Mark Halperin used to be a top political journalist at ABC, MSNBC, and Bloomberg News. Now his "Morning Meetings" and 2Ways on Zoom and YouTube are the best source I've discovered for intelligent, well-sourced, fair takes on the election. In his Morning Meetings, Halperin is accompanied by former Trump spokesman Sean Spicer, and until recently, Dem strategist Tim Hogan, now replaced by another Dem strategist, Dan Turrentine.
The conversations are lively, but fun and respectful.
Halperin always reserves time for his viewers to weigh in with comments and questions, under his mantra of "peace, love, and understanding." These are conversations, not food fights.
Halperin typically begins sessions with his own take on the day's top campaign stories. He doles out compliments and criticisms of the Trump and Harris campaigns with evenhandedness. If he leans one way or the other, it is undetectable to me.
With that preamble, Halperin's comments on last night's VP debate are all the more noteworthy. As the headline indicates, he saw it as a near-total triumph for JD Vance. Halperin also denounced the CBS moderators, Norah O'Donnell and Margaret Brennan, for their anti-Vance bias.
The YouTube of his post-debate 2Way is available here. Excerpts of Halperin's comments:
- "Without a doubt, a total mismatch [in favor of Vance.]"
- Abortion and J6 are tough issues for Republicans, but Vance "handled them as well as I've heard any Republican handle them."
- "[Vance] was obviously extremely well prepared, but didn't seem rehearsed."
- Walz' answer about lying about being in Hong Kong during Tiananmen was "ridiculous."
- "I just can't understand, if you looked at the topics chosen by the moderators. If you looked at their fact-checking. If you looked at the way they allowed one candidate [Walz] to respond and not the other at times. [The moderators were] completely one-sided in how they ran the thing. They chose, as the previous moderators do, to gang up on one side."
- "I thought Vance was the runaway winner. An overall drubbing."
Halperin continued the barrage at the beginning of today's Morning Meeting, which you can view here. Halperin:
- Called the bias of the CBS moderators “disgusting.”
- Said Walz’s answer on Tiananmen might be “the worst debate answer ever.”
- Said that in calling Walz the winner, Rachel Maddow “must be living in a parallel universe.”
- And as you will see in the screencap, described the debate as a “shellacking.“
Do yourself a favor, and check out Morning Meetings, which run for about 30 minutes, every weekday at 9 am EDT. The 2Ways are typically longer, and their airtime varies in accordance with events. If you miss either session in its live version, they're always available shortly thereafter on YouTube.
Tomorrow, it could be Trump's turn in the Halperin barrel. But for today, Trump/JD supporters will surely enjoy Halperin's commentary.
