OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Fox News anchor Sean Hannity gave rare praise to “fake news CNN” and its moderators for delivering a “fair” presidential debate despite “trashing” former President Donald Trump “for many years.”
After the Thursday showdown, Hannity spoke with Fox News in the spin room and almost managed to give a rare tribute to the CNN crew and hosts, reporters Jake Tapper and Dana Bash. However, he did so while indicating to his MAGA fans that he is still on their side with the automatic “fake” prefix.
Hannity said: “In fairness to fake news CNN, Fake Jake, and Fake Dana, they put aside their prejudice, their hatred towards Donald Trump for the night, and they actually asked questions and waited for answers.”
He continued: “I thought they managed the debate fairly well, something I didn’t expect, considering we’ve been playing the tape of them trashing Donald Trump for many years. So, I guess, credit for one night.”
WATCH:
Fox’s Sean Hannity after the debate:
“Biden was incoherent. This is after a full week of prep, mumbling, bumbling, stumbling, dazed, confused, struggling. You know, he had a brain fart twice during the debate. It was a disaster.”pic.twitter.com/iYmaYKWR7f
— Proud Elephant 🇺🇸🦅 (@ProudElephantUS) June 28, 2024
President Joe Biden is not thinking about withdrawing from the presidential race despite his terrible debate performance and a concerted lobbying campaign from the leftist media to do so, according to CNN’s Kayla Tausche.
CNN anchor John Berman on Friday morning asked: “Lot of questions for the Biden campaign. What are you hearing from the Biden team, Kayla?”
“Well, John, the Biden team as of this moment plans to pack up what few wins they had on the debate stage last night. You’ve already seen some of those packaged and posted on social media, and to move on and focus on what’s coming down the pike,” Tausche began.
“There are no plans, I’m told, for the president to drop out of the race and even further, I’m told that the president is still committed to a second debate in September, which is currently scheduled for September 10 and hosted by ABC News, much along the lines of the rules of the debate that was hosted last night,” Tausche added.
“Now, the adviser that I spoke with said that they’re not putting too much stock in the conversation last night, and that many of the staffers on the campaign and in the White House also worked on President Obama’s reelection in 2012. And they tried to draw the parallel to that first debate. That was a very low performance for President Obama, even he would call it a stinker. And they said that if you had believed the pundits in the wake of that debate, Mitt Romney would be president, would have been president after that,” she continued.
“But of course, the big difference is in the wake of that debate, no one in Obama’s own party was calling for him to resign the office of president. And that is the moment that Democrats find themselves in right now. The mood that I’m hearing from Democrats who are texting this morning is described as fatalistic behind the scenes,” she added.
Tausche concluded: “And while we’ve seen some of these public pronouncements from members of the president’s own party, there is still so much consternation about what happens next and whether the performance aspect of last night can even be fixed going forward. Because if not, that September debate is likely just to be a repeat of what we saw on stage last night, putting Democrats in the same position they’re in right now, even closer to Election Day. That being said, Biden himself did not seem to be fazed by it.”
WATCH:
JUST IN: CNN reports that the Biden campaign is not dropping out and is committed to the second debate in September pic.twitter.com/fgbnZvmGrE
— HOT SPOT (@HotSpotHotSpot) June 28, 2024
The media landscape has erupted in response to President Joe Biden’s horrific performance during the CNN Presidential Debate.
Responses have ranged from “dismal” critiques to outspoken requests from the left for him to get out of the 2024 contest.
Because of Biden’s comments, there have been discussions regarding whether the presumed Democratic nominee should withdraw from the contest to clear the way for an August convention contest for the nomination.
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, a longtime Biden ally, wrote: “I cannot remember a more heartbreaking moment in American presidential campaign politics in my lifetime — precisely because of what it revealed: Joe Biden, a good man and a good president, has no business running for re-election.”
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote on X: “I wish Biden would reflect on this debate performance and then announce his decision to withdraw from the race, throwing the choice of Democratic nominee to the convention. Someone like @gretchenwhitmer or @SherrodBrown or @SecRaimondo could still jump in and beat Trump,” Kristof added, referring to Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, and Biden’s Commerce Sec. Gina Raimondo.”
CNN’s John King highlighted the “very aggressive panic in the Democratic Party” that started in the early stages of the debate.
“This was a game-changing debate in the sense that right now, as we speak, there is a deep, a wide and a very aggressive panic in the Democratic Party. It started minutes into the debate and it continues right now,” King said.
“It involves party strategists, it involves elected officials, it involves fundraisers. And they‘re having conversations about the president’s performance, which they think was dismal, which they think will hurt other people down the party in the ticket, and they‘re having conversations about what they should do about it,” King added.
Bloomberg Opinion editor Tim O’Brien wrote on X: “Trump’s taken control of the momentum of this debate — despite lying and living in an alternate reality — and Biden simply comes across as a somewhat dazed punching bag.”
