ABC News moderators Linsey Davis and David Muir intervened during Tuesday night’s presidential debate to “fact-check” former President Donald Trump at least seven times, but never did so with Vice President Kamala Harris.
Many of their fact-checks were incorrect or incomplete. A list of the seven most obvious examples follows (quotes taken from the ABC News transcript):
- LINSEY DAVIS: There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born. Madam vice president, I want to get your response to President Trump.
- DAVID MUIR: I just want to clarify here, you bring up Springfield, Ohio. And ABC News did reach out to the city manager there. He told us there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community
- DAVID MUIR: President Trump, as you know, the FBI says overall violent crime is coming down in this country…
- DAVID MUIR: The question was about you as president, not about Former Speaker Pelosi. But I do want Vice President Harris to respond here.
- DAVID MUIR: I did watch all of these pieces of video. I didn’t detect the sarcasm, lost by a whisker, we didn’t quite make it, and we should just point out as clarification, and you know this, you and your allies, 60 cases in front of many judges…
- DAVID MUIR: Mr. President, thank you. Vice President Harris, you heard the president there tonight. He said he didn’t say that he lost by a whisker. So he still believes he did not lose the election. That was won by President Biden and yourself.
- DAVID MUIR: President Trump, thank you. You did bring up something, you said she went to negotiate with Vladimir Putin. Vice President Harris, have you ever met Vladimir Putin, can you clarify tonight?
Harris resorted to many hoaxes in her remarks, notably the Charlottesville “very fine people” hoax, but neither Davis nor Muir bothered to intervene. The “fact-checking” was in one direction.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.