“We thought fact-checking would be appreciated,” a network executive reportedly said as they cleared out their office, “but, well, turns out we were dead wrong. In retrospect, we should have just let them yell at each other uninterrupted. The American people love a good fight. Who knew?”

It all started with what was supposed to be the political showdown of the century: the much-hyped Trump vs. Harris debate. Hosted by ABC, the event promised to deliver the kind of high-stakes drama that America had come to expect from the 2024 election cycle. What viewers got, however, was something entirely different—a fact-checking marathon that made the moderators seem more like exhausted referees in a wrestling match than neutral mediators of a civil discourse.

As Trump went off-script, launching into his usual claims that Democrats were planning to “execute babies after birth” and that Ohio immigrants were engaged in a “pet barbecue” ring, moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis did their best to keep the debate grounded in reality. They corrected Trump on everything from immigration policies to economics, but the constant interruptions began to resemble a parental scolding session more than a presidential debate.

By the time Harris managed to get a word in edgewise—though noticeably less fact-checked herself—it was already clear that the night was veering off the rails.