As usual, there are differing opinions about who “won” and “lost” ABC News’ highly anticipated presidential debate on Tuesday night.
Having set the bar so low for her in the run-up to the event that all she had to do was show up and survive, the consensus in the media and on the left is that Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris won the debate.
Conservatives in general, however, believe that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump threw some good jabs of his own and that the vice president lost her chilly because she didn’t have enough substance, listened to too many memorized lines and was heavily backed up by the co-moderators in what turned out to be a biased three-on-one debate against Trump.
READ MORE: ABC News moderators made fun of the presidential debate
But while the moderators have faced bulky and well-deserved criticism in the aftermath of the debate debacle, I believe the real loser of the evening was probably CNN’s Daniel Dale.
We have been informed by reliable sources that Dale’s role is that of a “fact checker,” but as we have documented many times before, his “fact checks” all tend to favor one side over the other.
And that’s exactly what happened during and after the Harris-Trump debate, with Dale on steroids gaslighting the number of times Harris told a blatant lie:
Trump was shockingly dishonest and Harris remained mostly (if not entirely) factual.
– Daniel Dale (@ddale8) 11 September 2024
His accomplice Brian Stelter eagerly promoted Dale’s “findings”:
Accordingly @ddale8According to a preliminary count, “Trump made at least 33 false claims.” Harris made at least one. pic.twitter.com/DJ1uaJwAfO
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) 11 September 2024
I’m so glad they’re both back pic.twitter.com/thK0Y27X67
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) 11 September 2024
It goes without saying that the media is doing the American people a disservice by not doing its job of holding all sides accountable. But that’s nothing novel for Dale, either.
To prove to everyone how Dale feels about Trump’s fact-checking of the Democrats, let’s take another look at these pearls:
This president says some faulty things. Not ideal. But it cannot be argued that this era is even remotely comparable to the last president’s harrowing daily avalanche of extreme falsehoods.
My fact check on Biden’s first 100 days: https://t.co/BTLAd7bD4N
– Daniel Dale (@ddale8) May 2, 2021
Biden was again imperfect from a fact-checking perspective. He made at least some false, misleading, or out-of-context claims.
Trump was, as always, a notorious liar.
– Daniel Dale (@ddale8) 23 October 2020
And perhaps my favorite tip of all:
Biden implicitly checks Trump’s statements by … uttering many coherent sentences in a row, even though Trump has repeatedly said Biden is incapable of doing so. https://t.co/LzS2Bx7ioq
– Daniel Dale (@ddale8) 18 September 2020
But back to the current debate: Although the moderators and Dale were (predictably) willing to let Harris pass, we were not.
My colleague Nick Arama has compiled numerous examples of Harris’ lies, including repeating the “bloodbath” and “very fine people” hoaxes and lying about Trump’s (non-)involvement in Project 2025. My colleague Jennifer Oliver O’Connell also detailed the false “fact check” the moderators performed on Trump at the beginning of an exchange on the abortion issue.
There’s a lot more that led up to this, but I think the point is clear. If last night’s debate proved anything, it’s that the Democrat-media industrial complicated is alive and well and doing exactly what it was doing this time in 2020 – working feverishly to put Trump and the Republicans in a challenging position before Election Day.
Flashback–>> Prove me wrong: CNN’s fact-checking department has hit rock bottom
