Two of the most respected, longest serving voices in the world of traditional, mainstream conservativism are National Review’s Editor-in-Chief Rich Lowry and former SDNY prosecutor-turned-author and columnist Andrew C. McCarthy. They co-host “The McCarthy Report” podcast which is among my “must listens (as is NRO’s The Editors” which Rich hosts as well. They joined me today to review the debate Tuesday night with a focus on moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis and the brass at ABC and Disney. (Disney owns ABC.)

As I note in the interview below, I have co-moderated five GOP presidential primary debates with big networks as the representative of Salem Media –four with CNN in 2015-16, and one with NBC this past November and I know how these debates are awarded, organized and how the teams of of network and corporate folks script it all with the moderators, rehearse it often, and time it carefully. I also know that the very top executives of the networks involved are very involved in the productions. While I did work for NBC from May of 2016 until October or November of 2019, I have never been paid by CNN or ABC, did not work for either CNN or NBC at the time of the debates I participated in, but also have a rule not only of confidentiality about what was discussed in the debate preps which I adhere to, and a personal policy of never discussing colleagues past or present. I am not bound by either agreement or practice to stay silent on the ABC/Disney debacle.

Audio:

09-13hhs-lowry-mccarthy

Transcript:

HH: As you know, the fallout from the ABC News-Disney debate debacle continues to grow. And more will grow throughout the weekend as Donald Trump announced yesterday he will not be doing any more debates. And I think he’s right in that choice, but I’ll talk about it this hour, the debate that happened, the fallout with Rich Lowry, who is the editor-in-chief of National Review, and Andrew C. McCarthy, former federal prosecutor at the Southern District of New York, author/columnist, and of course, co-contributor with Rich Lowry on The McCarthy Report podcast. Rich Lowry also hosts National Review’s The Editors podcast. Both of those podcasts will be mentioned in my Washington Post column on Monday as must-listening to. Rich, good morning. I don’t know that we have Andy, yet. We’re trying to find him. I think maybe the alarm clock didn’t go off. How are you, Rich Lowry?

RL: Good. How are you?

HH: Good. Thank you for getting up very early this morning. We keep trying various numbers for Andy, so he’ll eventually join us. You hear my setup, Rich, and I’ll play a little bit of tape yesterday. The very best dissection of that debate that I’ve heard came from the Ruthless podcast. Josh Holmes has negotiated these before. I’ve done five of these debates with the big networks. They were GOP presidential primary debates – 4 with CNN, 1 with NBC. I know how they’re run. I know how they’re scripted. I know how the preparation goes on, 30-50 people, top brass. Muir and Davis don’t bear all of the weight for what happened. But what, I heard, I listened to The McCarthy Report. Everyone should. I have not listened to The Editors emergency podcast, yet. I will today. Your assessment, I know that Trump could have done better, he ought to have prepared more, all that stuff. What was your assessment of ABC’s role?

RL: It doesn’t look any better in retrospect. It’s horrible. And you know, I’ve been looking back over the transcript kind of in the cold light of day a couple days afterwards. I don’t think Trump’s performance is any better. I think Harris is actually worse if you read it on the page. But the moderators are just awful. One thing I didn’t notice in real time, towards the end, there was a bit of a fact check, it was kind of between a fact check and a question to Harris after Trump had said, you know, she was sent over there to negotiate prior to the Ukraine war, and look what happened. The war happened anyway. And I think it was David Muir who said oh, so you’re saying she negotiated with Putin? Madame Vice President, have you ever met Vladimir Putin? That’s not what he said. He didn’t say she met with Vladimir Putin. He says that she was sent over there, which she was. She met with Zelenskyy right before the invasion. So again, if you’re going to fact check, you shouldn’t fact check at all, because it’s too hard to do in real time. But if you’re going to do it, you’ve got to be correct, (1), and you can’t do it just for one side. And that’s what they did. And I was talking to a friend who was at CNN prior to the CNN Trump-Biden debate, and a bigwig from CNN came over and was chitchatting, and said just watch. You just watch. After this debate, CNN will not be the story. I guarantee you CNN will not be the story. Clearly, that was the directive from above. You’re just moderators. It’s not about you. You’re not the candidate. And the very least, no one at ABC said that to these two, and may have indeed said the opposite.

HH: Now Rich, you have been working around the clock, because you’ve done The Editors podcast, you’ve done The McCarthy Report podcast. You’ve been writing for National Review. You have a job, actually, to be the editor-in-chief of National Review, and you’re back on the East Coast for some National Review thing. So you’ve been traveling all over the place. As you’ve talked with people, is this going to change opinions of the debate, because the general review, as I’ve said to Martha MacCallum and Larry Kudlow on the air, upon further review, the call on the field has been reversed by me. My call on Tuesday night was well, Trump lost the battle, maybe he’ll win the war because of the issues that he raised. Now, I’m just thinking he may have won the debate, because the verdict is kind of a rolling verdict. Do you think that is happening?

RL: I think certainly among Republicans, this is the first thing they say, is they talk about the moderation. And I was talking to a friend about this yesterday, and he says, Rich, you know, we’re still talking about Candy Crowley, a relatively minor intervention. Well, it was a pretty big intervention in a foreign policy debate between Romney and Obama. And what else does anyone remember of that debate? I mean, this will be remembered for a very long time for Republicans. And maybe, Hugh, you know, you’ve been involved in these negotiations in these debates. After every bad one, Republicans say we’re never going back to the same mainstream model. Everyone, that’s kind of the point of view everyone has at the moment. I’m not, it’s never stuck before. Maybe it’ll stick this time. I kind of doubt it, but that’s the take among a lot of Republicans. I don’t know whether that’s enough to help Trump in the overall impression of who won this debate, because you also know how it works. You know, people say he lost, and you ask people over time, and it’s, the defeat is magnified by hearing all the pundits and commentators say it. I’m not sure how much it matters. You know, if he’s still leading on the economy and the border and inflation, I’m not sure how it matters very much. But she clearly, she cleared a kind of bar the other night.

HH: She did clear a bar. The question is upon further review. In fact, let me play for you something I said to Larry Kudlow on Wednesday, cut number 19. We’ll get Rich’s…

LK: Hugh Hewitt, your take on any of this?

HH: Well, I want to say kudos on your riff, Larry, because the oldest cliché in news is also true. First reports are usually wrong.

LK: Oh, thank you.

HH: And the first reports last night are that you know, Trump lost, Harris won. Over the course of the day, I have been seeing three things emerge. Trump was okay. Not his best, but he did get in some haymakers. His closing statement was best. And any time you’re focusing on migration, you’re winning. Kamala Harris, by contrast, was at her best, and it wasn’t very good. And then third, and I think this matters a lot, it was the worst presidential debate in moder history. I do not believe even an independent or even a moderately fair Democrat will conclude other than that was an ambush. And as that settles in, as people study what Alex just referred to, the Vice President did not answer one question. Nor did ABC, which is owned by Disney, ask one question about China. Not one question. I was thinking of their theme parks, their merchandising. I’m thinking about the NBA who doesn’t talk about China. Not one question about Iran. They did not bring up our hostage who was executed along with five others in Israel on the 10/7…I am so amazed at the unprofessionalism and the deeply disrespectful of America, as Katie mentioned, performance by ABC. I think by the weekend, Trump may have won this. It’s a moving river of opinion that gathers force. And at this point, yeah, I wanted more. I wanted perfection. But that was the best the Vice President’s ever going to be, and she’s not very good.

HH: Rich, you can’t hurt my feelings. Am I wishcasting there, or might that happen?

RL: I’m not sure that’s going to happen with the general public. Among Republicans, this, clearly this process is ongoing and began during the debate. It was one of the top takeaways anyone has. It’s just obvious to everyone where these moderators were coming from, and they weren’t upholding their professional obligation to be neural interlocutors and kind of ask the question, unless the question wasn’t answered and there needed to be a follow-up, to fade back into the bush like the Homer Simpson meme. But the follow-ups for Kamala obviously weren’t there. The very first question, are people better off than they were four years ago, she didn’t answer. She didn’t come close to answering, and she didn’t even try to answer it. And she got onto tariffs by calling the Trump tariffs, you know, a tax. And immediately, Trump responded to that. And unfortunately, that sort of set the pace for what the whole night was like. She was never challenged by the moderators, and Trump didn’t do enough to call her out, or to call out the moderators in real time. You know, in some of the most effective debate performances, yes, in the primary contests, not in the general election, have been calling out moderators. Newt Gingrich in South Carolina famously against our friend, Juan Williams. So I think this is something that would have helped Trump to call out in real time.

HH: I heard you mention that, and I, when Andy joins us when we find him, and he confirmed to me last night he was going to join us, but we might have his wrong number. He might not have our number. I’m going to stipulate that the former President ought to have called out the moderators the way that Newt did. I believe you brought this up in 2012. Newt called out John King, and it in fact began a new way of engaging with moderators. Did you mention that on The McCarthy Report yesterday? Was that you?

RL: I think it may have been, I may have said it. Andy may have said it. But that was an electric moment that won South Carolina for Newt Gingrich.

HH: Yeah.

RL: But Trump didn’t do it.

HH: I’ve got a theory on why, which I’ll talk with you, we’re going to talk during the breaks. We’re going to put it all in the podcast. We’re going to put it all on YouTube as well, and I’m going to play part of it in Hour 2. So I’m going to talk with Rich, and we’re still looking for Andrew C. McCarthy. Maybe the alarm didn’t go off, and maybe we got the wrong number, but we’ll find him. Don’t go anywhere. Rich Lowry will be right back, America, on the Hugh Hewitt Show.

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HH: I am back, America, and I’m joined by Rich Lowry and we have found Andrew C. McCarthy, but we got him by video, which is very rare. Good morning, Andy. Welcome. I gather you have no cell service? Did you, have you moved to California and the fires took it our or something?

ACM: I’m in a delightful place that’s for a technological neanderthal like me, Hugh, I’m having a little trouble navigating it. But we’re here.

HH: Okay. I appreciate it. I first want to stipulate, you’re the lawyer. Rich has been talking with me about this debate. I’m going to stipulate Donald Trump could have done better. He could have prepared better. He ought to have warmed up. I loved your discussion on The McCarthy Report yesterday about how you warm up for trials. Glenn Youngkin on my show, a former basketball player, told me that before his debates with Terry McAuliffe, he warmed up in a debate model before he went out so that, you know, like warming up before a game. I’m going to stipulate to all of that. Andy, I’m going to give you just two or three minutes to unpack what you think the moderators were doing. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I have done five of these debates. They’re very scripted. We did 12 rehearsals for the NBC debate in November. NBC top brass was there. There are 30-50 people in the room. It’s scripted. Every scripted is vetted so you don’t embarrass yourself. I asked my own questions, but they’re vetted by the NBC team. With that background, what do you think ABC’s plan was?

ACM: Well, I don’t think there’s any question that they’re, they have their thumb on the scale for Harris. I was impressed, Hugh, by the, by that clip that you made, or that Duane made that sort of strung along a number of the different interjections that they had throughout the evening. But I still think that when you read the transcript cold off a page rather than listen to it, where I thought there was a lot in voice inflection and body language that confirmed the indication that they were in the tank for Harris, to me, the biggest thing that they did that was helpful to Harris was kind of be training wheels for her. I think that they gave her a comfort level which is very important to someone who is not a terrific extemporaneous speaker, and who was clearly going to be nervous in front. I don’t know what the latest estimations are of the audience. I think it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of over 60 million people.

HH: It’s over 70 million now. It’s over 70 million now.

ACM: Okay. All right. Well, you have somebody who is not particularly good at this, who is in an almost Super Bowl level kind of audience. She’s going to be nervous. And I think they helped her get over the hump by making her comfortable that if she fell into trouble, they were going to jump in and help her. And in the meantime, with Trump, they were going to give him a hard time. I wouldn’t want to say they were going to give him a much harder time than they were going to give her, because I really don’t think they gave her a hard time at all. They were kind of grateful to her for her answers and for being there, whereas they fact checked him in real time. So I think there’s a lot there, and I say this as an old trial lawyer. You know, juries are always looking for body language. And the reason that appellate courts, as you know, don’t reverse trial courts on matters of credibility, is because the jury was there and they weren’t, and top level courts recognize that there’s a lot to be said for body language and the way people act and the way that their demeanor as they answer questions. I think this was all very helpful in the way of a setting for Harris to ease into and then become stronger as the night went on.

HH: I found that very persuasive. I listened to The McCarthy Report yesterday when I was doing my trundling, and I thought that’s very persuasive, because I’ve been talking to audiences since I was 21. And I’m always a little nervous at the beginning. Even on a hit, you know, on an obscure, I’m always just, the voice warbles a little bit at the beginning. I’ve been doing this forever. Stay tuned, we’ve coming right back on the network.

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HH: These two are among the smartest, most respected conservative influencers in America, because they’re fair. They’re no drop dead Trumpists. They’re not MAGA people. They’re like me. They’ve been in the conservative movement forever, and Andy knows terrorism, and Rich knows television and conservatism, and has written a great book on Lincoln, the only guy that realizes that Lincoln kind of is more of a Whig than people, I love Rich’s book on Lincoln. I would recommend that and Andy’s book on the Blind Sheikh trial. It may be one of the most important ones ever. But here’s something I said to Martha MacCallum that Rich is not going to understand, because he’s too young. And I think maybe Andy will. Let’s play cut number…

ACM: Hey!

HH: I know. You and I are the same age. Cut number 17, Martha MacCallum yesterday.

MM: Hugh, your reaction to what the President has had to say just now?

HH: I am not surprised, Marth, and thank you for having me on. I think he knows that he is in the process of winning the debate on Tuesday night, and I want to explain that. NFL fans are familiar with the phrase upon further review, the officials have reversed the call on the field due to overwhelming evidence. Well, upon further review, the American public has decided that debate was rigged. It was absolutely in the tank by ABC and Disney to hurt the former President and to help Kamala Harris. And the way I explained this to people, and it doesn’t need much for Juan and I, we are of this age. But if you’re over, if you’re under 62, it won’t necessarily make sense. In 1972, the Soviets won the gold medal against the American basketball team in the Olympics. But that’s only because the officials and the referees insisted that they win. Doug Collins, Jim Brewer, they can tell you the whole story, but it was rigged. And when you go back and look at the deep, deep bias that manifested itself, it was as though lawfare had become mediafare.

HH: Stop right there. Rich Lowry, do you have any idea what the 1972 basketball game was about?

RL: Oh, I do. I do. I did not watch it, but I’m aware of this travesty of justice, Hugh, so it’s a great sports analogy.

HH: Andy, do you remember watching it?

RL: No, no, a little touch too young.

ACM: Yeah, I’m not surprised that you…I’m not surprised that you decided that Trump’s best defense would be Bobby Knight. There’s something about that, that I think makes perfect sense.

HH: Well, they replayed the ending three times. Then, the scorers got involved, and then the appeals to the IOC was denied, 3-2, because the East Bloc voted against the people who said that was a screw-up. It was rigged at the end, and poor Doug Collins almost got killed. I think it was that bad. Now Rich, we’ve all stipulated Donald Trump should have done better, should have gone after the moderators, and he’s not doing any more debates. Does it matter in the end for the election?

RL: It could matter a little bit. You know, it’s close. As the cliché goes, anything could matter. I doubt it’s decisive. You know, I think she might get a little, you know, a one or two point jump/bump from this, and it may kind of, I would guess, kind of fades away. But Trump needs to continue to prosecute the case against her much more aggressively than he did on that, or effectively than he did on that debate stage. And not to beat a dead horse, Hugh, about Trump’s preparation, but the closing statement was clearly something he’d thought about, right? It was something that was at least in his head if he hadn’t rehearsed, or someone hadn’t told him those lines. I just don’t know why he didn’t have four or five of those closing statement-like statements on each of the major issues. And I think he would have been in much, much better shape. I just doubt that the debate is going to matter that much. I don’t think he’s going to win the debate in retrospect. I just don’t think the debate is going to matter much. He didn’t win the debates, at least according to the post-debate polling, any of the debates in 2016. He had a catastrophic first debate in 2020. Of course, he wins in 2016, and comes very close in 2020.

HH: So Andrew McCarthy, will it matter? We’ve got about a minute to the break, and we’ll talk during the break. We have another segment after the break, so we’ve got plenty of time. But do you think it will matter, Andy?

ACM: Yeah, I think, I’m more convinced than Rich is, that it’ll matter. And it’s only because I think Kamala Harris, unlike Trump’s opponent in 2020 or 2016, had a sort of a plausibility gap that I think this helps her get over. She’s a different person than he’s run against before in the sense that she wasn’t a known quantity. And I think to be a plausible candidate, she needed to have something like the night that she had. This is more dangerous a development than the other debates were.

HH: All right. We’re coming back with Andy, because if you didn’t listen to The McCarthy Report, and Rich, yesterday, you should go and get it, because Andrew scared me again, and we’re going to talk about that during the break. Come back and talk about more stuff.

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HH: But Andrew, at the end of yesterday’s, you said we’re basically, we’re ready to get whacked by the bad guys in a 9/11 sort of way. And I could not believe, among the things I could not believe about the debate, they didn’t bring up Hersch Goldberg-Polin executed 10 days ago, American citizen, 10/7 glancing. Nothing about China. Not one question about China. I think that’s because Disney’s got theme parks there. But generally, it wasn’t a serious debate, Andrew, and we’re in very serious times. Would you repeat for my audience so that they go to The McCarthy Report and listen to your exposition about this, how much peril we are in right now?

ACM: Well, I just think that we’re in a situation, Hugh, that in many ways is very much like the three year run up to 9/11, by which point the leadership of al Qaeda had moved from Sudan to Afghanistan. Except in some ways, we have more protection, but in some ways, the threat is worse. And what I mean is that what al Qaeda needed to project power the way that it did on 9/11, which was more of a devastating strike against the United States than even Pearl Harbor was, and that was actually a hit on the homeland which no other foreign enemy had done in that kind of dimension ever before, what they needed was operational alliance with a home government that could not only give them safe haven, but make it possible for them to train, to recruit, to raise money, and to plot. And they had, we are back to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. In fact, the only difference on that score between now and 9/11 is there’s the possibility that if the Taliban falls, ISIS will actually be the governing regime in Afghanistan, which in some ways is even more frightening than the prospect of a continued Taliban governance in alliance with al Qaeda. And I think while it’s good that our intelligence sharing is by leaps and bounds much better than it was 23 years ago, from the domestic side all the way across in to national intelligence, the border has been eviscerated. And we really don’t have any control, because this government has taken no control over who is in our country, including whose operatives have gotten into our country. And so I think that combination of things gives me a kind of a September 10th feeling that I’m not able to shake, and that frightens me a lot.

HH: I can’t shake it, either, and Rich, this brings me to the other takeaway. John Podhoretz mentioned this on the Commentary pod yesterday. John doesn’t care for the President’s performance at all. But he’s questioning himself. Did he throw the spotlight on migration enough, and the eating cats and dogs comment? I was watching the debate with a very successful L.A. producer and promoter who got up with about a minute to go and said they’re eating the dogs. That’s all I needed to know, and he laughed at Trump and he left. And that is sort of, you know, a lot of people, but on the other hand, everyone is now looking at Springfield, a city of 58,000 people in the 2020 Census that has had 20,000 Haitians move into it in three and a half years. I love the Haitian people. We support missionaries that go to Haiti. I just don’t think any small town in Ohio can absorb 20,000 of anybody and not be…was Trump cunning by just hammering this? Did that actually get people to look at Springfield?

RL: He did talk about it all the time, right? Almost every answer, he got the border in. And it’s not, the cats and dogs thing is not what I would have mentioned about Springfield. I mean, the three or four facts that he could mention that would be more reliable, but it’s gotten people talking about Springfield, right, more than they would have otherwise. And this also goes to another David Muir fact check. So he mentions the cats and dogs thing, and Muir says, well, the city manager says that’s not true. But how did Muir know the city manager was right? We still can’t be sure the city manager was right. So again, it’s not his role to say that. We do have a call to emergency services from a local resident saying I see four Haitian immigrants taking four geese from the pond. This guy who is doing the call doesn’t sound crazed. He sounds very reliable. The thing is, Hugh, that no one cares really about geese, right? I think you could eat as many geese as you want, because people consider them a pest. It’s the cats and the dogs that get people’s attention. But that aside, 20,000, or maybe it was 15, some people say 15, but 15 or 20 in an underlying population of 58 is just shocking. But when you have as many people who were coming in the last three and a half years, they’ve got to go somewhere, right?

HH: And we’re coming back on the air. Yeah, we’re coming back on the air. Pause there. This will be on the network.

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HH: We were talking during the break about they are eating the dogs and the cats meme that’s come up, and whether or not President Trump, former President Trump was cunning in overstating and focusing the issue on Springfield, to draw attention to Springfield. Andy, what do you think? Has he tricked us again via his very unusual media technique of using a sledgehammer on a glass thimble to get everyone to look at it? What do you think, Andy?

ACM: Well, maybe he has, but I think, Hugh, this more goes to your observations about the unseriousness of this. As Rich and I discussed the other day, I about fell out of my chair when she said that there were no American forces currently in combat zones around the globe. You know, I’m, I have gotten about as far as I can go in terms of how interested I am in the cats and dogs. But why isn’t somebody fact checking her on that?

HH: I have Senator Sullivan coming up next hour, because I’ve got family on the Lincoln, and the Houthis are shooting at it. You know, I’m outraged.

ACM: Yeah, and you should be. But you know, she says that she’s the last person in the room on Afghanistan. She’s portrayed herself as the most important national security advisor that this president has had for four years. I presume she gets the presidential daily brief every day. For her, under those circumstances, to look the American people in the eye and say for the first time our administration is the administration that doesn’t have any Americans in combat zones, when we’ve had the Houthis, just to take that one example, have made scores of attacks on in the last, since October 7th, so in the last 11 months targeting American forces and successfully striking them. You know, we’ve been very fortunate that the casualty number has been low. But this is a thrum that’s gone on for 11 months. I just, I found that mind-boggling that she could say that.

HH: Now Rich, you guys talked on this yesterday about the lawfare and how the Hunter Biden thing had to be settled, he had to plead guilty, because it would have been catastrophic to have a six-week trial. I know the judge, so I don’t want to get too involved in talking about that case. That’s my rule. And I don’t want to get too involved in how NBC and CNN did the debates in which I participated, because again, confidentiality rules. But do you think they had a conversation in the room? Again, it usually is 30-50 people on every single debate prep session from brass to moderators to people in the back, the producers, etc. Do you think they consciously decided not to fact check Kamala Harris? And do you think they just said we’re not going to do China, and somebody said we’re not getting close, we’ve got theme parks there? Because I don’t know how you don’t talk about China in a presidential debate.

RL: Yeah. Clearly, you know, you go through the questions, and you come up with a bunch of them, and you throw some out and leave a lot on the cutting room floor. So they must have thought of asking about China. You would think, right? I mean, it would be bizarre if they didn’t. And for whatever reason, they left that one on the floor, but decided to ask Trump about, you know, a month-old controversy, something he said at a Black journalist forum. It’s just a totally bizarre choice. I think not asking about Hunter is a little more understandable given, you know, Biden’s no longer the main issue or the opponent anymore. It’s still a big issue. It should be a big issue. And Hugh, that was one of Trump’s best moments, right, when he said she’s Biden. You know, he could do much worse than going and saying that 20 times a day from now until Election Day.

HH: So Andy, the, I don’t want to talk about Hunter Biden, either. And I don’t even want to talk about the Biden family. I heard you say for 50 years, the guy’s been saying stuff that serves his immediately short-term objective. So we’re done with Biden. I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in whether or not the moderators consciously had a plan to lift her up and protect her, be her training wheels as you said on The McCarthy Report yesterday and repeated off-air that will be in my podcast today. Do you think they planned that? I mean, I can’t imagine how they would end up this bad. And after I listened to the Ruthless podcast, and Josh Holmes has negotiated debates. I’ve been in them. They did a line by line, if you listened to Ruthless, a line by line on the debate. And they’re just stunned at how bad it was. Like the Richter scale is exponential, not incremental, this wasn’t, most media bias is at a 5 on the Richter scale. This was an 8 on the Richter scale. Do you think they planned it that way, Andy? Or did they fall into blue bubble bias?

ACM: Well, I think blue bubble bias, there’s a lot of intent behind that, too. But you know, this kind of reminds me, Hugh, of during the Obama administration, I was asked all the time do you think Obama told Holder to do that. I think we went like four years with that, and my answer to that was always Holder is there precisely because Obama doesn’t want to have those kinds of conversations. He is in that position because he knows what’s expected of him. And if he deviates from what’s expected of him, they have subtle ways of getting him back on course, including not so subtle ways, I imagine as well. But I don’t think it’s, I don’t think these conversations are necessary the same way that people think about conspiratorial groups that I used to prosecute eons ago where you actually did have people have to plan out criminal escapades, because that’s just the nature of the beast. I think that these people are in the jobs that they’re in, in the institutions that they’re in, because they know exactly what’s expected of them. And a lot of this is seamless, and probably wordless. But everybody knows what they’re supposed to do, and they executed it.

HH: That’s interesting.

ACM: And I think if they had to plan it, they may not have been as grotesque as they were in terms of the extent to which they went to lean Harris’ way and give Trump a hard time. That’s the kind of thing, probably if you expressly had to plan it out, someone would say no, no, no, we can’t get away with that.

HH: But what I want the audience to know is how, there were 12 rehearsals for the NBC debate I did with Vivek and Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley and Chris Christie and whoever the 5th was. There were five on the, Tim Scott. And every question was planned. Every question was rehearsed. My questions were all about China, and all about TikTok, and their navy and their military. And they don’t veto. They test, and we anticipate responses, and we know where we’re going next. It’s a script, Rich. It’s like putting an issue of National Review together, right? It’s planned. You just don’t take everything that comes in over the tram and jam it into the magazine. Jack Butler doesn’t run the NRO online that way, where he is the online editor. What do you think? Did they consciously decide no China, no Hersch Goldberg-Polin, we’re not going to do that stuff?

RL: Yeah, I think they consciously decided what they were going to ask and what they were not going to ask, and I think it had to be a decision to fact check or not fact check, right?

HH: Yes.

RL: That was such a, that was a big…prior to the CNN debate, there was a big debate after the CNN debate. All of us wanted a fair debate. We were delighted with it, but the left was absolutely outraged by it and made a huge deal of it, and made it as though CNN had committed this fundamental offense against journalism by having neutral moderators. So I think they decided to fact check. I kind of doubt they sat there, as Andy, I think the Obama-Holder analogy is a really good one, that they sat there and said now only fact check Trump. That’s where the blue bubble comes in, where they only think Trump is untruthful, and Kamala’s fine. So they only fact check one candidate. If you’re planning it, you would have been more careful about covering your tracks, at least fact checking her once, and they didn’t even do that.

HH: Now the lawfare has become obvious. And the two counts in Atlanta dismissed yesterday. As Trump predicted, he would win every case, eventually. He’s not going to win the, if he loses one, he’s going to lose the obstruction case in Florida. And it’s Jack Smith’s bad that he didn’t isolate, Democrats should be mad at him. I’m not sure that it’s, Trump…I haven’t seen his defense, yet, so I can’t say he’s going to lose, but that’s the strongest case against him. Has the media gone as far as lawfare? In other words, lawfare is a term of art now. We know what it means. It’s the weaponization of the Justice Department, both state and federal. Andy McCarthy, has the media gone as far as the justice system has to prosecute and persecute its enemies within, as perceived by the blue bubble?

ACM: I think so. You know, I used to talk about the, when I would write about this kind of stuff, I would talk about the Democratic Party and their media allies. And over the last number of years, I have instead referred to it as the media-Democrat complex, because I actually think the media is the senior partner here. And progressive politicians come and go, but the media’s eternal. And I do think that they have more of a thumb on the scale today than, I think they’re more audacious now than they ever have been, which is saying something. But I think they believe they’re having their moment, and there are a lot of days I wonder whether they’re not right about that.

HH: All my podcasts roll together, so I don’t know if you brought up George H.W. Bush with Dan Rather, which is when the pushback began, or whether that was on Comfortably Smug or on Commentary. I can’t remember where I heard it, but I said yeah, that’s where the pushback came. Rich, is it, has mediafare become the equivalent of lawfare now, at least among what I call Manhattan-Beltway media elites, legacy media?

RL: Yeah, it’s blatant, and it gets worse all the time, which is so depressing, Hugh, because we spent probably a large percentage of our careers complaining about media bias. We have whole organizations devoted to exposing media bias and have done very good jobs at it. And we have media outlets that counter-report fake narratives the media comes up with very effectively. But the media still gets worse. And this may be the worst, most biased debate moderation we’ve ever seen. And so it’s had no effect on them. Some of them, they’re conscious partisans. A lot of them, they’re unconscious partisans. But it doesn’t matter. It adds up to this edifice that is a huge, a huge thumb on the scale. And if Trump loses, clearly, it’ll be part of the reason he’s defeated, if he is.

HH: We have one more segment, but very quickly, we have one minute to the break, and then one segment after the break. Exit question on a, you know, like the old McLaughlin Group. Can the media be saved? Rich Lowry, can the media be saved?

RL: No. It’s fundamentally corrupt, and we need to do more to develop more our own institutions devoted to reporting.

HH: Andrew McCarthy, can the media be saved?

ACM: I don’t know that it matters, but I think we exaggerate how much it matters, because let’s remember, Republicans do get elected. Donald Trump did get elected. The media’s about as popular as Congress is. So you know, yes, they’re in the tank for one side, but that has its tail effect as well.

HH: I have one more question off-air. You’re going to have to listen to the podcast to get it. It’s about the Chinese spy in New York, and I can’t think of two people better to ask it, and it should have been asked on Tuesday night, but it wasn’t. Stay tuned, America.

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HH: If you’ve not been in a news cycle, there was a Chinese spy in the New York Governor’s office both for Hochul and Cuomo, a spy. And how much damage can a spy do? Well, they can take thumb drives and put air-gapped computers and put Malware in, or they can just do soft influencing. Rich Lowry, are you following the story? How much damage could she have done?

RL: It was quite, quite bad, because she clearly succeeded in tilting how the government of New York handled China, handled Taiwan in Beijing’s favor. And Hugh, it seems to me, you know, there’s been a big focus on Russia, and Russia’s influence operations. But to the extent we know about them in ’16 and now. Russia’s kind of spent a lot of money on things that just don’t matter. You know, some internet memes on Facebook that no one watched, you know, in ’16, this latest Tenet Media thing. You know, the indictment adds up how many views these videos got collectively, and it makes it sound like it’s a massive thing. But if you average is out over the videos that were created, it was very small. Whereas China has carried out the most successful espionage operation ever against the United States. They’ve stolen all our industrial secrets. And when people are exposed, it’s like this. She had, she was, that was really worth China’s money. That was, they got a lot of bang for their buck. So this is something we need to take extremely seriously.

HH: And Andrew, when you were prosecuting people in the Southern District, I was at the DOJ doing FISA warrants for the A.G. And what these people do, no one really has any idea. They can watch the Americans, get sort of a glimpse. It wasn’t wet work. There wasn’t any of that stuff going on. How much damage could she have done, Andy?

ACM: A great deal, but what I worry about is that it’s the tip of the iceberg. You know, this is the one we see. We have, compared to the Cold War, and I think Niall Ferguson makes this point brilliantly all the time. We have a very integrated economy with China. We have relations with China that don’t even compare to what went on in the Cold War where there was very little economic integration between the United States and the Soviet Union, and not a lot of foreign exchange. So they’re pervasively not only, you know, you think about the federal government, but the state government, as we’re seeing, but also in corporate America, on the campus, in all the institutions of opinion. And I know we want to put Biden in the rearview mirror, but the House investigation shows that in two different schemes, Communist Chinese regime paid the Bidens, just between 2014 and 2019, $8 million dollars. Do we think that they were doing that for nothing? Do we think that has nothing to do…

HH: That’s why they, that’s why Hunter entered…yeah, that’s why Mark Scarsi had him read the indictment, because he’s pleading guilty to all that, that money. And now, they should, I hope there’s a FARA case coming. Andrew and Rich, you’ve been very generous with your time. I’m going to keep plugging away at getting people to listen to The Editors and The McCarthy Report as well as Commentary and other podcasts as an alternative to being informed. But please come back for my DMV special, because Rich, you almost got thrown out of a DMV, and Andy, you had come from a DMV. And I have cried in a DMV. And so if the DMV is representative of the government, I think we should do the DMV special. So please come back in the future, and we’ll do an entire hour on DMV. Thank you, friends.

ACM: Thanks, guys.

End of interview.