I’ve seen this movie before. A high-profile presidential debate turns sour because moderators try to “fact check” one of the candidates (we know which one) and just get it totally wrong.
No, I’m not talking about Candy Crowley in the second 2012 presidential debate. But this applies to her, too. This week Donald Trump and Kamala Harris met for the first, and probably last time on the debate stage.
CBS’s moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis made a farce of the impossible task.
Trump claimed that multiple newborns in Minnesota over the last handful of years who’d survived an abortion were left to die. Horrifically, this is true. As governor, Walz also signed the repeal of much of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act in Minnesota, which included striking requirements that such instances be reported.
Huh. I wonder why?
That doesn’t even account for the legality of abortion in Minnesota at any point during the pregnancy.
Davis countered that it is illegal to kill a child after its birth, which is of course true. But that’s not what Trump was getting at and she knew it. Is there really much of a difference between actively killing a child and letting the newborn — who by God’s grace survived the attempted butchering in utero — die unattended to on the operating table?
Of course not. I’m nauseous just writing about it.
And Trump’s argument went further, that there are very real parts of the Democratic base who want abortion available all the way up until birth. And guess what, that’s true as well, as you can see here with this gut wrenching bill proposal in Virginia.
And don’t forget Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s comments about a mother and physician discussing whether to keep a child who’d survived an abortion…after being “resuscitated.”
Barbaric.
Then on crime statistics, Muir interjected to dispute Trump’s claim about rising crime. Muir cited an FBI report but guess what — the FBI report omitted certain large metro areas like New York City and Los Angeles. The reason wasn’t nefarious — the shift in reporting procedure caused the omissions — but they still weren’t included.
Do these moderators even do a modicum of research before these presidential debates? Not enough, apparently.
I’ll mention this briefly, but when you have a moderator arguing with a candidate about whether a certain statement from years ago was sarcastic or not, you’ve lost the plot.
Fact-checking in real time during a debate is a next to impossible task and never comes off in a fair manner. And half of the country knows the reason why.
Not only that, there’s a whole cottage industry of fact checkers at publications whose entire job is to do this post-debate assessment. Let the moderators be moderators and the fact checkers be fact checkers.
But of course, the legacy media has taken it upon itself to wage total war on all fronts against the Trump campaign, as if that’s its role and not Kamala Harris’.
Debates are already shallow enough, making it impossible for voters to truly gauge what the candidates’ true policy stances are. We don’t need slanted, let alone factually incorrect, “fact checks” mucking up the waters even more.
You’ll never see that kind of nonsense from The Texan. Our reporters understand their role — to give readers a fair understanding of both perspectives.