The debate was about 10 minutes old when most of us realized it was going to be slanted.
The moderators immediately started fact-checking Donald Trump in real time while saying nothing to Harris. Now, allegations are arising that this was a planned move to boost Harris in the election.
Talking Points…
- The debate
- Allegations arise
- Analysis
The bias during the debate was absurd, with Trump regularly being fact-checked by the moderators. For instance, in one segment, David Muir asked Trump about a comment he made regarding the 2020 election, hinting that he had finally accepted that he had lost the election. Trump noted that he was saying those comments "sarcastically," with Muir responding rather snidely that he had watched the video, adding, "I didn't detect the sarcasm."
When Trump discussed late-term abortions and how some states allow babies to be killed after they are born, Linsey Davis stated, "There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it's born." That, however, is not necessarily true. In Minnesota alone, since Walz has been in office, there have been numerous occasions where a late-term abortion failed, and no life-saving measures were taken to save the child. Now, those clinics are no longer required to report children who survived the abortion, but from 2015-22, there were 24 instances where babies were born alive after an attempted abortion. We are talking semantics here in their description, but the fact of the matter is that late-term abortions happen, and while it may be rare that an abortion attempt fails and the child is born alive, some states do not take measures to save that child and will allow it to die.
These are just two of about six instances where the moderators fact-checked Trump but failed to call out blatant lies by Harris, such as inflation numbers, "very fine people" comments by Trump, and, by my count, about 20 other lies. Even after the debate, CNN fact-checked the debate and claimed that Trump had 33 lies to Harris' one lie. I have also seen several outlets add "context" to something Harris said rather than allow it to be called a lie.
On Thursday, the reports started to fly as well as a social media post that said Harris had been given the questions before the debate was up on X. I am still tracking that down, but there is plenty to chew on regarding the bias of the debate moderators and ABC News. The first is that Linsey Davis and Kamala Harris are sisters in the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. That, my friends, is a severe conflict of interest. They were not in the sororities at the same time or the same school, but anyone who has joined a fraternity or sorority knows brothers and sisters in these houses always look out for each other.
Then, a recent piece in the Los Angeles Times regarding Davis started to blow up for comments she had made about the debate. Davis told the outlet that she would fact-check Trump in real time to ensure what happened to Joe Biden would not happen to Kamala Harris. Since that story broke, I have also seen reports that it was openly discussed between moderators and ABC News brass that Trump would be fact-checked and Harris would go unchecked, but again, I am still trying to run that one down to confirm it. Having said that, it seems pretty clear that was the case.
All of this led to Mark Penn, a former top adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton, calling for an investigation into ABC News to pull all internal communications regarding the debate to see if the network was purposely "rigging the outcome of this debate." He stated:
"I actually think they should do a full internal investigation, hire an outside law firm. I don't know how much of this was planned in advance.
"I don't know what they told the Harris campaign. I think the day after, suspicion here is really quite high, and I think a review of all their internal texts and emails really should be done by an independent party to find out to what extent they were planning on, in effect, you know, fact-checking just one candidate and in effect, rigging the outcome of this debate. I think the situation demands nothing less than that."
The cherry on this sundae is the relationship between Kamala Harris and Dana Walden, the co-chairman of Disney, who also oversees operations at ABC News. Harris has called them "extraordinary friends" in previous interviews, not to mention the two of them are neighbors in Brentwood. Walden has also donated money to Harris' campaigns in the past, dating back to at least 2003.
The only issue that really seems unsettled right now is whether Harris was given the questions beforehand. In my opinion, that is the least of our worries since Harris did not answer the questions, simply turning everything into an attack against Donald Trump. But if that did happen, it just seals the fact that our news agencies cannot be trusted and that we have state-run media at this point.
Even without the questions, though, ABC News moderators clearly put their thumbs on the scale in this debate to ensure Harris won. And if you look at Harris' confidence and demeanor during this debate, it was unlike anything we had seen before. She is generally nervous, often breaking out in that cackle, and ends up serving up word salads rather than anything intelligent. Don't get me wrong… Harris was very well prepared for the debate, but that extra confidence could easily have come from being informed that she could say and do whatever she wanted, and that the moderators would never check her. And if she knew they were going to fact-check Trump in real-time, it surely would explain her constant goading of Trump to lead him down a path where she knew he would start spewing exaggerations and lies (even though some of Trump's "lies" have already been proven to be true).
