Rep. Nate Schatzline and Will Tanner, editor of The American Tribune, called out the moderator bias in the recent presidential debate and analyzed the state of the presidential race.
“There definitely was media bias,” Tanner told The Dallas Express. “[There was this] ridiculous petty fact-checking of Trump. Meanwhile, Kamala pushed multiple just-debunked hoaxes.”
He pointed to the debunked Charlottesville “very fine people on both sides” hoax and the “bloodbath” comment, which referred not to a potential revolution if Trump was not re-elected but to dangers American manufacturers would face from Chinese trade.
Schatzline (R-Fort Worth) said, “I loved that the very biased moderators kept saying this is ‘a historic moment.’ And I’m like, yeah, because our nation is in decline. That’s what is historic about right now.”
This decline is something the Texas House member fiercely opposed and believed could be reversed by electing Donald Trump as president again in November.
The Dallas Express asked the American Tribune editor about the political implications of Trump’s early reference to the alleged eating of geese and other nongame animals by Haitian asylees in Ohio. While he did not think Trump’s comment alone would change opinions, he saw it as tactful to drive home key points on border security.
“[Americans] see a video of some guy carrying around a goose that’s federally protected with zero repercussions for him. I think that shows kind of a double standard in America where … criminals aren’t really arrested for crimes, but your grandma was arrested for walking around the Capitol,” Tanner said.
“Every town is a border state now,” he added.
In an echo of Candy Crowley fact-checking Mitt Romney for false information in 2012, moderator David Muir had attempted to fact-check Trump by saying ABC talked to the city manager in Springfield, and the official said there were no instances of geese eating in Springfield.
However, this alleged assertion from the city manager is countered by a 911 call regarding Haitians killing public park geese, as reported by the New York Post.
Schatzline heralded SB 4, a border security bill that “requires DPS to take biometric data off of illegal aliens that cross the border illegally.” He noted that this bill would benefit Texas by creating a more reliable system of identifying who is crossing the border and how often they have done so.
He said this sets the stage for the state legislature to pass a bill in 2025 that will require “a DNA test … saliva swab” for children being trafficked across the border, which he believes will help authorities identify children who are “no are longer with their family, but are with a random person that they’ve been sold to.”
The state legislator from Fort Worth said the Biden-Harris administration does not help state and local authorities with this biometric data collection because of political reasons. “And for the reason of winning a political vote, for the reason of having a future voter, because their plan is for illegal aliens to be able to vote. She is sacrificing the next generation to the horrific world of sex trafficking as we speak and refuses to do anything about it,” he claimed.
ECONOMICS
Tanner thought Harris’ plan for more auto manufacturing jobs was unlikely to be successful because of automation. However, he thought Trump’s commitment to use tariffs to defend America’s industrial base had merit.
“You can make American manufacturing competitive with tariffs that equalize the prices due to China not really having environmental rules and laws in the way that we do, and other issues like that with them using effectively slave labor,” he said. “You can make American manufacturing competitive, but I don’t think you can bring jobs back.”
However, he thought the promise of tariffs would not shift votes, despite the plan’s potential viability, because of a lack of public knowledge about that element of industrial policy.
Schatzline was asked about tax cuts, an issue he is passionate about and which has become a major focus of both the Trump and Harris campaigns. The vice president’s opening debate remarks focused on building an “opportunity economy,” which she said included cutting taxes for young families. She contrasted it with Trump’s alleged tax plan which she described as mostly benefiting billionaires.
However, Harris had appeared to steal parts of her tax plan from both Trump and his running mate Sen. JD Vance (R-OH). One such example came in early September when she took Vance’s $5,000 child tax credit plan and made it her $6,000 plan.
The representative, who is up for reelection in November, opined that electing Trump president again is important because inflated prices have also meant an inflated tax burden for citizens. Schatzline champions ideas like raising the homestead exemption and cutting the state budget until there is no longer a surplus.
TAYLOR SWIFT
The most challenging question of the interview was “What effect will Taylor Swift’s post-debate endorsement of Kamala Harris have on the race?”
“I don’t listen to Taylor Swift for anything,” Schatzline said.
“I’m what you might call a Swifty disrespector,” Tanner joked before noting that the pop star signed her endorsement as “a childless cat lady.”
He added, “If [childless cat ladies] weren’t already voting for Kamala, then they’re probably not going to be voting.”
