Let’s keep it simple: ABC News’ David Muir and Linsey Davis did a fantastic job moderating Tuesday night’s debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. Their questions were sharp, their research was to the point, their approach was calm, and they even managed to squeeze in real-time fact-checking without coming across as overly partisan. In my book, Tuesday night’s debate was the best-moderated presidential debate of the Trump era.

To be fair, it’s a low bar to reach. With the notable exception of the Trump-Biden debate in June, in which Trump allowed a sleepy Joe Biden to yawn and mumble his way to lame duck status, most general election debates Trump has participated in since 2016 have been chaotic affairs. Because Trump doesn’t care about the issues, has poor impulse control, and is obsessed with appearing dominant, he typically ends up talking over his opponents and flouting the agreed-upon rules of the debate, as if daring the moderators to do something about it.

They generally do very little about it, which works to Trump’s advantage: He can look tough on TV while his opponents look impotent. When moderators try to push back, as former Fox News host Chris Wallace did in a raucous September 2020 Trump-Biden debate, Trump has generally succeeded in making it seem as if he’s being attacked by a wildly unfair and biased media. (Indeed, Trump and his surrogates are currently saying as much—rather weakly—about Tuesday night’s debate.)

But between compliance and combativeness lies the path to effective debate moderation, and I thought Muir and Davis did an excellent job of navigating that path Tuesday night. The moderators’ questions were all cutting edge, with nary a softball in the group. When candidates’ answers veered away from the question initially posed, Muir and Davis generally found a way to guide them back to the original question and give them a second chance to answer.

The questions were mostly also specificallywhat matters. It is easy even for an undisciplined politician like Trump to ask a broad question of the What would you do with XYZ? variation. It’s harder to deduce, or at least it’s easier for a home viewer to notification the distraction—when the question is specifically rooted in the candidates’ statements or policy positions. Consider the following question Davis asked Harris: “Vice President Harris, when you were last running for president, you said you wanted to ban fracking. Now you don’t want to ban fracking. You wanted mandatory purchase programs for assault weapons. Now your campaign says you don’t want to ban fracking. You supported decriminalization of border crossings. Now you’re taking a harder line. I know you say your values ​​haven’t changed. So why have so many of your policy positions changed?”

That’s a great question. But other Trump debates have had good questions and have been bad debates. Where Muir and Davis really shined was in their preparation and their behavior. Near the beginning of the debate, an exchange about the economy got a little out of hand when Trump criticized Harris’ economic plan as being as simplistic as a children’s book: “It’s like four sentences, like Run Spot Run.” Rather than urging Trump to remain civil and stick to the issues, Muir effectively brought the debate back to the issues: “Mr. President, I’d like to expand on something you both brought up. The vice president brought up your tariffs, you responded, and let’s dive deeper into this.” The smooth pivot was a function of Muir and Davis being prepared for Trump to go off the rails, and being calm enough to steer the debate back to more substantive territory.

Their thorough preparation and calm demeanor were also evident in their judicious and effective use of real-time fact-checking, which they occasionally deployed in response to some of Trump’s most outlandish claims. Live fact-checking in a televised debate is difficult to do well. It can come across as name-calling, and it can sometimes seem as if the person being fact-checked, no matter how deserving, is being attacked by the moderators. Davis and Muir did neither. They did not attempt to refute each lie that Trump told, and they never let Trump’s false claims upset them. Instead, they took their place and delivered their rebuttals in a neutral, matter-of-fact tone.

For example, during a discussion about abortion, Trump announced that some states would allow infanticide after a baby is born. Davis waited for Trump to finish his response, then said this: “There is not a single state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it is born. Madam Vice President, I would like to get your response to President Trump.” Later, when Trump tried to claim that undocumented immigrants in Ohio were eating residents’ pets — a typically odd Trumpian rehash of an unsubstantiated right-wing claim that went viral this week — Muir responded calmly and immediately: “I just want to clarify, you’re referring to Springfield, Ohio. And ABC News has contacted the city manager there. He told us that there have been no credible reports of specific allegations that pets have been abused, injured or mistreated by individuals in the immigrant community.” Preparation and behavior. Muir and Davis predicted that Trump would make these claims. They did their research to refute them. And then they delivered their refutations quickly and calmly, without disrupting the broader debate.

If there’s one gripe about Muir and Davis’ moderation, it’s that at times it felt like they were refusing to let Harris respond to some of Trump’s provocations, while giving Trump carte blanche to respond to everything Harris said about him. As I watched the debate, it certainly felt like Trump was jumping in and responding without the moderators formally giving him the floor, and at times I couldn’t understand why ABC kept letting him do so. But ultimately, ABC’s decision to let Trump babble sometimes felt wise. One of the main points of these debates is to show viewers who these candidates are and what they stand for. By allowing Trump to insist on a few rambling, mean-spirited, generally incoherent rebuttals, viewers were left with the distinct impression that Trump is a vicious, empty-headed bully who only looks out for himself. That’s journalistic employ.