Lester Holt and the Problem of Refereeing Donald Trump

On the most recent episode of the Keepin’ It 1600 podcast, a twice-a-week show hosted by former Obama staffers Jon Favreau and Dan Pfeiffer, CNN’s Jake Tapper came on to preview Monday’s first presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Tapper, who has hosted several debates himself, initially lamented how difficult it was to moderate 11 different people on stage and looked forward to seeing just these two candidates against each other.

But then the topic drifted, as it inevitably does in this campaign, to matters of truth: How to elicit it, what steps a moderator could take to ensure it, how to make sure it is not violently molested in front of what is expected to be the largest debate audience in television history. And Tapper, a smart man and as good a moderator as there is, didn’t have any answers.