Progressives Slam NBC Host Matt Lauer For Failing To Fact-Check Trump On Claims About Iraq War [VIDEO]

Politico reports:

Democrats and Hillary Clinton allies are less than thrilled with Wednesday’s Commander-In-Chief Forum, hosted by Matt Lauer on NBC. At an event that saw both Clinton and conservative challenger Donald Trump challenged on their stances toward national defense and foreign policy, liberal operatives and Clinton supporters took exception to what they perceived as unbalanced questions, criticizing Lauer for failing to push back on false statements by Trump and for spending a significant amount of time on Clinton’s email scandal.

During the forum, reporters openly fact-checked Trump’s false claim that he supported the decision to go into Iraq prior to the invasion, an argument he has repeatedly made on the campaign trail. Liberal figures pounced on the omission, ripping NBC for devoting so much time to Clinton’s controversies instead. Clinton campaign press secretary Brian Fallon criticized the forum for letting lies by Trump go “unchecked.”

From the Huffington Post:

Lauer is not the first reporter to let Trump get away with his revisionist account of his early stance on the Iraq War. Buzzfeed later reported that several major news outlets ― CNN, Fox, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, Bloomberg, the New York Times and the Washington Post ― have, on at least one occasion, offered a platform for Trump to insist he was always against the Iraq War without correcting the candidate.

This is no small oversight. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton failed to secure the Democratic party’s presidential nomination in 2008, in part, because she voted for the disastrous war that her opponent, Barack Obama, had opposed as a senator. In this election, voters don’t have the option of electing a candidate who demonstrated better judgment about whether to invade Iraq. But during the town hall on Wednesday, Clinton owned up to her miscalculation on the Iraq War ― and reminded voters of her opponent’s refusal to do so.