Rep. Daniel Goldman of New York criticized CNN and its hosts during Thursday night’s debate with President Biden for allowing former President Trump to make claims on air without fact-checking them.
“He clearly misunderstands the disaster that is his presidency,” Goldman said in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Friday. Highlighted by Mediaite. “And it got a lot of attention, but no big backlash.”
Biden’s poor performance — blank-faced, listless and flubbed — largely overshadowed Trump’s reactions in the debate, the first time the two candidates have faced off face-to-face since 2020.
Two debates between the presumptive candidates were proposed by the Biden campaign and agreed to by the former president.
The first debate, held on Thursday, was moderated by CNN hosts Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, and each candidate agreed to a set of rules beforehand, including muting their microphones while the other was speaking. The final debate, hosted by ABC News, will take place after the party conventions in September.
Goldman urged Biden to attend the second debate despite growing concern among Democrats following the incumbent president’s shaky performance and calls for him to resign. He called Thursday an “off night” and said he wanted to wait and see whether the former president would continue to lie.
“Let’s have another debate where the moderator counters Donald Trump’s lies,” Goldman told Cooper. “Unfortunately, Trump threatened your network and there was no counterargument.”
“He has free reign to lie as much as he wants, and that doesn’t serve the American people,” he continued.
The network has come under heavy criticism for not fact-checking the candidates’ false statements in real time, with hosts asking follow-up questions after the candidates didn’t use their allotted speaking time to address the false claims.
Cooper told Goldman that it is Biden’s job to push back and counter Trump, but that he “clearly” failed to do so on Thursday.
“Obviously, we’ll see at the next debate whether that changes,” Cooper said.
