Body language experts tell Dr. Phil ABC News debate moderators were hostile to Trump: 'Thumb on the scale'
'There was clearly a bias against Trump in their faces,' one said of moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Body language experts told Dr. Phil Tuesday after the presidential debate that the ABC News moderators clearly favored Vice President Kamala Harris.
Dr. Phil spoke with experts Scott Rouse and Greg Hartley in a special post-debate town hall broadcast. Rouse holds multiple certificates in advanced interrogation training and has been trained alongside the FBI, Secret Service, U.S. Military Intelligence, and the Department of Defense. Hartley is a former Army interrogator with expertise in intelligence, business, body language and behavior.
When asked whether they saw bias from moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis in Tuesday’s debate, Hartley said they were against former President Trump.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"Let's just look at body language, look at the facial expressions of people when they're looking at Trump. There was clearly a bias against Trump in their faces," he said.
Both body language experts questioned the fairness of the network that hosted the debate.
Meanwhile, for Harris, he said, "There's a little bit of a thumb on the scale when you ask one person two questions in a row as the primary question, and it's a softball question that feels like bias to me. I would challenge them to tell me why that's not biased if I were in his situation."
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{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Rouse argued that one key aspect of the debate was that the moderators were willing to interrupt Trump.
"At the same time, we're seeing the commentators, they would be speaking at the same time President Trump was. So as he's trying to finish his answer, they would keep- they would not only answer, they would keep talking as well," he said.
Rouse then used his expertise as a Grammy nominated music producer to suggest one key difference in how the network handled Trump versus Harris.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"And you can tell, I believe, if I'm correct here, the volume of [Trump’s] microphone might have been a little bit ‘hotter’ than everybody else's," Rouse said. "That's why he sounded so loud. He was speaking loudly, but I think you'll hear this when you listen back- this is my opinion."
Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Trump during the debate in Philadelphia on Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024. (Doug Mills/The New York Times/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
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He added, "So whether that was on purpose to make him sound more aggressive, I don't know. But he was pretty loud in there."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Dr. Phil then read off the questions that were asked to Harris and Trump, noting, "In each of these questions to Trump, there were fact-check, follow-up questions. And I didn't hear that to Harris."
"Nor did I," Hartley said. "And there's a way you ask a question. I interrogated people for a long time. And when you're doing that, you want to look at ‘how do I ask the question’?' Why didn't you say, 'Why have you not done anything about the border as opposed to Trump?’"
"There's a more negative tone often towards Trump," he added. "Look, at the end of the day, this is about finding out what they think and giving everybody a chance to understand it. And I thought it was a little heavy-handed at times, just my opinion."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Fox News Digital reached out to ABC and did not receive an immediate reply.