In advance of Monday’s debate, Republicans have been pounding on the moment from 2012 when CNN anchor Candy Crowley corrected a false assertion by Mitt Romney. He said President Obama had not characterized the Benghazi attack as an "act of terror" the day following the assault on the U.S. consulate. As Crowley noted, "He did, in fact, sir."
But Republicans are so desperate to dissuade real time fact-checking of serial liar Donald Trump that they're actually lying about that great debate moment. Here's Mike Pence Sunday on CBS's Face the Nation:
“Well, I think we all had this experience a few years ago of Mitt Romney being interrupted and being challenged on an assertion he made,” Pence said. “I believe it was about the tragedy in Benghazi, and it turned out the moderator was wrong.”
First off: he’s incorrect. Here's the transcript from Sept. 12, 2012, when Obama said: "No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for."
Second, journalists are now questioning whether debate moderators should or should not fact-check in real time. The idea is that, supposedly, moderators shouldn't become a part of the story. They should simply facilitate a conversation between the two candidates and fade into the background.
That poses this simple question: Would you rather be Candy Crowley or Matt Lauer?
Crowley took heat mainly from conservatives for uttering five words because, yes, it made their candidate look very bad. But it's not her fault Team Romney built a whole line of attack around a false premise. Nonetheless, journalists then started perseverating over the role of a moderator.
On the other hand, you have Matt Lauer, who was universally panned by his fellow journalists. Among other things, the lies Lauer allowed Donald Trump to spew unchecked were whoppers. Viewers who didn't know the history of Trump's evolution on the Iraq War, were left to believe— falsely—that Trump opposed it from the outset. Worse yet, Trump said that Hillary Clinton had mischaracterized his stance, which is part of what made Lauer's fumble so egregious.
Donald Trump is not Mitt Romney, who simply failed to do his homework. Trump lies for a living. Not every once in a while—every 3.25 minutes. To not expose that fact to some 100 million viewers tonight would be a disservice to America.
So who would I rather be, Candy Crowley or Matt Lauer? Crowley every day of the week and twice on Sundays. She was accurate. She was concise. And she exposed a misrepresentation of Obama by the right wing. She even went on to give Romney the benefit of the doubt for being "correct" about his overarching point, if not the details. So she was plenty fair.
Lauer, by comparison, let Trump's complete distortion of reality go unchallenged. Repeatedly. He also failed to drill down on the details of Trump's so-called "policies" and asked him a series of useless questions given the weight of the job he's applying for.
Crowley was right in the moment and she was right in retrospect. Her performance will be judged well by history. Lauer has become the moderator no journalist wants to be remembered as. Perhaps it took Lauer's truly unfortunate work to reframe the virtues of Crowley's execution.
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