ABC News faces criticism for fact checking Trump more than Harris during debate
‘Fox News @ Night’ panelists examine top moments from the ABC News Presidential Debate (Courtesy: ABC News).
ABC Presidential Debate co-moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis fact-checked former President Trump five times during the heated 90-minute event and failed to correct Vice President Kamala Harris a single time on Tuesday evening.
Aside from the lopsided number of fact-checks, many pundits said Trump received far more challenging questions and that ABC moderators gave largely Harris a pass on a variety of issues. But the lopsided fact-checking took center stage from critics of the Disney-owned network.
"ABC is making a huge mistake trying to fact-check this live. They’re only proving how biased they are," Fox News contributor Ari Fleischer posted on social media.
ABC Presidential Debate co-moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis fact-checked former President Trump four times during the 90-minute event and failed to correct Vice President Kamala Harris a single time on Tuesday evening. (ABC News)
Here are fact-checks from the ABC Presidential Debate from the National Constitution Center:
Fact-checks on Trump
1. Abortion
Trump was asked about his stance on abortion, as ABC’s Davis pointed out that the former president has boasted about killing Roe v. Wade and has called himself "the most pro-life President in American history" but has since declared he would be great for women’s reproductive rights. Trump also recently said Florida's six-week abortion ban "is too short," but said he would vote against a ballot initiative that would overturn the six-week ban on abortions in the state.
"The reason why I’m doing that vote is because… they have abortion in the ninth month. They even have, and you can look at the governor of West Virginia [Viriginia], the previous governor… not the current governor, whose doing an excellent job, but the governor before, he said, ‘The baby will be born, and we will decide what to do with the baby,’ in other words we’ll execute the baby. And that’s why I did that," Trump said.
Davis raised eyebrows with the first fact-check of the evening.
"There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born," Davis said.
2. Pets
Trump said illegal immigrants are eating people’s pets
"In Springfield, they're eating the dogs. The people that came in. They're eating the cats. They're eating -- they're eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what's happening in our country. And it's a shame," Trump said.
Muir shot back, "I just want to clarify here, you bring up Springfield, Ohio. And ABC News did reach out to the city manager there. He told us there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community."
Trump said he’s seen it on television, but the ABC anchor wasn’t amused.
"The people on television say my dog was taken and used for food. So maybe he said that and maybe that's a good thing to say for a city manager," Trump responded.
"I’m not taking this from television. I'm taking it from the city manager," Muir said.
"But the people on television say their dog was eaten by the people that went there," Trump said.
"Again, the Springfield city manager says there's no evidence of that," Muir responded.
FOX NEWS MEDIA PROPOSES SECOND HARRIS-TRUMP DEBATE MODERATED BY MARTHA MACCALLUM, BRET BAIER
Former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. (Screenshot: Fox News simulcast of ABC News Presidential Debate)
3. Crime
At one point, Trump said, "Crime in this country is through the roof," but Muir quickly objected.
"President Trump, as you know, the FBI says overall violent crime is coming down in this country," the ABC anchor responded.
"The FBI -- they were defrauding statements. They didn't include the worst cities. They didn't include the cities with the worst crime. It was a fraud. Just like their number of 818,000 jobs that they said they created turned out to be a fraud," Trump responded.
4. Sarcasm
Trump said he was being sarcastic when he recently said he lost the 2020 election to President Biden.
"I said that sarcastically. You know that. It was said, ‘Oh we lost by a whisker.’ That was said sarcastically. Look, there's so much proof. All you have to do is look at it. And they should have sent it back to the legislatures for approval. I got almost 75 million votes. The most votes any sitting president has ever gotten. I was told if I got 63, which was what I got in 2016, you can't be beaten."
Muir shot back, "I did watch all of these pieces of video. I didn't detect the sarcasm."
Muir then told viewers that judges have said there was "no widespread fraud" and immediately asked Harris is she felt Trump was trying to intimidate voters with claims he would prosecute anyone who helped cheat an election.
5. Pelosi
There were other moments that weren’t full-blown fact-checks, but were seen as hostile moments against Trump, such as when Muir snarked that a question was not about former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi when Trump evoked Pelosi during an answer.
"I showed up for a speech. I said, I think it's going to be big. I went to Nancy Pelosi and the mayor of Washington, D.C. And the mayor put it back in writing, as you know. I said, ‘You know, this is going to be a very big rally or whatever you want to call it.’ And again, it wasn't done by me. It was done by others. I said I'd like to give you 10,000 National Guard or soldiers. They rejected me. Nancy Pelosi rejected me," Trump said.
"It would have never happened if Nancy Pelosi and the mayor of Washington did their jobs. I wasn't responsible for security," he continued. "Nancy Pelosi was responsible. She didn't do her job."
Muir responded, "The question was about you as president, not about Former Speaker Pelosi."
ABC DEBATE MODERATORS SPARK FURY FOR AGGRESSIVE FACT-CHECKING OF TRUMP, EASY TREATMENT OF HARRIS
Fact-checks on Harris
There weren’t any.
Many have pointed out that Muir and Davis failed to correct Harris for saying that Trump once said there were "very fine people" on both sides of the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" rally in 2017.’’
Critics of Trump have claimed for years that he called neo-Nazis "very fine people" when he was actually talking about people protesting over a Robert E. Lee statue, with President Biden and his allies in the mainstream media regularly pushing the notion.
But earlier this year, left-leaning fact-checking website Snopes acknowledged that Trump never called neo-Nazis "very fine people" during his press conference following the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" rally in 2017.
"In a news conference after the rally protesting the planned removal of a Confederate statue, Trump did say there were 'very fine people on both sides,' referring to the protesters and the counterprotesters. He said in the same statement he wasn't talking about neo-Nazis and white nationalists, who he said should be 'condemned totally,'" Snopes wrote.
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Trump helped out ABC moderators by informing viewers that the claim by Harris has been "debunked."
Harris said we need to stop disparaging people and called Trump a "disgrace" minutes later, but ABC moderators failed to point that out. Harris also tied Trump to Project 2025, but moderators failed to point out that Trump has completely distanced himself from the polarizing plan.
Harris also mischaracterized Trump’s "bloodbath" comment and Trump’s stance on IVF without being checked, and ABC moderators failed to question Harris on gun bans and mandatory buybacks and that no active military were in a combat zone.
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