If you’re hoping for a kill-shot moment during Thursday’s presidential debate, you may be disappointed.

Just two days before the highly anticipated CNN spectacle, Scott Adams, the illustrator of the controversial comic strip “Dilbert,” and humorist Michael Ian Black have given us a preview of what to expect at the main event. Adams invited Black on his podcast to discuss Adams’ claim that one cannot have a conversation with someone who believes the media tells the truth.

Adams had planned to confront Black with the usual litany of hoaxes perpetrated by the media to demonize Donald Trump. He believed Black didn’t know the actual facts behind these media hoaxes, so thought he could deliver a simple lecture on how the news is meant to persuade, not inform. He expected to surprise Black with a solid list of provable facts exposing the many anti-Trump hoaxes.

Knowing the Adam’s audience would likely be Trump-leaning, Black did not attempt to inform or persuade them. Black came merely with the goal of countering Adams’s efforts at persuasion. If Trump thinks he can waltz into the debate with the same approach Adams used, he may be in for the same nasty surprise Black had waiting for Adams.

The Adams/Black debate came to a screeching halt when Adams matter-of-factly claimed that Biden accused Trump of praising the Charlotteville extremists who appeared to identify as neo-Nazis and white supremacists. Black simply denied that Biden had made the accusation. Adams’ jaw gaped open in shock. Adams said he spent the day watching compilation videos of Biden making this claim on the stump, including mentioning at his campaign launch. Adams played the video of Trump clarifying that he condemned the neo-Nazis and racists. Black acknowledged this video and agreed to its authenticity. So, Adams repeated his assertion that Biden perpetrated the “fine people” hoax. Black stopped Adams again, challenging Adams to play just one video in which Biden actually accused Trump of calling neo-Nazis “fine people.”

It was bewildering. How could Black deny Biden misquoted Trump? We all clearly remember Biden making this claim repeatedly. Even the left-leaning Snopes issued a fact-check debunking the “fine people” hoax and noted that Biden made the distortion of Trump’s comment “the cornerstone of his campaign.”

Adams was not quick enough to understand what Black was doing. Biden quoted Trump correctly but out-of-context. Trump did say there were fine people on both sides but he also clarified that he wasn’t talking about the neo-Nazis. So, what Biden’s campaign actually did was to correctly quote Trump but then leave out the context, allowing listeners to supply their own. More importantly, that left it to Trump to explain why he wasn’t a Nazi supporter. And if you’re explaining, you’re losing.

And the same can be said of the hoax surrounding the Hunter Biden laptop. The 51 intelligence officers never outright said the laptop was Russian disinformation, but carefully hedged their claims by stating that it bore the earmarks of a Russian information campaign. Not a Russian “disinformation” campaign but an “information” campaign. In doing so, they left the door open for the possibility that the Russians might have been telling the truth, even if they were behind the suspected effort to interfere in the election. Of course, they also admitted the Russians might have had nothing to do with the laptop—but since they only said that the story “bore the earmarks” of a Russian information campaign, that also wouldn’t make the statement false.

Black then questioned whether Trump could be taken at his word literally. No, he cannot, Adams quickly conceded. Trump speaks using hyperbole and exaggeration for rhetorical effect. You see what he did there? If Trump can shade the truth to make a point, why can’t Biden and his supporters?

Black went on to claim that the media likewise did not advance the claim that Trump praised neo-Nazis as “fine people.” This claim likely relies on more quibbles over the literal words not exactly matching the clear intended persuasive effect. For example, ABC News wrote, “President Donald Trump maintained he ‘answered perfectly’ when he said there were ‘very fine people on both sides’ of clashes at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.” The Atlantic wrote that Trump’s Charlottesville speech showed, “The President’s Pursuit of White Power.” Obviously, the writers wanted to convey the impression that Trump did endorse racists, even if they buried some trap door qualification that saved the claims from being outright lies.

Unfortunately for Trump, the left still considers the Charlottesville hoax too good to be untrue. It doesn’t matter that he clarified himself by condemning white supremacists. They simply acknowledge what he said in his denial but insist their out-of-context interpretation is the one that matters. Both sides use interpretation to shade real quotes into misleading soundbites that embarrass the other side. There’s something particularly sneaky and dishonest about the way the left continues to distort the true story. But that’s our view from inside our own bubble. Maybe the other side sees something similar when they look to their right.