By David Harsanyi
Tuesday, September 08, 2020
Democratic Party presidential nominee Joe Biden finally
held what was billed as a press conference with journalists the other day —
something of rarity in a campaign that has relied predominately on staged
question-and-answer sessions. It was a truly embarrassing display of hackery
from the media.
Here’s a quick sampling of some of the queries Biden
faced from supposedly dispassionate journalists:
An Atlantic reporter asked Biden about anonymously
sourced claims (published last week in The Atlantic) that Trump had made
belittled remarks about veterans: “When you hear these remarks . . . what does
it tell you about Trump’s soul and the life he leads?”
Follow-up: What would Biden “say to supporters of QAnon”
and to Trump for “not rejecting that conspiracy?”
“We also know that Russia has been trying to sow doubt
about the system. Are you concerned at all that this messaging may be working,
that your supporters may give up on voting by mail because they’re concerned
that it may be rigged?”
“You said today is the angriest you’ve been as a presidential
candidate, but you said you’re trying to restrain yourself. Aren’t there a lot
of people out there who are supporting you or inclined to not vote for the
president, who would say, ‘Why isn’t Joe Biden, angrier about all of this?’”
“Do you know when you will have another COVID test? Do
you have any planned, any future testing coming up?”
And so on.
The questions largely gauged Biden’s anger and
disappointment regarding the presidency of Donald Trump, a completely
legitimate topic for the candidate to bring up, but not one that allegedly
independent media should be prompting him on.
One assumes that firefighting journos have more important
inquiries to ask a candidate whose agenda goes beyond a distaste for his
political rival. They could, for example, ask him:
After 45 years, you recently dropped
your support for the Hyde amendment, which barred taxpayer funding of
abortions. Does your current position comport with that of the rest of the
Democratic Party establishment, which supports abortion funded by the
government until the ninth month of pregnancy? If not, can you point to a
single restriction that a Biden administration would support?
Do you still support the “Biden amendment” to the
Foreign Assistance Act, which bans any American foreign aid from being used in
research related to abortions?
You recently talked about how your Catholic faith had
inspired your run for the presidency. But you’ve also recently promised
to reinstate Obama-era policies rolling back conscience protections for
Catholic nuns and other religious groups. Will a Biden administration renew
efforts to sue charitable orders like the Little Sisters of the Poor in an
effort to force them to pay for birth control in violation of their religious
beliefs?
You once promised to put Beto O’Rourke — the man who
said, “Hell yes, we’re going to take your guns” — in charge of gun-control
efforts in a Biden administration. Will you keep that promise? Your running
mate Kamala Harris also supports confiscation of “assault weapons.” You back a
ban on AR-15s and other semi-automatic rifles, but it’s unclear whether you
back a retroactive ban. Where do you stand now?
During the campaign you publicly supported
the “defund the police” movement — using the definition that has been laid
out by advocates of that cause — despite the rioting and spikes in crimes we
were seeing at the time. Now you say you no longer back redirecting funds from
police departments. What changed your mind?
Last year, you claimed that all the benefits of
Republican tax reform went “to folks at the top and corporations.” Do you still
stand by this? If so, why do you now say you won’t fully reverse the Trump tax
cuts?
During the Democratic Party primaries, you supported a
carbon tax and renewable mandates. Even the liberal Tax Policy Center says you
will raise
taxes on the middle class and small businesses. So how can you claim that
you won’t raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 when the burden for
those programs and hikes are borne by everyone?
You have embraced
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal, which proposes banning cars and
air travel, as a framework for your energy policy. In addition, on numerous
occasions you said you would ban fracking. Now you say you do not support a
fracking ban. What changed your mind, and how will you achieve your promised
goal of “a 100 percent clean energy economy and net-zero emissions no later than
2050” without restricting affordable fossil fuels?
You have promised
to return to the Obama administration’s directives on Title IX, which have
denied due process to college students accused of sexual misconduct, preventing
them from questioning their accuser, reviewing allegations and evidence,
presenting exculpatory evidence, and calling witnesses. Why don’t college
students deserve the same presumption of innocence that you enjoyed after Tara
Reade accused you of sexually assaulting her?
You’ve said you’re not a fan of charter schools and that
you oppose “for-profit charter schools” because they “siphon
off money for our public schools, which are already in enough trouble.” How
do you plan on making the federal government impose itself on local schools,
and how do stop localities from offering more choices to parents and kids if
they wish?
You have changed your position on the 1994 Crime Bill, a
bill you authored, as well as on the Defense
of Marriage Act, abortion, the Iraq War, spending freezes for Social
Security, busing, trade, and so on. Most people change their mind from time to
time — “evolve,” in the liberal parlance — but is there any major bill that you
supported as a senator that you still support today?
A majority of Democratic
Party voters believe in a conspiracy theory alleging that Russia altered votes
to win the 2016 election for Donald Trump. Are you concerned that it undermines
the office of the presidency to delegitimize elections in this way? What do you
say to these members of your party?
We’ve now seen more than one report that Democratic Party
leaders and allied
organizations are preparing
to challenge results of the election if you lose the Electoral College but have
more votes nationally. Do you support this kind of effort, or will you accept
the Constitutional prescribed election results?
Those are just some of the topics that come to mind.
Biden has been getting away with flat-out lying about a lot of these issues —
with the help of “fact checks” and reporters for months. After an eight-year
vacation during Obama’s terms, we’ve seen lots of aggressive questioning of the
president over the past four years. Nothing wrong with that. It would be nice,
though, to see even a scintilla of that investigative zeal in the Biden coverage.
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