Like everyone else, I was struck last night by ABC News decision to "live fact-check" the debate. This did not go well, with ABC repeatedly fact-checking Trump and also repeatedly giving Harris a pass on clearly false statements she made.

In addition to the debate moderators interjecting comments (or not) during the debate, ABC also published a list of fact-checks on its website. Let's look at a couple of these.

HARRIS CLAIM: Harris said, "Trump left us the worst unemployment since the Great Depression."

FACT-CHECK: Needs context

The unemployment rate peaked at 14.8% in April 2020 when Trump was in office – that was indeed the highest level since the Great Depression, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But unemployment rapidly declined to 6.4% in January 2021 by the time Trump left office, as the economy started to rebalance. And that 6.4% unemployment rate is still better than the 10% peak during the Great Recession in October 2009.

So this fact-check says Harris' claim needs context and then immediately proves that what she said was false. The 6.4% unemployment when Trump left office in 2021 was not the worst since the Great Depression. It wasn't even close. The correct rating here would have been "False" not "Needs context." Indeed, other fact-checkers managed to get this right. Here's the NY Times, for instance:

“Donald Trump left us the worst unemployment since the Great Depression.”

— Vice President Kamala Harris

False.

Unemployment spiked to its worst levels since the Great Depression in the pandemic recession of 2020, but it was 6.4 percent the month Trump left office. That’s nowhere near the worst rate since the Depression.

See how easy that was? Even when ABC catches Harris making a clearly false statement, they give her a pass. 

But at least they said something about it in that case. What you won't find in this fact-check from ABC is anything about some of the many other false claims Harris made about Trump at this same moment in the debate including her repetition of the "very fine people" claim, the "bloodbath" claim and more. Some of these were mentioned by other fact-checkers but not by the moderators and not by ABC News online. Harris got a pass.

This clip may be the most egregious example of ABC debate moderators' direct actions/inactions to affect viewers’ perceptions of the information presented at the debate.

There are at least seven instances of this within a two-minute span.

This is not “bias."

It’s much worse.… pic.twitter.com/tYJhZwGwdW

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) September 11, 2024