While the Democratic party and staunch supporters of President Biden wrestled with his dismal debate performance and his future as the party’s nominee for president, some House Democrats took aim at the debate moderators for not offering more pushback against former President Donald Trump.
Mr. Biden’s performance sent ripples of panic throughout the Democratic party, much to some Republican’s glee, but effectively overshadowed many of Mr. Trump’s responses and misleading statements or outright lies from both men.
Republicans, including Mr. Trump, lauded the moderators, CNN’s Dana Bash and Jake Tapper, for treating the former president “very fairly.”
But Rep. Dan Goldman, New York Democrat, believed differently. In response to a question from CNN’s Anderson Cooper on whether Mr. Biden should participate in the next scheduled presidential debate in September Mr. Goldman took a shot at the moderators.
“Let’s have another debate where, actually, the moderators will push back on Donald Trump’s lies,” Mr. Goldman said. “He intimidated your network, unfortunately. And there was no pushback. He was given free rein to just lie as much as he wants and that’s not helpful to the American public either.”
Rep. Robert Garcia, who is a member of the Biden campaign’s national advisory board, said that the moderators should have done more to fact-check Mr. Trump in real time.
“I think it’s crazy to have a debate where the largest serial liar in American politics goes unchecked by moderators, the moderators should be the first pushing back on lies and fact checking,” said Mr. Garcia, California Democrat. “We already know by fact checking organizations and almost everything he said was a lie.”
Both men notably bent the truth in their responses. Mr. Trump mischaracterized the events of Jan. 6, 2021 when he said that it was a “relatively small number of people” who were “ushered” into the building by the Capitol Police.
Thousands of people descended on Capitol Hill, with some smashing windows and kicking doors to gain entrance to the building.
Mr. Biden claimed that no U.S. troops had died during his tenure as president. At least 16 service members have died since Mr. Biden took office, 13 of which died during the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, and three were killed earlier this year during a drone strike on a U.S. base in Jordan.
- This article is based in part on wire service reports.
• Alex Miller can be reached at amiller@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.