NY Democrat criticizes CNN for debate: network gave Trump ‘free rein to just lie’

Rep. Daniel Goldman (DN.Y.) criticized CNN and its moderators for allowing former President Trump to make claims on air without fact-checking during Thursday night’s debate with President Biden.

“He is blatantly mischaracterizing the disaster that was his presidency,” Goldman told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in an interview Friday. highlighted by Mediaite. “And it got a lot of attention, it didn’t get a lot of resistance.”

Biden’s poor performance, including blank stares, lack of energy and stumbling over words, largely overshadowed Trump’s responses during the debate. The event marked the first time the two candidates faced each other since 2020.

Two debates between the presumptive nominees were proposed by the Biden campaign and agreed upon by the former president.

The first, held on Thursday, was moderated by CNN anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash — and both candidates agreed in advance to a set of rules, which included muting microphones when the other person was speaking. The final debate, hosted by ABC News, will take place at the September post-party conventions.

Despite growing concerns from Democrats and calls for the incumbent to resign after the shaky performance, Goldman encouraged Biden to attend the second debate. He called Thursday an “off night” and said he wants to see if the former president continues to lie.

“We’re going to have another debate where the moderators will reject Donald Trump’s lies,” Goldman told Cooper. “He intimidated his network, unfortunately, and there was no resistance.”

“He was free to lie as much as he wanted and that doesn’t help the American public either,” he continued.

The network came under heavy criticism after Bash and Tapper failed to offer real-time verification of false statements from both candidates. Moderators offered follow-up questions when a candidate did not use their full speaking time but did not reference the false allegations.

Cooper told Goldman it was Biden’s job to provide a counterattack and rebuttal to Trump, but “clearly” he was unable to do so on Thursday.

“We will see, obviously, in another debate, whether this will change,” Cooper said.

This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story