In an indication of what he may be worried about come Monday’s presidential debate, Donald Trump told Fox & Friends on Thursday that he doesn’t think the moderator should "fact-check" the candidates’ statements.
Trump says it’s up to the candidates themselves to call out their rivals when they are wrong.
In other words, Trump can’t handle the truth. He’s worried that Lester Holt, the NBC anchor who is scheduled to moderate the debate, will actually do his job, unlike NBC’s Matt Lauer, whose performance at the Sept. 8 presidential form with Trump and Hillary Clinton was roundly criticized for a number of things, including a failure to catch and challenge Trump’s blatant lies.
“How in the hell does Lauer not factcheck Trump lying about Iraq? This is embarrassingly bad,” wrote Tommy Vietor, a former aide to President (Barack) Obama. Glenn Kessler, the chief fact checker at The Washington Post, posted a link to NBC’s check of Mr. Trump’s claim and wrote: “@MLauer should have been prepared to do this.”
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Trump wants viewers to believe that he is worried about the pressure being placed on Holt:
Trump says there’s pressure on NBC’s Holt ahead of Monday’s debate at Hofstra University. He likens it to the pressure former Indiana University basketball coach and Trump supporter Bobby Knight used to put on referees.
Trump says: “A lot of people are watching to see whether or not he succumbs to that pressure.”
Trump doesn’t like the press, no surprise there, and he especially dislikes it when they challenge his lies, including his most recent one about Barack Obama’s birthplace.
"(Hillary Clinton’s) campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy," Trump said at the end of a long press conference at the Trump International Hotel. "I finished it. President Barack Obama was born in the United States. Period.
The media immediately fact-checked that statement and called him out: Clinton never made the claim that Obama was born outside the U.S. How did the Trump campaign respond? By putting out a press release that double-downed on the lie.
“With Clinton’s 2008 campaign manager admitting on national television and on Twitter that they promoted the rumors surrounding now-President Obama’s heritage, Mr. Trump has been fully vindicated.
Unless Holt is allowed to do his job as moderator, Trump will hijack the debates and turn them into the Eight Circle of Hell—fraud.