Moderating A Trump Debate Is A No-Win Situation
HuffPost
The ABC News moderators valiantly tried to fact-check Trump in real time, but it may never have been enough.
Tuesday night’s presidential debate was a study in contrasts. Unlike their CNN counterparts in June, ABC News moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis came prepared to push back on former President Donald Trump’s lies.
On five occasions, they fact-checked Trump in real time, according to a HuffPost analysis of the debate transcript. It began when Davis challenged Trump after he repeated his lie that Democrats support “abortion in the ninth month” and “execution after birth.”
Davis stepped in. “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born,” she said.
At first, it seemed like a welcome shift from prior debates, when moderators would often let Trump ramble on and on, spewing lie after lie.
But there’s only so much someone can do to stop him. As we’ve often witnessed since 2015, moderating a debate or conducting a live TV interview with Trump is regularly a no-win situation. It often ends up resulting in more free airtime for Trump. For every fact-check in the moment, there are plenty more of Trump’s spurious claims that go unchallenged. Plus, the former president’s penchant for distraction, deflection and obfuscation often derails any attempts by the interviewer to keep the discussion on track. Trying to pull out every rotting piece of lettuce from Trump’s word salad and parse each one is a fool’s errand. It would take hours — days, even.
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