Report: Biden Aides Upset CNN Won’t Fact Check Trump During Debate

Republican presidential candidate, businessman Donald Trump speaks during the Republican p
AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, File
Wendell Husebø

President Joe Biden’s aides are reportedly furious CNN will not live fact-check former President Donald Trump during Thursday’s debate.

The debate is “not the ideal arena for live fact-checking” Trump, CNN political director David Chalian told the New York Times on Monday.

Chalian later told the Associated Press that debate hosts Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, extreme Trump critics, can correct an “egregious” misstatement from either candidate “that needs to be checked or the record needs to be made clear,” but he claimed Tapper and Bash are “not here to participate in this debate.”

Chalian’s comments launched “anxious calls and texts” from Democrat officials, who “tried to figure out what exactly his comments portended for Thursday night,” Politico’s West Wing reported Tuesday.

Biden aides apparently believe the lack of live fact-checks “exemplified a primary failing of the press corps for several years now.”

“Democrats and Biden allies believe there is a duty to try — and to not be fixated on upholding the appearance of impartiality when one side is peddling lies more than another,” West Wing reported.

The debate comes at a pivotal time for CNN. The network is on track for its lowest-rated month in prime time since 1991, the New York Times reported, citing Nielsen ratings that showed fewer than 100,000 average viewers a night among adults ages 25 to 54.

While the Biden campaign tries to work debate referees, CNN defended its co-hosts from critics on Monday after they came under fire for alleged biase against Trump. “Jake Tapper and Dana Bash are well respected veteran journalists who have covered politics for more than five decades combined,” the network said in a statement.

The statement came after the Trump campaign challenged CNN for abruptly ending its interview with Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt. CNN’s Kasie Hunt, a former MSNBC host, suddenly ended the exchange when Leavitt highlighted CNN’s Jake Tapper’s long history of criticizing Trump.

Tapper is co-hosting Thursday’s first presidential debate with Dana Bash. Both are critics of Trump.

They suggested Trump is a liar, was tougher on Democrats than Putin, pushed Russia propaganda, used rhetoric similar to Adolf Hitler, pushed falsehoods “fast and furious,” “tried to kill democracy once. He’ll do it again,” is an antisemite, could cause a civil war, and blamed Trump’s rhetoric for a New Zealand shooting.

Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former GOP War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.

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