WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump and other Republicans complained Wednesday that the previous night’s ABC News presidential debate was unfair to the GOP candidates.
However, the campaigns of President Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris have also negotiated through media outlets about the possibility of holding a second debate before the November 5 election.
Trump and his supporters said ABC News hosts David Muir, anchor and editor-in-chief of “World News Tonight,” and Lindsey Davis, Sunday anchor of “World News Tonight” and ABC News Live “Prime” anchor, had aligned with Harris in fact-checking some of Trump’s outlandish claims.
“It was three to one,” Trump said of Harris and the two hosts during a call on Fox News morning show “Fox and Friends” on Wednesday. “It was a rigged deal, just as I predicted, because you look at the fact that they were correcting everything and then they didn’t correct her.”
During Tuesday night’s debate, Davis disputed Trump’s claim that the former Democratic governor had suggested he might allow abortions after birth.
“There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a newborn baby,” Davis said.
Muir also responded to a baseless rumor that Haitian immigrants were stealing and eating residents’ pets in Springfield, Ohio, after former President Trump repeated the rumor, which the city’s mayor denied.
“The debate was horribly poorly moderated,” Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told Fox News’ Sean Hannity shortly after the debate. “It was three to one.”
A representative for ABC News did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on the criticism.
Polls on the debate
The perception that ABC’s hosts were biased toward Harris was not widely shared outside of Republicans.
In a YouGov survey of more than 3,000 adults, 40% said they thought the presenters were fair and unbiased, with “don’t know” being the second most common answer at 29%, and 27% saying they thought the presenters were biased towards Harris.
A majority of independents (32%) and 69% of Democrats also said the hosts were fair, while just over half of Republicans said Muir and Davis were unfair to Trump.
Trump took to his social media platform, Truth Social, last night to bragged about his performance in the debate, posting several screenshots of polls from right-wing news outlets that showed he won the debate.
“Comrade Kamala Harris lost so badly she is demanding another debate. Just look at the polls! It’s the same with professional boxers, when they lose a fight they immediately demand another one. MAGA2024,” Trump wrote, after Harris’s team proposed a second meeting.
Trump defended his comments about Haitian immigrants in Ohio, a false claim that has been circulating on the right and was further amplified on social media on Monday by Trump’s running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio.
He posted police audio published by conservative news outlet The Federalist that allegedly showed migrants being seen carrying geese in late August, and reposted a video, fact-checked by Canton, Ohio, newspaper The Repository, that showed a Canton woman with no known ties to the Caribbean being arrested Aug. 16 and charged with animal cruelty after she killed and ate a cat.
Ahead of the debate, Trump posted AI-generated images of himself cuddling with cats and waterfowl on his private jet, as well as an army of cats wearing MAGA hats and carrying semi-automatic rifles.
Another argument?
Speaking at a Sept. 11 memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, Trump reportedly indicated he would take part in two more debates hosted by NBC News and Fox News.
The NBC event was scheduled to take place on September 25th, but Harris disagreed, preferring October.
Fox executives on Tuesday night reiterated the network’s offer to host another debate in a battleground state in October.
Trump campaign spokeswoman Caroline Leavitt said in an email that the former president’s Fox News comments were a reference to a town hall meeting with commentator Sean Hannity earlier this month.
“It was supposed to take place on September 4th,” Leavitt wrote. “Kamala didn’t show up, so it turned into a town hall meeting with Sean Hannity.”
Harris’ campaign has said the vice president wants to debate Trump again in October, a sentiment reiterated by campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon in a statement late Tuesday.
“Under the bright lights, Americans could see the choice they face at the ballot box this fall: move forward with Kamala Harris or move backward with Trump,” O’Malley Dillon wrote. “That’s what they saw tonight, and that’s what they should see in October at the second debate. VP Harris is ready for the second debate. What about Donald Trump?”
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