Donna Brazile on leaking debate questions: I didn't want my candidate to be 'blindsided'

The entire point of a debate is to be hit politicians with questions they weren't expecting. They tend to devolve into meaningless, tedious, shouting matches, but the idea is to force a pair of potential elected officials to think on their feet and address issues of public concern. Specifically, the goal is to batter them with questions they didn't anticipate, and see if they can generate coherent, articulate, responses. The goal is not to hand them the questions in advance so that their writers can formulate a pat, focus-tested, response.

Unless, that is, you're either Donna Brazile or Hillary Clinton. If you are, the rules don't apply, and your goal is to put on a dog and pony show that offers the pretense of a genuine debate ...but really serves as nothing more than a scripted campaign commercial. With that as your objective, you leak the questions ahead of time. After all, you wouldn't want your candidate to be "blindsided" would you? That's according to Donna Brazile, who was just about laughed out of the room after offering Tucker Carlson some of the most tortured spin the host had ever heard.

"What I sought to do, Tucker, was to ensure that we had these issues on the table, and I wanted to make sure our candidates, I didn’t want them blindsided. That’s what I admitted to."

Just. Wow. Check out the clip below.