Adam Guillette breaks down full GOP debate on Hamodia
September 7, 2023
INTERVIEW — GOP Scorecard: Debatable
Adam Guillette spoke with Hamodia last week Thursday about the GOP primary debate held the previous night.
Guillette is the president of Accuracy in Media, a conservative watchdog group that describes itself as using “citizen activism and investigative journalism to expose media bias, corruption, and public policy failings.”
He is also a distinguished faculty member at the Leadership Institute, which trains young conservative activists.
Guillette previously founded the Florida chapter of Americans for Prosperity, and was a vice president of Project Veritas.
Who, if anyone, do you think won last night’s debate?
I don’t think there was a definitive winner, except perhaps Trump, because there was no definitive winner. To me, no candidate really stood out so much and made such a name for themselves that Trump will have regretted not appearing.
I think people assumed Trump would come up a lot more in the debate than he did. Around the midway point of the debate, there was a 13-minute segment in which they discussed Trump, his legal troubles, and January 6, but other than that segment he was not mentioned much. Did you think that his name would come up more?
Absolutely. The question for me ahead of time was, “Are they going to pile up on DeSantis or are they going to pile up on Trump?” And really, it was neither. I was surprised at how little Trump got attacked, given that they’re all so far behind him.
Do you think that’s because Trump has such support in the Republican Party that the other candidates are afraid that attacking Trump would be suicide?
No, I think it’s because many of them are more traditional, old-school politicians who used an old-school approach, which didn’t benefit them: It was a lot of, “I’m from a small town, I come from this family, my wife is this or my daughter is that,” and less substantively about what they’ve actually done, what they’re going to do, what other people did that was right or wrong.