MU debate scholar discusses GOP debate on “This Week”

The Republican debate on FOX News Thursday night, drew a record 24 million viewers, according to Nielsen.

University of Missouri professor of political communications Dr. Mitchell McKinney is one of the millions who watched the debate. As our guest on “this Week,” ABC 17’s Joey Parker started the conversation with the scholar of presidential debates by asking “who won the debate.”

This is a transcript of their conversation:

Joey Parker: Dr. McKinney, first of all, who won last night’s presidential debate?

Dr. Mitchell McKinney: Well, usually we talk in terms of, of who didn’t lose the, the debate. It’s quite often the case that someone will make a gaff, a blunder, a mistake, and then we start to see their poll numbers fall. I don’t, we didn’t see that last night. We also had some expectations going into the debate of how would Donald Trump perform. He certainly had a lot of media attention surrounding him. Much of it his own build up in terms of the lead up to the debate. His performance seemed to be rather positive. Even some of the morning programs this morning, (said he had) a pretty strong performance, last night. So, going into the debate as the front-runner, I think coming out of the debate he’s maintained that front runner status.

Joey: Now a lot of people thought it was going to be a three-ring circus led by Donald Trump. Did it surprise you that it didn’t turn out quite that way?

Dr. McKinney: Well, in some ways I think we might attribute that to the strong hosting moderators…the journalists that were in charge of that debate, the Fox News team, Chris Wallace; They took control at the very beginning, They had pointed questions for each of the candidates. It wasn’t just questions for the two or three front runners. Also in terms of it not turning into ‘The Donald Trump Show,’ several of the other candidates on the stage, even when prompted or asked by the journalists, encouraged by the journalists to take on Trump, didn’t do so. They passed over that opportunity. If they had attacked him, that would have given him more of an opportunity, I think, to take charge of the debate. So we didn’t see that happen.

Joey: Did Fox News surprise you with their harder line of questions?

Dr. McKinney: You know, in many ways, there was a lot of questions about their performance last night with this perception by some that perhaps Fox News is too close to the Republican candidates, the Republican Party, the RNC. And I think going into the debate that probably prompted them to, from the get-go, that first round of questions pointed questions to each of the candidates. And my assessment as I was watching that two hour debate I thought, “Okay right out of the gate we’ve had these very strong questions. Now maybe they’ll pull back a bit.” But not so. Throughout the entire two hours, they kept it up with questions regarding past comments the candidates had made, conflicting statements, things about their background that were perhaps weaknesses. They took effort to highlight all of those things last night and I think conducted that debate very well.

Joey: Did anybody surprise you? Which candidate surprised you perhaps?

Dr. McKinney: “In terms of the candidates’ performances, I said we did really see any major gaps. Yet I’ve noted Jeb Bush’s performance in the debate was very somewhat low-key, low-energy, a very reasoned, a deliberate performance. He was standing right next to Donald Trump, is seen as perhaps the contender for front-runner status. And I think the stark contrast between Trump’s aggressiveness, his willingness to take on any and all comers, including the questioners, really was a contrast to Jeb Bush’s performance. And at times, with that large number of candidates on the stage and for two hours, there were times that we even forgot Jeb Bush was there. And so we heard him later in the debate and so I think that energy level, his approach really was a contrast to Donald Trump.

Joey: Speaking of forgetting people were there, Dr. Carson, of course, had the least amount of time I believe, but he held his own and came up with some zingers himself, didn’t he?

Dr. McKinney: “He did. When he was allowed to speak and had questions posed to him, through humor, through his own personal background, the experiences he’s had as a neurosurgeon, really was a contrast to the background and the record of a lot of the other politicians on the stage. And so that his performance I think went well. You know interesting another person not on the stage but who had a chance to have a cameo appearance in the debate was Carly Fiorina. That seemed to be driven largely by her very aggressive debating in that earlier “also ran” debate, and Fox turned to her and gave her some time in that debate.

Joey: Today I’ve been hearing her talked about probably the most right after Bush and Trump.

Dr. McKinney: You know, Joey, one of the differences I was surprised with this, the earlier debate was much more aggressive, certainly Carly Fiorina’s performance, but Rick Perry, Senator Lindsey Graham, in taking on Hillary Clinton. We heard much more of that in the earlier debate. We didn’t hear a lot of that, a lot of attack of Hillary Clinton in the latter debate. We heard a few references, even some of it was done with humor. And I was surprised by that. I thought that the main stage, the top ten candidates, would really take her on, but nothing like what we heard in that earlier debate.

Joey: Dr. McKinney, thank you very much for joining us. We hope to have you back.

Dr. McKinney: Thank You.