President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden each had town hall's this week. President Trump's aired on Tuesday on ABC with George Stephanopolous moderating and Biden's yesterday on CNN with Anderson Cooper moderating.
Joe Concha, The Hill's media reporter, was on Fox & Friends this morning and called out the glaring differences between the two events and said, "One town hall was infinitely more challenging than the other. It's very apparent what we saw between the two candidates, one obviously hostile the other one hospitable."
"Anderson Cooper didn't challenge or fact-check the former vice president even once," Concha said, noting that Biden claimed no one would've died from the coronavirus if he was president.
Photo by: Screen capture from CNN YouTube Channel
The former Vice President's said, "If the president had done his job... from the beginning, all the people would still be alive. All the people -- I’m not making this up. Just look at the data. Look at the data."
"To say that Joe Biden was ahead of this and it was top of mind in February and March simply is not true," Concha corrected. "I could go through a lot of things here, but CNN usually has a fact-check chyron that it uses for President Trump, during the RNC address he had for instance," he said. "For whatever reason, that took the night off last night."
Fox News reported the demographics of each of the town hall's participants.
- Trump Townhall: 4 Trump Voters, 2 Hilliary Clinton Voters, 1 Jill Stein Voter, 3 Non-voters (1 non-citizen) and 3 unidentified.
- Biden Townhall: 13 Democrats and 3 Republicans
Photo by: Screen capture ABC News YouTube Channel
Biden was confronted by friendly supporters who delivered "softball" questions. Meanwhile, Trump’s town hall with ABC News on Tuesday was nothing of the sort and the president instead was criticized in his interactions.
Fox News contributor Mollie Hemingway said Thursday night on The Ingraham Angle after the Biden Townhall, "President Trump and Joe Biden have both been hitting the campaign trail this week and it’s noticeable there’s a stark contrast in media treatment between the two. It is beyond propaganda.”
“It used to be said that the media acted as a public relations arm of the Democrat Party," Hemingway said. "I think it's much easier to just understand them as essentially running the Biden campaign, particularly with the trouble that Biden is having in terms of typical campaigning.”
ABC News published an entire article fact-checking Biden's answers and found that he was wrong in several of his responses.
Even Politico called out the Biden town hall with an article entitled "Talk about losers': The top moments from CNN’s kid-gloves town hall with Biden" and Tweeted, "If ABC's event with President Trump was an icy grilling, CNN's drive-in conversation with Joe Biden yesterday was more like an affable reunion of old acquaintances. ICYMI, here's a look at the key moments from last night's town hall."
Ari Fleischer, Former White House Press Secretary and FOX News contributor stated on Twitter, "When Politico accuses CNN of a softball interview, you know there's a problem. This man might become POTUS, yet still, too many reporters think their role is to help make that happen instead of asking hard questions. The media is broken."
President Trump was listening to Biden's town hall prior to giving a speech at a peaceful protest in Wisconsin, “I just see he’s up there tonight getting softball questions from Anderson Cooper. They don’t ask me questions like that,” Trump told the crowd gathered at the airport. “They’ve got cars … it’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.”
The Trump campaign said in a statement that every question at the debate was “an invitation for him to attack President Trump” and also rebuked Cooper for offering “almost no pushback.”
“At no time did anyone question Biden about his economic record or his plan to raise taxes by $4 trillion while the economy is in rapid recovery,” said Tim Murtaugh Trump 2020 communications director. “At no time did anyone ask Biden why he opposed President Trump’s travel restrictions on China at the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, which experts say saved thousands of American lives.”
