To a large extent, it almost didn’t matter that Dana Bash and Jake Tapper were on stage.
The two CNN journalists prepared meticulously to moderate Thursday’s presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, the first ever between a sitting president and his predecessor, and asked several sharp questions.
Many of them were ignored, while the moderators faced an onslaught of criticism over a lack of real-time fact-checking that allowed baseless claims to go unchallenged — particularly from Trump.
The network defended its hosts on Friday, saying they were not intended as referees.
“The role of the moderators is to present the candidates with questions that are important to American voters and to facilitate a debate, enabling candidates to make their case and challenge their opponent. It is up to the candidates to challenge one another in a debate,” a spokesperson told Reuters.
“CNN offered robust fact-checking coverage in post-debate analysis on TV and across our digital platforms during and following the debate’s conclusion.”
U.S. President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump squared off in a debate in Atlanta that aired on CNN. Here are some of the major moments — including when Trump took advantage of a verbal fumble from Biden, as well as the current president accusing his predecessor of having ‘the morals of an alley cat’ regarding his ongoing criminal and civil legal issues.
The event, organized by CNN and broadcast over most of the country’s main news and broadcast networks, was the earliest general election debate ever, held before the two candidates had been formally nominated by their parties.
Did the moderators play a role?
Tapper and Bash asked about the economy, immigration, abortion, threats to democracy — a litany of issues that ranked among the most important problems facing the country in a recent Gallup poll of U.S. adults.
Their problem was that, more times than not, the questions were ignored as the two candidates continued to squabble at their own pace.
“You have 67 seconds left,” Tapper said to Trump when he didn’t address one. “The question was, what are you going to do to help Americans in the throes of [opioid] addiction right now to get the treatment that they need?”
“This does pertain to it,” Trump said, moving on to talk about open borders and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
At another point, when Bash asked Trump, 78, whether he would support the institution of a Palestinian state, Trump said, “I’d have to think a bit before we do that,” and went on to talk about NATO.
Bash also had to go back to Biden, 81, to ask a second time what he would say to Black voters who believed they hadn’t made enough progress under his administration, after he recited a handful of programmatic changes. She asked Trump three times about whether he’d accept election results if he lost.
CNN determined ahead of time that Tapper and Bash would be questioners, not umpires. They didn’t follow up questions — except to repeat those that weren’t answered — and left it to the politicians to try and fact-check. Each called the other a liar.
U.S. President Joe Biden appeared to lose his train of thought during a debate in Atlanta that aired on CNN with former president Donald Trump, saying, ‘Look, we finally beat Medicare.’ Trump responded by saying, ‘He beat it to death.’
CBS’s Gayle King said later that the lack of fact-checking benefited Trump because he was able to seem more in control with his answers. “If you don’t know the facts, you’d think he was making a lot of sense,” she said.
CNN’s Daniel Dale sent out several fact-checks on social media during the debate, but television viewers would not be aware of them unless they happened to look for them. Under CNN’s rules, other networks carrying the debate were not allowed to break in with any commentary of their own until the debate was finished.
Heading into the debate, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow said she did not envy the position in which Tapper and Bash were placed.
“The moderators at CNN have an impossible job,” she said, “and they are under nuclear-hot scrutiny.”
After former U.S. president Donald Trump brought up the criminal conviction of Hunter Biden and accused U.S. President Joe Biden of interfering in the proceedings, Biden called Trump’s claims ‘outrageous’ and ‘simply a lie.’ Biden then brought up Trump’s ongoing criminal and civil legal issues.
CNN came under criticism before the debate by the White House Correspondents’ Association, which protested the network’s decision not to allow a pool text reporter into their studio to observe Biden and Trump off-camera. CNN said there was no room, although it promised to usher a reporter in briefly during one of the two commercial breaks.
The first debate between Trump and Biden in 2020 was seen by 73 million viewers, while the second had 63 million. Those were in the fall, when television viewership was generally up.
The impression that some Americans were left with about Biden’s fitness for the job essentially had nothing to do with Bash and Tapper or their involvement in the program.
“There’s no question this was not what the Biden campaign wanted or needed,” ABC’s Mary Bruce said. After the debate, CNN’s John King pointed to his cellphone, saying he hadn’t seen anything like the concern expressed to him in text messages as the debate went on.
“There’s a full-on panic about this performance,” NBC’s Chuck Todd said.
After former president Donald Trump accused U.S. President Joe Biden of ‘driving us’ to a third World War, Biden responded by saying a Trump election win would see Vladimir Putin’s Russia overrun Ukraine. ‘Right now, we’re needed, we’re needed to protect the world,’ Biden said after referencing Article 5 of the NATO treaty.
