Fact-Checking: The Next Frontier

Last night's debate…sigh. The Trump gish gallop was predictable; Biden's weak performance less obviously so. I side with the people who fault the CNN format for allowing Trump to lie freely, and even that cutting Trump's mic may have made it worse, as illogical as that may seem.

Fact-checker Daniel Dale put out a rapid series of fact checks on CNN later that night, covering 28 of the lies. Too bad it wasn't in the debate.

Tom Tomorrow discussed the lack of fact-checking briefly on BlueSky tonight:

I don't really know how Jake Tapper and Dana Bash could have fact-checked Trump without turning it into a four-way debate. Maybe have Daniel Dale onsite and take occasional pauses to rate the veracity of statements?

Every debate involving Trump goes off the rails and none of the revised rules really did much to prevent that. I legitimately don't know what they could have done.

Maybe a constantly updated chyron clarifying the complete lies. 'FACT CHECK: NANCY PELOSI NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR J6 LOL'

Or a Ron Howard voiceover, "He did not, in fact, try to send 10,000 National Guard"

A commenter responded with one of my favorites:

A pop up animation of Lying Cat:

There were several other interesting ideas in the conversation on BlueSky about ways to run a debate with a gish-galloper. I don't have a lot of hope that any of them will be implemented in the future.