ABC News’ David Muir seems to have suffered some consequences regarding his appalling stint as debate moderator for the network’s presidential debate on September 10. Muir and co-moderator Linsey Davis were raked over the coals for their biased and, at times, outrageous behavior in the crucial discussion.
Kamala Harris was permitted to lie at will, whereas Trump was fact-checked live, including one regarding his tone, and asked baited questions to get under his skin. Everyone saw through it because his show, World News Tonight, got trashed in the ratings (via NY Post):
Muir’s “World News Tonight” averaged 6.7 million viewers on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, the three episodes following the debate, after averaging 7.6 million in 2024 leading up to the debate.
The 12% drop in viewers for “World News Tonight” is more significant than slight declines “CBS Evening News” and “NBC Nightly News” saw when comparing the three episodes following ABC’s debate to the year-to-date totals, although Muir’s newscast remained the No. 1 broadcast evening newscast.
While it’s unclear if Trump supporters have tuned out ABC’s newscast on the heels of the debate, the former president has blasted it as “one-sided.” Trump told Fox News that he believed Harris should have been fact-checked on a variety of claims.
“Every one of them should have been questioned by David Muir, who I’ve lost a lot of respect for. Everyone’s lost respect for him,” Trump said last week.
“It was so … one-sided,” he continued. “It was one against three.”
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On Sunday, ABC News’ Martha Raddatz even noted that Harris was wrong when she said there is “not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone in any war zone around the world.”
“Our fact-checkers found that to be false,” Raddatz said.
Davis admitted the network wouldn’t be like CNN, where a Biden meltdown led to him quitting the race. We learned of Harris’ serial lying during this event only after the cameras were off.
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