THIS EVENING, FOX NEWS’ SEAN HANNITY moderated Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) and Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) in a debate that had been agreed to some time ago when DeSantis’ poll numbers in the Republican presidential primary race were much better than they are today. At the time, it was also expected the imposter occupying the White House, Joey Biden, would be impeached, ousted, or ready to retire, a mere footnote in the 2024 campaign season, and that Newsom might be the new Big Guy taking his place.
I haven’t watched Hannity, or Fox (except Maria Bartiromo on Sunday morning), since early on Election Day of 2020 when the cable news channel prematurely and erroneously called the State of Arizona for Biden with only a tiny fraction of the vote counted. I didn’t miss much, it seems.
It wasn’t really a debate, but rather, a clearly one-sided G.O.P. presentation, albeit, a well-researched and accurate one. Newsom would have none of it, though, and talked over Sean and DeSantis, sometimes very loudly. His answers were unresponsive and irrelevant as he ignored the facts presented to him by Hannity that painted a tarnished picture of the Golden State. Many of his assertions were just plain untrue, except, perhaps, for his correction to DeSantis’ pronunciation of Kamala Harris’ first name. Newsom came across as the pompous ass he truly is, but credit where due: he agreed to appear on (gasp!) Fox.
DeSantis, for his part, came across as sane, reasoned, and prepared. He is not known to be a good debater (this was good practice), but he can do a pretty credible compare-and-contrast presentation, as he illustrated. He came with a show-and-tell package, which included, e.g., an actual map currently in use showing where the human shit on the streets in San Francisco is especially bad and a couple of actual books in current use in California schools that glorify homosexuality in age-inappropriate ways. He had to be a bit annoying by speaking fast and loud to be heard over Newsom’s constant interruptions. At the end, it sounded as though the two had agreed to continue the debate another 20 minutes, but during the commercials, they changed their minds. A news imbroglio ensued.
It appears over 5 million watched the fiasco. All the while, it was irrelevant to 2024, but maybe it is a glimpse into the future—2028.
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