1. The whole evening and its contents spun into an ethics train wreck. My favorite? Vivek Ramaswamy deliberately evoked Barack Obama’s line calling himself a “a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too,” in his 2004 Democratic National Convention keynote speech when he was running for the U.S. Senate, despite the fact that 99% of Americans had forgotten about the moment and just about as many couldn’t care less. “Who the heck is this skinny guy with a funny last name and what the heck is he doing in the middle of this debate stage?” Ramaswamy said. What the heck was he doing? Comparing oneself to Obama isn’t great strategy at a GOP debate, and Chris Christie, who is alert to such things, responded, aptly, “The last person in one of these debates … who stood in the middle of the stage and said, ‘What’s a skinny guy with an odd last name doing up here?’ was Barack Obama,” Christie said. “And I’m afraid we’re dealing with the same type of amateur.” Touche!

But perpetually embarrassing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, attending the debate as a “Trump surrogate” thought part of her job was to emulate MSNBC race-baiters. She said, “Greene: “I was pretty disgusted by Chris Christie and his racist comment towards Vivek Ramaswamy… He compared him to Obama. I thought that was pretty racist.” She actually said that. Several things come to mind:

• The competition over who is the most consistently ridiculous GOP member of Congress is a tight one: Is it George Santos, the serial liar? Lauren Broebert? But Greene is special, and the fact that Trump would deliberately designate such a flaming fool to represent him is one more example of how he prefers obsequious loyalty to competence.
• Obviously, she had instructions to slash at Christie, whom Trump regards as a turncoat—and this nonsense was the best she could come up with? Wow.
• Vivek Ramaswamy compared himself with Barack Obama,  and she said Christie was “racist” for taking him at his word. I don’t know if even Joy Reid would try that crazy reasoning.
• As a conservative, Greene should be opposing the Left’s expansive and dishonest use of the racism label, which is almost always used to slime conservatives, not using it herself against a Republican.
• We’ve been discussing on other threads when an idiotic statement proves the speaker is an idiot. I’ll stand on this example. Greene is an idiot. But we knew that, I hope…

2. The mainstream media’s reporting was unusually mendacious. How hard is it to report a debate straight and let the responses of the debaters speak for themselves? Too hard, I guess, if you’re just a propaganda arm posing as a journalism publication. Here’s the Times on the climate change exchange:

Chaos Erupts When Republican Candidates Are Asked if They Believe in Climate Change: There is no scientific dispute on the question, but almost none of the Republican presidential candidates gave a straight answer.

But that wasn’t the what the candidates were asked. The question was “Do you believe in human behavior causing climate change? There is considerable scientific dispute on that question, but even if there were not, it’s still not what the question involved. And there was no “chaos.” Fake news, start to finish.

3. The Fox News moderators really and truly asked Chris Christie about UFOs. With all the important policy, legal and political issues voters need to understand and learn what the candidates propose to do about them, I’d estimate that flying saucers land at 67,552nd on the list. Why not ask Christie what his favorite episode of “Ren and Stimpy” is? His favorite recipe for goulash?

4. Here’s how the Associated Press headlined its coverage of Trump’s love-in with Tucker Carlson:

“Trump praises Jan. 6 crowd, repeats election lies in online interview while skipping GOP debate”

The whole article is an anti-Trump diatribe and reads more like an attack on MSNBC than a news piece. Here are some examples:

• “Trump, who has repeatedly brushed aside democratic norms and embraced the inflammatory throughout his political career…”  Wow. The AP’s client party is brushing aside the throbbing democratic norm of not using the criminal justice system to neutralize political opponents, as the AP crushes the democratic norm of a neutral and ethical journalism establishment, and it dares to use that standard issue “Big Lie” again. Shameless. Disgusting. Unforgivable.
• “The incendiary comment [that Democrats can be violent] comes as Trump has venerated those charged with crimes for the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol and downplayed the violence that day….” Wow again. Talk about deceit: the deadly riot was deadly because a Capitol cop shot an unarmed rioter. More specifically, that technique is ultra-hacky journalism, the equivalent of writing, “President Biden’s speech about American leadership comes as he increasingly gets confused at public functions and frequently descend into gibberish when he isn’t trying to feel up any female who comes within reach.” But the AP would never uses that cheap technique against a Democrat…just Trump.
• “The night before the interview was posted, Trump spoke at a fundraiser hosted at his New Jersey golf club for the Patriot Freedom Project, which supports the defendants charged for their roles in the insurrection.” I don’t know that I’ve ever seen an article that purports to describe a single event and drags in so many other unrelated ones to make sure it is as negative as possible. Meanwhile, the riot was a riot. It was not an “insurrection.” Anyone who calls it an insurrection loses credibility with me, forever. The partisan prosecutors hunting Trump have concocted every crime imaginable to try to pin on him, and yet they didn’t charge him with insurrection, because even the most committed, woke, Obama appointee judge would laugh it out of court. Nevertheless. once respectable news platforms keep repeating that lie, and have for more than three years.
• “His third White House bid has come as he’s continued to align himself with those espousing extreme views and conspiracies while wrapping his campaign around bogus claims about the 2020 election.” This is the same technique as noted above. First, the article is supposed to be about the interview, not the official talking points to discredit Trump. Second, what does “align” mean in that sentence? What does the AP regard as an “extreme view”? Restricting abortion? Enforcing immigration laws? Having election security measures in place? Not wanting to have a doddering wreck in the White House? Which “bogus” claims in the AP referencing? The claim that the news media, like the AP, worked overtime to demonize Trump as Russian stooge, and that this substantially undermined his chances of being re-elected?
• “Appearing with Carlson instead of debating leans into that. The former Fox host has promoted the view that white people are being “replaced” by people of color and spread misinformation about issues like the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and the war in Ukraine.” Pardon the vulgarity, but that’s just bullshit. Trump accepting the opportunity to have a separate interview with Carlson had nothing to do with Tucker’s embrace of the “replacement theory,” which many prominent Democrats and progressives have endorsed themselves as a good thing, without using the word “replacement.” And again, what misinformation? An ethical  news report can’t just throw in irrelevant and unsupported generalities like that—if it’s supposed to be news reporting. I thought the link to Jan. 6 might go to a Carlson story, but it doesn’t.

One more time: Shameless. Disgusting. Unforgivable.

And, of course, unethical.