As Trump and Harris spar, ABC's moderators grapple with conducting a debate in a polarized country - The Boston Globe

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

76% : MSNBC commentator Chris Hayes sent a message on X that the ABC moderators were doing an "excellent" job -- only to be answered by conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who said, "this is how you know they're complete s -- -."While CNN chose not to correct any misstatements by the candidates during Trump's debate with Biden in June, ABC instead challenged statements that Trump made about abortion, immigration, the 2020 election and violent crime.
57% : In the end, Trump logged 43 minutes and 3 seconds of time talking, while Harris had 37 minutes and 41 seconds, according to a count by The New York Times.
47% : The debate's stakes were high to begin with, not only because of the impending election itself but because the last presidential debate in June -- between Trump and sitting President Joe Biden, whose performance was roundly panned -- uncorked a series of events that ended several weeks later with Biden's withdrawal from the race and Harris stepping in.
46% : In an illustration of how difficult it is to conduct a presidential debate in a polarized country, ABC News moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis fact-checked and corrected Trump four times Tuesday and were attacked angrily by the former president and his supporters.Trump, shortly after he left the stage in Philadelphia, sent out a message on his social media platform: "I thought that was my best debate, EVER, especially since it was THREE ON ONE!"Muir and Davis moderated what is expected to be the only debate between the former president and the sitting vice president.
37% : Muir twice asked Trump whether he wanted Ukraine to win its war against Russia, and he didn't answer.
29% : Trump often looked angry or smiled at some of Harris' statements, while avoiding eye contact with his opponent.
27% : During a discussion of abortion, Trump made his oft-repeated claim that Democrats supported killing babies after they were born.
27% : "Answering online critics who complained ABC stacked the deck in Harris' favor, Atlantic writer James Surowiecki wrote that "the way they 'rigged' the debate is by letting (Trump) hang himself with his own stream of consciousness rambles.
25% : "Muir pointed out that Trump, after years of publicly not admitting to his defeat to Biden in the 2020 election, had recently on three separate occasions conceded he had lost.
23% : The alternative was none."Toward the end of the debate, CNN fact checker Daniel Dale said on social media that "Trump has been staggeringly dishonest and Harris has been overwhelmingly (though not entirely) factual.
22% : ABC also noted, after Trump had repeated a debunked report that immigrants were killing and eating pets in Ohio, that there had been no evidence that had happened.
21% : Trump replied that he had been sarcastic in making those recent statements.

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