Well let's take the Rick Santorum question. Don as Santorum started to talk about how some people on ObamaCare lost their doctor and had to pay higher rates. Will then interrupted and said that he asked what freedoms he personally lost since Obama took office. The President of the United States isn't just representing himself, he is representing an entire country. And a lot of people lost their doctor and had to pay higher rates. Having a prosecutor like debate is a terrible idea, because the prosecutor's job is not to get the truth, but to get a response that is best for his case. That is why there is a defense attorney who then asks other questions, to get everything out there
Let's get one thing clear - this wasn't a debate, it was an interrogation, a cross-examination by a prosecutor. And let's get another thing clear: Will McAvoy (brilliant character that he is) is not actually a Republican, he's a liberal's fantasy of the "ideal" Republican, because Sorkin is most certainly a liberal: He's a Republican who holds mostly liberal ideals and hates Republican politics.
@@loremipsum3610 He hates the Tea Party's lying about being a grassroots movement when they are actually a mouthpiece for the Koch brothers. He hates the denial of science, such as evolution and anthropogenic climate change. He hates the interference in people's freedoms such as the opposition to gay marriage. He likes everything about what the Republicans should stand for -- market based solutions instead of government interference, personal liberty instead of legislative dictate, gun ownership by responsible adults, and so on. Aside from the things I outlined, what does he hate about Republican politics and what liberal ideals does he hold?
Its was a debate...Hahahaha. It was a debate.....That's how seriously the VP was at the debate. you can say all the things you can and brush it under the carpet in the garb of a debate.
@@alexh8613 so let me ask you have you had to change doctors and can you give three people you know by name that had to change doctors because of Obamacare? Can you cite study done by a nonpartisan think tank that backs up your claim that lots of people had to change doctors? The question wasn't did somebody you know have to pay higher rates for healthcare before Obamacare became law. The question was have you had to change doctors or has anybody you know had to change doctors. I am allowing that the answer would be anecdotal evidence and might not indicate the scope of the problem so I am allowing for any evidence you can name that supports that claim (again from a nonpartisan group, not the Heritage Foundation or something similar).
It was already happening when Sorkin wrote this.. apparently from all the comments I’ve seen in these Newsroom vs Trump -situations is that the whole World saw what was going on except Americans themselves. :|
Sorkin is a neoliberal hack who's done nothing significant aside from popularizing a now overused camera technique and perpetuating the myth of American Democracy.
"It is reprehensible that the liberal media would attempt to pit republicans against each other" Will- "I'm sorry, you do understand this is a political debate, right?"
We don't do this with our actual debates because the candidates know they would never be elected if they *actually* got asked tough questions. But hey, it's not like they're running for the highest office in the land or anything right?
@@phunkyphresh3799 thats where it needs to be made clear actions such as those, that are unprofessional and unbecoming, would have you disqualified from the running
@@4realjacob637 stop changing the subject. We are at talking about politicians running for office not politicians who already are in office. That's another discussion.
Not really. Let's take the Rick Santorum question. Don as Santorum started to talk about how some people on ObamaCare lost their doctor and had to pay higher rates. Will then interrupted and said that he asked what freedoms he personally lost since Obama took office. The President of the United States isn't just representing himself, he is representing an entire country. And a lot of people lost their doctor and had to pay higher rates. Having a prosecutor like debate is a terrible idea, because the prosecutor's job is not to get the truth, but to get a response that is best for his case. That is why there is a defense attorney who then asks other questions, to get everything out there
@@alexh8613 He wasn't answering the question that was asked of him in more ways than one. His answer wasn't about a freedom he lost nor was it about a "freedom" at all. "Lot of people" is a vague and weak claim to make as you can easily say the exact opposite of your statement and say, a "lot of people didn't lose their doctor or pay higher rates (how is that a freedom lost again?)" too. The defense attorney's job is to do the exact same thing as the prosecutor if you are simplifying it that much as they are trying to get the response that will help their case the most as well. You seem to have a problem with requiring the candidates to tell the truth and answer the questions they are asked, and that is just silly. What's the point of a debate at all if they can lie and spew nonsense talking points that have no substance or veracity to them?
@@edwardheaney3641 No, what matters is answering the question that was asked. The fact that he DIDN"T answer the question posed to him is the problem. That aside, could you tell me how it's a "freedom" that some people lost?
@@edwardheaney3641 first of all, they didn’t lose the “freedom to choose their own doctor”. That’s talking point nonsense. Some plans and coverages, it turned out, were too poor to qualify as coverage and changes had to occur. The insurance companies took the cost of being regulated out on consumers. Besides this, it was a question based on an actual quote; that’s why it was personalized to individual freedoms of the candidate to match the original quote’s assertion. Also, if you want to broaden it to others, then bring your data with you. Have numbers and facts. That’s how a debate should work.
The biggest problem with this scene is this is what the world NEEDS, but in reality people like Will, Mac, Charlie and the whole team are near IMPOSSIBLE to find. They may start with a lot of heart to try make the world a better place, but once they get to a position where they can make a difference, 99 out of a 100 of them have already been corrupted by the system. I love this show, I really wish the goal that the main characters are trying to accomplish can happen in reality, but it's just....too damn hard...
I don't think it's about individuals becoming corrupted. Any person that would actually do that wouldn't be put in a position of power. Very few, if any, candidates would agree to such a debate, making it sort of moot. If a debate like that were to actually happen, most people wouldn't care about what actually went down, but bite-sized, easy-to-understand bits on highlights and social media that would be marketed sensationally as "takedowns" or whatnot, so the actual info and nuance would be lost and it'd be like a sort of "roast comedy" thing. And it wouldn't be marketed that way because the media's "evil" or whatever (which it probably is, regardless): it'd be marketed that way because that's what sells and that's what we buy. It's not about individuals. At least that's what I think, I could be wrong.
No they're not there are thousands of people seeking a job in the fourth estate seeking to be these people, the problem we have is that there is no market for this, no one wants to pay for letting journalists do the work they really want to do.
"I'm not going to allow the press to make fools out of our cannadates." The RNC that year would later ask one of the running candidates in the Debate "Who is better Elvis or Cash?"
Just needed to watch this scene again, after watching the joke that was the first Trump vs Biden "debate". Oh, what could be ... but we will never have!
Same here. Can you imagine if this was what the debates were actually like? Birds would sing and the sun would shine and babies would smile. Ugh, what a dumpster fire the actual debate was.
@@GeneralG1810 I'd shift that a little bit. Remember the scene in The Newsroom where Mac and Will are talking about bias towards fairness? ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-6dgBCjmiDrw.html Mac says "There aren't two sides to every story. Some stories have five sides some only have one. " Will says "Bias towards fairness means that if the entire congressional Republican caucus were to walk in to the House and propose a resolution stating that the Earth was flat, the Times would lead with "Democrats and Republicans Can't Agree on Shape of Earth." The problem with modern news is that it's impossible to *look* like you're unbiased when you're reporting some of the wackiness that's going on. The President of the United States is claiming that one of the most well-respected epidemiologists in the world doesn't know what he's talking about. What do you say in that case? Trump is the best-protected person on Earth and needs to have contact with comparatively few other people during the day as compared to, e.g., a retail worker. If Trump had followed basic health protocols (mask, social distancing) then he would not have gotten covid, period. Instead, he was going around hugging people, claiming that masks don't work, and (unsurprisingly) he ended up sick. How do you report that in a way that doesn't make it look as though you're biased against Trump?
David K. Storrs True but most of the media says Trump does NOTHING good ever, I mean come the fuck on that’s just stupid. He’s introduced policies that have helped plenty of people. CNN these days aren’t even a news network they’re just a Trump smear machine, and Fox is the opposite side of the same coin. NONE of them can just report a story without putting their own spin on it!
@@GeneralG1810 Trump has definitely done some things that are good for some people -- for example, the tax cuts that he advocated for did in fact put money back into some people's pockets. What policies in particular were you thinking of?
This would be incredible to actually see aggressive thoughtful questions, and have them (politicians on any side) answer for the blithe sound bites they put out to appease their bases.
I'm sure it would get popular eventually if someone actually did it. But someone would have to pay for it while being hands off enough to let it actually appear independent.
Amazing idea, doesnt take into account that most people are so stupid they vote one party their entire life without being open to the possibility that there's a better candidate out there
@@chrispez9 no thats what im saying people dont do, they claim on party their entire life without ever really understanding the values and agenda of said party, to allign with a single party your entire life is stupid, because the agenda of said party changes all the time based on current candidates,global politics and a million other things , you should take each election individually and search for the candidate you personally believe in and agree with, not just voting republicans because theyre republicans or voting democrats because theyre democrats
This is very true, and a definite problem with the current two party system, but that just proves why harsh primary debates are important. If a core (read: the majority) of voters only ever vote for their preferred party's candidate, then it's especially important to ensure the best person from each primary wins the candidacy, instead of who can talk over everyone loudest or sounds the most persuasive (despite actually being full of BS).
What is so sad is how the RCCC is offended by the idea of its perspective nominees being asked about statements they've made in the past. It's like the RCCC knows that its candidates couldn't live up to the scrutiny of Wil McAvoy, a card carrying Nebraska born Republican.
@@larrysmith2638 Ironically, a "free press" is one that is funded without strings attached. If people pay for the news, either through subscription fees or contributions to some sort of trust fund like with PBS, then they are free to write about important things going on, generally without any major biases. However, when people don't want to pay for news, the news has to be funded by advertisers. This means that the news will be biased in favor of corporate interests, and will likely never do a bad story about companies that fund them, no matter how terrible. To make matters worse, advertisers pay by the click, so the news broadcasters are incentivized to become more sensationalized and click baited; Usually by stoking fear or anger in their audience, as these are the emotions most likely to drive a response or interaction. And once they monitor what kinds of articles you click on, they can feed you what you want to hear rather than an objective news story. This leads to the kind of ever diverging political polarization and "alternative facts" we see in different political groups. In addition to this, now that they have a profile of things you like to click on, they can determine your interests and sell these profiles to advertisers to target you more specifically. This is why you can be thinking "Hmm, I think I'd like tacos for lunch" and suddenly there's an advertisement for Taco Bell on your social media account. These algorithms can know you THAT well. And advertisers will pay big money for this information. In essence, you become the product they are selling, not important news stories. This is why we need people to pay for their news, so that news can be truly independent.
No party in the world does. I'm a committed Socialist (Fear me Conservatives and Republicans) and I hear the same bullshit lies, clichés and rhetoric from left-wing candidates. For example, here in the UK our left-wing parties attack the Conservatives for their cuts to our National Health Service but when Labour was in power between '97 and '10, they made the exact same cuts. When you bring this up, they waffle on about how it was a different time and a different party and go back to attacking the Conservatives rather than take responsibility for their part. They're all in it for themselves.
I thought this show was cool. However the older I get the more I realised it just bashed republicans. I’m not trying to debunk the shit the show threw. However the show acted like Democrats are complete saints. They definitely are not. The party of Nancy Pelosi, a person whose on city has more human feces on its street than dogs. Elisabeth Warren, a woman who is less than 1/1024th Cherokee but still ticked the diversity box her entire career. Joe Biden, a man whose son is a disgrace, he jumps prostitutes, smokes crack and films both while also sleeping with his dead brothers widow while collecting cash for his dad from foreign dignitaries. Let’s not forget Kamala Harris, a woman who proudly jailed non violent drug offenders who were mostly black then turns around and says AMERICA persecutes black people. Joe Biden has been in office for almost 5 decades and he claims America is institutionally racist, what has he personally done in 50 years to change that. Besides trying his best to stop Clarence Thomas from joining the Supreme Court? his friend Robert Byrd was a “Exalted Cyclops” in the KKK as well as a recruiter.
The show didn't attempt to show Democrats were saints. It rarely mentions them. It's Rapeubliscams (and especially rabid ones) who held the majority of the power in Congress until recently. All Rapeubliscams have done since the 1980s is actively promote racism and misogyny while putting our tax money into the hands of the wealthy and making the rest of us pay for it. Putting Thomas on the bench, who hates Black people even more than the Klan does,. was intended as a slap in the face to everyone who revered the great Justice Thurgood Marshall.
Because Aaron Sorkin didn’t want it to. He said after West Wing he would never do another tv series for more than three seasons. And rather than let it suffer the way West Wing did after Sorkin left, Newsroom ended with little decline in quality.
If debates happened like this, would I watch them? Yes. Would I be more interested? Yes. Would I absolutely hate every single candidate? Yes. I get why we dont have this exactly. Hopefully someday there will be a better balance.
I wouldn’t hate every single candidate bc I’d be able to see who could handle the pressure and was ACTUALLY qualified for the office a full year before I even voted, which is just stupid that we have to wait that long for a campaign to finish. Why are campaigns 2 years long???
@@lynnerose7891 i think cause its an industry with billions of dollars behind it so the longer it goes the more money is made which has lead to the lengthing of each presidential campaign and the near immediate congressional campaign for re-election. if you work in the industry its in your intrest to say to candidates if they start earlier they have a better chance and blunders will be forgotten.
I love he way they end this episode. After seeing what Will wanted we get a clip from the actual Debate where the toughest question Michelle Bachmann is asked is "Elvis or Johnny Cash"? Absolutely sums up what's wrong with the current "Debate" format...
Ridiculous that things aren't really like this. We let them get up there and blather lies and not get called out on it. They rarely answer the question they are asked and are never called out on it.
Presidents going on about fixing gas prices had always been a mysterious thing that idiots always go along with. 😂 How’s a guy in Virginia gonna make the gas cheaper in Nebraska?
It would actually thin out the herd and get the crazies and the morons and the hollow demagogues out of the race leaving a handful of fairly decent candidates. And like the character who's with the GOP says at some point, the candidate who would win that debate, would lead the polls the next day. Anyone half intelligent and not blatantly dishonest should welcome such a format.
You're both right, and the show makes that point (with one character taking each of your stances) at the end of this episode. It would absolutely "empty the clown car" (as Will puts it) and remove unqualified candidates from the race, but because no candidate wants to risk looking unqualified, and because the party doesn't want any of them to look *that* bad, neither the party nor the candidates will agree to this style of debate (which is what ultimately happens, on the GOP official's decision). In fairness, the same is probably true for both parties.
This is actually Sorkin’s biggest problem. Will isn’t a journalist, he’s just smarter than everyone all the time because the writers make it so. He’s not even really doing a debate between candidates he’s the one debating because Sorkin wants to show how Will (I.e. himself) is actually much smarter and just cares about the truth, damnit!
@@CMike_ did you know it takes two years for a presidents policies to fully take effect. Biden couldnt have destroyed the economy in that short amount of time. In fact trump was handed a pretty solid economy and tanked it two years in and it didn't help that covid lockdown happened.
Viewing this, I would say we need Jeff Daniels, in character as he is here, as the debate moderator for All of our future presidential debates, in real life!!! This would be Much Better than the bullshit the candidates on both sides were allowed to get away with in many past campaigns!
And this is what we need, in all debates, in all parties, in all democratic countries, in all elections. But it's not what we'd watch on TV if it was on.
The candidates would never agree to this format, and if it started to happen they would claim they were blindsided. Media allies would call out the moderator for his “grandstanding”. THE AIM ISTO PROTECT THE CANDIDATES, NOT ADVOCATE FOR THE VOTERS.
Only if you chose another plan. By the way, that's because it was still privatized insurance. The problem with Obamacare was that it didn't go far enough and make health insurance a completely public program.
@larrysmith2638 I couldn't disagree more. I think insurance itself is the problem. Everything should be privatized. Doctors and hospitals should negotiate payment plans directly with customers and work out their own plans for patients who simply can not pay. Government, in case you haven't noticed, couldn't run a fast food restaurant efficiently. We need competitive markets in medicine, not government control. We need medical supply companies who can lower the costs of supplies. Lastly but most definitely not least, we need the middlemen being insurance and government as far as medicine goes, to simply go away. Their existence is not justified.
@AnthonyJMurph we lost our insurance because once big Mike's husband Barry Sotoro created his precursor to full government control, my provider raised their rates in increments until my employer no longer could afford it. We lost our benefits. The insurance companies decided they were not going to play ball with Barry care. The $50 a week FAMILY plan that did everything we needed magically vanished. So, yeh. That happened.
For every future debate, all mics should be muted until after the moderator asks a candidate a question, and if said candidate isn't answering it, they can be cut off and muted right on the spot.
"You said if you were elected the price of gas would be $2.50 a gallon. How does the US president control the price of oil?" This sound bite could be used for the last 4 years of political debates.
It was an olive branch to show how Republicans can get back to sanity. If people actually watched the Newsroom, you would see them beat up on Occupy Wallstreet quite a bit.
The problem with politics with any type of political system is people has a need to defend the system or the people they are voting for when in fact they should be the first in line to scrutinize, analyze, and question the very people that they are voting for.
"is that supposed to be an impersonation?" That right is the problem with politics around the globe. We/they/everyone focus on the visual representation than the intellectual one because who cares what the candidate thinks
People had to change doctors because of Obamacare, though. The fact that Santorum and his family didn't doesn't change a thing. People suffered because of Obamacare and Santorum ran for president to defend those very people, even when, get this, they weren't members of his immediate family! That's what elected representatives do, they fight for our freedoms even when they themselves haven't lost them. Santorum wasn't running to get more rights for himself, he was running to get more rights for the people.
What about the democrats in plain sight with lies after lies after lies. And threats to the American people day after day. That being said I'm a registered republican but if an actual democrat I found that wasnt apart of tearing this country apart such as maybe a tulsi gabbard, id have a vote for her.. That being said Trump was the best president the country has had in decades and morons threw that away or a stolen election possibly, but I dont want to.be put in RU-vid jail for a 4th time in 2 years. 8 months of no Trump and the wokeism shooting threw the roof we will be a 3rd world country very soon and very sad. Since you seem so democratic just know the real clown car is the left.
Lol "no you cant answer my questions". This is such a power fantasy by the anchor. He doesnt like the answer so he interrupts and doesn't let them answer the question with anything but a yes or no. "Name three freedoms" names one. No I don't like that answer. Name 3 different ones
No he didn’t name one he named a benefit that’s not a freedom ( you could twist an explanation like freedom to choose not to have health insurance but that’s not really a choice) So why are you saying that the anchors having a power fantasy when he just wants a proper answer?
Except that this high powered intelligence and wit would nail everyone in both parties. Good logic applied within the presupposed bounds and fallacies of the right/left paradigm are only that. One would even say it ceases to be good logic out the other side- just another presupposition or fallacy.
