My case against fact checking in debates

This is a tough one.

On Wednesday night, Donald Trump sent this out to his social media horde:

In the wake of Tuesday’s debate, it has become a de facto Republican talking point: Trump didn’t really lose the debate. He was ganged-up on — facing off against not just Kamala Harris but the two ABC moderators as well.

I wanted to dig into this — and offer a few thoughts.

Let’s start with the facts: David Muir and Linsey Davis, the two ABC moderators, fact-checked Trump four times in the debate. They didn’t fact-check Harris at all.

These are the four fact-checks the moderators offered on Trump:

1. On abortion: “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born.” — Linsey Davis

2. On immigration: “I just want to clarify here, you bring up Springfield, Ohio, and ABC News did contact the city manager there. He told us they had no credible reports of pets or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals in the immigrant community.” — David Muir

3. On crime statistics: “President Trump, as you know, the FBI says that overall violent crime is actually coming down in this country.” — Muir

4. On the 2020 election: “We should just point out here as clarification ... 60 cases in front of many judges, many of them Republican, looked at it and said there was no widespread fraud.” — Muir

How much, um, debate, is there are on these four fact checks?

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On abortion, Trump regularly cites 2019 comments made by former Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam as proof that Democrats are fine with killing babies who have been born.

Here’s what Northam said: “If a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”

A spokesperson later clarified that Northam was “absolutely not” talking about euthanasia following a failed abortion but rather the “tragic and extremely rare case in which a woman with a nonviable pregnancy or severe fetal abnormalities went into labor.” 

What’s undoubtedly true is that Northam, a medical doctor, was inarticulate in his comments. What’s also undoubtedly true is that infanticide, which is what Trump was suggesting Harris supports, is already illegal in every state.

On the “eating pets” immigration controversy, this appears to be a debunked right-wing meme that Trump platformed during the debate.

At issue is an influx of Haitian immigrants into the town of Springfield, Ohio. Trump running mate JD Vance had, for several days before the debate, insisted that immigrants were overrunning the town and overwhelming its services.

That twisted — thanks to social media — into the idea that immigrants were eating the pets of the residents of the town. Which is not true, according to the Springfield city manager.

Here’s the Columbus Dispatch:

The city manager released a statement saying there's no evidence of any cats or other pets being harmed or eaten by the Haitian immigrants. The statement also refuted rumors that immigrants were involved in "illegal activities such as squatting or littering" or "deliberately disrupting traffic."

Conservative publications have noted reports of geese being stolen from local parks in recent weeks. Which, of course, is not the same thing as pets being eaten.

On whether crime is dropping or rising, the FBI released statistics in June that crime overall had dropped in the U.S. in the first three months of the year — with violent crime and property crime dropping considerably.

As NBC reported of the FBI’s findings:

The murder rate fell by 26.4%, reported rapes decreased by 25.7%, robberies fell by 17.8%, aggravated assault fell by 12.5%, and the overall violent crime rate went down by 15.2%, the statistics show.

Reported property crimes also decreased by 15.1%, according to the UCR report, which the FBI compiles using crime statistics supplied to the agency by law enforcement agencies across the U.S.

But, it is also true that the FBI numbers do not present the full picture. As FactCheck.org noted:

The FBI statistics are, however, incomplete, given that they measure only crimes reported to law enforcement — some crimes, such as rape, are historically greatly underreported — and not every law enforcement agency reports its statistics. That has been the case for decades. 

That, of course, puts to lie Trump’s insistence that the FBI is hiding the actual crime numbers to help Harris win.

Then, finally, on the 2020 election, the case is pretty clear: Trump and his legal team filed 62 suits related to alleged irregularities in the election. Here’s how they turned out:

So, on the Trump fact checks, here’s my verdict: Three were totally indisputable. The fourth — the FBI crime stats — would have benefited from more context from the ABC moderators since it was less clear cut.

Now, let’s turn to Harris. The moderators fact-checked her a total of 0 times in the debate.

Which begs the question: Is everything she said in the debate totally true — and therefore not worthy of a fact check?

The Federalist, an unapologetically pro-Trump publication, listed 25 “lies” Harris allegedly told in the debate.

While some of these are stretches (Harris did not grow up in the middle class!) there are several that I think are legitimate — including Harris’ claim that Trump supports a “national sales tax” (he does not) and her insistence that Trump left the White House with the country at its worst unemployment rate since the Great Depression (he did not).

So, two things can be true here:

1. Trump said many more false things — almost three dozen by CNN’s count — in the debate than did Harris.

2. Harris did say several things that were not true — and should have been fact-checked on them by the ABC moderators.

All of which gets me to the broader, philosophical questions: Should debate moderators engage in fact-checking at all?

My answer to that, I think, is no. Let me explain.

I believe, deeply, that there are objective facts. Like, say, the 2020 election was not stolen.

But, I also know that ALL politicians shade and shape facts and figures to work for them. And that these “facts” aren’t necessarily outright false but absolutely need more context in order to give a viewer or reader the full picture.

(To be clear: Trump does this sort of shaping and shading — and outright lying — more than any other politician I have ever encountered. But, they all do at least some of it.)

Given that, I think moderators wading into the fact-checking waters is a very slippery slope. If moderators stopped the debate to fact check everything a candidate says that is not objectively and unquestionably true, they would be interjecting on nearly every answer.

Which would make the moderators the focus of the debate. And the arbiters of who won and who lost. Which is a bad thing.

The moderators who moderate best are, in my mind, the ones who are sort of forgettable. In that they facilitate the conversation between the candidates but don’t make themselves a player in the proceedings.

Another way to think about it: It’s like buying tickets for you and your kids to go see the Los Angeles Lakers when the team comes to town. And, within the first 5 minutes of the game, the officials call 4 fouls on LeBron James — and he has to sit for large swaths of the 1st half. No one came to see the refs! They came to see LeBron.

Ditto the debates. The moderators aren’t the story. They aren’t running to be president. People tune in to see the candidate duke it out.

Which brings me to this final point on fact checking: I think it works best when the candidates do it. These are big boys and girls! They are running to be the most powerful person in the world! If they hear something they believe to be false come out of their opponent’s mouth, they should speak up and call it out.

As soon as the moderators start choosing when to interject a fact check in the debate, they make themselves active participants in the debate. And once that happens, it opens the door for the candidates to use them as a crutch for a poor performance. (See “Trump, Donald.”)

That’s where I land — after LOTS of thinking about fact checking in debates. What’s your take?