‘ABC should fire them!’: MAGA is mad that the presidential debate moderators did their job
Donald Trump and his supporters are attacking ABC with accusations that the network is “rigged” and needs to be boycotted, all because the moderators of the presidential debate did their job.
The moderators’ corrections in the latest presidential debate between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris were a welcome change from past debates. After all, moderators have a history of failing to keep Trump in line.
Before he dropped out of the presidential race, President Joe Biden bypassed the traditional Commission on Presidential Debates, thus only agreeing to two debates held by CNN and ABC. A major part of the reason was likely because the moderators of the Commision’s September 29, 2020, presidential debate between Biden and Trump completely lost control, allowing Trump to throw the debate into chaos by constantly interrupting Biden.
During a past presidential debate with Hillary Clinton, Trump was permitted to loom behind and try to intimidate Clinton every time she was speaking. In his sole 2024 debate against Biden, Trump made over 30 false statements, with both Biden and the moderators largely permitting him to do so without correction.
Hence, it was a breath of fresh air when the moderators at the ABC-hosted debate between Harris and Trump finally made it clear that he can’t just say and do whatever he wants during debates.
MAGA is mad that ABC debate moderators fact-check Donald Trump
ABC moderators Linsey Davis and David Muir played a small role in the recent debate, which included fact-checking the most unhinged falsehoods that Trump uttered. When Trump made the racist and xenophobic claim that immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are “eating” cats and dogs, Muir stated that there were “no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”
At another point, Trump claimed that Democrats are executing babies after birth, to which Davis stated, “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born.” Trump was making up entirely fictional scenarios that no rational individual would ever actually believe. No candidate, whether Democrat or Republican, should ever be allowed by a presidential debate moderator to tell such brazen lies.
The only outraging aspect of the corrections was that the moderators had to tell an actual presidential candidate that, no, people aren’t eating dogs and killing babies after birth in the United States. Of course, MAGA is actually upset that the moderators corrected him on these points. Trump himself excused his terrible performance by blaming it on the “rigged” ABC hosts and whining about the moderators correcting him. Elon Musk also began claiming that ABC wasn’t being “fair” by correcting Trump on his lies.
It wasn’t long before #BoycottABC began trending on X as unhinged MAGA supporters insisted that ABC “interfered” in the debate and was biased. According to them, the fact that the moderators corrected Trump means they’re biased towards Harris. None seemed to be able to put it together that they corrected Trump because he told completely ridiculous lies.
Apparently, making up stories about eating pets and killing children isn’t grounds for correction. Many demanded to know why Harris wasn’t corrected, even though she was. Others claimed they’ve never seen anything like a moderator correcting a candidate before.
Many of the boycotters don’t seem to realize that ABC is owned by Disney. So, if they want to make a dent, they’ll have to boycott Disney and all of its over 200 subsidiaries. It’s also unclear why they think a company worth over $160 billion cares if a few people don’t want to watch Disney and ABC anymore.
Essentially, conservatives are threatening to boycott ABC, calling the debate the most horrifying thing they’ve ever seen and calling the moderators “disgusting,” all because they can’t stand that Trump was fact-checked. All conservatives’ reactions prove is that moderators have not kept debates from going off the rails frequently enough.
It should be the norm for candidates to be prevented from spreading dangerous and harmful lies on live television rather than something so rare conservatives are in shock.
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