ABC’s Matter-of-Fact Moderators Built Factual Guardrails Around Trump

Calmly and firmly, Linsey Davis and David Muir pursued the kind of real-time fact-checking missing from many previous debates.

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Fifteen minutes into Tuesday’s debate, former President Donald J. Trump was delivering a circuitous answer about his stance on abortion rights when he made a statement with no basis in reality: that a governor had condoned executing babies after birth.

Linsey Davis, one of the evening’s moderators from ABC News, did not let that one slide. “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born,” Ms. Davis said, matter-of-factly.

A little later, it happened again. When Mr. Trump made an outlandish claim about migrants in an Ohio town eating dogs and cats, the other moderator, David Muir, pointed out that ABC had called the city manager and learned there were no credible reports of pets being harmed.

“The people on television say, ‘My dog was taken and used for food,’” Mr. Trump said.

“I’m not taking this from television,” Mr. Muir responded. “I’m taking it from the city manager.”