Donald Trump and Joe Biden are set to square off in the first presidential debate on CNN on Thursday night, which will mark the first time either man has debated since they squared off in 2020.
Trump and Biden went toe-to-toe twice that election cycle. Then-Fox News anchor Chris Wallace was at the helm for the first, NBC News’ Kristen Welker for the second, and both featured comments from Trump about Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings and/or his infamous laptop that were essentially shut down by the moderators.
Given what we know now about the laptop and the first family’s corruption, Megyn said Biden should be forced to answer for how he misled the American people in 2020. On Thursday’s show, she was joined by the hosts of The Fifth Column – Kmele Foster, Michael Moynihan, and Matt Welch – and revealed what question she would kick off the debate with if she were in the moderator chair.
#TBT to 2020
Trump was criticized after the September 2020 debate moderated by Wallace for the way he interrupted his opponent and the moderator throughout the night. Wallace, who now works for CNN, said this week that he believes Trump lost the election that night.
Megyn said Wallace’s comments fail to acknowledge his own role in stifling the candidates ability to debate. “What he didn’t refer back to was his own culpability in shutting down Trump’s attempt to raise the corruption issues that were already coming to the surface about Joe Biden,” she noted.
As Megyn explained, one of the more contentious moments of the debate came when Trump raised the issue of Hunter’s business dealings in Ukraine while his father was vice president. Rather than letting it play out, Wallace continually interrupted Trump, allowing Biden to avoid answering the questions.
“Trump was asking very short, focused questions, and I would have loved to have heard [Biden’s] answers,” Megyn recalled. “The reason we didn’t is because Chris Wallace ran cover for Joe Biden, and now he is out there saying he lost the presidency that night.”
A similar situation unfolded in October 2020 on NBC when Welker shut down a back and forth about Hunter’s laptop – which Biden tried to dismiss as Russian disinformation – so that she “stay on the issue of race.”
Megyn’s Top Question
During the first son’s criminal gun trial earlier this month, the FBI testified that it knew the laptop was Hunter’s basically from the get-go. Megyn said Biden has some explaining to do. “If I were moderating this debate tonight, that would be my first question,” she said.
It would go something like this:
“Mr. President, four years ago you sat on this stage and you told the audience members across America that the laptop was disinformation. You cited intelligence analysts who said as much. You said it was exactly right, that the laptop was a product of ‘Russia, Russia, Russia.’ We now know, from your own administration, that it was real. The FBI took the stand the in your son’s criminal trial and testified, under oath, that at the time you said that the FBI knew that laptop was real and the information on it was valid. Do you owe the American people an apology tonight for the misleading you did on the stage four years ago?”
Moderator Bias
But Megyn is not holding her breath the subject will come up because – as Wallace and Welker’s interference in 2020 demonstrated – the moderators have a lot of control over how the night goes. “It shows that what Trump is up against when it comes to moderator bias,” she noted. “[Welker] got off of that question insistently and quickly because ‘I want to talk about race… No one gives a sh-t about corruption in the Biden family. What we care about is skin color. Back to my pet issue.'”
Megyn believes that “challenge” will continue for Trump on Thursday with moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash. “The biggest way that that bias shows up in these debates is in story selection, in topic selection,” she explained. “And there is zero chance these moderators are not going to be interested in similar things whether it comes to race… January 6… E. Jean Carroll… Trump’s alleged fraud.”
Ultimately, that is what Trump likely signed up for by agreeing to debate Biden on CNN. “Those are all things that this moderator panel will control,” she concluded. “And what kind of questioning are we going to get on the Biden corruption scandal, if even a single one?”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with The Fifth Column by tuning in to episode 824 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.