During a recent speech, former President Donald Trump blasted ABC News for how it conducted the presidential debate from earlier between him and Vice President Kamala Harris. Speaking in front of Trump Tower, the Republican presidential candidate accused the network of orchestrating a 3-on-1 attack against him, in which the moderators displayed apparent bias.
In the aftermath of the controversial debate, the ABC News moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis, received substantial criticism for their fact-checks of Trump’s statements, breaking the traditional decorum of moderating and interjecting during the event. Notably, Trump was continually fact-checked throughout the debate while Muir and Davis seemingly refused contest the validity of Harris’ remarks.
Speaking about the debate, Trump called out David Muir, labeling him a “lightweight,” while emphasizing the bias that was on display. “And during the debate, I mentioned that and David Muir, a real lightweight,” Trump said in his statement. “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 the moderator for refusing to hold Kamala Harris to the same standard he was held to. “He didn’t correct [Vice President Kamala Harris] one time, and what she said was wrong, absolutely wrong,” he said. The former president proceeded to call out several instances in which Harris should have received a fact check.
The Republican candidate continued, “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.’”
Trump also claimed that his campaign had an agreement with ABC News that the moderators would refrain from interrupting the discussion to provide corrections his statements, which he accused the network of outright violating. “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,” he claimed.
The former president asserted that David Muir “lost all credibility” after the event, where he could have honored the agreement and fact checked the statements all he wanted after the debate. “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 said.
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