DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said Wednesday that ABC’s license should be revoked over its alleged bias in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris during Tuesday night’s presidential debate.
Trump told the co-hosts of “Fox & Friends” that ABC News debate moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis were “dishonest” for not correcting Harris’ false statements about the Charlottesville riot in 2017, his support for in vitro fertilization, and The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.
The former president said the two ABC debate moderators unfairly fact-checked him while allowing Harris to state false and misleading claims.
“They’re dishonest and … I think ABC took a big hit last night,” Trump said. “I mean, to be honest, as a news organization, they have to be licensed to do it. They ought to take away their license for the way they did that.”
[He explained his recent use of the word “bloodbath” to describe the eventual result of the Biden-Harris administration’s electric vehicle mandate on the auto industry.]
“Everybody loved that term because as soon as they heard that word—it is kind of a vicious word,” Trump said. “But, referring to the economy … ‘bloodbath’ is the word I used, and it was fine in that context. They were trying to make it sound like it was a riot or something.”
“IVF, I was a leader on IVF,” the former president said, referring to the debate topic of in vitro fertilization. “The IVF, which is in vitro fertilization, I was a leader on that. When I first heard about it, from the very beginning, I was one of the leaders on it and the Republican Party has been a leader on it.”
Harris “was trying to say it was the opposite,” Trump said. “The whole thing about abortion, [Muir] said, it was incredible. I think he corrected me about six times, and each time I was right.”
ABC News’ two debate moderators appeared to repeatedly fact-check Trump while allowing Harris to get away with false claims. Davis, for example, immediately pushed back against the former president as he said some Democratic states allow for late-term abortions and for babies to be killed after a botched abortion.
Harris also falsely said that Trump plans to sign a national abortion ban if it reached his desk, though the former president has repeatedly spoken in opposition to such legislation. Muir and Davis did not correct the vice president.
The moderators allowed Harris to falsely claim that Trump stated there were “very fine people” on both sides of the riot in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. The liberal site Snopes rated the claim that the former president called neo-Nazis and white supremacists “very fine people” false in June, noting that he said those groups should be “condemned totally.”
“[Harris] was using Charlottesville, and everybody, you take a look at [Fox News host] Laura Ingraham, she did it incredibly. [Ingraham] had it totally debunked; in fact, she gets angry when people hear about Charlottesville, when they use that,” Trump told “Fox & Friends.”
“Because what they did is they stopped and they didn’t put the following sentence in. And when they put the last sentence in, when it’s all put together, what I said was absolutely perfect,” he said. “And ABC knew that, everybody knew that, frankly. I think they lost a lot of credibility.”
The moderators did not fact-check Harris when she alleged that Trump “intends on implementing” The Heritage Foundation-led Project 2025, a conservative policy outline and personnel list to help serve the next Republican president. The Trump campaign has publicly disassociated itself from the initiative.
Muir and Davis also fact-checked Trump when he claimed that Haitian migrants are eating pet cats and ducks in Springfield, Ohio, by stating that local police said they have not received any credible reports on the matter.
Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation
