As RedState previously reported, the New York Times announced Monday that they would have 60 reporters and 29 so-called fact-checkers covering the first presidential debate of the 2024 election cycle, making clear in the process just which nominee would be the focus of the bulk of their coverage (three guesses).
“How do you cover a historic presidential debate that includes a candidate convicted of 34 felonies in what he has called, without evidence, a ‘rigged trial,’ and that will air on TV absent an audience? With a few dozen reporters and fact-checkers,” their article began, while later noting, without evidence, that they would be on hand “to offer context, insight, photos, reactions and fact-checking.”
READ MORE: NYT Siccing an Astonishing 29 Fact Checkers on Trump-Biden Debate—but Make It Clear Who They’re After
CNN will be hosting the Thursday night debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. Ahead of the evening’s festivities, there has been a lot of talk, with some of it coming from the Trump campaign, as to the anti-Trump bias of the debate’s moderators, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash.
As we documented, Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt appeared on the network Monday, where she was promptly cut off by CNN anchor Kasie Hunt after bringing up Tapper’s bias.
But though Kasie Hunt might be shy about admitting to CNN’s one-sided coverage, their senior media reporter, former Brian Stelter sidekick Oliver Darcy, is not.
In a “Reliable Sources” newsletter put out earlier, Darcy point-blank admitted that the fact-checking strategy for CNN would revolve around Tapper, Bash… and Biden keeping Trump in check (bolded emphasis added by me):
What’s more, while CNN has said it will not fact-check the candidates’ claims in real-time, Trump’s propensity to spread dangerous lies and corrosive conspiracy theories will put some onus on Tapper and Bash to make sure the Republican does not abuse the platform to peddle some of his favorite dishonest talking points. While much of that responsibility will fall to Biden, placing it entirely on him would create a dynamic in which there is no baseline truth on matters of enormous significance such as the legitimacy of the 2020 election. In cases of fact versus fiction on critical matters, a he-said, he-said dynamic would not serve the audience well. CNN will need to account for that.
In other words, Darcy is cheerleading the fact that there will be a three-on-one debate strategy at play, with Bash, Tapper, and Biden working together to rein in Trump. But no fact-checking will be done on Biden, apparently.
Another sign of how slanted this debate is primed to become, here is CNN’s media maven Oliver Darcy declaring that Trump, and only Trump, will be telling falsehoods and that the burden to correct him will be shared by the network.
Serial prevaricator Joe Biden need not worry! pic.twitter.com/2D7zp7NstW— Brad Slager – Scrubbing Down In a Bloodbath (@MartiniShark) June 27, 2024
Further proving the point that the fix is in was a tweet Wednesday from their purported fact checker, Daniel Dale, who has been away from social media since September but who all of a sudden is back in action on the Twitter machine just in time for the debate:
Hello old pals! It’s been a delightful many months of not-tweeting, really couldn’t recommend more highly, but I’ll be tweeting some fact checks during the debate.
I’ll also be on CNN TV post-debate, and our team will have a detailed running fact check on the CNN site and app.
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) June 27, 2024
Just to prove to everyone how Dale views fact-checking Trump versus Biden, let us take a look at these gems:
This president says some inaccurate stuff. Not ideal. But there’s no pretending that this era is remotely similar to the last president’s staggering daily avalanche of extreme wrongness.
My fact-check look at Biden’s first 100 days: https://t.co/BTLAd7bD4N
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) May 2, 2021
Biden was again imperfect from a fact check perspective. He made at least a few false, misleading, or lacking-in-context claims.
Trump was, as usual, a serial liar.
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 23, 2020
And perhaps my favorite one of all:
Biden is implicitly fact checking Trump by…uttering many consecutive coherent sentences, which Trump has repeatedly said Biden cannot do. https://t.co/LzS2Bx7ioq
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) September 18, 2020
Imagine having the bar set so low that being able to utter a few coherent sentences is considered a victory for Joe Biden. Worse, imagine fearing a candidate’s message so much that the network hosting the debate feels the need to triple-team them – all while heavily restricting media access during the debate.
Just a terrible look all the way around for CNN, but we knew better than to expect much out of them.
The debate starts at 9 pm ET. Make sure to keep it here as we’ll be liveblogging it from start to finish.
Related: The Devil Went Down to Georgia – and Is Puttin’ a Whuppin’ on Joe Biden
