ABC’s Debate Pulled Off a Trick No One Else Has Managed in the Trump Era
Let’s keep this simple: ABC News’ David Muir and Linsey Davis did a great job moderating Tuesday night’s debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. Their questions were sharp, their research was on point, their approach was calm, and they even managed to pull off some real-time fact-checking without coming across as excessively partisan. In my book, Tuesday night’s debate was the best-moderated presidential debate of the Trump era.
To be fair, it’s a low bar to clear. With the notable exception of this June’s Trump-Biden debate, in which Trump allowed a somnolent Joe Biden to gawk and mumble his way toward lame-duck status, most of the general-election debates in which Trump has participated since 2016 have been chaotic affairs. Because Trump doesn’t care about the issues, has poor impulse control, and is obsessed with appearing dominant, he generally ends up talking over his opponents and ignoring the agreed-upon debate rules, as if challenging the moderators to do something about it.
They generally do very little about it, which works to Trump’s benefit: He gets to look tough on TV while his opponents seem impotent. When the moderators do try to push back, as former Fox News host Chris Wallace did in a rowdy September 2020 debate between Trump and Biden, Trump generally has been able to make it seem like he’s being ganged up on by the very unfair and biased media. (Indeed, Trump and his surrogates are currently saying as much—quite weakly—about Tuesday night’s debate.)
But in between docility and pugnacity lies the pathway to effective debate moderation, and I thought Muir and Davis did a fine job walking that road on Tuesday night. The moderators’ questions were uniformly salient, with hardly a softball in the bunch. When, in their responses, the candidates pivoted away from the question that had been initially asked, Muir and Davis generally found a way to lead them back to the initial question and give them a second shot at answering.
For the most part, the questions were also specific, which is important. It’s easy for even an undisciplined politician such as Trump to deflect a broad question of the What would you do about XYZ? variety. It’s harder to deflect—or at least it’s easier for a home viewer to notice the deflection—when the question is specifically rooted in the candidates’ statements or policy positions. Take the following question that Davis posed to Harris: “Vice President Harris, in your last run for president, you said you wanted to ban fracking. Now you don’t. You wanted mandatory government buyback programs for assault weapons. Now your campaign says you don’t. You supported decriminalizing border crossings. Now you’re taking a harder line. I know you say that your values have not changed. So then why have so many of your policy positions changed?”
That’s an excellent question. But other Trump debates have featured good questions, too, and have been, in the end, bad debates. Where Muir and Davis really excelled was in their preparation and their demeanor. Near the beginning of the debate, an exchange about the economy went off the rails a bit when Trump bashed Harris’ economic plan as being as simplistic as a children’s book: “It’s like four sentences, like Run Spot Run.” Rather than urge Trump to maintain decorum and stick to the issues, Muir effectively brought the debate back to the issues: “Mr. President, I do want to drill down on something you both brought up. The vice president brought up your tariffs, you responded, and let’s drill down on this.” The smooth pivot was a function of Muir and Davis being prepared for Trump to go off the rails, and being calm enough to direct the debate back toward more substantive territory.
Their deep preparation and calm demeanor also showed in their judicious and effective use of real-time fact-checking, which they deployed occasionally in response to some of Trump’s more bizarre claims. Live fact-checking in a televised debate is hard to do well. It can come across as scolding, and it can sometimes seem like the person being fact-checked—no matter how deserving the fact checks—is being ganged up on by the moderators. Davis and Muir did neither. They didn’t try to rebut every lie that Trump told, and they never allowed themselves to seem upset about Trump’s inaccurate claims; rather, they picked their spots and delivered their rebuttals in neutral, matter-of-fact tones.
During an exchange about abortion, for example, Trump announced that some states would permit infanticide after a baby was born. Davis waited for Trump to finish his response and then said this: “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born. Madame Vice President, I want to get your response to President Trump.” Later, when Trump tried to claim that undocumented immigrants in Ohio were eating residents’ pets—a typically odd Trumpian regurgitation of a baseless right-wing claim that’s taken the internet this week—Muir responded calmly and immediately: “I just want to clarify here, you bring up Springfield, Ohio. And ABC News did reach out to the city manager there. He told us there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured, or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.” Preparation and demeanor. Muir and Davis predicted that Trump would make these claims. They did their research to rebut them. And then they delivered their rebuttals quickly and calmly without derailing the broader debate.
If there’s anything to complain about regarding Muir and Davis’ moderation, it’s that it occasionally seemed like they were refusing to let Harris respond to some of Trump’s provocations, while giving Trump carte blanche to respond to whatever Harris said about him. Watching the debate, it sure felt like Trump was jumping in and responding over and over without having formally been given the floor by the moderators, and at times I didn’t understand why ABC kept allowing him to do it. But ultimately, ABC’s decision to let Trump ramble at times felt judicious. One of the main points of these debates is to let viewers see who these candidates are and what they stand for. Allowing Trump to insist on a few digressive, mean-spirited, generally incoherent rebuttals gave viewers the unmistakable impression that Trump is a vicious, empty bully who stands only for himself. That’s a journalistic service.
Need advice on living through this historic and nerve-racking presidential election? Slate wants to help. Submit your questions to Wedge Issues here. It’s anonymous! No question is too dumb—or too existential.
