Commission on Presidential Debates Co-Chair: ABC Moderators ‘Bent Backwards to Help’ Harris, Were ‘Worst’ I’ve Seen

On Wednesday’s broadcast of Newsmax TV’s “The Record,” Commission on Presidential Debates Co-Founder and Co-Chair Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr., who also was Chair of the RNC, stated the performance by moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis was “the worst performance that I’ve seen” and that they “clearly were oversized, I think, on the way they treated” 2024 Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump and “bent backwards to help” 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris.

Fahrenkopf said, “I thought one of the things that really shocked me last night was the way the moderators handled it. We always explain to our moderators, and we’ve done 33 of those, Greta, starting back in 1988, that their job is to be facilitators. They’re not to get involved themselves. It’s different than if you had someone on your show and you asked them a question and they answered it in a different way than they said a month before, you would correct them. But moderators are not supposed to do that. A debate is between the candidates, not a debate between the candidate and the moderators. And these moderators, so far as I was concerned, it was the worst performance that I’ve seen. And I’ve — as I said, I’ve done 33 of these things over the years. I don’t know what their thoughts were, but they clearly were oversized, I think, on the way they treated the former President and the way they treated the present Vice President, I think they bent backwards to help her.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett