If you thought Chris Wallace was running interference for Joe Biden during Monday’s presidential debate with President Trump, wait until the debate in Miami on October 15.
The next moderator, C-SPAN’s Sean Scully, is a Democrat veteran of Capitol Hill and former legman for Biden.
Understandably, the Trump campaign isn’t happy about the arrangement, and the Commission on Presidential Debates is likely wondering what to do. Will it permit another anti-Trump partisan to moderate a debate, or find someone who can do the job fairly.
Luv For the Veep
Conservatives have complained bitterly that Chris Wallace of Fox News, who moderated the first debate, repeatedly shut down Trump and didn’t press Biden with tough questions.
Trump did what he had to do: debate two liberals instead of just the one running for president. That was bad enough, but now, it appears, he’ll have to do it again if Biden groupie Scully moderates.
And Scully didn’t just work for Biden. He also toiled for the other Democrat who helped take down U.S. Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork.
In 2011, Scully detailed his past in politics and rise in journalism for The Cable Center:
You know, it was pretty traditional. I came to school in Washington, D.C., went to American University and had a couple of internships. I worked for Joe Biden, Senator from Delaware at the time, as an intern, so I had my first chance to really see politics up close in Washington, D.C. I worked for Senator Kennedy. I was involved in his ill-fated campaign in 1980, which was interesting; having worked as a high school student in the Carter campaign in 1976, I saw from two different perspectives.
Now he hosts C-SPAN’s Washington Journal.
Tweets Reprised
Whatever Scully’s bona fides at C-SPAN, he isn’t just an impartial journalist who happened to intern for Biden and Kennedy, then shed his ideological biases.
That shows in a tweet from 2016, as Fox News reported:
Replied Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller:
Even worse, Scully exposed himself as an anti-Trump partisan when he retweeted an op-ed from the New York Times’s faux conservative, David Brooks.
“Trump’s supporters deserve respect,” Brooks generously wrote. “They are left out of this economy. But Trump himself? No, not Trump, not ever.”
Scully retyped Brooks’s imprecation: “No, not Trump, not ever.”
Amazingly, though Scully has worked for C-SPAN since 1992, his open partisanship apparently isn’t a problem for his employer.
Still, Scully crosses his heart and hopes to die if he isn’t fair to his former boss’s opponent, Fox reported.
At the beginning of September, Scully did an interview in which he committed to being fair “across the board.” He said his training as a backup moderator in 2016 helped him prepare for his role this election. Scully’s debate will be a town hall format at the Center for the Performing Arts in Miami, Florida.
“The town hall meeting is unique because it’s really more of a facilitator role, but to listen carefully, to follow up, to make sure that the president, that Joe Biden … follow the rules, that they don’t filibuster,” he said. “And my hope really is that we’re going to ask very direct questions, and we’re going to push for very direct answers, and to make sure it’s fair across the board.”
Next Moderator
Moderating the third debate — October 22 at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee — will be NBC’s Kristen Welker, another Biden booster.
An example of Welker’s commitment to honesty was her report that Biden’s running mate would be radical leftist Kamala Harris. Harris, recall, participated in the character assassination of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing.
Welker described Harris this way:
Harris had a rapid ascent in California’s legal circles, rising from county prosecutor to San Francisco District Attorney, to California Attorney General, cultivating a moderate political reputation and inviting criticism from some liberals that she was insufficiently progressive on criminal justice issues.
Aside from offering the ludicrous claim that abortion fanatic Harris is a moderate, Welker did not, of course, explain how Harris’ “rapid ascent” occurred. Harris rocketed to the top after she served in several positions under Willie Brown, the flamboyant and married speaker of California’s House of Representatives.
And the day that Biden and his wife, Jill, were to appear at the Democratic National Convention, Welker ignored the Daily Mail’s report that Biden and his wife had an affair while she was married to another man.
