On Friday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Your World,” Harris-Walz Campaign Senior National Spokesman Ian Sams responded to criticism that ABC’s moderators failed to fact-check and press 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris the same way they did her Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump, during the debate for her claim that there haven’t been troops in combat or ducking on the border by stating that it’s “quite telling of a candidate who’s complaining about the moderators how he performed in the debate. I think ABC did a good job.”
Host Neil Cavuto asked, “[Y]ou do hear from the Trump people that she got — your candidate got deferential treatment. She was not interrupted or fact-checked nearly as much as Donald Trump was. And I’ve heard some of your surrogates and her surrogates say, well, that’s because his whoppers were bigger. I’m just curious, were you surprised the moderators did not interrupt her or fact-check her to the degree they did Donald Trump? In the end, you go into this meticulously planning things, right? That had to surprise you somewhat.”
Sams responded, “Well, the funny thing about fact-checking is it only is relevant when you’re telling lies, and the Vice President wasn’t really telling lies on stage, and President Trump was. And so, in order to be able to fact-check –.”
Cavuto then cut in to say, “Well, there were some mini-whoppers in there, … you’re right, there were some mini-whoppers in there, compared to allowing the killing of infants after they’re born and going back to the cat and dog eating thing, those are whoppers, you’re quite right. But there were some areas where she stretched it and no one bothered to go after her about no combat going on around the world involving U.S. servicemen or what was going on and the preference for dealing with what she was doing at the border and her, obviously, obfuscation around that, but it just didn’t seem balanced in that respect.”
Sams responded, “Well, it’s also quite telling of a candidate who’s complaining about the moderators how he performed in the debate. I think ABC did a good job. I think that they ran a tidy debate. I think that it allowed the American people to see the clear choice between the two candidates, and boy, oh boy, did they get to see a choice between someone who was focused on the issues that they actually care about –.”
Cavuto then cut in to ask Sams if he was surprised that Trump took Harris’ bait.
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett