Moderator Jim Lehrer on Pres. Debate: 'I Never Read Tweets'

Obama shocked the country with his horrible debate performance last October. After it was all over many of his supporters blamed debate moderator Jim Lehrer of PBS for the debacle–especially on Twitter. But Lehrer remained blissfully ignorant of all the criticism because he refuses to bother with Twitter.

The criticism of Leher’s debate moderation was pretty stiff on Twitter and mostly from Obama’s supporters. But Politico reports that Lehrer says he never saw any of it.

“I never read any of them, never got a report on them, didn’t want to know anything about them,” Lehrer said as he sat on Kalb Report panel at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on Monday night.

Lehrer told the Press Club audience that he was unaware of the criticism immediately after the debate but caught wind of it all much later. “Afterwards I heard about these millions and millions of tweets, and I knew that some of them were critical about me. You know, look, the bottom line here on this, I felt good about that debate, so no Tweet and Twitter…10 million tweets or twitters weren’t going to change my view of that.”

Politico reports that Vice Presidential debate moderator Martha Raddatz had exactly the opposite experience when she was attacked on Twitter after her night in the spotlight. Raddatz did battle with many detractors on Twitter. “I was worried because there was such nasty stuff,” Raddatz said. Her son, though, warned her not to obsess over people Tweeting “from a basement filled with cats.”