ASHLEIGH BANFIELD (HOST): Let me ask you a question about the president weighing in on all of this.
BRIAN STELTER: Yeah.
BANFIELD: And the reason I'm asking you about this, Brian, is because Matt Lauer is getting a lot of heat online, elsewhere, critics coming in saying he really went to town on Hillary Clinton and grilled her on emails for the majority of the time, didn't give her enough time to talk about foreign policy and commander-in-chief stuff, but then effectively moved the goal posts and gave Donald Trump more of a pass, didn't push him on this whole “I was always against the Iraq war.” By the way, listen to the Howard Stern 2002 interview where he says I guess so, I'm OK with the invasion. And so the criticism is coming in, even from the president who is imploring the press to listen to what he is saying and questioning him about this. This whole movement of the goal posts and grading on a curve, are you seeing it too?
BRIAN STELTER: Yeah, he used that phrase, grading on a curve, which I think is becoming a common phrase, thinking about the media’s treatment of Trump and politicians’ treatment of Trump. When we say grading on a curve, we all sort of know what that meant from high school, that people go easy on you, they give you a higher grade, grade inflation, that kind of thing. I think it is true that Trump is held to different standards than Clinton on a number of different issues. That's what the president was trying to point out as well in his own way this morning. Obviously he is a supporter of Hillary Clinton, he wants tougher coverage of Donald Trump. Tough can mean many different things, but there's no doubt, at the forum, there was different treatment for Trump versus Clinton, and that’s going to be a challenge for the debate moderators starting in two and a half weeks.
