NEW YORK — The first joint appearance of presidential nominees Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump on NBC’s “Commander in Chief Forum” averaged 10.8 million viewers on Wednesday.
But the performance by moderator Matt Lauer, co-anchor of “Today,” became a hot topic during and after the event held at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York.
Lauer received harsh feedback — most of it from media critics and supporters of Clinton — after he failed to press Trump on his insistence that he was opposed to the Iraq War. Clinton had earlier mentioned a 2002 radio interview with Howard Stern in which Trump said he favored the U.S. invasion. But the Republican nominee maintained Wednesday night that he was opposed to it, with no follow-up from Lauer.
Lauer also received blowback for interrupting Clinton, who attempted to provide longer and more detailed answers during her portion of the forum. Each candidate was given a half-hour, and Clinton spent nearly half of her time discussing the controversy over her emails.
Former Obama White House speechwriter Jon Favreau wrote: “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?’“
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote on Twitter that the forum was “an embarrassment to journalism.” (Kristof is a friend of former “Today” co-anchor Ann Curry, who had an uneasy on-air rapport with Lauer.)
Other commenters also said Lauer went easier on Trump.
“If Matt Lauer were a dog, he’d bark at women and rollover for white men,” tweeted Warren Leight, former producer of NBC’s “Law & Order: SVU.”
Lauer is rarely subjected to the kind of notices he received for the forum. At one point the hashtag #LaueringTheBar was trending on Twitter.