Former President Donald Trump came out hot during his debate against Vice President Kamala Harris, while ABC’s moderators fact-checked just one side of the stage.
Trump and Harris met for the first time in their political careers on ABC News’s debate stage in a 90 minute contest that featured no live audience, muted mics and moderators that left many conservative viewers frustrated. As ABC’s David Muir and Linsey Davis continuously corrected Trump and left Harris un-checked, the vice president baited the former president into fiery moments by teasing him about rally crowd size and his 2020 loss.
“I’m gonna invite you to attend one of Donald Trump’s rallies because it’s a really interesting thing to watch,” Harris said, pivoting from questions on immigration to prodding the former president.
“He talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He will talk about windmills causing cancer. And what you will also notice is people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom. And I will tell you the one thing you will not hear him talk about, is you,” the vice president continued.
Harris wisely baited Trump to talk about his rallies, which pivoted away from her weakest subject: The border.
— AG (@AGHamilton29) September 11, 2024
Asked to respond, Trump chose to dispute whether people are attending his rallies or not.
“She said people start leaving. People don’t go to her rallies. So she can’t talk about that. People don’t leave my rallies,” the fired up former president said.
Harris later dug into Trump again, telling the former president that he was fired by 81 million Americans in the 2020 election.
“Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people, so let’s be clear about that, and clearly he is having a very difficult time processing that,” Harris said. She later added that around the world, leaders are “laughing at Donald Trump.”
Though Harris dodged questions on her numerous policy flip-flops and whether Americans are better off under her administration than Trump’s, pundits and media personalities suggested that the vice president presented herself better than her opponent. A CNN flash poll of debate watchers found that 63% said Harris had won the debate, compared to 37% for Trump. The same sample of individuals said pre-debate they were split 50-50 on who they expected to win.
Her campaign apparently thought so too, because minutes after the forum ended, they began calling for a second debate in October.
That was fun. Let’s do it again in October.
— Brian Fallon (@brianefallon) September 11, 2024
Trump, meanwhile, was noticeably louder and more aggressive than in his debate against President Joe Biden, where the Republican nominee largely stood quietly by while his opponent imploded.
“She conveyed the calm. Did she answer all the questions about the switches? No. But I thought he would’ve raised that,” former congressman Harold Ford said in Fox News’ post show.
“She came out ahead of him in my opinion, no doubt,” Brit Hume, Fox News political analyst, responded to Ford. “She was calm, she was prepared.”
Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people.
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) September 11, 2024
Though Trump was debating Harris, many Trump supporters felt the former president was taking on Muir and Davis too in an unfair fight. Throughout the debate, Muir and Davis repeatedly fact-checked Trump but failed to correct Harris when she made false claims.
Minutes into the debate, the former president referenced a 2019 video of former Virginia governor Ralph Northam saying that if a mother opted not to provide her baby medical care after birth, the “infant would be kept comfortable.”
Davis mistakenly jumped in to claim that no states allow post-birth abortions.
Harris, however, was allowed to repeat previously debunked lies.
“Charlottesville … there was a mob of people carrying tiki torches spewing anti-Semitic hate, and what did the President then, at the time say? There were fine people on each side,” Harris said.
Snopes previously rated the claim that Trump called neo-nazis and white supremacists “very fine people,” false. The former president noted after the Charlottesville rally that they should be “condemned totally,” according to Snopes. Harris was not fact-checked by the ABC moderators.
In another instance, the vice president claimed that Trump would sign a national abortion ban, though the former president has repeatedly said he would not do so. The moderators did not fact check Harris, forcing Trump to respond and denounce the lie himself.
Even Snopes, a far-left publication, agrees with Trump. pic.twitter.com/j9Lhw2uvWw
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) September 11, 2024
VP Harris claimed tonight: “There is not one member of the military who is in active duty in a combat zone in any war zone around the world for the first time this century.”
Meanwhile, CENTCOM just blew up a few things in Yemen. https://t.co/DP12vM3RzR
— Elias Atienza (@AtienzaElias) September 11, 2024
Wait.
Did @DavidMuir and @LinseyDavis NOT fact check Kamala’s clear and repeatedly debunked lies about “Charlottesville” and “bloodbath?”
What the hell?!
cc: @ABC— J. Hogan Gidley (@JHoganGidley) September 11, 2024
Many viewers also took issue with the moderators’ line of questioning. Even as the economy is a top issue for Americans, Muir and Linsey only touched on the topic once in the first 45 minutes of the debate. Instead the moderators asked about results of the 2020 election and abortion access.
Omg. The Q to Harris is just a lob to let her shit on
J6 for 2 minutes. This thing is a JOKE. ABC you are a JOKE— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) September 11, 2024
“I think the tough questioning of Trump was justified, but the moderators noticeably did not follow up with Harris when she dodged the question or said something that wasn’t true. They asked her how exactly she’d end the war in Gaza and she says I want to end the war. What?” political commentator Zaid Jilani tweeted.
The ABC moderators’ bias was noticeable when asking each candidate about a topic they have previously reversed course on.
When asking Trump about abortion, Davis laid out the history of the former president’s comments on the topic, highlighting Trump’s shifting positions, but when asking Harris about her various flip-flops, ABC briefly touched on her reversals with little follow-up.
“Vice President Harris, in your last run for president, you said you wanted to ban fracking. Now you don’t. You wanted mandatory government buyback programs for assault weapons. Now your campaign says you don’t. You supported decriminalizing border crossings. Now you’re taking a harder line,” Davis began.
“I know you say that your values have not changed, so then why have so many of your policy positions changed?” she asked.
Half way through the debate, Washington Examiner commentary writer Tim Carney wondered out loud how Americans would perceive the match-up between the two foes amid ABC’s moderation.
“This moderation is pretty bad. I wonder the average voter comes away thinking ‘I guess Kamala doesn’t say false stuff’ or ‘I wonder why ABC checks only one side.'”
