Yet more online controversy swirls over the Tuesday, October 1 vice presidential debate between Senator and 2024 running mate JD Vance and Minnesota Governor and 2024 Kamala Harris running mate Tim Walz. Particularly, commenters on X (formerly Twitter) remained furious over how the moderators treated Sen. Vance, namely in fact-checking him despite doing so being against the rules of the debate.
In that exchange, Brennan said, “Just to clarify for our viewers, Springfield, Ohio, does have a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status, temporary protected status.” Vance fired back, “Margaret, the rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact-check. And since you are fact-checking me, I think it’s important to say what’s actually going on.”
The general online view of what happened during the debate, at least on the pro-Vance, pro-Trump right, was characterized by one X poster who said, on the night of the contentious debate: “Once again the debate moderators from #CBS are fucking playing games and showing extreme bias. These debates moderated by Marxist communists liberals are a joke. call them out. . #VPDebate2024”
But while the tone for how the right generally viewed the moderators’ performance during the debate was set that night, controversy and anger has continued swirling in the wake of it. For example, on Saturday, October 5, one commenter on X responded to a post about the millions who tuned into the debate by saying, “And in other news: CBS moderators violated their own rules by erroneously fact checking true statements by Senator Vance. But CBS isn’t biased?”
On the same day, another commenter argued that the moderators were “shameless” in their bias, saying, “The two moderators from CBS shamelessly broke their own rules by fact-checking (wrongly and solely) Vance. They ignored questions of administration’s tardy responses to Hurricane Helene, the Ukraine war, the recent Trump assassination, Middle east, crime, etc”
Similarly, around the same time, another noted that the moderators appeared to have “ganged up” on Vance, saying, “The CBS News moderators, Nora O’Donnell, and, especially, Margaret Brennan, also as expected, ganged up on Vance. They had learned nothing, and forgotten nothing from the last disastrous, and biased debate moderators.”
On a different note, a poster on X argued that the moderators had incorrectly characterized a potential Israeli counter-attack against Iran, saying, “CBS moderators were wrong. Israel would not be launching a “preemptive strike” on Iran. It would be a retaliatory strike on Iran. They were also wrong in claiming the Biden is tough on Iran.”
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Similarly differently, another poster alleged that the so-called “journalists” and “moderators” tend to press asking about issues that are bad for the Republicans, while holding off on those that might hurt the Democrats, making debates a waste of time. That poster wrote, “Why do the press & moderators only ask questions to negativity impact Trump but not Harris? That CBS “debate” was a ridiculous waste of time, not hard questions for Harris. Same goes for this useless cesspool of ‘journalists’.”
Watch the moderators go after Vance here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video