A former advisor to Bill and Hillary Clinton has called on ABC News to conduct an internal investigation into whether there was an effort to rig Tuesday’s presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and 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 Just The News host John Solomon that “suspicion is really quite high” due to the blatantly one-sided “fact checking” interruptions from hosts David Muir and Linsey Davis.
The moderators interrupted the former president with several fact checks — some of which ended up being patently false — while allowing Vice President Harris to get away with multiple lies without interruption.
“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 told Just The News. “I don’t know what they told the Harris campaign.”
The former Clinton ally’s observations mirror those of thousands of social media users, who have insinuated that Harris was given questions in advance due to her numerous canned responses. A number of the questions appeared to have been set up in order for Harris to score points, including one in which Trump was essentially asked if he was a racist.
“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,” Penn said.
He further explained his position in an editorial he penned with Andrew Stein, a former Democrat New York City Council president, which was published in the Wall Street Journal. The two former Democrats argued that Muir and Davis appeared to have “decided in advance” to fact check Trump and leave Harris alone.
“[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.”
A number of political leaders, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former President Trump himself have characterized the ABC News event as a “three-on-one” debate. The former president still believes he had a good night and came out victorious, however.
