The Patriot Post® · ABC's Pre-Debate Treachery
Another day, another whistleblower, and another case of the mainstream media responding with a coordinated Meh.
By now, we all know that ABC News worked mightily to help Kamala Harris in last week’s debate with Donald Trump. There’s simply no other way to account for the grotesque imbalance of real-time “fact-checking” of Trump and the complete lack thereof toward Harris.
Normally, a mainstream media newsroom is hermetically sealed from impartial observers, but one courageous ABC News staffer has spoken out. Late last week, an X poster named Black Insurrectionist came forward with a remarkable claim:
I will be releasing an affidavit from an ABC whistleblower regarding the debate. I have just signed a non-disclosure agreement with the attorney of the whistleblower. The affidavit states how the Harris campaign was given sample question which were essentially the same questions that were given during the debate and separate assurances of fact checking Donald Trump and that she would NOT be fact checked. Accordingly, the affidavit states several other factors that were built into the debate to give Kamala a significant advantage. I have seen and read the affidavit and after the attorney blacks out the name of the whistleblower and other information that could dox the whistleblower, I will release the full affidavit. I will be releasing the affidavit before the weekend is out.
Sure enough, on Sunday night, Black Insurrectionist did release a six-page affidavit from a person who says he’s been working in tech and administrative roles at ABC for more than 10 years. Among the whistleblower’s charges were that ABC agreed that certain questions would be off limits, including the perceived health of Joe Biden, Harris’s tenure as California’s attorney general, and any questions about her brother-in-law Tony West, who used to work at the Department of Justice. Interestingly, the affidavit was signed on September 9, the day before the debate. Clearly, the whistleblower had noted all these things before they played out last Tuesday night.
Harris, for example, was provided with a smaller lectern, which made her look less diminutive. She also got a split-screen broadcast view that eliminated the difference in stature between herself and Trump. Furthermore, the whistleblower says that ABC News talked with the Harris campaign without a representative of the Trump campaign present. This seems patently unfair.
The worst of it, though, was the behavior of ABC’s disgraceful “moderators,” David Muir and Linsey Davis, who practically tripped over each other to incorrectly “correct” Trump. Five times in all. But not once to Harris. Take, for example, the moment early on in the debate when Trump noted the connection between illegal immigration and rampant crime. Here, Muir interjected, “President Trump, as you know, the FBI says overall violent crime is coming down in this country,” even though the truth is that crime is up.
Apparently, Muir failed to consult the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which operates the National Crime Victimization Survey. As the Washington Examiner reports, “It releases new data every September, and it did so last week. They show Trump is right about crime and Muir is wrong. Crime is up, not down.”
We’re still waiting for a front-page correction and apology from ABC News. And waiting. And waiting.
Where was the ABC News fact-check on Harris’s vile Charlottesville lie? Or her lie about our nation not having any troops in a combat zone? Or her lie about Trump’s plan to institute a national abortion ban? Or her lie about Project 2025, from which Trump has repeatedly distanced himself?
What does ABC News have to say about these inflammatory charges? In a remarkably brief and high-level 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.”
As Megyn Kelly, a former Fox News host and former debate moderator herself, described it on her podcast, “This is a non-denial denial. So I have more questions today than I did yesterday, and it cannot be left at this.”
In an X post earlier this week, billionaire businessman and Trump supporter Bill Ackman raised the matter with Bob Iger, CEO of the Disney Company, which is ABC’s parent company.
“Dear Bob,” Ackman writes, “I assume that you have been made aware of this affidavit which was made public earlier today in which a whistleblower states that ABC worked closely with the Kamala Harris campaign in sharing the substance of the questions, avoiding certain topics, agreeing on the staging, committing to fact check Donald Trump and not Harris, and more disturbing details.”
Ackman concludes: “In light of the seriousness of the allegations and the implications for this presidential election and for ABC’s reputation and thereby Disney’s and the office of the CEO, I strongly encourage you to launch an immediate investigation of this matter.”
.@RobertIger
— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) September 16, 2024
Dear Bob,
I assume that you have been made aware of this affidavit which was made public earlier today in which a whistleblower states that @ABC worked closely with the @KamalaHarris campaign in sharing the substance of the questions, avoiding certain topics,… https://t.co/Y95zdQ5Vk3
So far, crickets and tumbleweeds.
But Ackman isn’t alone. Former Clinton pollster Mark Penn is also calling for an investigation. “I don’t know what they told the Harris campaign,” Penn said. “I think the day after, suspicion here is really quite high, and I think a review of all their internal texts and emails really should be done by an independent party to find out to what extent they were planning on, in effect, you know, fact-checking just one candidate and, in effect, rigging the outcome of this debate. I think the situation demands nothing less than that.”
“It was a rigged deal,” said Trump, “as I assumed it would be. … They were correcting everything and not correcting with her.” As he added last night, “I had [moderators] telling me that I’m wrong about things where I’m totally right. … I think my only regret is that I wanted to be elegant, and I didn’t want to go after the anchors.”
We understand why Trump might want to be deferential here. After all, he wasn’t debating to energize his base; he was doing so to appeal to that tiny sliver of the American electorate that remains undecided.
The ad nauseam lesson for Republicans and conservatives, though, is that the mainstream media is the enemy, and we trust its practitioners at our peril.