Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Eli | Email Lauren When The New York Times published a story on Monday about the CNN presidential debate, a quote buried 17 paragraphs into the piece caught the attention of President JOE BIDEN’s allies. In an interview with the paper’s MICHAEL GRYNBAUM, CNN’s political director DAVID CHALIAN said a live debate “is not the ideal arena for live fact-checking.” Moderators DANA BASH and JAKE TAPPER, he stressed, would focus on “facilitating the debate between these candidates, not being a participant in that debate.” As for assessing the accuracy of the candidate’s comments, Chalian said that responsibility would fall to the CNN analysts participating in post-debate discussions. Biden aides and allies weren’t pleased. For them the comments exemplified a primary failing of the press corps for several years now: not just an uneven approach to covering DONALD TRUMP, but one that actively shies away from the industry’s core responsibility. “This is going to be probably the single most critical moment of the campaign so far,” Rep. ROBERT GARCIA (D-Calif.), a top campaign surrogate, said in an interview with West Wing Playbook. “The idea that you’re not going to provide any sort of fact-check moderation on the single largest serial liar in American politics today, I think is really dangerous.” Democrats close to the campaign — including some who frequently appear on CNN’s airwaves — told West Wing Playbook that Chalian’s comments sparked a flurry of anxious calls and texts on Monday as party officials tried to figure out what exactly his comments portended for Thursday night. But for all their bellyaching, the campaign itself did not want to formally comment. A senior Biden campaign adviser would only go as far to say that Biden’s job “is to lay out his vision for a second term and to contrast that with what Donald Trump would do as president.” “We are confident that the moderators will uphold their journalistic duty and do their jobs,” the adviser said. The degree to which journalists have an obligation to fact-check Trump in real time has become a prominent subplot in the larger debates over the press’ relationship with the ex-president. Those who have interviewed him have tried to do so — to limited success (though with some notable exceptions). But debate moderators face an entirely unique set of pressures on this front. Correcting the sheer amount of falsehoods that emanate from Trump could end up occupying much of the forum and leave the impression that a thumb is being put on the scale. Still, Democrats and Biden allies believe there is a duty to try — and to not be fixated on upholding the appearance of impartiality when one side is peddling lies more than another. For them, Chalian’s remark was especially perplexing given that Bash and Tapper have reputations for being aggressive interviewers who are comfortable calling bullshit. It wasn’t lost on those in Biden’s orbit that CNN anchor KASIE HUNT had no problem shutting down Trump spokesperson KAROLINE LEAVITT after she attacked both Tapper and CNN in an interview on Monday. “[W]ill be interested to see if CNN’s zero tolerance policy extends beyond baseless attacks on their own talent to baseless lies from presidential candidates,” ERIC SCHULTZ, a senior adviser to BARACK OBAMA, posted on X. Trump’s campaign, unlike Biden’s, has had little compunction about criticizing CNN before the debate takes place. Trump himself, after agreeing to debate Biden “any time, any place,” said Saturday that CNN’s format was “like death.” And Leavitt said in a post on X that her abrupt on-air dismissal by Hunt “proved our point that President Trump will not be treated fairly on Thursday.” All that’s in keeping with Trump’s own years-long habit of questioning in advance the fairness and legitimacy of any metric — TV ratings, political polls, the government’s jobs numbers and, of course, election results — in an attempt to inoculate himself against an adverse outcome. Inside CNN, plans for Thursday’s debates are in full swing with Tapper and Bash having decamped for Atlanta to rehearse, leaving their daily shows to back-ups. One network employee familiar with programming discussions said there has been a greater effort in recent days to book Trump campaign and MAGA movement voices and to ensure they had equal air time — “to display a certain fairness” in the run-up to the debate. CNN declined to comment. But Chalian, for his part, has not backed off his position on real-time fact-checking. In another interview with the AP published Tuesday, he made clear that if there was an “egregious” falsehood or lie “that needs to be checked or the record needs to be made clear, Jake and Dana can do that.” But he reiterated that the moderators are “not here to participate in this debate.” That didn’t put Biden world at ease. Instead, it made plain for them that the responsibility to push back against Trump would, in large part, have to fall on them. Rep. Garcia said Biden would push back against Trump, but it was impossible to expect that he could correct his opponent on every issue on stage. Given that Trump “cannot tell the truth,” Garcia argued that “it’s the job…of moderators at a debate to push back.” MESSAGE US — Are you CANDY CROWLEY? We want to hear from you. And we’ll keep you anonymous! Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. Did someone forward this email to you? Subscribe here! MEA CULPA: In yesterday’s Campaign HQ section, we misstated JEN O’MALLEY DILLON’s title. She is the Biden-Harris campaign chair. It has since been updated online. We apologize for the error.
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