ABC News Turns Presidential Debate into Kamala Harris Lovefest
We can all name memorable Presidential debate moments off the top of our heads. There was a young, good-looking, vibrant John F. Kennedy vs. an older, sweatier Richard Nixon. Ronald Reagan said of Vice President Walter Mondale, “I will not make age an issue in this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” And said of an inept, in-over-his-head Jimmy Carter, “There you go again.” But the most memorable thing about the first Presidential debate of 2024 might not have anything to do with the candidates and everything to do with the moderators.
Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump held their first debate Tuesday night on ABC. Trump had voiced his dislike of ABC News recently during a town hall event in Pennsylvania with Sean Hannity. But not much could have prepared Americans for what they witnessed Tuesday night. It has been said time and again that the mainstream media no longer tries to hide their bias towards the Democrat Party, but sometimes, you have to see it in all its disgusting glory to remember what you are dealing with. Moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis may as well have had their “Harris for President” T-shirts on. They propped Kamala Harris up at every turn. She got no tough questions about her record as a prosecutor, Attorney General, Senator, or Vice President. She spoke in a word salad of platitudes and vagaries and was not pressed on anything she would do as President. She was unable to answer the simplest of questions, the first one being, “Do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?” Harris launched into how much government spending she would implement but little else.
But this was just the beginning of the ambush Donald Trump was walking into. At first, Trump was able to jump in and correct some of the whoppers Muir and Davis were letting her get away with, like Trump being on board with Project 2025, which he is not. But after a while, perhaps when they realized he was correcting her, they began fact-checking Trump in real-time. It truly was one of the most unprofessional things to witness. But besides being unprofessional, and if not unethical, it should be, was the fact that several of Muir’s and Davis’s “fact-checks” were actually wrong. Two, in particular, were FBI crime statistic reporting and reports in Springfield, Ohio, of residents’ pets being taken by Haitian immigrants, and some even eaten. Maybe if you want to play “gotcha,” you should have your facts straight. They clearly didn’t. Every time Muir and Davis teed up another softball for Harris, then gave Trump rebuttal time, he was fairly adept at pivoting the topic back around to the economy or immigration, the two biggest concerns for Americans in this election. Trump managed to rattle Harris several times and even used a version of her “I’m speaking” zinger against her. Truly a mic drop moment.
Instead of asking Harris about her radical far-left record, like supporting transgender surgeries for detained illegal immigrants or decriminalizing drugs, Muir and Davis pounced on Trump, wasting time with just plain stupid stuff, like January 6, and various hoaxes like the Charlottesville “fine people” and “bloodbath” nonsense. It doesn’t matter to them that the American people don’t give a rat’s rear end about those things. Jan. 6 doesn’t pay for your groceries or put gas in your gas tank. But if it will make Trump look bad, they are all in. But maybe one of the most interesting facts about Tuesday’s debate, and what exactly was taking place under the guise of a debate, was the fact that ABC News is owned by Disney. Dana Walden is the Disney executive who oversees ABC News. Walden is a big Democrat donor and is a close personal friend of…wait for it…Kamala Harris. For David Muir and Linsey Davis, who is Harris’s sorority sister, purely coincidental, of course, apparently, nothing says sucking up to the boss quite like rigging the debate for her best friend.
Despite the three-on-one onslaught, Donald Trump held his own as best he could. There were places where it looked like he might lose his temper, who could blame him? And he had some missed opportunities, like being a bit more specific on how he would end the Russia-Ukraine war, and he should have talked about China more. That would have given him a chance to talk about the millions of dollars Joe Biden and his family have made off China, and that might have been an opportunity to tie Kamala Harris to the Biden administration she has been trying so hard to distance herself from. Slipping in a bit more of Kamala Harris’s radical record would have been helpful, too. We still have no clear idea what Kamala Harris would do if, God forbid, she is elected.
Horribly biased moderators aside, part of the problem is, is that Donald Trump is not just running against Kamala Harris. He is running against the Democrat machine that has created her. It is the same Democrat machine who, before June 27, wanted her off the ticket, and wanted Joe Biden to pick a new running mate. The New York Times and The Washington Post ran pieces with titles like “For the Country’s Sake, Vice President Harris Should Step Aside.” Now, Democrats want you to believe they thought she was the next best thing since sliced bread all along.
Donald Trump says there will be no more debates. But who knows, that could be a well-played tactic by Trump. Republicans should vow never to do another debate on a mainstream media television network. When you are the hen, and the fox asks you to dinner, don’t go.