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NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck returned to the Fox News Channel Wednesday on Fox News @ Night to react to the sudden agreement between the Joe Biden and Donald Trump campaigns to hold presidential debates on June 27 with CNN and September 10 with ABC. Speaking to host Trace Gallagher, Houck urged caution on the part of the Trump team and be prepared for the debates to be rigged. Asked by Gallagher to explain why he doesn’t “think that CNN moderators” Jake Tapper and Dana Bash “will give Trump a fair shake,” Houck explained “you got to watch out for shenanigans” and said it was reminiscent of what this site warned ahead of the “infamous CNBC debate back during the 2016 election cycle.”     “Jake Tapper, he received awards for pushing the fake Trump Russia collusion case. So, as you point out in your Common Sense [commentary], and Erin [Perrine] and Amber [Duke] pointed out as well [in the previous segment], you know, the demands that President Trump is willing to meet, yeah, you want to see these debates happen, but did you do that at the expense of a fair show for you,” he added. Gallagher then went to former local TV anchor Dee Sarton with similar warning from a piece by our friend Eddie Scarry at The Federalist: “Trump, along with every other Republican should at least have a guarantee that there won’t be any more Chris Wallace or Candy Crowley moments where the moderator takes liberty to run interference for the Democrats.” Sarton concurred with Houck and Scarry, saying her “stomached turned when I heard...who moderators were going to be” and Biden may “have turned the tables a little bit with” his goating video Wednesday morning. “You got to really think about the Americans...who would really love to see these two men side by side, who maybe are still a little bit undecided in this. What do they need to hear? And try to cut through that...[T]he guy is pretty smart..But it’s going to take a lot of work to be ready for that night,” she argued. Houck followed up with more concerns about this CNN debate, such as the possibility they’ll engage in “live fact-checking” with the sniveling Daniel Dale “and who knows about snarky chyrons.” To remove the possibility of any nonsense being fed to the moderators, Houck also suggested “Dana Bash and Jake Tapper and then, Lindsey Davis and David Muir and ABC shouldn’t be wearing earpieces” in order to keep the debate as organic and “free flowing” as possible. All they would need to keep things moving, Houck argued, would be clocks (which are standard below most camera rigs in TV studios). “There is just so many factors, especially with CNN that we really, really got to watch out for. And just real quickly, on substance, Peter Doocy is exactly right, that — it’s very clear this is to distract away from the issues, considering Biden has been dragged on issue after issue,” Houck concluded. Before the segment wrapped, Sarton spoke from experience of moderating debates about the dynamics between having an audience versus none at all: I’ve heard some people say today, oh, well, Trump, you know, he feeds off the audience. He needs that audience. I’m not sure I agree with that. I think he can bring it without an audience, even though obviously, it helps. I’ve done debates when the room is empty, and it really does suck all the light out of the room...I don’t think the lack of an audience is going to be nearly as damaging to President Trump. To see the relevant transcript from May 15, click “expand.” FNC’s Fox News @ Night with Trace Gallagher May 15, 2024 11:09 p.m. Eastern TRACE GALLAGHER: Let’s get media analysis from NewsBusters Managing Editor Curtis Houck, and the host of A Home That Heals podcast, the queen of Idaho Television, former TV news anchor Dee Sarton. Thank you both for coming on. To you first, Curtis, because you don’t think that CNN moderators will give Trump a fair shake. Explain that for us. CURTIS HOUCK: Yeah, I think you got to watch out for shenanigans, Trace. We, at NewsBusters said this when there was that infamous CNBC debate back during the 2016 election cycle. Jake Tapper, he received awards — GALLAGHER: Mmhmm. HOUCK: — for pushing the fake Trump Russia collusion case. So, as you point out in your Common Sense, and Erin and Amber pointed out as well, you know, the demands that President Trump is willing to meet, yeah, you want to see these debates happen — GALLAGHER: Right. HOUCK: — but did you do that at the expense of a fair show for you? GALLAGHER: Yeah. And Dee, Eddie Scarry at The Federalists, wrote the following here, quoting, “Trump, along with every other Republican should at least have a guarantee that there won’t be any more Chris Wallace or Candy Crowley moments where the moderator takes liberty to run interference for the Democrats.” I mean, we have learned that moderates can — moderators, rather, Dee, can really sway the jury. I mean, you have worked the debates. So, you know, what’s going on here. If you were advising Trump, about these debates, is there anything you would advise or add? DEE SARTON: Oh, boy, I’ll tell you, my stomach turned when I heard, you know, who the moderators were going to be? And yeah, it’s a — it’s a tough situation. I feel like he came out so strong and said, any place any time. GALLAGHER: Yeah. SARTON: That was sort of his power play, and now they have turned the tables a little bit with this. And so, I am a little bit worried about that. And I guess my advice would be boy, you got to really think about the Americans — the Americans that — that I’m around all the time, who would really love to see these two men side by side, who maybe are still a little bit undecided in this. What do they need to hear? And try to cut through that. But that’s got to be tough, but I kind of can’t imagine when you’ve got the — all of that going against you, how that happens. GALLAGHER: Yeah. SARTON: But the guy is pretty smart, and I think he can figure it out. But it’s going to take a lot of work to be ready for that night and in a way that the underdecides will hear his message. GALLAGHER: Yeah. It seems, Curtis that the Biden team wants this debate to be as controlled as possible. You know, that’s why you control as much as you can. And hopefully, you can contain any errors or any you know, bad looks. HOUCK: Yeah, exactly. I mean, and then, there is the question, as you pointed out, as well about live fact-checking, is Daniel Dale going to be there? GALLAGHER: Yeah. HOUCK: I saw someone on X today argue that maybe, you know, the Dana Bash and Jake Tapper and then Lindsey Davis and David Muir and ABC shouldn’t be wearing earpieces, so they are not being fed things in their ear. You know, they can have clocks there like we do in our studios for keeping time. But other than that, I mean, it should just be free flowing. GALLAGHER: Yeah. HOUCK: And who knows about snarky chyrons? There is just so many factors, especially with CNN that we really, really got to watch out for. And just real quickly, on substance, Peter Doocy is exactly right, that — it’s very clear this is to distract away from the issues, considering Biden has been dragged on issue after issue. GALLAGHER: Yeah, and it really is a big gamble, Dee, because you look at this and you think, okay, they can control this, they can cut the microphone to Donald Trump, and cut Biden’s microphone and, maybe even kind of limited the moderators, but the bottom line is, is that there’s no teleprompter. And if you’re an 81-year-old president, who is known to kind of speak out of turn, this is something that they cannot control and it’s not the State of the Union speech. I mean, you can do whatever you want to but you have to speak off the cuff for a lot of this. SARTON: Right, you really do. And, you know, I was thinking about this earlier today. It’s a situation where people — I’ve heard some people say today, oh, well, Trump, you know, he feeds off the audience. He needs that audience. I’m not sure I agree with that. I think he can bring it without an audience, even though obviously, it helps. I’ve done debates when the room is empty, and it really does suck all the light out of the room. But I do you think it’s going to be tough. From what we have seen of President Biden, I just kind of can’t imagine what that’s going to be like. GALLAGHER: Yeah. SARTON: And not having those support systems in place for him, I think that’s going to be the Achilles heel for him. I don’t think the lack of an audience is going to be nearly as damaging to President Trump. GALLAGHER: Yep, it is. I mean, you’re the President. You are alone and you are flying blind for a short time there. Dee Sarton, Curtis Houck, thank you both. HOUCK: Thanks.

CBS’s Stephen Colbert had two distinct reactions to the news that former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden have agreed to debate each other on Wednesday’s installment of The Late Show. On one hand, he adored Biden’s announcement video, going so far as to break out the “Damn! Cam.” On the other, he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos he “was surprised that Biden would dignify Trump by offering to meet him.” Of course, Biden’s announcement didn’t come out of nowhere, as Colbert acknowledged when he introduced a clip of Biden, “Trump has been challenging President Biden for months now, and today, Biden accepted by releasing this video, where he took a swipe at Trump's court schedule.”     The video showed Biden telling viewers that, “Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020 and since then, he hasn't shown up for a debate. Now he's acting like he wants to debate me again. Well, make my day, pal. I'll even do it twice. So, let's pick the dates, Donald. I hear you're free on Wednesdays.” The two men have decided on Thursday, June 27, and Tuesday, September 10. Nevertheless, Colber reacted with glee, “For my reaction to that, join me over at the ‘Damn! Cam.’ Damn!” Later, Stephanopoulos joined the show to hype his new book and Colbert started to ask, “Let’s talk about debates. Okay, you’ve moderated debates—” Stephanopoulos interrupted to lament, “Yes, it did happen. I think because I’m being sued, I’m not going to be moderating this one this time around.” Trump is suing Stephanopoulos for defamation, but even if that lawsuit didn’t exist, the former Clinton operative’s out of left field question to Mitt Romney about banning birth control is enough to disqualify him from moderating any future debate. Regardless, Colbert continued, “Are you surprised? Because I was a little surprised they were going to happen. I was surprised that Biden would dignify Trump by offering to meet him.” Stephanopoulos replied, “I was surprised, especially after you were talking about it before, that Chris Wallace debate four years ago, just the worst presidential debate in American history. I was surprised it's going to happen again. Interesting move by Biden, kind of a bold move by Biden. I do think the rules he's put in place could make a difference.” Colbert interjected to add, “I love them. No audience. In studio. When your time is up, the mind goes off. That's a loss of power.” Stephanopoulos agreed, “Yeah, and it will be interesting to see, I mean, I know both sides have accepted now. I wonder if at the end of the day, with those rules, if those rules are really in place, if the debate really happens, but I think those rules are essential.” Many in the media are making a bigger deal of the agreed upon rules than they should. For instance, in every past presidential debate there has been an audience, but it has been required to remain silent and the cutting of mics could hurt the mumbling and rambling Biden just as much as Trump. Here is a transcript for the May 15 show: CBS The Late Show with Stephen Colbert 5/15/2024 11:38 PM ET STEPHEN COLBERT: Trump has been challenging President Biden for months now, and today, Biden accepted by releasing this video, where he took a swipe at Trump's court schedule. JOE BIDEN: Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020 and since then, he hasn't shown up for a debate. Now he's acting like he wants to debate me again. Well, make my day, pal. I'll even do it twice. So, let's pick the dates, Donald. I hear you're free on Wednesdays.  COLBERT: For my reaction to that, join me over at the "Damn! Cam." Damn! … COLBERT: Let’s talk about debates. Okay, you’ve moderated debates— STEPHANOPOULOS: Yes, it did happen. I think because I’m being sued, I’m not going to be moderating this one this time around. COLBERT: Are you surprised? Because I was a little surprised they were going to happen. I was surprised that Biden would dignify Trump by offering to meet him. STEPHANOPOULOS: I was surprised, especially after you were talking about it before, that Chris Wallace debate four years ago, just the worst presidential debate in American history. I was surprised it's going to happen again. Interesting move by Biden, kind of a bold move by Biden. I do think the rules he's put in place could make a difference. COLBERT: I love them. No audience. In studio.  STEPHANOPOULOS: The mic goes off. COLBERT: When your time is up, the mind goes off. That's a loss of power. STEPHANOPOULOS: Yeah, and it will be interesting to see, I mean, I know both sides have accepted now. I wonder if at the end of the day, with those rules, if those rules are really in place, if the debate really happens, but I think those rules are essential. 

It’s a meme on the left that the right cannot create good art. When asked why, leftists will usually say that it’s a temperament. They might even go so far as to claim it’s genetic. Conservatives aren’t creative, and for some reason, that seems to be one of the few immutable characteristics leftists will happily espouse. You can change your sex, but apparently becoming more creative is too far of a stretch. I won’t beat around the bush here. It’s a stupid meme. Are you really going to posit that all of history produced bad art prior to the 1960s (or whenever you want to draw that line)? Because rolling back the clock a century or two, you’ll find that artists were universally rightwing. They held views that are simply intolerable to the modern man. When it comes to successfully incorporating conservative, Christian themes in my work, I don't pretend to have it all worked out. I’m dredging in the same mud as any other indie author, just trying to make sense of things in this strange digital landscape we find ourselves in. Of course, leftists might say their favored historical figures were secretly gay or liberal or hiding from oppression or whatnot. It’s their way of easing their consciences and coping with the fact that history is decidedly rightwing. But the meme sticks because it does in some sense ring true. Just take a look at conservative entertainment over the last two decades. Aside from a few shining examples, it’s been a sea of mediocrity and cringe. Late to class On paper, the Daily Wire's new animated series "Mr. Birchum" is a step up. It's the creation of Hollywood veteran Adam Carolla, an artist who achieved his success largely in spite of his conservatism, not because of it. Its writers and performers are seasoned professionals. In a post on X promoting the series premiere, Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing crowed that the Daily Wire was doing what the mainstream media didn't dare: airing the kind of comedy that puts laughs before political correctness. "For decades no network would touch @adamcarolla’s animated sitcom 'Mr. Birchum' for fear of offending the wrong people. Fortunately, we love offending the wrong people, so on 5/12 @DailyWirePlus is bringing him back." Whether or not that's true, "Mr. Birchum" is emblematic of a larger trend and is a good example of everything wrong with the approach mainstream conservatives have to media and art production. While lack of funding may indeed be one of the things holding back conservative art, it's also hampered by a certain spiritual predilection: the deep-seated desire to become Hollywood 2.0. Or as I posted on X: Was I too harsh? Perhaps. But this attitude that “we can do a Hollywood except we’re the cool guys” is cringe. It’s cringe because it’s an abuse of what art should be. You’re not trying to be entertaining for entertainment’s sake. You’re not trying to reach for the transcendent or some higher meaning. You made a series-long meme where you’re the chad and the other guy is the soyjack. These conservatives aren’t concerned with plots or characterization or emotion. They’re making essays on why the left is stupid and passing it off as something fresh and vital. And perhaps this would be tolerable still if these essays weren’t filled with Boomer talking points or appeals to a liberalism that everyone knows is dead. The worldview is not commensurate with the situation on the ground. Shows like "Mr. Birchum" are not connecting with tradition or reality. They’re just doing what Hollywood did 15 to 20 years ago. Farewell to Springfield Trying to create a "Family Guy" or "Simpsons" but rightwing is a fool’s errand because the America that spawned those franchises is dead. The subversive antics in Quahog or Springfield are far less cute now that so little remains to subvert. An intact, churchgoing family in a community where everybody knows each other? Now, that's funny! Do the failings of Peter Griffin or Homer Simpson even register in a world that is suffering a serious masculinity crisis? And what "middle class" household can support a family of five in the suburbs on one nuclear safety inspector's salary? Fox Conservative art, if it is to be art at all, has to face these realities with sincerity. And the first thing to do is to realize that rightwing art must be more than just a rebuke of the left. Leave your political grievances for Substack essays and journal articles. Hollywood gets away with stamping its boot on its enemies because there’s no alternative, and it has the funding to dress it up. But we don’t have the time to waste on such nonsense. We’re already fighting an uphill battle for attention, and no one wants to hear your lecture about how you’re the smartest guy in the room. Even if you could put together a perfect formulation of your politics, you still shouldn’t do it because that’s not what art is for. It’s about connecting with transcendent truths and those go beyond the political. This isn’t to say that politics shouldn’t be incorporated into art, only that they should never overwhelm your artistic sensibilities. Scoring points over your enemies is petty. Your gaze should always be fixed on what will make your art better, not your political agenda. And this is not to say that people need to be writing Cormac McCarthy novels or filming movies so existentialist they’ll make Dostoevsky. The spiritual depth of a work is not in its complexity, as so many on the right fail to understand. John Carter and Conan the Barbarian are simple, but they are also deep in their spirit. They speak to the masculine hero in men, and that’s why they are remembered nearly a century later. This is not an exhortation to make a thousand clones of "Breaking Bad," all uniquely miserable in their own way. This is an exhortation for all art that can speak to the human experience, no matter how childish or silly it may seem. I want another Dostoevsky, yes, but I also want the next Robert Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs. I want artists of all kinds. I want every genre, and I want artists to invent new ones. It is only then that we’ll have a culture again. Skin in the game It's easy enough for me to proclaim this from the sidelines. While I have my reservations about "Mr. Birchum," I acknowledge the effort and passion it takes to create any work of art, as well as the fortitude it takes to subject that art to public criticism and the risk of failure. It's in that spirit that I offer up my own methods and strategies for scrutiny. When it comes to successfully incorporating conservative, Christian themes in my work, I don't pretend to have it all worked out. I’m dredging in the same mud as any other indie author, just trying to make sense of things in this strange digital landscape we find ourselves in. And if I am cringe, well, I’ll own up to that. I’ll use "Gigaheroes" as it’s the more contemporary of my two fiction serials. The setting for the story is a world where the woke won — reducing all the West to the third-world ruin. There was a brief nuclear war, but by that point, the incompetency crisis and general corruption meant most bombs malfunctioned. What remains of America is a post-apocalyptic failed state that is utterly broken in spirit. And there’s also Superheroes. The thrust of the story is not conservatives making a final last stand, nor about anyone trying to resurrect America as a constitutional republic. It’s about very desperate people living in a shambling corpse of a world that just won’t seem to end. There are explicit jabs at the welfare state, but I try to limit such commentary to no more than a few sentences at a time. I try to keep the political in the background as much as possible. Isaac Young Five hundred credits for a cheeseburger. I stared at the flickering LED menu until my eyes felt like they were bleeding. They said moving to a digital currency was going to fix the inflation issue. They said a universal income was going to help get people back on their feet. At least we don’t have high immigration anymore. No one wants to live in the Democratic Union."Gigaheroes," Chapter 3: Adam Mason Whenever I need to use language to describe leftist policy, I change it up with new terms to avoid taking the reader out of the experience and back to 2024. For example, racial and sex quotas are referred to only as “high and low” priority. I find modern jargon such as “woke” to not be very helpful. It brings to mind too much of the crude discourse of the internet and the personalities therein. Characters complain, but I try to have them focus on more concrete problems. My protagonist, Adam Mason, is unsatisfied with his life, but he doesn't express this with a laundry list of a policy recommendations or even a thesis on how the world got to where it did. He’s a starving hobo, and he sells his phone for a cheeseburger. Isaac Young As I walked down the dark streets of City 57, I saw they were still running my face on the giant billboards. The news calling me a Far-Right Extremist gave me a chuckle. They were probably already typing up my manifesto. In truth, I wasn’t an extremist anything. I was a survivor who did what he did to make a living. The only thing that made me extreme was that I didn’t want to be quarantined in Gen Pop. Sure, my parents were nostalgists for the old America. But America was dead, taken out behind the barn and put down like an old mutt, and nothing was going to bring it back."Gigaheroes," Chapter 5: Seattle Vance Here I wanted to include a plot point about the lying nature of mass media and how it cycles through topics so fast that people can’t remember what happened last week. I think it’s important to always keep in mind that you never want to give off the impression that you yourself, the author, is the one making the complaints. To that end, I made Seattle Vance largely apolitical. He’s not on my side, or anyone’s side really. He’s more interested in completing his job than anything else. It just so happens that he is a criminal. You can always tell a story is compromised when characters act or say things you know wouldn’t be true to the setting. Ideally, the reader/viewer should never feel the hand of the author. Anything that takes them out of the work should be trimmed down or removed outright. Isaac Young For a long time, I knew I wanted to die. Most days, I didn’t know what really kept me from throwing myself into the East River. Maybe it was the little things, like occasionally having a cheeseburger, that kept me from going insane. But no, that wasn’t quite it. I knew I was waiting for something, holding out hope, I guess. I think I was waiting for when things finally got better. I don’t know, maybe I would catch a lucky break or something. But I was also waiting for when the world was going to get better. It had to at some point. Everything can’t get worse and worse forever. Can it?Even when I was crawling through the mud, I wanted to see the light at the end of the tunnel. When all the suffering and heartbreak and bitterness finally came to an end, maybe then I would get to see what it was all for. Sure, we lost everything, but it still had to be for something, right? We lost our lives, but someday the world was going to fix itself, right?"Gigaheroes," Chapter 11: Adam MasonAim high I think that the heart of every story is the exploration of a spiritual question. You’re trying to get at a moment, a piece of reality captured by ink on a page or a picture on a screen. And it’s in pursuit of that catharsis that I write my fiction. I’ll let my audience decide whether or not I succeed, but that’s what I aim for. It’s those questions of finding meaning and virtue that underlie my goals as an author. Every scene I write I try to either capture that, or build the necessary framework in order to capture that. Having an audience totally enraptured, their full attention on every little detail, I think that’s what artists should strive for. And anything that gets in the way of that purpose ought to be removed. Whatever is good, whatever is true, whatever is beautiful, that is the objective. And I think sacrificing that for politics is a terrible, awful mistake. This essay originally appeared on Isaac Young's Substack, "Trantor Publishing."