Last week, NBC hosted a Commander-in-Chief Forum with presidential nominees Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump moderated by TODAY show co-anchor Matt Lauer. While Lauer was present at the forum, he certainly did not moderate much of anything. Instead, he seemed to use the time exclusively for brutally interrogating Clinton on her past scandals.

While Lauer’s first question to Clinton seemed innocent enough — he asked what she thought would be an important characteristic for a commander-in-chief — his true intentions were revealed when he didn’t even let her finish answering before interrupting her to pivot to her emails. Because of this, Clinton was relegated to spending time discussing already well-known facts about the email scandal, instead of having a meaningful conversation about policy, plans or literally anything new and relevant to the upcoming election.

Throughout the rest of the forum, Lauer interrupted Clinton 16 times — approximately once every 90 seconds. At one point, Clinton actually had to protest her treatment, asking him to “let [her] finish” when she was talking about a particularly important topic. In contrast, Lauer did not interrupt Trump a single time during the entire program and actually allowed him to get away with at least six blatant lies. Questions Clinton was asked focused on issues of trust and empathy, issues voters generally don’t point out in male candidates.

As Clinton neared the end of one of her question segments, implying that Trump’s fear mongering was playing into ISIS’s hands, Lauer interrupted her again to bring up the agreement to not attack the other candidate that they made at the beginning of the interview. But Clinton had not even said Trump’s name. Later, Lauer again mentioned the agreement to Trump, stating that he should “try to keep the attacks to a minimum,” to which Trump responded “to a minimum,” implying he would still be attacking. He then spent several statements throughout his interview slamming both Clinton and President Barack Obama, all of which Lauer let pass without disruption.

This type of subtle misogyny in the media is partially to blame for Clinton’s so-called likability problem. Journalistic ethics does not condone a biased narrative, yet this is exactly what Lauer did throughout the event. As the moderator, he was supposed to be the great equalizer between the candidate and the electorate. Thanks to his influence, the forum served as a continued example of the intense gender bias and double-standards in our media and the political sphere. NBC’s Lester Holt will be moderating next Monday’s debate, who might hopefully start turning this culture of bias around by holding both candidates to the same standard onstage.

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A version of this article appeared in the Monday, September 19th print edition. Email Blake Waranch at [email protected].