It should be the job of the moderators to call out a candidate when they spew something demonstrably false, but according to CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash during the TV presidential debate held on June 27, 2024, that’s President Joe Biden’s responsibility.

There were no on the spot fact checks by CNN, which allowed the GOP MAGA ex-president to freely trumpet misinformation ad nauseum to 51 million TV debate viewers which gave him the edge. Anyone can make themselves look great if they can go unchecked with a non-stop tirade, fabricating their abilities and accomplishments while falsely accusing opponents of bad actions. It’s easy to look confident and in command if a realty talk show host can just pontificate away on anything while not being held accountable for failing to answer direct questions with on-target answers that demonstrates a solid grasp of problems facing the peoples of this country with well-thought-out solutions.

The lack of timely factchecking on numerous false claims made on the debate stage by presidential candidates is a disservice to voters who’re deciding who to hire for the top US job. If average Americans can’t apply for jobs with resumes full of distortions because business managers do fact checking, then why do presidential candidates get a free pass?

The democrat POTUS Joe Biden tried to call out the GOP MAGA ex-president when he was lying, but President Biden was totally off his game on debate night and his attempts to challenge his opponent, fell short. But in my opinion, few would succeed in responding to a bully, expert performer in the fast-paced dishing out of a torrent of lies, distortions and false accusations.

As per “Letters from an American,” dated June 27, 2024, Heather Cox Richardson writes:

(The GOP MAGA ex-president) “responded to the calling out of his own criminal convictions by saying that Biden “could be a convicted felon,” and falsely stating: “This man is a criminal.” And, repeatedly, Trump called America a “failing nation” and described it as a hellscape.”

“It went on and on, and that was the point. This was not a debate. It was Trump using a technique that actually has a formal name, the Gish gallop, although I suspect he comes by it naturally. It’s a rhetorical technique in which someone throws out a fast string of lies, non-sequiturs, and specious arguments, so many that it is impossible to fact-check or rebut them in the amount of time it took to say them. Trying to figure out how to respond makes the opponent look confused, because they don’t know where to start grappling with the flood that has just hit them.”

See debate analysis: June 27, 2024 – by Heather Cox Richardson

Frankly a single debate, does not a president make…

A list of some of the ex-presidents lies are detailed in the June 28, 2024, Rollingstone article by Nikki McCann Ramirez and Ryan Bort, “Trump’s Debate Lies Went Unchecked by CNN Moderators:”

Excerpts:

Trump attempted to blame Nancy Pelosi for the violence on Jan. 6. 

“When asked by CNN host and debate moderator Jake Tapper what he would say to “those voters who believed that you violated your constitutional oath through your actions and inaction on Jan. 6, 2021, and worried that you’ll do it again,” Trump responded by deflecting blame to Pelosi.”

“Nancy Pelosi — if you just watched the news from two days ago — on tape to her daughter who’s a documentary filmmaker, they say, but she’s saying, ‘Oh, no, it’s my responsibility. I was responsible for this.’ Because I offered her 10,000 soldiers or National Guard, and she turned them down.”

“She can’t be very happy with their daughter because it made her into a liar. She said, ‘I take full responsibility for Jan. 6,’” Trump said.”

“As fact-checkers were quick to point out, neither Pelosi nor any member of Congress has the unilateral authority to activate the D.C. National Guard — only the president, defense secretary, and U.S. Army secretary can. Despite what he claimed, Trump made no such authorization ahead of or on the day of the riot. In fact, Maj. Gen. William J. Walker, the D.C. National Guard commander, testified before the Jan. 6 Committee that in the days before the riot, Pentagon officials had severely curtailed his ability to speedily deploy troops to locations around D.C., and that the approval for National Guard support on Jan. 6 was delayed by the Pentagon for several hours.”

“His claims about Pelosi may not have been his most ridiculous lie about Jan. 6. “On Jan. 6 we were respected all over the world,” he said, dodging a question about what he has to say to people who feel he violated his oath on the day of the Capitol riot.”

Trump told several egregious lies about abortion 

“On the issue of reproductive rights and freedoms, Trump claimed onstage that Democrats want to “kill the baby.”

“They’ll take the life of a child in the eighth month, the ninth month, and even after birth — after birth — if you look at the former governor of Virginia, he was willing to do this. He said, ‘We’ll put the baby aside, and will determine what we do with the baby,’ meaning, ‘We’ll kill the baby.’”

“Trump has told this lie before, and it’s easily disprovable. ​​Ralph Northam, the former governor of Virginia, was not endorsing infanticide in the 2019 statements Trump was referring to, but rather discussing abortions later in pregnancy, and gave a hypothetical example of a mother who had not sought an abortion and gave birth to an infant who was nonviable when asked if he would support abortion up until the moment of birth.”

“Republicans attempted to claim that Northam’s comments referred to a decision to kill the infant, rather than a discussion of palliative or continuing care for a child unlikely to survive long after birth.”

“Abortions later in pregnancy, after the second trimester, are extremely rare. Only 1 percent of abortions in the United States take place any later than 21 weeks and are typically the result of a severe fetal anomaly that would result in nonviability or places the life and health of the pregnant person at risk.”

“Trump also claimed that “everybody wanted” the Supreme Court to kill Roe v. Wade and for abortion law to be determined on a state-by-state basis. Polls have repeatedly shown that a substantial majority of Americans oppose the Supreme Court’s decision.”

Trump said he is responsible for bringing the cost of insulin down for seniors

“I heard him say before: insulin. I’m the one who got the insulin down for the seniors,” Trump claimed, emphatically. “I took care of the seniors.”

“The Trump administration created a voluntary plan program that allowed seniors on certain health care plans to cap out-of-pocket insulin costs at $35. The Inflation Reduction Act, which Biden signed in 2023, capped insulin costs at $35 for everyone on Medicare, not the select Americans whose plan participated in the program created under Trump.”

Trump said he had the best environmental record 

“Trump has roundly dismissed the climate crisis, tapped a coal lobbyist to lead the Environmental Protection Agency while he was in office, and ahead of a potential second term in office has reportedly told fossil-fuel executives that he’ll do whatever they want.”

“And yet on (debate) night he touted his environmental record, claiming he had “the best numbers ever” while noting how clean the air and water were under his watch. “We had H20,” the former president said. In reality, the Trump administration did all it could to roll back air and water protections, as well as a host of other environmental regulations.”

“Trump also claimed the Paris Climate Agreement, which Trump pulled America out of and Biden rejoined, is costing the U.S. “trillions” and other nations “nothing.” Biden snapped back that Trump hasn’t “done a damn thing for the environment,” but Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg did the best job of explaining the real cost of curbing fossil-fuel emissions during a congressional hearing earlier in the day.”

“Wait until you find out how much [we’re spending] on oil and gas subsidies,” he responded to a question about the administration’s environmental policy being too expensive. “Wait until you find out the economic impact that some economists have put at $15 million every hour or every day, trillions of dollars every year, from allowing the environmental conditions in this country and the planet to worsen.”

As per Open Secrets, “oil and gas industry executives have donated $7.3 million this election cycle to Trump’s campaign and outside groups / PACs backing his candidacy, citing Federal Election Commission filings as of April 22.”

As per a May 10, 2024 Forbes article by Sare Dorn, “Energy Industry Already Giving Trump Millions—While He Promises Big Cutbacks In Seeking $1 Billion Donation:”

“At the Mar-a-Lago dinner (with oil / gas executives), Trump promised he would lift a moratorium on permits for liquefied natural gas exports on his “first day” in office, undo the Biden administration’s limitations on drilling in the Alaskan Arctic and pave the way for more drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, the Washington Post reported, citing sources familiar with the meeting.”