Was the ABC News debate rigged?
A bombshell allegation from a purported whistleblower says the Kamala
Harris campaign was given a copy of the questions and was assured that
the vice president wouldn’t be fact-checked live on-air during her
debate with former President Donald Trump. An affidavit allegedly from
this individual was released last weekend. Now, ABC News has responded
to these allegations after days of intense speculation, sneaking it in
as the news cycle is preoccupied with the latest Trump assassination
attempt in West Palm Beach, Florida (via Daily Beast):
ABC News has again insisted that no topics or questions
were shared with either Vice President Kamala Harris or Donald Trump,
and their respective campaigns, in advance of last week’s presidential
debate. The network’s statement came after it declined to
directly address allegations—made in an allegedly sworn statement,
purportedly by one of its staff—that it helped Harris in the debate. […] The
name of the person who signed the document is obscured, but in the six
pages, they make claims which—if true—would be explosive. The
allegations include that Harris’ team allegedly negotiated specific
camera angles to portray her more favorably than Trump. The document
also claims the campaign negotiated rules with ABC without involving the
Trump team, and it managed to get the network to avoid specific topics
including President Joe Biden’s health; Harris’ tenure as “Attorney
General in San Francisco”; and her brother-in-law and adviser Tony
West. In a statement to the Daily Beast, ABC News did not address
any of the specific allegations: “ABC News followed the debate rules
that both campaigns agreed on and which clearly state: No topics or
questions will be shared in advance with campaigns or candidates.” […] ABC
categorically denied to The Daily Beast last week that Harris was given
any questions ahead of last week’s debate, shooting down one of the
talking points that Trump and other right-wingers tried to use to
explain the former president’s dismal debate performance. “Absolutely not,” an ABC News spokesperson told The Daily Beast. “Harris was not given any questions before the debate.” The network’s debate rules stated that “no topics or questions will be shared in advance with campaigns or candidates.” The
spokesperson also said no aides were in contact with moderators David
Muir and Linsey Davis. Trump aides have attacked the moderators as
“agents of the Harris campaign” following their efforts, which have been
almost universally lauded. A source familiar with the matter
also dismissed the purported fact-check “assurances” as untrue. Harris’
campaign did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.
Of course, this is the response. What—you thought they were going to
admit to such a scandal? There’s one huge problem: no one trusts the
media. That balance remains deep in the negative after years of
anti-Trump fake news nonsense stemming from the Russian collusion hoax
and the interference on the Hunter Biden laptop, the latter of which was
dismissed as a Kremlin disinformation campaign that eventually was
proven to be true. Also, Daily Beast was the go-to outlet ABC News used to first respond to these allegations and offered a blanket denial:
Again, this isn’t an isolated incident: Donna Brazile sent questions
to the Hillary Clinton camp in 2016. The top Democratic Party official, a
CNN contributor, then lost her gig after these revelations. There is
one notable difference: we don’t have Wikileaks in 2024. These emails
from Brazile got leaked because of that site. Who knows what was said
now, but if they did it once, is it out of line to suggest they haven’t
done so multiple times in the past? No. Also, a blanket
denial won’t do much in terms of persuasion since we all saw what
happened: some of the allegations panned out, as Harris lied repeatedly
during the event and never got any pushback unlike Trump. The former
president’s campaign was expecting unfair treatment, but it was so
explicitly biased. At times, you’d thought communications staffers at
the Democratic National Committee were moderating instead of David Muir
and Linsey Davis. While some attention has been placed on Davis
and Harris being sorority sisters, it’s this admission from the ABC
moderator that will keep the ‘rigged’ narrative alive—Davis admitted she
was going to do live fact checks to avoid a Biden-like meltdown like
the one we saw on CNN (via Fox News): ABC
News anchor Linsey Davis admitted in a post-debate interview that her
fact-checking of former President Trump was influenced by the earlier
CNN debate that went disastrously for President Biden. In an
interview with the Los Angeles Times, Davis said she wanted to address
concerns that Trump's statements could be allowed to "hang" there
unchallenged by his opponent or the moderators, as they were when Trump
and Biden debated on CNN in June. "Davis, wearing pink glasses
while speaking to The Times over breakfast at the Ritz Carlton in
Philadelphia, said the decision to attempt to correct the candidates was
in response to the June 27 CNN debate between Trump and President
Biden, whose poor performance led to his exit from the race," the Times
reported. "People were concerned that statements were allowed to
just hang and not [be] disputed by the candidate Biden, at the time, or
the moderators," Davis told the outlet on Wednesday morning.
But Harris’ lies are okay to fester, huh? Davis’ line is the same one repeated any time Democrats look bad on policy or optics: It’s OK when we do it. There’s
a track record of bias, and now, one of the moderators intended to tilt
the scales. ABC News should accept this story isn’t going to die; as we
know, the establishment press is a socialist coven that hates Trump. Whatever they have to say, I’m against it—and reject it.
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