Millions of Americans tuned in to ABC News on Tuesday for what was supposed to be the first presidential debate of the election. Instead, they witnessed a one-sided show trial where ABC News served as the judge, jury, and executioner, as pointed out by Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk on X.
ABC News’ David Muir and Linsey Davis spent 90 minutes running election interference for Vice President Kamala Harris by ambushing former President Donald Trump. Rather than addressing soaring inflation, rising gas prices, fake job numbers, and the deadly border crisis, the Bobbsey Twins decided to focus on platitudes while Harris got away with murder — yes, murder.
Not once did Harris have to answer for her border crisis that has left innocent Americans brutally raped and murdered, but then again, she wasn’t the one on trial, Trump was.
Muir tried, for example, to pin Jan. 6 on Trump but conveniently omitted that Trump clearly called for a “peaceful” protest that day.
“Is there anything you regret about what you did on [Jan. 6]?” Muir asked.
Trump was once again put on the defense and forced to spend precious time setting the record straight: All he “did” was give a speech urging supporters to “peacefully and patriotically” “make [their] voices heard.”
But Muir decided Trump’s answer wasn’t yet satisfactory, perhaps because Trump hadn’t said anything that the propaganda press could later use to vilify him.
“It’s a very simple question as we move forward toward another election,” Muir said during his cross-examination. “Is there anything you regret about what you did on that day? Yes or no?”
But if Muir actually cared about “officers coming under attack,” he would have grilled Harris about her support for a fund that bailed out violent protesters during the deadly 2020 riots. Instead, Muir exploited the Jan. 6 protest (during which a Capitol police officer killed Trump-supporter Ashli Babbitt) as an opportunity to toss Harris easy questions to answer while dodging accountability for her disastrous policies and years in office.
Muir and Linsey also spent the night slamming Trump with bogus fact-checks while letting Harris spew already-debunked falsehoods.
“Let’s remember Charlottesville, where there was a mob of people carrying tiki torches, spewing anti-Semitic hate, and what did the president then, at the time say?” Harris asked, claiming that former president Trump said “‘There were fine people on each side’,” Harris said. Here, she once again, as Biden did in his disastrous debate performance weeks ago, “repeat[ed] a long-debunked claim regarding Trump’s remarks,” as The Federalist previously reported. She also falsely claimed Trump said there would be a “bloodbath” if “the outcome of this election is not to his liking.” This, however, was another mischaracterization of Trump’s previous remarks in which he said that the country would fall victim to an economic bloodbath if he were not in office to place a “100 percent tariff on every single car” that is imported.
Muir also let Harris lie about the Supreme Court immunity ruling, late-term abortions, and Trump’s repeated condemnation of white supremacy uninterrupted, forcing Trump to preemptively defend himself against the blatant lies knowing Muir — the judge, jury, and executioner — only cared to “fact-check” Trump.
It was an insulting night: as Americans struggle to choose between putting food on the table or keeping a roof over their head, ABC News’ in-house Harris campaign staffers prioritized grilling Trump about the 2020 election and his flippant comments instead of pressing Harris on how she would bring relief. The moderators oversaw nothing more than a show trial where Trump was forced to defend every word he’s ever spoken while Harris was able to skate past her four years of failure.
But that was the entire purpose: The propaganda press wanted to sabotage Trump’s chances of winning by making him defend trivial issues, creating fodder for the media to malign him while praising Harris.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be so surprised by the lopsided coverage. Media Research Center released a study that analyzed “all 100 campaign stories that aired on [Muir’s] World News Tonight [on ABC] from the day Harris entered the race (July 21) through September 6,” and purportedly “found 25 clearly positive statements about Harris from reporters, anchors, voters or other non-partisan sources, with zero negative statements — none,” as The Federalist previously reported.
“That computes to a gravity-defying 100% positive spin score for the Vice President,” the report claims, adding that Muir’s coverage was 93 percent negative “spin score” toward Trump.
