MRC Smears Hispanic GOP Debate Moderator As ‘Anti-American’ For Not Asking Softball Questions

As with the first one, the Republican apparatchiks at the Media Research Center hyped and defended the second Republican presidential debate (which, like the first, leading candidate Donald Trump refused to attend). Jorge Bonilla kicked things off with a Sept. 27 post (also in Spanish) complaining that someone from Spanish-language network Univision was allowed to serve as moderator alongside pro-Republican Fox Business hosts, insisting that this didn’t mean Univision suddenly moved to the right:

The worst part of the GOP’s inexplicable decision to invite Univision to co-moderate tonight’s presidential primary debate at the Reagan Library is that it validates Univision’s claim to represent the Hispanic community, when they very clearly do not.

Watch as anchor and debate co-moderator Ilia Calderón claims that mantle in the network’s ad promoting the debate:

[…]

Expect Calderón to ask questions on immigration, gun control, and other items from the leftwing policy pupu platter. Just keep in mind that Univision has no mandate from Heaven with which to speak on behalf of the Hispanic community, inasmuch as there is such a singular thing. In fact, polling suggests quite the opposite.

After the debate, Nicholas Fondacaro raged at Calderón for purportedly being “anti-American” for asking questions that actually challenged the candidates:

The second GOP presidential primary debate Wednesday night was a case study in why the Republican Party shouldn’t award debate moderation privileges to hostile and dishonest members of the liberal media. While Fox Business Network occupied two of the moderator positions (Stuart Varney and Dana Perino), the third was given to Univision anchor Ilia Calderón. Her questions were by far the most anti-American and dishonest; ranging from lies about gun violence being “unique” to America to blaming America for the drug trafficking at the southern border, and more.

In a question directed to North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, Calderón peddled the liberal media’s BIG LIE about gun violence: “Mental health concerns are not unique to United States. But gun violence is.”

Back here in reality, Central American and South American countries were some of the most dangerous countries in the world. Their violence was often cited as a primary driver of illegal immigration to the U.S. According to reporting from NPR, those countries have per capita violent gun death rates many times that of the U.S. In 2019, America’s rate was 3.96 while Mexico’s was 16.41 and Calderón’s home country of Colombia had 26.36.

In his rage, Fondacaro forgot to explain how that line of questioning was “anti-American.”Kevin Tober similarly slurred Calderón as “anti-American” without providing a factual basis, further attacking her as “pro-trans” for asking a question about anti-LGBTQ violence:

Fox News for reasons passing understanding, allowed radical leftist Univision anchor Ilia Calderón to co-moderate their Republican presidential primary debate. Throughout the evening, Calderón asked numerous anti-American & pro-LGBTQ questions of the candidates. Predictably, during their live post-debate coverage, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow praised Calderón’s biased questions because they are something Fox’s audience is “not used to hearing on Fox.”

“There was also an interesting dynamic tonight with the moderators. With at least one of the moderators, Ilia Calderón from Univision she’s the only one of tonight’s three moderators who has some experience moderating debates,” Maddow said. “But it was Miss Calderón who actually in her questioning sort of distinguished herself by telling the listening audience tonight something they are not used to hearing on Fox,” she added.

Maddow then gushed over the Anti-American and false question that American citizens are responsible for bringing fentanyl into the United States: “She mentioned, for example, that when it comes to fentanyl, 90 percent of fentanyl is caught at the U.S. Border and most is brought by American citizens. That is something Fox audiences may never have heard on their television before.”

Being a lesbian herself, Maddow predictably enjoyed the question posed to Mike Pence about supposed violence against “LGBTQ+” people: “She also confronted former Vice President Mike Pence with this question about the LGBTQ community right now. It was a question, again that Fox viewers are not used to hearing, and it elicited at first, a sort of general platitude for Mr. Pence and then a somewhat chilling threat from him toward that community,” Maddow proclaimed.

The MRC’s DeSantis Defense Brigade weighed in with a post by Tom Olohan cheering how Ron DeSantis “stressed that keeping Americans safe from the rampant crime often intensified by radical Soros-funded prosecutors is crucial for the country’s future success.” Tober returned to complain that the candidates pushing partisan attacks on Democrats on border issues was called out:

During ABC News Live Prime’s post-GOP debate coverage, political director Averi Harper was clearly disappointed that Republican candidates framed the Biden border crisis as a “wholly Democratic Party failure,” and bemoaned the “finger-pointing and the platitudes that were made on that stage.” 

Tober offered no evidendce that Biden and only Biden is to blame for the border situation.

A post by Tom Kilcullen cheered how Nikki Haley “blasted censorship-loving tech platform TikTok as ‘one of the most dangerous social media apps that we can have.'” Mark Finkelstein was annoyed that someone whose show he hate-watches for a living picked a debate winner:

“Nikki Haley: Endorsed By Morning Joe!”

That’s hardly the kind of support that someone seeking the Republican presidential nomination would welcome. To the contrary, it could be the kiss of political death for Haley or any of the Republican contenders.

But while the praise for Haley was not overly enthusiastic, the former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador was clearly the winner of last night’s debate in the eyes of today’s Morning Joe panel.

Indeed, no one other than Haley was mentioned as a possible winner. Joe Scarborough, Willie Geist, Jonathan Lemire, and Elise Jordan were all in agreement: Haley was “the adult in the room.”

[…]

For all this praise today, if Haley ever did become the Republican candidate, you could count on Morning Joe to train an endless stream of attacks on her!

Curtis Houck, meanwhile, whined that the lack of questions about the elephant (not) in the room was noted:

During the post-GOP presidential debate analysis on Thursday’s CBS Mornings and ABC’s Good Morning America (GMA), liberal journalists bellyached that the seven candidates didn’t obsess over the four indictments against former President Trump or fixate on a recent Truth Social post calling for charges to be brought against former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley.

Chief Washington correspondent and soon-to-be three-time anti-Trump author Jonathan Karl was beside himself in both hours of GMA over how, other than Chris Christie looking into the camera and referring to “your indictments,” “that was the only mention in the entire debate of Trump’s indictments.”

“There was no mention whatsoever of this week’s ruling by a New York judge that Trump’s company had committed widespread fraud,” he added.

[…]

Karl then offered this lie: “No major attacks on him from the other candidates besides, you know, suggesting that he should have been there.”

Hello, Jon? What was that clip of DeSantis talking about Trump and the national debt? Or how about the moments when DeSantis hit Trump from the right on abortion? Or Christie on the border and then Russia? Or Mike Pence on the size of the federal bureaucracy? Or Nikki Haley on China?

Houck provided no links to the actual debate transcript, so it’s unclear whether the candidates were targeting Trump specifically or repeating their usual right-wing talking points.

Speaking of hate-watching, Fondacaro did his usual meltdown routine at “The View,” spewing performative outrage because the hosts talked about the debate in a way that didn’t follow Fox News-esque talking points:

There’s a lot of criticism that could be leveled at the second Republican presidential primary debate on Fox Business Network, particularly Univision moderator Ilia Calderón’s anti-American questions, the crosstalk, and the The View cast shared during their reaction on Thursday.

Amid their whining about Republican candidates holding Republican positions on everything from gun rights to immigration to transgenderism, racist ABC co-host Sunny Hostin bloviated about how the debate “looked like a cage fight.”

Hostin falsely suggested that there was no policy discussion about any topic at all. “I didn’t hear a lot of policy. You know? You want to talk about the border and immigration, well, you want to get rid of the Affordable Care Act, so what is your plan for health care?” she scoffed.

For what it’s worth, faux conservative Alyssa Farah Griffin grew a couple vertebrae and pushed back by noting that just because they didn’t like the policy didn’t mean policy wasn’t discussed[.]

Again, Fondacaro failed to explain how asking questions that deviated from the RNC script made her anti-American. Also, Fondacaro’s constant smearing of Hostin as a “racist” is based solely on her merely talking about racism and his failure to understand how metaphors work.