Lester Holt, the anchor of “NBC Nightly News,” is leaving the show in summer 2025 and will start his new job at NBC “Dateline.”
Holt succeeded disgraced former anchor Brian Williams as anchor of NBC News in 2015. In 2016, moderating the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, Holt interrupted Trump 41 times to either fact-check or follow-up on Trump’s statements.
Holt only interrupted Hillary Clinton seven times, never asking her about Benghazi, the Clinton Foundation, her email scandal, or her “deplorables” remark.
When Trump discussed stop-and-frisk, Holt falsely claimed stop-and-frisk had been ruled unconstitutional, saying, “Your two — your two minutes expired, but I do want to follow up. Stop-and-frisk was ruled unconstitutional in New York, because it largely singled out black and Hispanic young men.”
“If a moderator is going to interfere, he should do some homework and not pretend to know the law when he does not. Mr. Holt and NBC cannot overrule the U.S. Supreme Court,” former New York Mayor Rudy Giuiliani reacted. “Stop and frisk is based on an 8-1 decision of the Supreme Court, Terry v. Ohio. That ruling hasn’t been overturned or even modified by the court since it was handed down in 1968. Stop and frisk is constitutional and the law of the land. The majority opinion, written by then-Chief Justice Earl Warren, approved the constitutionality of stopping a suspect if the police officer has a reasonable suspicion that a person has committed, or was about to commit, a crime. If the officer also has a reasonable suspicion the person is armed, he can conduct a pat-down—that is, a frisk—of a person’s outer clothing.”
Eight years later, last September, Holt linked Trump and running mate JD Vance’s campaign rhetoric to a second assassination attempt on Trump’s life.
“Today’s apparent assassination attempt comes amid increasingly fierce rhetoric on the campaign trail itself. Mr. Trump, his running mate JD Vance continue to make baseless claims about Haitian immigrants in Ohio,” Holt stated.
NBC's Lester Holt: "Today's apparent assassination attempt comes amid increasingly fierce rhetoric on the campaign trail. Mr. Trump, his running mate JD Vance continue to make baseless claims about Haitian immigrants" in Springfield, Ohio, resulting in bomb threats. pic.twitter.com/apw9WQ1liR
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) September 15, 2024
In 2018, Fox News noted that Holt was the only major news anchor to initially skip reporting on the Monday the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees questioned Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz over his report into FBI and DOJ misconduct during the Hillary Clinton email probe.
“Things were no different on Tuesday, when Holt began his newscast with a lengthy feature on President Trump’s zero-tolerance immigration policy unfolding on the Southern border that included reporter Gabe Gutierrez speaking with migrant families,” Fox News added.
