Why Did Fox Have Liberal Framing of Questions at the GOP Debate? W/ Michael Duncan & Eliana Johnson

My God, what a hot mess. I have to say, I didn't enjoy it. I said yesterday, this is a good thing because it's Republicans getting their ideas out there. That's probably better for the GOP. You know, like reinforce the positions that they hold when it comes to the border, when it comes to the economy, that could work to their benefit as we go into the general. No, I take it all back. They were sniping, they were small ball, they were petty. The moderators were a disaster. I don't think it was a good night for the Republican Party. It could have been, it just wasn't. And I think overall it was a fail. So I will give the whole event, I won't give it an F, but I'm gonna give it a D. I'm gonna give it a D because there were a couple of moments that were okay. So I guess let's kick it off there. What's your letter grade? And then we'll get into why. I'll start with you, Duncan. I think I'd give it a C. I agree with you in large part on everything you're saying there. Look, I think it was a food fight and I think it reflects the anxiety amongst all of these candidates to know that the field is too large right now if one of them is going to knock off Donald Trump who has a huge, huge polling lead. And I think you see that in their rhetoric and style in this second debate. People are looking for a moment. Maybe some are looking a little too hard. I'm sure we'll get into some of the low lights of the night, but I think the food fight reflects that anxiety for people trying to have a breakout moment and win on the field. What about you, Eliana? What's your grade for what we saw last night? I'm gonna go D plus. I thought there were a couple of highlights and several low lights. Clearly, I think all of the candidates were conscious that this is the last debate where many of these guys are gonna be on stage. I anticipate the RNC is gonna ratchet up the qualification threshold for the third debate, and we're gonna see far fewer candidates on that stage. And so everybody was sparring for attention and the moderators did a poor job of corralling the candidates. So there was tons of crosstalk. It was oftentimes difficult to hear. The moderators had a hard time controlling them. And when the candidates were talking, the questions appeared, to me, more appropriate for a general election debate than for a Republican primary debate. They just weren't asking about, for the most part, things of interest to Republican primary voters. The ones that stood out to me as particularly inappropriate for Republican primary voters was, one of the questions was, what are we gonna do for the Dreamers? Another one was about gun safety. There was a third about LGBTQ plus Americans. And while all of those might be okay for a general election debate, these things just aren't top of mind for conservative voters. And not at all- That's who this show is for. And so keep the audience in mind. And the New York Times today ran a glowing profile of that Univision anchor- Oh my God. Noting that Univision retained editorial control over all of her questions. Well, it was obvious and it was a fail. What on earth was Fox thinking partnering with Univision? That that woman, Ilya Calderon, is a leftist who's been partnering with Jorge Ramos, who more than anyone is responsible for the abandoned objectivity approach to Donald Trump and to journalism. I mean, they have almost singularly undermined the profession of journalism more than any other that I can think of off the top of my head. And it was intentional. She's his co-anchor. This is a leftist news organization that's basically propaganda. They've been in partnership with the Clintons. It was like having Hillary Clinton out there at this woman's questions. And while, I mean, I've anchored five presidential debates in the GOP primary field and you can go out there and it's perfectly fine to say, hey, here's an issue that's gonna be a problem for you if you're the nominee when you get to the general. You can do that. Like you're too extreme for moderates on abortion. What say you? Is that true or not? That's okay. We've been doing that from time immemorial. But the issue selection and the way in and out of the questions showed her bias time and time and time again. And at times she wasn't the only one on the stage committing that sin for our GOP primary. Here's just an example of what we saw last night. Americans want to believe a leader who says, you can follow me. I've got you. Don't worry. President Biden is trying to do that with Bidenomics. A recent poll found that mass shootings and gun safety are one of the most important issue for Latino voters. Mental health concerns are not unique to the United States, but gun violence is. The Department of Homeland Security warns that violence against LGBTQ plus people is on the rise and intensifying. How would you protect this community from violent attacks and discrimination? That's just part of a wider income inequality trend in the country. The richest 1% now controls one fifth of all income. New black history curriculum says, quote, slaves develop skills, which in some instances could be applied for their personal benefit. You have said slaves develop skills in spite of slavery, not because of it. In three days, the billions of dollars in pandemic era funding is going to end and 70,000 daycares could close. According to Customs and Border Protection, about 90% of fentanyl is seized at official border crossings and 57% of the smugglers are US citizens. How would you stop fentanyl brought into the country mostly by US citizens? I mean, like that, especially that last one, really. Yes, the problem with fentanyl coming into the United States is all about the people with no connection to cartels. That's what she's leaving out. Yes, it is true that normally the fentanyl coming across there on the border tends to be brought in at the ports of entry by smugglers, not the illegal migrants who are choosing other places to sneak into the country. That's beside the point. The cartels are the ones providing the fentanyl. They are trying to kill Americans and desperate people will help the cartels get it across at ports of entry and elsewhere. And by the way, the migrant crisis pulls border agents away from the ports of entry so that they can't do thorough screening to begin with. But the cartels in the eyes of the Univision lady are not the issue. You see, it's the Americans desperate enough to help them to get the fent. What the F? I'm sorry, Duncan, but that woman had no business being out there at a Republican presidential debate. It was bizarre. It was almost like if you had a conference call with Joe Biden's comps department and tried to figure out a way to put all these candidates into knots on some general election issue and sort of weaved in there with all of the questions is the framing that the Biden administration would want in a general election debate, right? Like you're forcing all of our folks to play defense on these issues, rather than speaking to the conservative values that animate the people who are actually watching this thing. It was an absolute disgrace, Eliana, as I heard her questioning. First of all, I'm gonna be honest, she was difficult to understand. Sorry, she's bilingual and I'm not, but I didn't understand her English. And I actually thought quite a few times the candidates on the stage were a little confused by what she said, like they were struggling a little. She's only been in the United States, I think for 20 years. She hosts a show that's in Spanish. All of her social media is in Spanish. She decided to open the debate with a little Spanish language. I mean, it's still an English speaking country. It's like, are the Spanish speakers at the point now where we actually have to make a debate moderator speak in Spanish? So, okay, fine. That's what Fox and Univision decided to do. But what was more incomprehensible was her editorial for the situation. And the whole thing felt to me like it could have been put on by MSNBC, not Fox News. The miss here, I think, was that there are disagreements on the right among conservatives about foreign policy, on economics, and on immigration. I'm old enough to remember in 2014, 2015, a huge debate on the right. Marco Rubio fell into this trap on immigration reform. But the two biggest issues in the country right now are the economy and the border. And there are divisions among these candidates on those issues. And I thought the biggest miss in this debate was not allowing the candidates to face off against each other and to showcase the divisions among the candidates on the issues of most interest to Republican voters. Instead, it was putting the left-wing talking points to them and putting them on defense against them. We wanna see the candidates spar against each other. And when we got that, by the way, for example, on China, on TikTok, when Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy faced off, on foreign policy over Ukraine when they faced off, those were the best moments of the debate. But in the clips that you showed, and by the way, you didn't get the final question on who would you vote off the island, which was just bizarre. It was like Fox didn't learn from the final question of its last debate when they asked about UFOs. 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