NEW YORK ― Wednesday night’s Commander-in-Chief forum on NBC should have gone down as the first time the two 2016 presidential candidates shared a stage. But it will be remembered largely for the shortcomings of the man who was tasked with moderating. 
 
 Matt Lauer, the “Today” show host, flunked in primetime. And his failure was even more remarkable because he had the very information he needed to succeed. 
 
 During the first half of an hourlong event, Hillary Clinton pointed out to Lauer that Republican nominee Donald Trump had expressed support for the Iraq War prior to the 2003 U.S. invasion, even though he’s falsely claimed throughout his entire candidacy to have been staunchly opposed to it. 
 
 “My opponent was for the war in Iraq,” Clinton said at the forum simulcast on NBC and MSNBC. “He says he wasn’t. You can ― you can go back and look at the record. He supported it. He told Howard Stern he supported it.” 
 
 But when Trump took the stage in the second half of the event, he cited his criticism of the war in an August 2004 Esquire story as evidence he opposed the invasion, which actually began 16 months earlier. In a room full of Iraq War veterans, Lauer didn’t challenge Trump’s false claim. 
 
 The failure to fact-check on Iraq didn’t go unnoticed among many journalists on Twitter, including Lauer’s colleague, NBC News senior political editor Mark Murray. 
 
 Trump repeats that he was against the Iraq war from the outset. 
 
 
 
 That is not true. — Mark Murray (@mmurraypolitics) September 8, 2016 
 
 Seriously -- everyone, and I mean everyone, knew this would happen. And Matt Lauer didn't have a followup planned? https://t.co/mm5ufZKjEx — Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) September 8, 2016 
 
 Basically universal condemnation from journalists for Lauer letting Trump get away with Iraq War comments: pic.twitter.com/S0O2BvepDr — andrew kaczynski (@BuzzFeedAndrew) September 8, 2016 
 
 But criticism of Lauer’s performance began well before Trump even hit the stage. He grilled Clinton from the start on her handling of classified information while using a private email account as secretary of state. After several questions on the subject, Lauer turned to a member of the audience who also referred to the email situation in asking Clinton about handling sensitive information. 
 
 Clinton’s use of a private email account is perhaps the most litigated subject of the presidential campaign. That doesn’t make it unworthy of resurfacing. But the amount of time Lauer lingered on the topic drew befuddlement from Clinton’s backers and some second-guessing from other media members, who wondered why other weightier topics weren’t given the same attention. 
 
 The decision looked even worse when it was Lauer’s turn to question Trump. The NBC host began by asking Trump what in his personal or professional life has prepared him to be commander in chief, an open-ended question that allowed the candidate to boast about his business successes. “Well, I’ve built a great company. I’ve been all over the world,” Trump began. 
 
 Trump soon provided his supposed Iraq stance and later falsely asserted ― as he’s similarly done throughout the campaign ― to have been against the U.S. intervention in Libya that toppled late dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Trump said Clinton, as secretary of state, made a “a terrible mistake.” But Trump didn’t mention he shared the view that the U.S. should intervene, as another of Lauer’s colleagues, MSNBC host Chris Hayes, noted on Twitter. 
 
 Two of Trump's biggest critiques of Clinton are Iraq and Libya, both of which he supported. — Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) September 8, 2016 
 
 Trump wasn’t a U.S. senator or secretary of State when the Iraq and Libya decisions were made, as was the case with Clinton, so he clearly had less of a role in these military interventions. Still, if Trump is going to tout his supposed positions as evidence of foreign policy judgment, a moderator should be steeped in the candidate’s well-worn claims when pressing him at a national security-focused forum. But on Libya, like Iraq, Lauer didn’t correct the Republican nominee. To his credit, he did confront Trump on a 2013 tweet in which Trump suggested sexual assaults had risen in the military because women were allowed to serve alongside men. 
 
 Some of Lauer’s problems on Wednesday night were not of his own making. With only a half-hour with each candidate, he was pressed for time and forced to rush through topics while bringing in audience questions and timely follow-ups. 
 
 Still, Lauer neglected to challenge Trump on a number of controversial statements and past actions that would have had obvious relevance to the audience of veterans. They included the businessman’s four Vietnam draft deferments, mocking Sen. John McCain’s tortuous years as an American P.O.W., smearing a Gold Star family, likening his prep school experience to actually serving in the military, and talking about how he always wanted a Purple Heart. 
 
 By the end of the night, Lauer himself had become the story, which is often not the way a moderator wants his debate to be remembered. 
 
 Trumps getting softer questions and Lauer mainly isn't as aggressive. But Trumps still not doing great. — Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) September 8, 2016 
 
 I'm still mesmerized by this Lauer interview of Trump. pic.twitter.com/4vcLGjRN6D — Tim O'Brien (@TimOBrien) September 8, 2016 
 
 It is amazing. Lauer interrupted Clinton's answers repeatedly to move on. Not once for Trump. Tough to be a woman running for President — Norman Ornstein (@NormOrnstein) September 8, 2016 
 
 To my colleagues in the media: Elections are a serious business. If u are a moderator, prepare. Don't be another @MLauer and look the fool. — Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) September 8, 2016 

 The Fix's Callum Borchers explains why Matt Lauer, the NBC host who questioned Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump Sept. 7 on national security at a "commander-in-chief forum," is being criticized for his performance. (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post) 
 
 When a prominent figure representing the United States on an international stage sat down with Matt Lauer recently, the NBC host asked tough questions probing his false statements. 
 
 The prominent figure was Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte. On Wednesday night, a far different Lauer sat down with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. 
 
 At NBC's Commander-in-Chief Forum, Trump repeated one of his favorite unsupportable claims: "I was totally against the war in Iraq. ... And I was against the war in Iraq because I said it's going to totally destabilize the Middle East, which it has." 
 
 Fact-checkers have scoured the Republican presidential nominee's pre-invasion statements about Iraq and found nothing resembling the forceful and prescient opposition he has described throughout the campaign. What they have found, instead, is a September 2002 interview in which Trump told Howard Stern that he supported the war, albeit reluctantly. 
 
 The Washington Post Fact Checker has awarded Trump four Pinocchios on this issue. 
 
 Yet when the real estate mogul said again that he was "totally against the war in Iraq," Lauer did not challenge him. The moderator moved on to a question about Trump's temperament. 
 
 Journalists were aghast. 
 
 Trump lies about opposing Iraq war. Lauer lets it go. No follow up. Unreal. — Jonathan Chait (@jonathanchait) September 8, 2016 
 
 So @MLauer’s plan is just to let Trump lie about his past statements on Iraq? — Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) September 8, 2016 
 
 Basically universal condemnation from journalists for Lauer letting Trump get away with Iraq War comments: pic.twitter.com/S0O2BvepDr — andrew kaczynski (@BuzzFeedAndrew) September 8, 2016 
 
 People not happy w Matt lauer letting trump slide on Iraq pic.twitter.com/ikZizTn8sc — Hadas Gold (@Hadas_Gold) September 8, 2016 
 
 Reporters' frustration can probably be attributed to two main factors: Trump's Iraq war assertion has been repeated and debunked so many times that Lauer should have been prepared to push back. And the moment was so big — being the closest thing to a general election debate — that setting the record straight right away was important. 
 
 Certainly more important than getting to the bottom of what happened on Lochte's drunken night in Rio de Janeiro last month. But in an interview during the Olympics, Lauer pressed the swimmer to explain why he lied about an armed robber holding a gun to his head. 
 
 Here is a quick sample of Lauer's questions and follow-ups to Lochte: 
 
 "One of the things you appear to have embellished with Billy [Bush] when you talked to Billy is you said at some point after you refused to sit down the security guard put the gun to your forehead and cocked it. That didn’t happen?" 
 
 "Why’d you do that?" 
 
 "But at that point, it’s not a robbery. At that point, you’re striking a deal. You’re striking a deal to pay for what damage you’ve caused so that he doesn’t call the police and this doesn’t become a bigger incident. Isn’t that — isn’t that fair?" 
 
 "That doesn’t sound like a robbery. A robbery is when some guy targets you, whether he’s armed or not, to take your money, and your belongings, and your valuables." 
 
 "I guess what I’m trying to get at is the first version of the story you told, Ryan, was much more about the mean streets of Rio. And the version we’re hearing now is much more about a negotiated settlement to cover up some dumb behavior." 
 
 Clearly Lauer is more than capable of confronting and correcting misinformation. He just didn't do it with Trump. 
 
 Now, to be fair, Lauer was under tight time constraints. His original question was about what life experiences have prepared Trump to be commander-in-chief; when Trump deflected, Lauer cut him off and asked again. That's when Trump started talking about his "great judgment" on Iraq. With audience members waiting to ask questions of their own, Lauer might have decided that he had already spent too much time on a single inquiry and been reluctant to make another interjection that surely would have started an argument. 
 
 But the consensus among Lauer's media colleagues is that he shouldn't have let Trump's Iraq claim slide, regardless of the clock — that he should have been at least as tough on someone who wants to be president as he was on someone who wants to swim really fast. 

 "I heard Hillary Clinton say I was not against the war in Iraq," Donald Trump told Matt Lauer last fall during a Commander-in-Chief Forum. "I was totally against the war in Iraq. You can look at Esquire magazine from 2004. You can look at before that." 
 
 The reason Clinton said that Trump was not against the war in Iraq is because he was not against the war in Iraq. The United States invaded Iraq in 2003, and the congressional debate over authorizing the use of military force in Iraq was in 2002. And during that period, Trump supported the invasion of Iraq. BuzzFeed's Andrew Kaczynski and Nathan McDermott were the first to unearth a Howard Stern Show transcript that proved it. 
 
 Here was Trump in 2002: 
 
 Stern: Are you for invading Iraq? Trump: Yeah, I guess so. I wish the first time it was done correctly. 
 
 Since their initial report that Trump was lying about this, several different fact-checkers looked into it and all concluded that Trump was lying. Trump’s habit of lying about this has been widely discussed in the press. NBC News’s senior political editor caught Trump lying as it happened, and, as Trump himself noted, Clinton flagged the fact that Trump was going to lie about this for Lauer. 
 
 Trump repeats that he was against the Iraq war from the outset. 
 
 
 
 That is not true. — Mark Murray (@mmurraypolitics) September 8, 2016 
 
 Lauer, unfortunately, just let Trump get away with it. 
 
 How can someone like @MLauer not set the record straight on Trump's bogus claim of being against the war in Iraq? — Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) September 8, 2016 
 
 Later, near the very end of the interview, Trump said that Clinton "made a terrible mistake on Libya." 
 
 In fact, Trump himself supported the military action in Libya that he now characterizes as a mistake. He made a video about it and posted it on his website. You can watch it right here. 
 
 It’s not a great idea, in general, for journalists to let politicians get away with bald-faced, on-camera lies. But it’s particularly important not to let them do it when, as is the case with Trump on these two issues, the lies are so predictable. 
 
 Trump says these things about Libya and Iraq all the time. It’s not incidental, it’s the core of his message. He says it over and over again. And it’s not true. People need to know that. And Lauer totally blew it. 

 The NBC host faced online backlash after failing to press Donald Trump on his claim that he opposed the Iraq War in 2002. 
 
 Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump sat down Wednesday for their first joint-candidate event of the general election, and in the end, it was moderator Matt Lauer who faced the most Twitter backlash. 
 
 The NBC host spoke with both candidates during the forum, in which they covered topics of national security and the military with questions fielded by Lauer and a live audience comprising active-duty service members and veterans. 
 
 Lauer started by asking them both about "the most important characteristic that a commander-in-chief can possess" and military policies in general, but focused more on Clinton's email scandal and failed to press Trump on his claim that he opposed the Iraq War. 
 
 See some of the reactions below. 
 
 WTF is the matter with Matt Lauer not calling @realDonaldTrump out on his lie about not supporting going into Iraq. MSM keep him honest!!! — Rob Reiner (@robreiner) September 8, 2016 
 
 . @mattyglesias: Matt Lauer totally blew it on Trump’s blatant lying about Iraq and Libya https://t.co/DsRbubnarP — Arianna Huffington (@ariannahuff) September 8, 2016 
 
 If only @MLauer had access to this crack team of journalists. https://t.co/DYtkFFNrB8 — Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) September 8, 2016 
 
 I don't blame Lauer for asking the email question. But it's ABSURD that he started off with Trump, "Why should you be Commander-in-Chief?" — Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) September 8, 2016 
 
 Shoutout to Matt Lauer for not asking a follow up when Trump lies a out opposing Iraq war. Maybe Matt was still thinking about emails. — Wil Wheaton (@wilw) September 8, 2016 
 
 Precisely. What an embarrassment. What a travesty. We will remember this, NBC and @mlauer. You are responsible. https://t.co/WESVMoK0d3 — Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) September 8, 2016 
 
 OK great @Mlauer call, quoting a Trump tweet about how rape is the natural consequence of having women in the military. No followup — Joan Walsh (@joanwalsh) September 8, 2016 
 
 So @MLauer’s plan is just to let Trump lie about his past statements on Iraq? — Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) September 8, 2016 

 A frightening case study in journalistic failure. 
 
 I had not taken seriously the possibility that Donald Trump could win the presidency until I saw Matt Lauer host an hour-long interview with the two major-party candidates. Lauer’s performance was not merely a failure, it was horrifying and shocking. The shock, for me, was the realization that most Americans inhabit a very different news environment than professional journalists. I not only consume a lot of news, since it’s my job, I also tend to focus on elite print-news sources. Most voters, and all the more so undecided voters, subsist on a news diet supplied by the likes of Matt Lauer. And the reality transmitted to them from Lauer matches the reality of the polls, which is a world in which Clinton and Trump are equivalently flawed. 
 
 Lauer focused a third of his questioning time on Clinton’s private email server. Her decision to follow Colin Powell’s advice is a legitimate blot on her record. But Lauer did not move the ball forward on the question in any meaningful way: 
 
 The word judgment has been used a lot around you, Secretary Clinton, over the last year and a half. And in particular concerning your use of your personal email and server to communicate while you were secretary of state. You have said it’s a mistake. 
 
 
 
 You said you made not the best choice. 
 
 
 
 You were communicating on highly sensitive topics. Why wasn’t it more than a mistake? Why wasn’t it disqualifying, if you want to be commander-in-chief? 
 
 Lauer followed up with four more email-related questions. The impression an uninformed or even moderately informed viewer would receive from this interview is that the email issue represents a sinister crime, perhaps completely disqualifying from office, rather than an unjustifiable but routine act of government non-transparency. 
 
 The email exchange would not by itself be so alarming except when viewed in juxtaposition with Lauer’s hapless interview of Trump. Trump began the interview by boldly insisting, “I was totally against the war in Iraq. You can look at Esquire magazine from 2004. You can look at before that.” This is a lie. Trump has been quoted supporting the invasion beforehand and even afterward. Nobody has produced any evidence of Trump contradicting his support for the war before it started. His line to Lauer was transparently ridiculous – how could a 2004 interview supply evidence of having opposed a war that began in 2003? But Lauer did not try even a single follow-up. 
 
 Trump went on to make a series of wild and dangerous statements. He praised Russian President Vladimir Putin as a strong, effective, and popular leader. Lauer did press him on this point, and when he did, Trump offered the astonishing rebuttal, saying President Obama had done equivalently brutish things. Lauer did not press Trump on his claim that the president of the United States behaves in a fundamentally similar way to a dictator who imprisons and kills political critics and journalists. Trump likewise reiterated his belief that “to the victor go the spoils” is the proper basis for American foreign policy, specifically with regard to his long-standing lament that the United States failed to steal Iraq’s oil after the 2003 invasion. 
 
 Lauer’s attempt to press Trump was the completely ineffectual technique of asking repeatedly if he is ready to serve as commander-in-chief. Lauer probably believes the answer is no, but nothing about this question would drive home Trump’s extraordinary lack of knowledge. Instead it allowed him to performatively demonstrate his confident, alpha-male reality-show character as a prospective chief executive. 
 
 Both of these beliefs stun and appall foreign-policy experts in both parties, as readers of the Washington Post or the New York Times know. But the average undecided voter isn’t reading those newspapers. The average undecided voter is getting snippets of news from television personalities like Lauer, who are failing to convey the fact that the election pits a normal politician with normal political failings against an ignorant, bigoted, pathologically dishonest authoritarian. 
 
 Update: National Review’s Charles C.W. Cooke writes, “Welcome to the Club.” Cooke’s point is that my dismay at Lauer’s performance contradicts another piece I wrote four years ago, about the liberal influence of Hollywood. “Now he believes that pop culture — which is just as shallow and dumb as it’s always been; Lauer is no anomaly — is hurting him and his party. And we can’t have that!,” sneers Cooke. 
 
 Cooke’s accusation of hypocrisy suffers from two flaws, each of them fatal. First, my 2012 essay, which Cooke does not link, does not celebrate liberal influence, it describes it, and indeed argues the conservative critics have reason to feel resentful: 
 
 This capacity to mold the moral premises of large segments of the public, and especially the youngest and most impressionable elements, may or may not be unfair. What it is undoubtedly is a source of cultural (and hence political) power. Liberals like to believe that our strength derives solely from the natural concordance of the people, that we represent what most Americans believe, or would believe if not for the distorting rightward pull of Fox News and the Koch brothers and the rest. Conservatives surely do benefit from these outposts of power, and most would rather indulge their own populist fantasies than admit it. But they do have a point about one thing: We liberals owe not a small measure of our success to the propaganda campaign of a tiny, disproportionately influential cultural elite. 
 
 Cooke’s notion that I have been hoisted by my own petard implies that Hollywood is my petard, rather than an institution I analyzed critically as a source of liberal propaganda. 
 
 Second, the entire focus of that essay was on Hollywood – movies primarily, but also television shows like Modern Family, Glee, and so on. My criticism of Lauer focused on television news. Those are different things entirely. Did I think morning television or soft-focus feature news has a pronounced liberal bias? No, I don’t think that, I didn’t think that and I didn’t write that. 

 “Lauer interrupted Clinton’s answers repeatedly to move on. Not once for Trump,” Norman Ornstein, the political commentator, wrote in a Twitter message, adding: “Tough to be a woman running for president.” 
 
 On social media, surrogates for Mrs. Clinton began mounting a sustained attack on the anchor. “Imagine if @NBCNews had done its job,” wrote Nick Merrill, her press secretary, on Twitter. Neera Tanden, a close Clinton ally, was even harsher: “I guess the good news is that Matt Lauer isn’t moderating an actual debate,” she wrote. 
 
 The criticism captured what has become a common complaint about media coverage during this election: that news organizations and interviewers treat Mrs. Clinton as a serious candidate worthy of tough questions, while Mr. Trump is sometimes handled more benignly. 
 
 Mr. Lauer did manage to extract several head-turning statements from Mr. Trump. He confronted Mr. Trump with a crass Twitter message from 2013 in which the future candidate suggested that sexual assaults in the military were a logical result of men and women serving together. “It is a correct tweet,” Mr. Trump said. 
 
 When Mr. Lauer asked if Mr. Trump actually believed he knew more about the Islamic State than American generals, the candidate replied: “The generals have been reduced to rubble.” When Mr. Lauer brought up Mr. Trump’s admiration for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, noting that Mr. Putin had invaded Ukraine and was suspected of hacking Democratic emails, Mr. Trump refused to say a negative word about him. “Do you want me to start naming some of the things that President Obama does?” Mr. Trump asked. 
 
 Still, with the formal debates set to begin on Sept. 26, Mr. Lauer’s performance seemed to preview the troubles that television moderators could face in balancing fairness with accountability. Mr. Trump, with his Houdini-like ability to squirm out of direct answers, is a particularly tough subject for interviewers, who will be forced to determine on the fly when to interrupt with a prime-time fact-check. Chris Wallace, the Fox News anchor who will handle the third presidential debate, drew criticism this week when he said, “I don’t view my role as truth-squading.” 
 
 If Mr. Lauer — who was passed over to host a debate in favor of his NBC colleague Lester Holt — was seeking a piece of the moderator experience, he got it. Warts and all.
– If you weren't sure what all the tweets this morning with the #LaueringTheBar hashtag were all about, you may not have seen NBC's "Commander-in-Chief" military forum Wednesday night with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, helmed by Today Show host Matt Lauer. Critics say that during the hourlong forum (30 minutes with each candidate), Lauer barely called out Trump on odd remarks, exaggerations, or outright lies (specifically on Trump's claim that he was "totally against the war in Iraq"), while he was tougher on Clinton and perhaps even sexist by constantly interrupting her. "The consensus afterward was not kind," the New York Times notes, with columnist Nicholas Kristof saying in his own tweet the forum was "an embarrassment to journalism." Other thoughts: Jonathan Chait writes for New York magazine that "Lauer's performance was not merely a failure, it was horrifying and shocking." While not afraid to harp on Clinton's email server woes, Chait says, Lauer was ineffective at addressing many of Trump's "wild and dangerous statements," including that he saw Vladimir Putin as a strong leader—a failure on Lauer's part to show we have "a normal politician with normal political failings [running] against an ignorant, bigoted, pathologically dishonest authoritarian." Lauer "flunked in primetime," writes Michael Calderone for Huffington Post, especially on Trump's anti-Iraq war claim and a similar claim about US intervention in Libya. What makes Lauer's performance more egregious: He had the info to refute some of Trump's claims, including Clinton bringing up Trump's support for Iraq right before Trump took the stage. "By the end of the night, Lauer himself had become the story, which is often not the way a moderator wants his debate to be remembered." Writes Matthew Yglesias on Vox: "Matt Lauer totally blew it." He agrees with Calderone that Lauer dropped the ball on Iraq and Libya, noting, "It's particularly important [for journalists] not to let [politicians get away with bald-faced, on-camera lies] … when, as is the case with Trump on these two issues, the lies are so predictable." Callum Borchers points out in the Washington Post that Lauer was tougher on Ryan Lochte. "Clearly Lauer is more than capable of confronting and correcting misinformation. He just didn't do it with Trump," Borchers writes, though he acknowledges Lauer was dealing with "tight time constraints." The Hollywood Reporter lists some high-profile tweets about Lauer, including a "WTF" post from actor/director Rob Reiner and a Simpsons-related crack courtesy of actor Wil Wheaton.