times Heralds Megachurch’s ‘Outbreak’ of COVID in Defiance of Lockdown, and It’s an Insane Use of the Term

Whoa – Democratic Representative Rips Fellow Minnesotan Ilhan Omar: ‘She Doesn’t Belong in Our Party’

High Schooler Gets His Parking Pass Pulled Over a Trump-Trumpeting Elephant

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