It was as if Candy Crowley had returned to the presidential debate stage. And multiplied.

And gotten more wrong in the latest incarnation, too.

At multiple points during last night's presidential debate, ABC News moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis -- but especially Muir -- seemed more intent on debating rather than moderating. They continually entered the argument, contradicting Donald Trump and only Donald Trump, and often in error. 

Needless to say, this delighted Kamala Harris, who never got fact-checked on debunked lies such as the Charlottesville fable, which Harris dutifully trotted out, or "Project 2025." Muir and to a lesser extent Davis played along with Harris' debate strategy of trying to disqualify Trump rather than provide answers about her record and her agenda. Harris was so happy to get the assist that after one such intervention, she said something to the effect of You see what I mean? with her characteristic giggle.

If Muir or Davis wanted to run for president and enter the debate, they should have applied for the position on July 21. It's not like there wasn't an opening.

Even more infuriatingly, Muir's pompous interjections of "fact" mostly turned out to be anything but. This too reminds one of Crowley's notorious "fact check" in 2012, only repeated over and over again. 

Perhaps the most egregious of these pompous rebukes came during the abortion debate. Muir Davis [corrected] contradicted Trump on Democrats proposing that babies born alive after abortion attempts be allowed to die of neglect if the mother desired it. However, that is precisely what then-governor Ralph Northam proposed in Virginia, and that the bill in question would allow abortion to the moment of birth (Trump said West Virginia the first time):

“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.”

And that matters because that's what Tim Walz has allowed to happen in Minnesota as well. In fact, Walz went one step further just over a year ago. He removed any requirements to report live births resulting from abortions, after several cases of such deaths came to light:

As Democrats and media outlets accuse former President Donald Trump of dramatizing the Democratic abortion agenda, data from the Minnesota Department of Health shows that at least eight babies who survived abortions in the state were left to die.

Under a 2015 Minnesota law, the state formerly was required to report whether abortions resulted in the live birth of a baby, what actions were taken to preserve the life of that baby, and whether the baby survived. ...

Due to efforts by the state’s Democratic governor, who served from 2019 until the present, Minnesota will no longer even keep track of born-alive babies.

Tim Walz, the new Democratic vice presidential nominee, repealed the bipartisan measure in May 2023, stripping the state’s requirement that measure be taken to preserve the baby’s “life and health” and merely replacing it with a nebulous requirement for “care.”

Not only did Muir get this wrong, he derailed a real debate about abortion and the radical nature of the Democrats' position on it. And it's veeeery difficult to believe that this was an honest error on Muir's part, or ABC's. This was a deliberate attempt to gang up on Trump to assist Harris by making her look less radical. As a result, they allowed Harris to escape without really addressing this point, and she went on to have a pretty good night in large part thanks to the tag team that assembled on stage last night. 

This violates a core distinction between moderators and participants in an electoral debate. Part of the reason we have these game-show events is to see how well the two (or more) candidates can respond to each other as a means of testing their mettle for voters. Moderators who enter the debate violate that process, and usually badly -- although not usually as badly as Muir and Davis last night. And needless to say, moderators are not reliable fact-checkers in real time, as Crowley proved in 2012 and Muir and Davis smugly demonstrated last night over and over again. 

It also demonstrated how far the Protection Racket Media will go to shield Harris from any effective scrutiny. Not only will they not ask her tough questions, but as we saw last night, they'll provide answers for her in real time to keep her from having to come up with her own.  

The debate may have been an abortion, but voters got a really good look at how mainstream media cooks the political process. That's why we push so hard for our readers to support us through our VIP/VIP Gold membership plans. We have to maintain our platforms as a counterweight to the Big Media/Big Tech/progressive alliance -- and it's not easy. That combine works tirelessly to do exactly what we saw last night in attempting to use lies and manipulation to shut down dissent to their agenda. 

Plus, there's no better time to join than today! We are offering a debate special for the next 15 hours -- 60% off of both VIP and VIP Gold memberships. Use the promo code FIGHT and get access to our comments sections, plus great original and exclusive content, including VIP columns from all our staff writers plus shows like The Amiable Skeptics, Off the Beaten Path, and The Week in Review.

As for the debate itself, not much can really be gleaned otherwise. I will have some further thoughts on this -- read David's sharp take first -- but essentially, we didn't get an honest debate. And I think most viewers of that aborted effort will recognize that fact, another that Muir and Davis will undoubtedly ignore.