While there is a growing consensus that the first 2024 presidential debate between President Joe Biden and convicted felon Donald Trump was a disaster for the sitting president, there is also a faction of political observers who believe that the moderators of the debate fell down on the job.
In particular, there was a great deal of anger at CNN's Dana Bash and Jake Tapper over their failure to make Trump answer their questions and worse including allowing him to lie with impunity with no push-back or fact-checking.
As reported by the Washington Post's Jeremy Barr, the former president littered his answers with a flood of lies, yet the two CNN "State of the Union" hosts never stepped in to correct the record.
According to Barr, "Instead of fact-checking the candidates, Tapper and Bash focused mostly on keeping them within the time limits, stopping and starting and going back and forth between the candidates," before adding, "Even when Trump seemed to ignore a question about the opioid crisis by instead criticizing Biden’s economic policies, the moderators said nothing and allowed Trump to keep talking."
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With Trump also making false accusations about abortions after a birth, Kate Smith, senior director of news for Planned Parenthood, took to X, and wrote, "How are none of the moderators fact checking this post birth abortion nonsense?? That was a dumpster fire.”
NBC News and MSNBC contributor Anthony Coley used the same social media platform to complain, "The absence of real-time fact checking is the biggest failure of this debate."
“Not having fact checking was a dumb decision,” stated Ameshia Cross, a Democratic strategist.
As Barr noted, CNN placed itself in a box with CNN’s political director David Chalian stating beforehand, "The venue of a presidential debate between these two candidates is not the ideal venue for a live fact-checking exercise."
"Still, despite the criticism, CNN hoped that Tapper and Bash would keep the attention on the candidates, not themselves. Without a doubt, they achieved that objective Thursday, even as they were accused by some of staying on the sidelines," the Post report noted.
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