As we reported, there were allegations from a reported ABC staff whistleblower about the Trump-Harris debate. The whistleblower said in an alleged affidavit that the Harris campaign had been given sample questions and that the campaign demanded that Donald Trump would be fact-checked live. That of course happened, while Harris was not fact-checked at all despite a mountain of lies.
The whistleblower also alleged that the campaign imposed "restrictions on the scope of questioning."
The allegations include that Harris’ team allegedly negotiated specific camera angles to portray her more favorably than Trump. The document also claims the campaign negotiated rules with ABC without involving the Trump team, and it managed to get the network to avoid specific topics including President Joe Biden’s health; Harris’ tenure as “Attorney General in San Francisco”; and her brother-in-law and adviser Tony West.
But now, ABC is denying they gave the questions to the campaign.
In a statement to the Daily Beast, ABC News did not address any of the specific allegations: “ABC News followed the debate rules that both campaigns agreed on and which clearly state: No topics or questions will be shared in advance with campaigns or candidates.”
They had also previously denied that campaign aides were in contact with the moderators.
While they do deny that they shared the actual questions or topics in advance, there's so much not said that you could drive a truck through it.
They do not deny any of the other allegations about restricted questioning or fact-checking Trump, for instance. When you don't deny all the allegations, it raises obvious questions.
Plus, is a denial of giving the questions to the campaign a denial of giving sample questions or being given questions by the Harris team?
At this point, there's so little trust in the media that I don't think this brief response is going to squelch the questions. Particularly after the bias we saw all over the place from the moderators during the debate. As we reported, Linsey Davis even seemed to say the quiet part out loud. When asked about the fact-checking, she referred back to the first debate with Joe Biden, where "statements were allowed to just hang and not [be] disputed by the candidate Biden, at the time, or the moderators.”
It sounded like she thought they needed to fact-check Trump to make sure what happened to Biden didn't happen to Harris. Not a good look.
Meanwhile, Harris was lying up a storm unchecked, and they didn't seem to have any compunction about fact-checking her over truly obvious lies, like the "fine people" lie that even Snopes debunked or the claim that the administration didn't have any military in a combat zone that was just demonstrably false. So ABC didn't help itself at all with how they handled it during the debate—or how they have handled it since.
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