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from https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4879842-false-claims-harris-trump-debate/

With fact-checks like these, how does truth stand a chance?
by Jonathan Turley, Opinion Contributor - 09/14/24 10:30 AM ET

“You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.”

That famous line from Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) remains a
virtual mantra for politicians and pundits. Yet, judging from the
presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice
President Kamala Harris, we have officially entered the post-truth
political era.

ABC News has been widely criticized for the bias of the two moderators
Linsey Davis and David Muir. Even liberal outlets acknowledged that the
two journalists seemed inclined to “fact check” only Trump. In the meantime, they allowed clearly false statements from Harris go unchallenged.

Three of the unchecked claims are being widely disseminated by
supporters, including some in the media. Here are three legal “facts”
that are being repeated despite being clearly untrue.

“Crime is down under the Biden-Harris administration.“

One of the most notable slap downs by ABC followed Trump commenting that
crime rates have drastically risen during the Biden-Harris
administration. Muir immediately balked and declared: “As you know, the
FBI says overall violent crime is coming down in this country.”

Harris and her allies have been repeating the claim by ABC. But the
actual statistics show that Trump was right. The Justice Department’s released survey found that, under the Biden administration, there has
been a significant increase in crime. Violent crime was up 37 percent
from 2020 to 2023, rape is up 42 percent, robbery is up 63 percent and
stranger violence is up 61 percent. Other reports had shown startling
increases such as a doubling of carjackings in D.C. in 2023.

“Harris has not supported transgender operations for undocumented migrants.”

Some of the greatest mocking in the media concerned Trump’s statement
that Harris has supported transgender conversion treatment for
undocumented persons. New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser immediately
wrote “What the hell was he talking about? No one knows, which was, of course, exactly Harris’s point.”

On CNN, Wolf Blitzer declared how “outlandish” it was for Trump to make such a claim.

But it’s true.

In 2019, Harris told the ACLU that she not only supported such
operations but actively worked for at least one such procedure to take
place. When it was reported by Andrew Kaczynski on CNN, host Erin
Burnett was gobsmacked by the notion of taxpayer-funded gender
transition surgeries for detained migrants. “She actually supported
that?” Burnett exclaimed.

Even the New York Times later admitted that the “wildest sounding attack line” from Trump was “basically true.”

Harris does not support the right to abortion in the final three months
of a pregnancy.

Trump also hit Harris on her no-limits position on abortion rights,
allowing women the right to abort a baby up to the moment of birth.
Trump said Harris supports laws allowing abortions in “the seventh
month, the eighth month, [and] the ninth month,” to which Harris
retorted: “C’mon,” “no,” and “that’s not true,”

The hosts again said that Trump was making up his criticism of late-term abortions, including the risk of babies being born but allowed to die.

But in fact, many states, including Minnesota under Gov. Tim Walz (D),
protect the right of a woman to abort a baby into the ninth month. While
it is often said that this is left to the mother and her doctor, the law
gives the decision to the mother.

Late-term abortions are relatively rare, but they do occur. A Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention report estimated in 2019 that about
4,882 abortions were performed that year at least 21 weeks or later into pregnancy.

More than a dozen states, in fact, allow on-demand abortions after a
baby is viable and can even survive outside of the womb. Nine of those
states permit abortions throughout the entirety of pregnancy. Harris has supported these state laws and certainly did not answer the question on
what limits she would support, other than saying that she supports Roe
v. Wade.

To be sure, Trump did not help himself with his wilder claims. These
included debunked accounts of Haitian migrants eating people’s pets in
Ohio, which Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike Dewine, has denied.

The issue is not fact-checking, but the failure to do so equally and accurately. ABC actually disseminated false information under the mantle
of fact-checking, and that’s a real problem.

Moderator Linsey Davis admitted later that ABC did not want a repeat of
what had happened in the last debate, wherein Trump was given free rein
and the moderators limited themselves to asking questions and enforcing
time limits. CNN was praised in that debate across the political
spectrum for being even-handed.

What is most striking about this election is that none of this seems to
matter. Indeed, even the debate did not matter. While Trump can
legitimately object to a three-against-one debate format, Harris’s
victory was clear not dependent on bad calls by the refs. However, there
has been little overall movement in the polls, even though 67 million
people were watching.

The era of post-truth politics is evident in Harris repeating false
claims about Trump’s support for “Project 2025” and debunked claims regarding his comments about an extreme-right Charlottesville rally in
2017. Leading Democrats continue to make these false claims, in some
cases despite knowing that they are false.

On the other side, Trump is making promises he has to know can never be fulfilled. For example, he has pledged to make flag-burning a federal
crime with a penalty of two years’ incarceration. The Supreme Court, including conservatives like the late Justice Antonin Scalia, has ruled
that flag burning is protected speech under the First Amendment. Neither
a president nor Congress can change the meaning of the Constitution
without amending it.

With the help of the media, we have reduced our election to a political Slurpee. It’s all sugar rush and no nutritional value. We now have
pundits supporting the idea of no further debates and even arguing that
Harris shouldn’t give any interviews because it’s too risky.

Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) explained that Harris should avoid
one-on-one media interviews because “sometimes, you drill down into a question until there’s a word that’s uttered that can be used in a
negative way.” I suppose, as president, she will need to insist on
meeting foreign leaders only in CNN town hall events.

If you do not say anything, there are no facts to check. The election
then becomes a vote over whether you are for or against “joy.”

What is clear from the ABC debate is that citizens are on their own in
the election to find actual facts and substance in the super-sized
Slurpee of the 2024 election.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at
George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable
Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage” (Simon & Schuster).

Tags Daniel Patrick Moynihan Erin Burnett Kamala Harris Linsey Davis
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