Squinting behind his dark-framed glasses, CNN News star Anderson Cooper listened impassively as Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) called out Cooper’s network and his colleagues Jake Tapper and Dana Bash for giving no “pushback” when it came to Donald Trump’s voluminous lies during the now famous Biden-Trump debate.
“[Trump] is mischaracterizing the disaster that was his presidency,” Goldman said, and that “didn’t get a lot of pushback.” Goldman suggested another debate, in which the “moderators actually push back on Donald Trump’s lies. He intimidated your network unfortunately and there was no pushback. He was given free rein to just lie as much as he wants.”
But it was Biden’s stumbles and wavering comportment during the debate that dominated the media narrative in the aftermath of last Thursday’s 90-minute showdown, triggering calls for the President to drop out of the race and for the Dems to nominate a fresh face to take on Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee.
That aftermath included a plea from the New York Times editorial board calling for Biden’s retirement, further fueling the concerns of Dems and Democratic donors. But Goldman remains firmly — for now — among those Democrats including California Gov. Gavin Newsom and California Congressman Eric Swalwell, to name a few, that contend the post-debate narrative is too focused on Biden’s bad performance — giving Trump a pass he doesn’t deserve.
Goldman: But let’s have another debate where actually the moderators will push back on Donald Trump’s lies. He intimidated your network unfortunately, and there was no pushback. He was given free rein to just lie as much as he wants… pic.twitter.com/lNAmVk0uVb
— Acyn (@Acyn) June 29, 2024
Against the Times, Goldman is more in agreement with the editorial board of the Philadelphia Inquirer, which called for Donald Trump — not Joe Biden — to exit the race after Trump’s disastrous anti-American truth-challenged performance at the debate.
While no one could contend that Biden performed well, Goldman excoriated the CNN debate’s moderation as utterly irresponsible. In the absence of Trump being fact-checked by the moderators as he spewed dozens of unchallenged lies, Biden was at a disadvantage, as Goldman sees it. As Biden himself said after the debate: “It’s hard to debate a liar.”