On September 7, NBC hosted a presidential forum on issues related to national security. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were interviewed back to back and took selected questions from military personnel in attendance. It was moderated by NBC’s Matt Lauer.
Clinton was asked about her emails and (predictably) responded with flop sweat. Trump, as per usual, had some dishonest and dubious answers of his own. But at one point he at least appeared concerned and informed about veteran suicides. Advantage: Trump.
By the next morning, the media consensus was in and the big loser of the evening was . . . Matt Lauer? CNN media critic Brian Stelter said the reaction to the event was “universally negative.” Politico‘s headline was “Media turn on Lauer for not fact-checking Trump.” And according to the Washington Post:
Hillary Clinton’s campaign was spitting mad that the NBC host devoted one-third of her time on stage to asking a series of questions about her email practices as secretary of state, leaving her with less time to talk about pressing national security issues.
Perhaps Lauer should have pressed Trump harder on his Iraq war lie. But it’s also true that Lauer didn’t really pursue Hillary Clinton on her email answers, either. When Clinton was asked by a retired naval flight officer why she had skated on violating rules on handling classified information, when he “would have been prosecuted and imprisoned” for doing what she had done, Clinton responded with a pack of lies about how this was all a silly misunderstanding about the use of email “headers” denoting classified information. Earlier in the forum she even made a classic Clintonian dodge, saying that “none of the emails sent or received by me had such a header.” She finished with the jaw-dropping claim that “I did exactly what I should have done and I take it very seriously, always have, always will.”
Lauer, of course, did not press her on the fact that Clinton had specifically told her aides to remove classified headers, thus ensuring she wouldn’t send emails marked as classified. Never mind that it’s still illegal to mishandle classified information, with or without headers. Nor did Lauer follow up and ask Clinton how she squares “I did exactly what I should have done” with her earlier admission that “it was a mistake to have a personal account. I would certainly not do it again. I make no excuses for it. It was something that should not have been done.”
Is the fact that Trump lies about opposing the Iraq war before 2004 when he was a private citizen really more galling than the fact that the former secretary of state is flagrantly dissembling about behavior in high office that would put your typical naval flight officer in Leavenworth? It is not.
Naturally, the media are terrified what Clinton’s abysmal performance at the NBC forum portends for her showing in the upcoming debates. The media caterwauling, if that accurately describes a bunch of outraged liberal columnists and Democratic operatives on Twitter, isn’t simply, or even primarily, aimed at Matt Lauer. It’s also a warning to the moderators of the three scheduled debates to pile on Trump and go easy on Clinton, unless they want to be targeted as viciously as Lauer was. In fact, the Washington Post headline the next morning sent the message loud and clear: “Matt Lauer’s widely-panned performance shows the perils for debate moderators.”
Of course, the real loser here ultimately isn’t Trump or Clinton or Lauer. It’s the American people, who are once again being asked to decide which liar’s lies are the least consequential. And that’s no choice at all.
