Morning Joe Heaps Praise on CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash Before Debate: ‘Two of the Best We Have in the Business’

MSNBC’s Morning Joe had nothing but positive things to say about their competitors moderating Thursday’s presidential debate on CNN.

Co-hosts Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, and Willie Geist all praised CNN’s Dana Bash and Jake Tapper during a panel discussion on what to expect during the first 2024 presidential debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump:

Brzezinski: I don’t think that Jake Tapper and Dana Bash are planning to be hostile. I think they want a fair debate.

Scarborough: Well, they’ll be tough to both sides.

Brzezinski: I think they will be tough to both sides, and I think the hostility, from what we’re seeing already from the Trump campaign, is coming from Trump toward them to try and create hostility. And I’m sure that they will be elegant and fair and try their best to ask Donald Trump — and this is his worst nightmare — basic questions.

Scarborough also pointed out that a crucial role of any moderator is asking follow-up questions:

Scarborough: I think Jake, Dana, I think I think those two tonight are going to have the ability to not only ask the tough, fair question, but more importantly, the follow-up. That has to be asked.

Brzezinski: Or to call out lies.

Scarborough: Yeah. To call out lies, on both sides.

Geist went on to call Bash and Tapper “two of the best we have in the business” who will benefit from the format of the debate while having a big responsibility:

Jake Tapper and Dana Bash are two of the best we have in our business, and they will be able to ask, especially, I think, in this format, Sam Stein, we can’t underline this enough because we haven’t really seen it before. It’s the kind of debate you typically see, and I say this as a compliment, as a good thing on a local level, on your local news affiliate, where the candidates come into the studio. They sit there with no crowd. It’s not a rally, it’s not a rah-rah event, and they just have to answer the questions. And if they don’t answer it, instead of talking over the crowd, the moderators have a chance to ask it again. Sometimes the opponent can challenge and rebut, and you actually get to answers on issues. So it’s going to be fascinating to watch that just sort of the mechanical dynamic of how this plays out tonight.

Watch the video above via MSNBC.

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