Candy Crowley: It Wasn't Wrong For Me To Fact-Check In Debate
Tuesday night's second presidential debate was much more lively than the first.
While the first debate on Oct. 3 was marked by President Barack Obama's low energy level and moderator Jim Lehrer's inability to keep the candidates on topic, the second meeting of Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney was a loud, contentious affair.
Both candidates were riled up and ready to take each other out, leaving moderator Candy Crowley to keep them on task and move the debate along as scheduled.
Crowley proved much more proactive than Lehrer was as she interrupted the candidates when they spoke too long or went off topic and remained stern when they tried to argue with her.
One of the evening's bigger moments came on the topic of Libya, where Crowley inserted herself into the action and told Romney what he was saying was inaccurate.
Romney was claiming that President Obama had not acknowledged the attacks in Libya as acts of terrorism for weeks. Obama denied this, but Romney continued on, so Crowley jumped in.
"He did in fact call it an 'act of terror,'" she said, referencing the comments Obama made Sept. 12 when he said "no acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation."
But Crowley continued on, telling Romney that he was right for to assert that it had taken Obama weeks "for the whole idea of there being a riot out there about this tape to come out."
When Crowley appeared on "Starting Point" on Wednesday morning, host Soledad O'Brien asked if her concession to Romney was a form of "backtracking."
Crowley answered with a vehement denial.
"I was trying to move this along," Crowley said. "The question was Benghazi. There is no question that the administration is quite vulnerable on this topic - that they did take weeks to go, 'Well, actually, there really wasn't a protest and actually didn't have anything to do with the tape.' That took a long time. That's where he was going. That was his first answer. And then we got hung up on this, 'Yes, he said. No, I didn't. I said terror. You didn't say terror'" And then there was this point they both kind of looked at me. You know, he was looking at me and the president was looking at me. And what I wanted to move this along - could we get back to this? So I said, 'He did say acts of terror, called it an act of terror. But Governor Romney, you are perfectly right that it took weeks for them to get past the tape.'"
