NBC got a lot of backlash after the two town hall meetings with Donald Trump and Joe Biden. The reason for this is because ABC announced beforehand that they were going to give Joe Biden a specific time slot, and it seems that NBC picked the exact same time on purpose which, according to CNN, caused the network “lots of grief” about the Trump Hall meeting.
Katie Kuric from NBC’s The Today Show let the world know how she felt in a tweet she sent out. “Having dueling town halls is bad for democracy,” she wrote. “Voters should be able to watch both, and I don’t think many will. This will be good for Trump, because people like to watch his unpredictability. This is a bad decision.”
People went on to comment on her post saying how technology will let viewers watch both of them. But she and many others feel that a lot of voters simply won’t, and that overall it was a horrible move on the part of NBC.
According to Variety, Joe Biden’s town hall meeting still ended up winning in the ratings, with 14.1 million viewers to Trump’s 13.5 million.
Trump’s Town Hall Meeting
The moderator at Trump’s meeting that aired on October 15th, 2020 was Savannah Guthrie, the lovely co-host from The Today Show. To put it bluntly, she wasn’t playing any games with Donald Trump, and was not intimidated in the least by his bullying nature. It was just like The Guardian reported it…she literally ‘grilled’ him on certain topics.
For example, after Trump said that he denounced White Supremacy, she asked him about QAnon, a conspiracy theory from the far right which, according to BBC, is a “wide-ranging, unfounded conspiracy theory that says that President Trump is waging a secret war against elite Satan-worshipping pedophiles in government, business and the media” and that that fight will lead to a “day of reckoning where prominent people such as former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will be arrested and executed.”
“While we’re denouncing,” Savannah began, “Let me ask you about QAnon. It’s this theory that Democrats are a Satanic pedophile ring, and that you are the savior of that. Can you state once and for all that that is completely not true?”
“I know nothing about QAnon,” Trump responded.
“I just told you,” Savannah said.
“Yeah you told me, but what you tell me doesn’t necessarily make it fact,” he said.
“So there’s not a Satanic, pedophile…”
“I have no idea, I know nothing about them,” Trump interrupted.
“You don’t KNOW that???” she emphatically asked.
“No, I don’t know that. And neither do you know that,” Trump said.
“Just this week, you retweeted to your 87 million followers a conspiracy theory that Job Biden orchestrated to have the Navy Seal Team Six killed to cover up the fake death of Bin Laden. Now why would you send a lie like that to your followers?” Savannah asked him.
“That was a retweet. That was an opinion of somebody. And that was a retweet. I’ll put it out there…people can decide for themselves…” he responded.
“You’re the president!” she said. “You’re not just like someone’s crazy uncle who can just retweet whatever!”
Biden’s Town Hall Meeting
Joe Biden’s moderator at his town hall meeting was the Chief News Anchor from ABC George Stephanopoulous. He introduced a young African-American man from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania student named Cedric Humphrey, who was way up in a seating section above them. Cedric asked about the ‘you ain’t Black’ remark that was previously made by Joe, according to The New York Post, earlier in the year when the former VP said that “any minorities that voted for Trump ‘ain’t Black’.”
“Don’t jump, Cedric, you look like you’re way up there,” Biden joked with the young man, making him smile and seem more comfortable.
“Thank you George” Cedric responded, “and good evening former Vice President Biden. “Many people believe that the true swing demographic in this election will be Black voters under the age of 30. Not because they’ll be voting for Trump, but because they won’t vote at all. I myself have this exact same conflict. So my question for you is besides ‘you ain’t Black’ what do you have to say to young Black voters who see voting for you as further participation in a system that continually fails to protect them?”
“Well, I say first of all, as my buddy John Lewis said,” Joe began, “It’s a sacred opportunity to have the right to vote, to make a difference. If young Black women and men vote you can determine the outcome of this election. Not a joke. You can do that. And the next question is am I worthy of your vote, can I earn your vote. And the answer is there are two things that I’ve demonstrated that I care about my whole career. One is in addition to dealing with a criminal justice system to make it fair, and make it more decent, we have to put Black Americans in a position to gain wealth, generate wealth…number two, every three to four to five year old will go to school. Not day care, school.”
“All the great universities that you’ve gone to, go to or went to,” Joe continued, “in fact have talked about in the last eight years what happens when you let them go to school. They make up rapidly for any education that they didn’t have prior to that. They may not have heard as many words spoken, etc. etc. What happens is studies show that chances of them going through all years of school increases by 58%. And going through successfully….In addition to that I’d provide for $70 billion to HBCU’s for them to be able to have the wherewithal to do what other universities can do…”
