While the pundits argue over how the candidates performed Tuesday night, NewsBusters can say that the performance of the ABC moderators was abysmal as they forced former President Trump into a three-versus-one fight. The night was filled with contentious moments where the moderators took on Trump with slanted/combative questions and targeted him with six fact-checks, evening inviting Vice President Harris to take part in one. Meanwhile, Harris received ZERO fact-checks.
The first question to Trump came from World News Tonight anchor David Muir, who took Harris’s claims about Trump trade policy as fact and ridiculously asked him if he thought Americans could “afford” a 20 percent “national sales tax” he wasn’t proposing:
The vice president brought up tariffs, you responded. A let's drill down on this because your plan, as what she calls, is essentially a national initial sales tax. Your proposal calls for tariffs, as you pointed out here, on foreign imports across the board. You recently said you might double your plan imposing tariffs up to 20 percent on goods coming into this country.
As you know, many economists say that with tariff at that level, costs are then passed on to the consumer. Vice President Harris has argued it would mean higher prices on gas, food, clothing, medication, arguing It costs the typical family nearly $4,000 a year.
Do you believe Americans can afford higher prices because of tariffs?
Of course, there was a question about January 6. “You did send out tweets but it was more than two hours before you sent out that video message telling your supporters to go home. Is there anything you regret about what you did on that day?” Muir sniped.
A few of their so-called ‘fact-checks’ lacked facts, making their actions worse than those of former CNN moderator Candy Crowley.
Moderator Linsey Davis tried to muddy the waters on the Democrats radical abortion polices by suggesting they didn’t support late term abortion and pretending like former Virginia Governor Ralph Northam didn’t talk about killing babies after they were born. Meanwhile, Muir downplayed how many illegal immigrants were in the country:
DAVIS: There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it is born.
(…)
MUIR: How would you deport 11 million undocumented immigrants? I know you believe that number is much higher.
Trump even had to school Muir on how the FBI wasn’t properly counting violent crime in Democratic cities, thus making seems as though violent crime was down in America:
MUIR: President Trump, as you know the FBI says, overall, violent crime is coming down in this country.
TRUMP: Excuse me. The FBI were defrauding statements. They didn't include the worst cities. They didn't include the cities with the worst crime. It was fraud, just like their number of 818,000 jobs they said they created turned out to be a fraud.
At one point, Muir invited Harris to take part in a fact check of her involvement with Ukraine negotiations; despite the fact she was about to get time to respond to him anyway.
And yet, Muir and Davis opted to not fact-check Harris on anything. By NewsBusters’ count there were at least 5 major and easily falsifiable claims made by the Vice President: She peddled the ‘very fine people on both sides ‘ hoax, the “bloodbath” hoax, tied Project 2025 to Trump, lied about Trump’s position on IVF, and falsely claimed no American troops where currently deployed to war zones (Iraq, Syria, the Red Sea, etc.).
In terms of a breakdown of the political leanings of the questions, NewsBusters determined that there were 7 questions with a decidedly left-wing tilt, 11 neutral, and only 4 with a right-wing slant.
The four right-leaning questions were actually all to Harris: Are Americans better off than four years ago (noting it’s one of Trump’s arguments, and it was the first question of the night), if she approved of any abortion restrictions at all, why she and Biden kept Trump’s tariffs if they were bad, and why they waited until six months before the election to act on the border crisis.
The decidedly lopsided three versus one match up tracked with a NewsBusters’ recent study showing that ABC gave Harris 100% positive coverage.
The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read:
ABC’s Presidential Debate
September 10, 2024
9:03:22 p.m. Eastern(…)
DAVID MUIR: I want to begin tonight with the issue that voters repeatedly say is their number one issue and that is the economy and the cost of living in this country. Vice President Harris and President Trump were elected four years ago, and your opponent on the stage tonight often ask his supporters, are you better off than you were four years ago? When it comes to the economy, do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?
(…)
9:11:54 p.m. Eastern
MUIR: Mr. President. I do want to drill down on something you both brought up. The vice president brought up tariffs, you responded. A let's drill down on this because your plan, as what she calls, is essentially a national initial sales tax. Your proposal calls for tariffs, as you pointed out here, on foreign imports across the board. You recently said you might double your plan imposing tariffs up to 20 percent on goods coming into this country.
As you know, many economists say that with tariff at that level, costs are then passed on to the consumer. Vice President Harris has argued it would mean higher prices on gas, food, clothing, medication, arguing It costs the typical family nearly $4,000 a year.
Do you believe Americans can afford higher prices because of tariffs?
(…)
9:13:33 p.m. Eastern
MUIR: Vice President Harris, I do want to ask for your response. And you heard with the President said there. The Biden administration did keep a number of the Trump tariffs in place. So, how do you respond?
(…)
9:19: 13 p.m. Eastern
LINSEY DAVIS: There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it is born.
(…)
9:24:06 p.m. Eastern
DAVIS: And Vice President Harris, I want to give you time to respond. But I do want to ask, would you support any restrictions on a woman's right to an abortion?
(…)
9:26:30 p.m. Eastern
MUIR: We're going to turn to immigration and border security. We know this is an issue that is important to voters across the board in this country.
Vice President Harris, you were tasked by President Biden with getting to the root causes of migration from Central America. We know that illegal border crossings reached a record high in the Biden administration. This past June, President Biden imposed tough new asylum restrictions. We know the numbers since then have dropped significantly.
But my question to you tonight is, why did the administration wait until six months before the election to act? And would you have done anything differently from President Biden on this?
(…)
9:30:54 p.m. Eastern
MUIR: I just want to clarify here. You bring up Springfield, Ohio. And ABC News did reach out to the city manager there, he told us there had been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured, or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.
DONALD TRUMP: Well, I’ve seen people on television –
MUIR: Let me just say here.
TRUMP: The people on television, say my dog was taken and used for food. So, maybe he said that. And maybe that’s a good thing to say for a city manager.
MUIR: I’m not taking this from television. I’m taking it from the city manager.
TRUMP: But the people who are on television are saying there dog was eaten by the people who went there.
MUIR: Again, the Springfield city manager says there is no evidence of that.
(…)
9:34:16 p.m. Eastern
MUIR: How would you deport 11 million undocumented immigrants? I know you believe that number is much higher. Take us through this. What does this look like? Will authorities be going door-to-door in this country?
TRUMP: It is much higher because of them.
(…)
9:35:41 p.m. Eastern
MUIR: President Trump, as you know the FBI says, overall, violent crime is coming down in this country.
TRUMP: Excuse me. The FBI were defrauding statements. They didn't include the worst cities. They didn't include the cities with the worst crime. It was fraud, just like their number of 818,000 jobs they said they created turned out to be a fraud.
MUIR: President Trump, thank you.
(…)
9:45:09 p.m. Eastern
MUIR: Aides in the West Wing say you watched it unfold on television off of the Oval Office. You did send out tweets but it was more than two hours before you sent out that video message telling your supporters to go home. Is there anything you regret about what you did on that day?
(…)
