When Donald Trump and Joe Biden meet on stage for the first presidential debates on Tuesday, don’t expect any of the moderators to fact check either candidate in real time.
The co-chair of the Presidential Debate Commission, Frank Fahrenkopf Jr. said on Sunday that neither candidates will be fact checked.
“There’s a vast difference between being a moderator in a debate and being a reporter who is interviewing someone,” Fahrenkopf explained. “It’s the role of the other person in a debate to be the one to raise that [fact-check] rather than the moderator.”
He continued: “The minute the TV is off. There are going to be plenty of fact-checkers at every newspaper and every television station in the world. That’s not the main role of our moderators.”
Watch the clip on CNN
What Fahrenkopf is suggesting is quite reasonable…in normal times. Now there’s Donald Trump who lies everytime he opens his mouth. If Biden is force to fact check everything Trump says then he would not have time to effectively lay out his policy proposals to the American people. So, Biden is in a tough position, fact–check Donald Trump in real time and come up short on policy or allow Trump’s lies to go unchallenged to his face. Because, while millions of Americans will tune in to watch the debates, they will not stick around for the post debate analysis with fact checking from the various networks.
