ABC’s “World News Tonight” anchor David Muir may have driven away some viewers after the Disney-owned network irked conservatives during last week’s presidential debate.
Muir and co-moderator Linsey Davis fact-checked former President Donald Trump five times without ever correcting Vice President Kamala Harris, prompting a plethora of conservatives to suggest the debate wasn’t fair. Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America even called for a correction after Davis made an abortion claim made during the debate during one of the fact-checks on Trump that the group said was “100% inaccurate.”
Muir’s “World News Tonight” averaged 6.7 million viewers on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, the three episodes following the debate, after averaging 7.6 million in 2024 leading up to the debate.
The 12% drop in viewers for “World News Tonight” is more significant than slight declines “CBS Evening News” and “NBC Nightly News” saw when comparing the three episodes following ABC’s debate to the year-to-date totals, although Muir’s newscast remained the No. 1 broadcast evening newscast.
While it’s unclear if Trump supporters have tuned out ABC’s newscast on the heels of the debate, the former president has blasted it as “one-sided.” Trump told Fox News that he believed Harris should have been fact-checked on a variety of claims.
“Every one of them should have been questioned by David Muir, who I’ve lost a lot of respect for. Everyone’s lost respect for him,” Trump said last week.
“It was so … one-sided,” he continued. “It was one against three.”
Davis admitted in a post-debate interview that her fact-checking of Trump was influenced by the CNN debate that went disastrously for President Biden in June.
“People were concerned that statements were allowed to just hang and not [be] disputed by the candidate Biden, at the time, or the moderators,” Davis told the Los Angeles Times last week.
On Sunday, ABC News’ Martha Raddatz even noted that Harris was wrong when she said 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.”
“Our fact-checkers found that to be false,” Raddatz said.
“There are currently 900 US military personnel in Syria, 2,500 US troops in Iraq. All have been under regular threat from drones and missiles for months. We also have action in the Red Sea,” Raddatz continued. “Also, every single day, the Navy SEALs, Delta Forces special operators can be part of any sort of deadly raid.”
Muir and Davis failed to correct Harris in front of the debate’s massive audience of nearly 70 million people.
I’m watching NEWSNATION with Dan Democrat Abrams interview Cory Lewendowski and it’s never been more obvious that Dan Abrams is a radical Leftist that has TDS and he knows the dems are cheaters and are going to cheat and believes the Republicans should just accept cheating as normal no big deal in elections and Don Lemon gets Dan Abrams sooooo exited makes me wonder if Dan might get a little too exited at being so near to his studly blk so called journalist with a so called journalist such as Dan Abrams
I am NOT watching ABC anymore. Their coverage of the debate with Pres Trump was a disgrace. You let that phoney kamala go Scott free when she’s not in any way presidential material. She’s a communist. Is that what you want for America. Goodbye ABC.