The big loser from Tuesday’s Presidential Debate was ABC News.
The dishonesty and bias of the moderators set new records for a network trying to rig a debate. Virtually everyone recognized what they were doing. Ultimately, it helped President Donald J. Trump and hurt Vice President Kamala Harris.
The so-called fact checking was atrocious. For example, the moderators asserted that President Trump’s concern about babies being allowed to die after birth was wrong. Yet at least eight babies have been allowed to die in Minnesota under Gov. Tim Walz after attempted abortions. The ABC fact check was simply a lie.
During the debate, anger grew on X about ABC’s partisanship.
As for the two presidential candidates: Vice President Harris was clearly better prepared than most Republicans expected. In some cases, her answers were so clearly memorized it gave the impression that she might have seen the questions in advance.
By contrast, President Trump found himself in a three-on-one debate in which the two ABC moderators were clearly pro-Harris in the topics they chose and the one-sided and inaccurate fact checking. Despite that disadvantage, President Trump avoided blowing up in the way Democrats were hoping, and he delivered every major policy message defining Harris as an incompetent radical.
The analysis of the debate is going to show an enormous gap between the elites who will hail Vice President Harris the winner and the American people who think the debate was rigged and that President Trump won despite everything.
This reminded me of the first presidential debate at the beginning of Trump’s 2016 candidacy. Then-candidate Trump got into a bitter argument with Megyn Kelly, and the elites concluded that Trump had lost the debate. Yet, that evening, poll after poll showed 70 percent of voters thought Trump had won despite the nasty argument. While Callista and I watched the coverage, we thought there was something profound happening. The gap between the American people’s views and those of the elites had grown far apart. I suspect that gap has only widened since then.
As you listen to the elites lavish praise on Vice President Harris for a performance in which she had two active allies from ABC helping her, consider the following overnight polls:
Before the debate, Trafalger/Insider Advantage’s poll had Trump and Harris tied at 47. After the debate, it was tied at 48.
At the time of this writing, C-SPAN’s survey on X showed 75 percent thought Trump won the debate, while only 25 percent thought Harris had won. There were 195,000 votes and 13 hours left on the poll.
The Democracy Institute poll showed Trump won with 45 percent support to Harris’s 34 percent – and 27 percent were more likely to vote for Trump after debate while 24 percent were more likely to vote for Harris post-debate.
According to the Independent, a CNN snap poll, which was slightly more favorable to Vice President Harris, nevertheless noted that “55 percent of voters said Trump would handle the economy better than Harris, while 35 percent said the reverse – a 20 point margin slightly wider than prior to the debate.“
As might be expected, the Washington Post asked 25 swing state voters, and they were overwhelmingly favorable to Vice President Harris (23 percent to 2 percent).
On the other side of the spectrum, Newsmax asked its conservative viewers who won and got 93 percent for Trump to 6 percent for Harris.
I was reminded of a USA Today headline I saw in late October, 1994. I saw it as I was walking into a radio station interview in Bose, Idaho to talk for an hour about the Contract with America. It read something like “Democrats Gaining in House Elections.” I spent the entire interview worried about the headline. When I had time to read the article, it said Democrats were gaining among people least likely to vote. The Republican margin was growing among likely voters. This embedded bias has only grown in 30 years.
So, it’s no surprise that in the three-on-one debate, with the moderators lying about facts and rigging the questions to Trump’s disadvantage, Vice President Harris did better than Republicans had hoped. However, her radical record and performance failures on the economy and the border also got through – despite ABC’s effort to help her.
My guess is that President Trump will start pulling away in the battleground states.
The truth will sink in despite the media’s effort to get Harris elected.
For more commentary from Newt Gingrich, visit Gingrich360.com. Also, subscribe to the Newt’s World podcast.
