I watched ABC FAKE NEWS this morning, both lightweight reporter Jonathan Carl’s(K?) ridiculous and biased interview of Tom Cotton (who was fantastic!), and their so-called Panel of Trump Haters, and I ask, why would I do the Debate against Kamala Harris on that network?

Who’s surprised he’s trying to chicken out?

  • Geek_King@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    If he does drop out of the debate again, I bet they could get him to recommit by going all Biff Tannen on his ass:

    “What’s the matter McTrump? Chicken?”

    He’ll bristle, and say he’s no chicken and agree to debate Kamala.

    In all seriousness, I was surprised agreed to debate her at all, given that he has nothing to gain. Best cash scenario, he tries the same approach he used with Biden, turning his mouth into a fire hose of lies, and Biden couldn’t keep up. With Kamala, she’d just laugh at his lies, and actually refute him with facts, he’d look just awful in comparison.

    At this point I doubt he’ll actually show up to the debate.

    • WoahWoah@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      When he was clearly winning against Biden, he had nothing to gain. As he loses pace in the polling, his need to do a debate increases.

    • paddirn@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      “I heard McDonalds has a new menu item now, they’re calling them Chicken McTrumplets… Bawk… bawk… bawk… bawk”

      • paddirn@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        How would real-time fact checking even work? Would the moderators actually do their job for once and call it out, or would they just do little VH1/“Pop Up Video”-style graphics where they would highlight whether they would try to correct the record on certain things being said?

        • ChocoboRocket@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Hopefully both, and there’s a Lie-O-Meter that determines how truthful a statement is as its being read, and then a counter of provably false statements made

          Not like a here is a one in a billion outlier so the truth is a lie. If crime is down, but up in a small, specific area, the statement “crime is down” would be true.

          • paddirn@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            It’d be nice if there was some sort of objective, quantitative “score” that could be attached to each candidate’s performance (or as objective as it can be). Something at the end of the night you could point to and be like, “Yeah, they’re a goddamn liar-mouth.” Something either candidate could point to as a “win” without resorting to just soundbites that get blasted the whole week after and people are like, “Oh snap, they said that!” Like, an actual way to tell how honest either candidate seemed during their “performance”. I’m sure Trump would lie his ass off and his base would be like, “Well of course ABC is going to say Trump lied, they’re owned by woke Disney!”, but at the very least we’d have some sort of tracking of how much they lied during a debate.

            • barsquid@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              There is no objective measurement Repubs won’t ignore if it becomes an obstacle to white supremacist fascism and shoveling money into the yachts of the wealthy.

        • HomerianSymphony@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Would the moderators actually do their job for once and call it out

          That’s actually not the job of moderators. This idea that moderators should do fact-checking only came about in 2016 because of Trump.

          The network probably should have a team of fact-checkers. But fact checking in real time isn’t easy.

          • barsquid@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            I would like to have the moderators do anything at all, though, that would be nice. Like cut off a candidate who goes over time. Maybe force candidates to answer the question asked or forfeit their time.

            • III@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              I feel like this would be an actually valuable application of AI.

              • kill_dash_nine@lemm.ee
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                2 months ago

                The problem with that is that AI itself is unreliable and will be confidently incorrect all the time.

        • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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          3 months ago

          Here’s my proposal.

          During each candidate’s first turn to speak, no fact checks are shown, but the fact checkers will use the other candidate’s turn to come up with corrections. Then when it’s the first candidate’s turn again, the start of that their speaking time is used to read the corrections from their previous statement. If the corrections take the whole speaking slot, too bad so sad.

          • barsquid@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            If corrections also rollover into the next speaking window, Donald could just do his first slot and then go golfing.

          • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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            2 months ago

            That’s probably the only way to do a good job of it. Fact checking takes time.

            You can’t expect it to happen with any level of accuracy if you’re demanding it be done before the debater stops talking.