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Glenn Kessler Thinks ABC’s Moderators Were a Model for Future Debates

Twitchy

The talk here on X the night of and the day after ABC News' presidential debate shows that moderators Linsey Davis and David Muir were the focus of the debate and not the candidates. We've seen Donald Trump do better, and Kamala Harris didn't embarrass herself. But more people are talking about the "fact-checking" done by the moderators during the debate. According to Ryan Saavedra's review of the transcript, Trump was fact-checked by the moderators four times. Harris? Zero. Saavedra also counted six times that either Muir or Davis pressed Trump for a follow-up. Harris? Zero times.

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But as CNN's Abby D. Phillip put it, "When there is asymmetrical lying, there will be asymmetrical fact-checking." CNN's own fact-checker, Daniel Dale, tallied 33 false claims made by Trump during the debate, and only one by Harris. What? Harris even fell back on the time-tested "very fine people" and "bloodbath" hoaxes which even liberal sites like Snopes have debunked.

Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler didn't give us a tally that we know of, but he did think that having the moderators fact-check the candidates during the debate was a model for how future debates should be conducted.

What?

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As Twitchy reported, even TIME Magazine came up with one of the greatest corrections of all time by admitting they'd counted Trump's claim that Harris supported taxpayer-funder sex-change operations for jailed illegal immigrants as false, when Harris said exactly that on an ACLU questionnaire.

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Not surprisingly, the debate ended up being between Trump and Harris, Davis, and Muir. Three-on-one. As much as it pains us to say it, CNN's Jake Tapper and Dana Bash actually didn't do that badly at their task, which was to ask questions and keep time — not fact-check one and push back on one candidate. It's not the moderator's job to "correct" the candidate, as Davis did with her "Candy Crowley moment" early on.

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