by R. Cort Kirkwood
What ABC News sponsored and what Americans saw the other night was not a one-on-one debate.
The network’s David Muir and Linsey Davis blatantly sided with Harris, “fact-checking” former President Donald Trump when he told the truth, while permitting Vice President Kamala Harris to spew one lie after another.
And ABC’s post-debate “fact-check” published this morning was just as bad.
“This debate is three vs one — the ABC moderators clearly shilling for Kamala Harris,” former Democratic Representative Tulsi Gabbard wrote on X.
Abortion, Gun Lies
Though Trump clearly won the debate on the facts, the moderators’ running interference for Harris, either by “fact-checking” Trump or not “fact-checking” Harris, made it appear as if he lost.
On abortion, mistakenly saying West Virginia, Trump rightly noted that the former governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam, said would permit babies who survive abortion to die, a form of infanticide. “You can look at the governor of West Virginia, the previous governor of West Virginia, not the current governor, who’s doing an excellent job, but the governor before,” Trump said. “He said the baby will be born and we will decide what to do with the baby. In other words, we’ll execute the baby.”
“There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born,” Davis said. The straw man undermined Trump’s point — Democrats support permitting babies to die if they survive an abortion.
The morning-after “fact-check” said the same thing. It falsely claimed that Trump said, “Democrats in some states allow for the killing of an infant after birth.” He said no such thing.
Over a Fox News article she posted on X, columnist Ann Coulter noted that 210 U.S. House Democrats voted against a bill that would require medical care for babies who survive an abortion attempt.
So Trump was correct. Democrats favor permitting babies who survive an abortion to die.
Trump correctly said that Harris “wants to confiscate your guns,” which Harris denied by claiming she and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, are “both gun owners.”
“We’re not taking anybody’s guns away,” she said, “so stop with the continuous lying about this stuff.”
Davis asked Harris about her support for a mandatory gun buyback program when she ran for president in 2020. The moderator let Harris ignore the question and say “my values haven’t changed.”
In fact, on August 6, the Harris campaign X feed posted a clip of Walz — the one that landed him in trouble for falsely claiming he went to war — that strongly suggests they would indeed confiscate guns.
ABC’s morning-after “fact-check” ignored the matter.
The moderators overlooked Harris’ false claims that the infamous Central Park Five were innocent and that Trump wanted to execute them, while the morning-after “fact-check” said the claims were true.
As Coulter noted, neither is true.
“Fine People” and “Bloodbath” Lies
Shamefully, the moderators permitted Harris to repeat two debunked left-wing conspiracy theories, as did the post-debate “fact-check.”
Harris said that “some” Capitol Hill police died during the mostly peaceful protest at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021; that Trump called white supremacists “fine people”; and that he predicted a bloodbath if he didn’t win in November.
Said Harris, reprising Biden’s lies in his debate with Trump:
On that day, 140 law enforcement officers were injured. And some died. … But this is not an isolated situation. Let’s remember Charlottesville, where there was a mob of people carrying tiki torches, spewing antisemitic hate, and what did the president then at the time say? There were fine people on each side.
In fact, one Capitol Hill policeman died … after having two strokes.
And, as The New American reported in June, the leftist Snopes website debunked the claim that Trump called neo-Nazis and white supremacists “very fine people.”
And again reprising a Biden lie in his debate with Trump, Harris repeated the notorious “bloodbath” falsehood:
Donald Trump the candidate has said in this election there will be a bloodbath, if this — and the outcome of this election is not to his liking.
No, he didn’t. But again, the moderators and the morning-after “fact-check” let that one go, too.
As The New American reported when the Biden and media megaphone circulated that prevarication, Trump specifically spoke of a bloodbath for the auto industry if China manufactures cars in Mexico and exports them to the United States.
Obviously Biased Moderators
But perhaps Harris’ most obvious lie was this. The Capitol protest of January 6, 2021 was “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”
The Libs of TikTok X feed noted the obvious: “Tomorrow is 9/11.”
“The moderators were clearly biased,” Trump backer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said:
They were constantly fact checking Donald Trump but none of these whoppers that the Vice President was saying and her failure to answer that first question. That critical first question. They simply sat there on the sidelines.
Be that as it may, while the moderators hobbled Trump during the debate and permitted Harris to pretend she hasn’t been vice president for four years and never heard of Joe Biden, he leveled the vice president in his closing statement after hers.
“So I think you’ve heard tonight two very different visions for our country,” Harris said:
One that is focused on the future and the other that is focused on the past. And an attempt to take us backward. But we’re not going back. And I do believe that the American people know we all have so much more in common than what separates us and we can chart a new way forward. And a vision of that includes having a plan, understanding the aspirations, the dreams, the hopes, the ambition of the American people, which is why I intend to create an opportunity economy, investing in small businesses, in new families, in what we can do around protecting seniors, what we can do that is about giving hard-working folks a break in bringing down the cost of living. I believe in what we can do together that is about sustaining America’s standing in the world and ensuring we have the respect that we so rightly deserve including respecting our military and ensuring we have the most lethal fighting force in the world.
But Harris’ telling Americans what she would do was a perfect target for Trump.
“So, she just started by saying she’s going to do this, she’s going to do that, she’s going to do all these wonderful things,” the former president said:
Why hasn’t she done it? She’s been there for 3 1/2 years.
They’ve had 3 1/2 years to fix the border. They’ve had 3 1/2 years to create jobs and all the things we talked about. Why hasn’t she done it? She should leave right now, go down to that beautiful white house, go to the capitol, get everyone together and do the things you want to do. But you haven’t done it. And you won’t do it. Because you believe in things that the American people don’t believe in. …
But I just ask one simple question. Why didn’t she do it? We’re a failing nation. We’re a nation that’s in serious decline. We’re being laughed at all over the world. All over the world, they laugh, I know the leaders very well. They’re coming to see me. They call me. We’re laughed at all over the world. They don’t understand what happened to us as a nation. We’re not a leader. We don’t have any idea what’s going on. We have wars going on in the Middle East. We have wars going on with Russia and Ukraine. We’re going to end up in a Third World War. And it will be a war like no other because of nuclear weapons, the power of weaponry. I rebuilt our entire military. She gave a lot of it away to the Taliban. She gave it to Afghanistan. What these people have done to our country, and maybe toughest of all, is allowing millions of people to come into our country, many of them are criminals, and they’re destroying our country. The worst president, the worst vice president in the history of our country.