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I may be proven wrong, but I think the debates will be a fact-checking fail. Nothing like a real time check on Trump's firehose of falsehood will unfold. At best we'll see symbolic pushback on one or two lies, and his reaction will introduce more lies. https://twitter.com/debates/status/1308455499323539466 1/
Some reasons I think that: the sheer volume of lies Trump is able to broadcast in a single answer to question about, say, mail-in voting; the blowback from his defenders that each moderator knows is coming if they try it; the asymmetry factor, meaning— https://www.cjr.org/political_press/fact-check-trump-debate-crowley-romney.php 2/
— it will feel like bias if Trump is corrected a lot and Biden is not for lack of cause; the manifest need to move on; the weak precedent set by White House correspondents on live fact-checking (true, the debates are a different setting, but even so...) https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/20/politics/trump-false-claims-pennsylvania-speech-biden-fact-check/index.html 3/
Also: "You are not the story" is a unanimous belief among Washington journalists. And that sounds totally right— until you try to picture what would happen in any forceful attempt to keep this man from lying his way through the debate: you would become the story. Won't happen. 4/
Then there's what's known as Brandolini's law. https://twitter.com/ziobrando/status/289635060758507521 Add the pressures of live TV and extreme polarization to this maxim, and the moderator's escape route is clear: let @ddale8 and @GlennKesslerWP handle it after the debate. It's on Biden to respond during. 5/
