ABC asked to investigate attempted rigging of debate
A former adviser to Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton has called on ABC to launch an internal investigation about whether there was an effort from its news division to rig Tuesday's presidential debate in favor of Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris.
Mark Penn, a pollster and senior adviser for the Clintons from 1995-2008 and co-chair of the Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll, told the "John Solomon Reports" podcast Thursday that "suspicion is really quite high" and a review of internal texts and emails should be done by an independent party to find out whether there was an effort to rig the debate's outcome.
"I actually think they should do a full internal investigation, hire an outside law firm. I don't know how much of this was planned in advance," Penn said, according to Just the News. "I don't know what they told the Harris campaign.
"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."
In an editorial Penn wrote with Andrew Stein, a former Democrat New York City Council president, which was published Thursday in The Wall Street Journal, it appeared to them that ABC News' debate moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis, "had decided in advance" they were going to fact check Trump but not Harris.
"[Harris] enlisted every charge ever leveled against Mr. Trump, regardless of the truth," they wrote. "That included, to name a few, the false claims that he favors a national abortion ban and opposes in vitro fertilization, that he called neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Va., 'very fine people,' and that he threatened a 'bloodbath' if he loses the election. Each is untrue: Mr. Trump has made clear he opposes a national abortion ban. He favors IVF and has even said the government should pay for it. He condemned the Charlottesville neo-Nazis. And he predicted a financial 'bloodbath' for the auto industry if he loses and the Biden-Harris electric-vehicle mandates progress.
"Had the moderators turned to Ms. Harris after her lies and said, 'That has been debunked,' we might be having a totally different conversation about the debate, given how she tends to react when challenged. We would be saying she was having a good night until she couldn't help herself and went too far. Mr. Trump would have been freed from having to spend so much time defending himself against false charges, and the country would have gotten to hear more of his plans for America."
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Until ABC makes such an investigation and apologizes for its biased coverage of the debate Trump should not do another sitdown with them. ABC's conduct was appalling. Apparently, ABC gave Harris a preview of the questions that would be asked but not Trump. They also made a decision not to fact-check Harris.
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