ABC’s debate moderators’ performance in Tuesday night’s presidential debate made CNN’s performance in June look like a master class in fairness, objectivity, and balance.
It was exactly the kind of debate moderation left-wing commentators on X have been demanding for months—years, really.
They don’t want anything approaching objectivity. They wanted moderators to “fact-check” former President Donald Trump every step of the way while allowing his opponent to pontificate on questions they think will be beneficial to Democratic Party fortunes.
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And that’s essentially what happened.
ABC News anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis continually “fact-checked” Trump in real time, arguing with him after nearly every answer. That makes for a horrible debate format.
ABC debate moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis pose for pictures with ABC News crew members at the end of Tuesday night’s presidential faceoff in Philadelphia. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
Were the Lincoln-Douglas debates fact-checked by interjecting moderators? Of course not. The debate was between the two men and their ideas.
But in Tuesday night’s debate, the moderators didn’t even bother to create the mirage of objectivity. They hounded Trump every step of the way while stepping aside to allow Harris to make her points. They weren’t fact-checking on behalf of the American people, they were interjecting on behalf of their partisan interest.
The fact-checks weren’t even particularly accurate, not that that really seemed to matter to the moderators. For instance, when Trump said that Democrats in some states support after-birth abortion, Davis interjected that “there is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after birth.”
As The Daily Signal has reported, there are many states—including Minnesota, the home state of Harris’ running mate Gov. Tim Walz—that allow babies who survive abortions to die.
Harris didn’t get this treatment at all. Moderators politely allowed Harris to say whatever she wanted.
Even in the most obvious case of Harris going with the tired fabrication about Trump calling white supremacists “very fine people” in Charlottesville, Va.—fact-checked as false by even the reliably left-wing Snopes—Muir and Davis said nothing.
The fix was in.
To a certain extent, left-wing journalists demanding this kind of rigging is understandable. They know that the ABCs and the CNNs of the world are in the tank for their candidates. Why not use their power of control over these debates to direct it in a way that benefits Democrats, who are so clearly on the right side of history?
That mentality won out on Tuesday night and lefty commentators were giddy on social media.
“I will say it ABC moderators have exceeded expectations. They are fact-checking and confronting, Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin posted on X. “Shows how abysmal CNN was.”
That mirrors how the Left generally thinks all our society’s institutions should work. Alternatives to the narratives the Left peddles should be carefully managed and massaged so the people are led to only one point of view.
That’s why the Left had a full-blown meltdown when entrepreneur Elon Musk bought the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. It meant that they would no longer have the power to put the finger on the lever of amplifying the messages they like while suppressing the ones they don’t.
But this sort of bias comes at a cost. Institutions that ply on their objectivity as their main selling point risk surrendering the power of that credibility when they blatantly put their finger on the scale for a particular ideology.
The public’s attitude toward ABC and their cohorts and the media has followed the same course as public health institutions in the wake of the COVID-19 lockdowns. When after months of telling everyone to lock down for everyone else’s safety, they largely came out in favor of Black Lives Matter protests because “racism is the real pandemic,” they lost an enormous number of American who will never trust them again.
ABC’s moderators’ performance Tuesday night is a perfect example of why we have “populism.”
Did Trump fall into the traps ABC and the Harris campaign set in this 3-on-1 debate? Yes, probably. They will now pat themselves on the back and think of it as a job well done until Election Day.
With some Americans, that’s all good and well. Trump is too dangerous to be given a fair shake. With a fair debate, the people may choose poorly.
But the stacked deck highlighted the theme that Trump has always used to great success with his supporters since he became the Republican presidential nominee the first time way back in 2015. The system is rigged against you. The system hates Trump because it hates his supporters. The system hates Trump because it hates his supporters.
That message was driven home on Tuesday night. Maybe this was mission accomplished for ABC, but Muir and Davis did a disservice to the American people and certainly discredited themselves.
Jarrett Stepman – The Daily Signal
Jarrett Stepman is a columnist for The Daily Signal. He is also the author of "The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America's Past." Send an email to Jarrett
