Megyn Kelly has sharply criticized the moderation of the presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris and described the event as a “ramp” and an “ambush.”
The two presidential candidates faced each other for the first time on Tuesday evening at around 9 p.m. (local time) in the state of Pennsylvania.
They debated all sorts of issues that will be at the forefront of voters’ minds in November, including abortion, immigration and the state of the economy.
Kelly, a journalist and media personality, discussed her insights from the debate with Sky News presenter Paul Murray on Thursday, particularly with regard to the ABC News (US) presenters.
“It was a three-on-one attack, an ambush, and they went in with the appropriate preparation,” she claimed.
“If you look back now, we pulled up the transcript, you read all the questions and how it went, and every time Trump tried to bridge the gap or didn’t answer the question and tried to answer… express his own thoughts on something or even digress to defend himself against one of their attacks, they brought him back to their difficult question.
“Every time she (Harris) has done that, she’s gotten away with it – they’ve never done that to her … even once.”
She pointed to what she described as a lack of fact-checking by moderators of the claims made by Harris.
“How many fact checks did they do on her? None,” she said.
Kelly also attacked the fact-checks themselves, describing them as “flawed, opinion-laden and completely out of place.”
“The only silver lining in all this is that I have to believe that the viewers at home watching this have understood, if not explicitly, then instinctively, that this is unfair,” she said.
“I feel when I watch an unfair fight…”
Murray had sharply criticized the moderation after watching the debate the day before and described the situation as “frustrating.”
“This debate was all about ‘Trump is the problem, Harris is the solution,'” he said.
“They gave her the opportunity to emphasize this point again and again.
“Frustrating, frustrating.”
However, several media commentators and journalists in the US praised the moderation.
“If you show up in the spin room, you’ve lost. If you blame the moderators, you’ve lost,” Politico’s Jonathan Lemire said after the debate.
Various claims made by Trump and Harris during the debate were independently verified by AFP.
Several of Trump’s statements were labeled false, while at least one statement by Harris was labeled misleading.
It remains unclear whether a second debate will be organized closer to the official election date.
