Victor Davis Hanson Slams ABC Moderators’ ‘Shameless Bias’ During Trump-Harris Debate: ‘3-on-1 Pile-On’

ABC moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis “ruined the debate, their own reputations, and their network’s brand” after showing “shameless bias” during Tuesday’s Trump-Harris face-off, according to world-renowned military historian Dr. Victor Davis Hanson, who likened the “three-on-one pile-on” to CNN’s Candy Crowley “hijacking” the 2012 presidential debate, inaccurately fact-checking Mitt Romney in an effort to defend Barack Obama.

In a widely viewed post on X (formerly Twitter) Wednesday, Hanson highlighted the “shameful role” of Muir and Davis, who he accused of repeatedly fact-checking Trump while allowing Harris to make unchecked statements, particularly “old lies” concerning abortion and Charlottesville. 

According to Hanson, the debate will “be remembered as a three-on-one pile-on, given the unprofessional and biased team of ABC moderators.” 

“Rather than refuting pre-debate fears that their past anti-Trump biases would warp the debate, they only confirmed them,” he argued.

Comparing the incident to the infamous erroneous fact-checking of then-presidential contender Mitt Romney by CNN’s Candy Crowley in the 2012 debate against his opponent, Barack Obama, Hanson stated that the ABC moderators undermined their careers by inserting themselves into the debate while displaying partisan leanings.

During that debate, Crowley was seen as intervening to rescue Obama from his mishandling of the Benghazi attack with an inaccurate fact check. Similarly, in Wednesday’s debate, Hanson noted that moderators repeatedly interrupted to fact-check Trump, while allowing Harris’s claims to go unchallenged.

“Both disrupted the tempo to fact check (sometimes in error), and to editorialize Trump’s statements, while letting Harris’s Charlottesville, IVF, national abortion ban, ‘bloodbath’ or [Project] 2025 lies go unchecked,” he said. 

“Often their disruptive fact checks of Trump were simply wrong,” he added, “such as their preposterous claim that no states allow partial birth or late abortions where the viable baby is terminated—when at least six states put no limitations on any abortions.”

Furthermore, Hanson explained, the moderators posed provocative questions to Trump while avoiding pressing Harris on her past controversies or statements:

The questions addressed to Trump on January 6 were designed to provoke. They had no counterpart addressed to Harris—as for example, would she distance herself from Biden, or how she came to win the nomination without winning any elected delegates, or her last person in the room on Afghanistan boast, or if she wished to retract any of her inflammatory past statements, such as bragging that the deadly 2020 demonstrations would not and should not stop, or her tweets to help bail out violent 2020 rioters, or her lie that the border patrol whipped immigrants in the manner reminiscent of slavery and the Klan, or her boast that she was a radical and woke.

He also called attention to how Harris was not reprimanded for speaking over Trump, while the latter was repeatedly reminded to stay on topic, something Harris “rarely did.”

Suggesting that the moderators’ “shameless bias” could “swing empathy toward Trump,” Hanson concluded that “the real story was how ABC’s moderators ruined the debate, their own reputations, and their network’s brand.”

The matter follows Tuesday’s presidential debate which saw Vice President Kamala Harris make numerous false claims, many of which went unchecked by the ABC moderators who frequently fact-checked Trump, with Muir even bizarrely fact-checking a joke the 45th president had previously made.

The blatant bias displayed by the moderators spotlighted Disney executive Dana Walden, a close friend of Kamala Harris who oversees ABC News, with some suggesting Walden may have influenced the debate.

In July, Hanson called out the “sickness” on the Left as he lambasted leftist rhetoric for normalizing violence against Trump following a thwarted assassination attempt.