Media Research Center research director Rich Noyes appeared early Thursday night on the Fox Business Network (FBN) program Risk and Reward to analyze the liberal media’s crusade against one of their own in NBC’s Today co-host Matt Lauer for grilling both presidential candidates the night before at a veterans forum and predicted that pressure will be on his colleague Lester Holt to go easy on Hillary Clinton in the first official debate.
Noyes also told fill-in host Elizabeth McDonald that both Clinton and Donald Trump should be pushed to release their “full medical histories to find out what’s going on” and hopefully put to rest (or not) concerns about Clinton’s cough fits.
McDonald started the segment by reading two tweets attempting to convince the masses that Lauer was sexist for interrupting Clinton (ignoring how Lauer did the same for Trump) and asked for Noyes’s reaction.
“Well, I think Matt Lauer is getting bashed today not because Matt Lauer did a bad job. He actually has tough questions of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. He interrupted Donald Trump, but Trump stopped and didn't try to plow through him. He’s under fire from the left today because Hillary Clinton didn't do a good job answering those questions,” Noyes explained.
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From a factual standpoint, Noyes added that Clinton’s “substance wasn't great, and demeanor, she looked irritated, she looked testy” whereas if she had navigated her way through questions about her e-mail scandal more “crisply,” her friends in the press “would have been saying she hit a home run out of the park, but she didn't and they're attacking the interviewer.”
When McDonald inquired about predictions going forward for the first presidential debate on September 26, Noyes opined that NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt will have been well aware of the lambasting that’s been leveled at Lauer so he’ll try to say on the reservation:
[H]e's going to try to be very careful with the questions he's asking Hillary Clinton because of the way he's seeing his colleague being treated. You're going to see reticence in trying interrupt and trying to hold candidates to their time limit. Maybe you'll see a more respectful tone of questioning. It’s called playing the refs and I think, you know, it's something that Democrats are doing right now because they have a press corps that is sympathetic to the idea of stopping Trump...I think they’re a little upset Matt Lauer wasn't on reservation for that anti-Trump crusade that they're trying to whip up.
The roughly five-minute segment concluded with McDonald wondering about Clinton’s coughing spats and Noyes responded by realizing that it “may be nothing more than a nuisance” but we won’t have a definitive answer until she releases her entire medical history.
