Democrat allies in the establishment media gave ABC News debate moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis rave reviews for their performance.
Muir and Davis attempted to “fact-check” former President Donald Trump at least seven times but never did so with Vice President Kamala Harris, according to an analysis by Breitbart News’s Joel Pollak.
Harris regurgitated many hoaxes, notably the Charlottesville “very fine people” hoax, but the moderators turned a blind eye. The “fact-checking” was in one direction, Pollak found.At one point in the debate, Muir even fact-checked Trump’s claim that he was sarcastic when discussing the results of the 2020 election in a recent interview.
“Excellent job by ABC here,” said John Bresnahan, a co-founder of Punchbowl News, an “inside baseball” publication that mostly covers Congress:
Jennifer Rubin, a “pro-democracy” opinion writer at the Washington Post and an MSNBC contributor, cheered the biased fact checks.
“I will say it ABC moderators have exceeded expectations,” she said. “They are fact checking and confronting. Shows how abysmal CNN was”:
Chris Hayes, an MSNBC anchor, also praised Muir and Davis’s performance as “excellent”:
Michael M. Grynbaum of the New York Times claimed, “Linsey Davis and David Muir pursued the kind of real-time fact-checking missing from many previous debates”:
In the context of 105 minutes of fierce debate in Philadelphia, these exchanges were fleeting. But they signaled a shift — for an evening, at least — in the balance of power between Mr. Trump and the many journalists who have struggled, or stopped trying, to construct factual guardrails around the bombardment of baseless claims that he regularly unleashes on live TV.
Not all members of the media believe the moderators did well. Conservatives have raised concerns they applied a double standard to follow-up questions, fact checks, and the framing of questions.
“No normal person watching this would think the moderators are unbiased,” Tim Young posted.
“These moderators are a disgraceful failure and this is one of the most biased, unfair debates I have ever seen,” former Fox News debate co-host Megyn Kelly said. “Shame on you @ABC.”
More is here on the moderators’ bias.
“I thought that was my best Debate, EVER, especially since it was THREE ON ONE!” Trump posted on Truth Social.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.
