Former President Donald Trump accused ABC News of “violating” its agreement with his campaign on fact-checks during the Sept. 10 presidential debate with Kamala Harris.
The 2024 Republican nominee was in New York on Thursday and he blasted ABC News anchor David Muir as a “lightweight” while talking about the “massive crime” brought about by “Kamala’s migrant invasion.”
“And during the debate, I mentioned that and David Muir, a real lightweight, whose ratings have gone way down because he lost credibility,” Trump said during a news conference at Trump Tower. “I had one against three, but I think we did great. But David Muir of ABC, fake news, when I said that crime is way up in our country, he corrected me. He corrected me on so much and it was right what I said. He didn’t correct her one time, and what she said was wrong, absolutely wrong. So many different— Charlottesville, she was wrong, all of the different things, almost everything she said, and she was never corrected.”
“But [Muir] corrected me on crime,” he continued. “He said, ‘No, no, crime has not gone up.’ I said crime has gone up massively. He said, ‘I’d like to state for the record that crime has not gone up.'”
(Video Credit: WFAA)
According to Trump, the Disney-owned network violated a “deal” that he said was agreed upon ahead of the debate.
“Now you don’t know this, but we had a deal with ABC that there will be no corrections of any kind, and they violated the deal. Why? Because they’re bad people, and they’re fake news,” Trump explained. “So he did it many times to me during the debate. He violated the deal. That’s the deal, because you can take anything and try and make up stories with it. We had a deal where that wouldn’t happen.”
“You could do whatever you wanted as soon as the debate was over, but he did it in total violation of what our agreement was,” he added. “And a lot of people standing right over there will tell you exactly what it was, will show you what it was. David Muir has lost all credibility.”
Co-moderator Linsey Davis, who provided the first fact-check of the debate against Trump, was not immune to criticism from the former president either.
“I never heard of her. I never want to hear of her. She was terrible. I don’t know how she ever got her job in the first place,” Trump added. “But we have a country to save, and we can’t have fake news like that. And his ratings deserve to go down.”
Here’s a quick sampling of responses to the story, as seen on the social media platform X:
Despicable what ABC did.
— sarcastic liberal (@Bullyllama) September 26, 2024
Of course ABC violated the fact check agreement. They’re lefty looney and they’re desperate.
— David Tussing (@DavidTussing3) September 26, 2024
They are moderators, not fact checkers.
— Jeff Pedigo (@jefped) September 26, 2024
ABC-Fake News.
— Arelis Baird (@BairdArelis) September 27, 2024
Especially since their fact checks turned out to be WRONG.
— Harry Callahan (@GreggDoffin) September 26, 2024
Muir should be ashamed, his reputation will never be the same.
— Debbie Yzuel (@DebbieYzuel) September 26, 2024
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