Following the controversial presidential debate hosted by ABC News last month, the network’s show “World News Tonight” has seen a notable drop in ratings. Recent reports indicate that there has been a significant decline in year-over-year ratings for the show in the 2023-2024 season, which ended in September, days after the presidential debate that sparked backlash toward ABC moderators David Muir and Linsay Davis.
Despite continuing an eight-season winning streak as the number-one watched evening newscast, “World News Tonight” with David Muir saw troubling statistics in many areas. For the 2023-2024 seasons, the show averaged 7.72 million viewers, a 5% decline year-over-year. Furthermore, with the key advertising 25-54 age demographic, the newscast averaged 1.07 million viewers, representing a whopping 17% decline compared to last year.
Throughout the September 10 debate, the moderation of the event drew substantial criticism as Muir and Davis constantly interjected to fact-check Trump’s statements. However, they refused to question the validity of Vice President Kamala Harris’ comments, despite many dubious claims she made throughout the evening.
The American Tribune reported on criticism from former President Trump, where he called out David Muir, labeling him a “lightweight.” Moreover, Trump suggested that ABC News broke an agreement that they wouldn’t fact-check during the event. Instead, the Republican presidential candidate maintained that the debate was a 3-on-1 attack against him.
“And during the debate, I mentioned that and David Muir, a real lightweight,” the former president said, speaking in front of Trump Tower. “I had one against three, but I think we did great. But David Muir of ABC, fake news, when I said that crime is way up in our country, he corrected me, he corrected me and so much and it was right what I said.:
Trump called out many things Harris was wrong about that went without fact-check. “So many different— Charlottesville, she was wrong, all of the different things, almost everything she said, and she was never corrected. But he corrected me on crime. He said, ‘No, no, crime has not gone up.’ I said crime has gone up massively. He said, ‘I’d like to state for the record that crime has not gone up,’” he added.
According to Trump, there was an agreement in place that the moderators would not interject. “Now you don’t know this, but we had a deal with ABC that there will be no corrections of any kind, and they violated the deal. Why? Because they’re bad people, and they’re fake news,” Trump said. “So he did it many times to me during the debate. He violated the deal.”
“That’s the deal, because you can take anything and try and make up stories with it. We had a deal where that wouldn’t happen. You could do whatever you wanted as soon as the debate was over, but he did it in total violation of what our agreement was. And a lot of people standing right over there will tell you exactly what it was, will show you what it was. David Muir has lost all credibility,” he concluded.
Watch Trump sound off on ABC News below:
Featured image credit: By The White House from Washington, DC – President Trump Visits Honeywell International Inc., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=89932888
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