In a scathing appraisal of how the two moderators of the first 2024 presidential debate let Donald Trump run wild with a firehose of lies, one critic stated the pair is responsible for letting the former president hoodwink viewers who aren't fully immersed in politics on a daily basis.
In her column for Salon, political observer Heather "Digby" Parton wrote that "State of the Union" anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash failed as journalists by letting Trump make a mockery of the debate by lying with impunity, and not calling him out on it before a huge television audience.
Candidly noting thatBiden did poorly in the debate, Parton added, "As much as Biden blew the debate and missed his opportunity to dispel the concerns about his age, Donald Trump blew it too. He may have appeared more vigorous but he couldn't control himself and behaved once again like the undisciplined, lying, vulgarian who half the country already hates."
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"He spewed a torrent of lies, was rude and insulting."
She then turned on the CNN moderators, singling out Tapper in particular, writing, "For some odd reason, moderator Jake Tapper told Trump in the beginning that he didn't need to answer the questions and that he could use the time however he wanted. Trump ran with that, essentially giving a rally speech whenever he had the floor and was unresponsive to the vast majority of the questions.
"He made faces and insulted Biden to his face, at one point calling him a criminal and a Manchurian candidate. If anyone had said 10 years ago that this would happen at a presidential debate, they would have been laughed out of the room."
Pointing out that after the debate a CNN exec texted, "We are very proud of Jake and Dana. Our job was to make sure candidates were heard so voters can make informed decisions and we are pleased we were able to do that," Parton wasn't having it.
"Actually, CNN inadvertently became one of the greatest disseminators of disinformation in American political history," she accused. "Millions of people heard Donald Trump's lies and since they were met with silence from the journalists on the stage upon whom people depend to tell them the facts, many of them probably came away believing he must have been telling the truth."
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