In the wake of the most egregious and embarrassing presidential debate in modern history, the Commission on Presidential Debates is examining ways to prevent a similar debacle in the three remaining events.

A popular sentiment on social media — and mentioned by the commission later — is giving the moderator the ability to silence microphones of the two candidates.

That’s a no-brainer after this interruption-fest and insult-a-thon between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

What’s really needed, though, is real-time fact-checking done in person at the debate, complete with the moderator having the power to inform the public immediately about false, misleading and outright lies from candidates.

Whether each candidate would change their answers does not really matter. What matters is the public would see in real time each candidate’s level of honesty, accuracy and credibility.

Trump’s well-documented, unparalleled record the past five years of lying, repeating unfounded claims and even denying his own inaccurate statements make it the commission’s job to require he and Biden be confronted in real time about their answers.

Making this happen would be fairly easy. While specific questions are not shared ahead of debates, the main topics are. For example, the commission announced the topics a full week ahead of this first debate.

That’s plenty of time to pull together credible experts on each topic, have them gather necessary resources and work in real time at the debate to dig into the candidates’ answers. All the commission would need to add is a segment at the end of each open-discussion during which the moderator would share with the public the findings of the fact-checkers.

To be honest, Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, a veteran journalist with deep knowledge about the issues, probably could have done that several times Tuesday, especially because he alone crafted the specific questions. The commission, though, did not expect him to do fact-checking of answers.

Yet from opening disagreements about the number of Americans with pre-existing conditions to the final (false) attacks about election integrity, it was clear giving viewers the facts would have gone a long way toward showing each candidate’s credibility.

To be clear, such fact-checking would not always prove one candidate is right and the other wrong.

Look no further than the opening clash about how many people have pre-existing conditions. Biden said 100 million. Trump challenged that number. And then the train went off the rails.

— St. Cloud Times