There is a very good reason that ABC stacked the deck for Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential debate earlier this month. Speculation is rife that the network may have, mirroring Donna Brazile’s past actions, provided Harris with the questions or topics in advance. Adding fuel to this speculation is ABC’s decision to forgo fact-checking Harris’s inaccuracies and false statements, while subjecting Trump to rigorous, and occasionally flawed, fact-checking.
One reason is that the network clearly wants to help her win the election, as shown by both the network and the candidate pushing the same false narratives. But the primary reason is they would be fact checking themselves and the lies and conspiracy theories they’ve been peddling for years.
From morning to night ABC has a line-up of news, talk, pop culture and scripted series that help create and perpetuate narratives for the Democrats and the left in general. It starts with Good Morning America and continues with The View, World News Tonight, Jimmy Kimmel Live and Nightline. They have pushed the same stories, whether the Russia collusion hoax, the Charlottesville “very fine people on both sides” hoax, the January 6 “insurrection,” a secure border, climate change as an existential threat and more. Much more.
Media Research Center recently reported that of the Big Three networks’ evening news programs, ABC’s World News Tonight had the most positive spin on Kamala Harris since she was anointed to enter the race on July 21, through September 6, just 4 days before the debate.
“MRC analysts reviewed all 100 campaign stories that aired on ABC’s World News Tonight from the day Harris entered the race (July 21) through September 6, including weekends. Our analysts found 25 clearly positive statements about Harris from reporters, anchors, voters or other non-partisan sources, with zero negative statements — none. That computes to a gravity-defying 100% positive spin score for the Vice President. As for Trump, our analysts found just five clearly positive comments, vs. 66 negative statements, for a dismal 7 percent positive (93% negative) spin score.”
Kamala was picked by the party leaders, presumably Nancy Pelosi and the Obamas, to replace the ailing President Joe Biden just days after he had stated absolutely that he was in the race for the long run and would only step down if God almighty came and told him to do so. Kamala never got a single vote nor had to debate anyone to be handed the nomination. That is the Democrats’ idea of being the party of democracy.
The party believes they can run her as the Anti-Trump and never have to have her explain her many changes of positions that were clearly on the record from her run for the Democratic nomination in 2019 before being the first of about 20 candidates to drop out. Plus, the now infamous 2019 ACLU questionnaire putting her on the record. Her team, and now her to some extent, have claimed she has changed a number of her policy positions, but not her “values.”
For instance, she answered on the questionnaire affirmatively that she would fund transgender surgery for illegal alien inmates, end Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainers for illegal aliens accused of committing crimes and decriminalize all drug possession crimes if the drugs are for personal use.
What would be impressive is if she would sit with a real journalist who would challenge her views, challenge her flip-flops and ask her other tough questions, with follow-up questions, about her border policies, fracking, her views and positions on the economy, Israel, Iran and China. If she could, she would. But she won’t.
Another potential conflict of interest and explanation for why Kamala wanted the debate on ABC is that one of her closest long-time friends, Dana Walden, is Co-Chairman of Disney Entertainment, and part of her portfolio is ABC News.
According to Breitbart’s count, Harris had 21 different statements and accusations about Trump that were false, including Trump’s connection to Project 2025, his reference to a “bloodbath,” and her boast that “there is not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone, in any war zone around the world the first time this century.” That statement provoked outrage from some members of the military on active duty and family members who recall that this year alone three U.S. soldiers were killed in Jordan and 40 others were injured in an attack at a base near the Syrian border and at least four American service members suffered traumatic brain injuries from an attack in Iraq.
When it comes to election interference and election rigging, media corruption and bias is a bigger factor than even the Twitter files, where the DOJ and FBI put their thumbs on the scale to decide what information was acceptable. They were actually in the rooms at Facebook and Twitter deciding what is misinformation and disinformation, and telling social media what speech to suppress, such as the truth about Hunter Biden’s laptop, all the while pushing lies and conspiracy theories about Trump-Russia collusion.
The media have also enabled and fueled the DOJ’s lawfare against Trump and his allies while ignoring massive corruption by the Biden administration.
Finally, is Kamala really going to attempt to make it through the last six weeks of the campaign without answering any questions from a real journalist about how and why she has allegedly changed her positions on a considerable number of issues without changing her values? She really owes it to the voting public to explain her positions, her flip-flops, her and Biden’s accountability on issues like border security, Afghanistan, war in the Middle East, inflation, crime and censorship of free speech.
It’s completely unprecedented, untenable and should be unacceptable to allow her to avoid such scrutiny. But most of the media are fine with it, because they understand that there are no cogent, reasonable justifications that could explain her evolution on those issues. She wants it both ways: holding on to the support she has without alienating her base, while pretending to have moved to the right on a number of issues without her values having changed.
In the meantime, Trump and vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance are out every day taking all sorts of questions, hostile and otherwise, with any and all members of the media. The contrast could not be more stark.
There will be no price to pay for ABC. There never is. They’ve been caught fabricating and putting their thumb on the scale time and time again. Why would this time be any different?
The views expressed in CCNS member articles are not necessarily the views or positions of the entire CCNS. They are the views of the authors, who are members of the CCNS.
