September 10 Debate

Transcript: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/harris-trump-presidential-debate-transcript/story?id=113560542 

Lies are in red

  • ABC Debate Moderator David Muir Hosts Most Pro-Harris, Left-Wing Newscast https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/rich-noyes/2024/09/09/100-abc-debate-moderator-david-muir-hosts-most-pro-harris-left-wing 

    • Of the Big Three evening newscasts, ABC’s World News Tonight — run by debate moderator David Muir — has been the most positive towards Harris and the most hostile to Trump.

    • MRC analysts reviewed all 100 campaign stories that aired on ABC’s World News Tonight from the day Harris entered the race (July 21) through September 6, including weekends. Our analysts found 25 clearly positive statements about Harris from reporters, anchors, voters or other non-partisan sources, with zero negative statements — none. That computes to a gravity-defying 100% positive spin score for the Vice President.

    • As for Trump, our analysts found just five clearly positive comments, vs. 66 negative statements, for a dismal 7 percent positive (93% negative) spin score.

    • ABC’s reporters and anchors either jumped in to criticize Trump themselves, or broadcast negative comments from non-partisan sources to impart a heavily negative spin to the former President’s coverage.

    • During these same weeks, both the CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News also delivered highly positive coverage for Harris, and mostly negative coverage for Trump, yet not as extreme as we found with ABC’s World News Tonight. Employing the same methodology, coverage of Harris was 94% positive on CBS, and 71% positive on NBC — historically good press, but not as good as the 100% positive press she received on ABC.

    • As for Trump, his coverage was 77% negative on CBS, and 86% negative on NBC — extremely hostile, but not as dreadful as the whopping 93% negative coverage he received on ABC.

    • (Also, in the Spin Room during the debate reporters were cheering and booing against Trump, not even trying to hide their bias, according to reporter Cabot Philips.)

  • ABC moderators pressed Trump for follow ups 6 times, Kamala 0 (lies/extremely dishonest or misleading statements are in red below) 

  • ABC moderators “fact checked” Trump 5 times, Kamala 0 

  • 1st question: “are we better off than we were 4 years ago?”  

  • MODERATOR: “there is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born”-->This “fact check” is WRONG! 

  • Kamala: Tim Walz and I are both gun owners. We're not taking anybody's guns away. So stop with the continuous lying about this stuff.”

  • Trump: She was big on defund the police. Harris: That's not true. [mouthed, not audible]

  • Kamala:” Let's remember Charlottesville, where there was a mob of people carrying tiki torches, spewing antisemitic hate, and what did the president then at the time say? There were fine people on each side.”

    • Full text: https://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/15/full-text-trump-comments-white-supremacists-alt-left-transcript-241662   “You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name. And you had people — and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists — because they should be condemned totally. But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. OK?  And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.”

    • When asked if he meant the media was treating white nationalists unfairly, Trump clarified that in no way was he complimenting any of the racist protesters: “No, no.  There were people in that rally — and I looked the night before — if you look, there were people protesting very quietly the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. I’m sure in that group there were some bad ones. The following day it looked like they had some rough, bad people — neo-Nazis, white nationalists, whatever you want to call them,” Trump explained. “But you had a lot of people in that group that were there to innocently protest, and very legally protest — because I don’t know if you know, they had a permit. The other group didn’t have a permit. So I only tell you this: There are two sides to a story. I thought what took place was a horrible moment for our country — a horrible moment. But there are two sides to the country.”

    • Even SNOPES debunked this! https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-very-fine-people/

  • Kamala: “Donald Trump the candidate has said in this election there will be a bloodbath, if this -- and the outcome of this election is not to his liking.

  • Kamala: “It is well known that he admires dictators, wants to be a dictator on day one according to himself.”  https://www.snopes.com/news/2024/01/24/trump-dictator-day-one/ 

    • TRUMP: I love what I do because we are going to have … we are going to make our country greater than ever before. And … (crowd applauding) … that is so important. It's so important. We are going to do things. We're gonna close the border, Day One. The border gets closed. … (crowd applauding) … And Day One and a Half, we drill. You know we drill, baby, drill. Drill. Drill. Drill. … (crowd applauding louder) … And probably on Day Two we'll get rid of this ridiculous electric car mandate … (crowd continuing to applaud)

    • HANNITY: We almost have to go to a break. I want to go back to this one issue though, because the media has been focused on this and [are] attacking you. Under no circumstances, you are promising America tonight, you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody

    • TRUMP: Except for Day One.                       HANNITY: Except for …

    • TRUMP: (smiling and pointing at Hannity) Look, he's going crazy. Except for Day One.

    • HANNITY: Meaning?                TRUMP: I want to close the border and I want to drill, drill, drill.

    • HANNITY: That's not … that's … that's not … that's not "retribution."

    • TRUMP: No no. I'm gonna be … I'm gonna be, you know he keeps, we love this guy.

    • HANNITY: (laughing) TRUMP: He says, "You're not gonna be a dictator, are you?" I said no, no, no … other than Day One. We're closing the border and we're drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I'm not a dictator, OK? https://rumble.com/v3zv5nd-president-trump-town-hall-with-hannity-december-5th-2023-maga.html 

    • Trump's remarks, when viewed in their full context, came as he pointed and smiled at Hannity and clarified that his usage of the term "dictator" — which came from Hannity's own reading of reporting and remarks made in the news media — referred to two items: Trump's policies regarding the U.S.-Mexico border and the drilling of oil. "After that, I'm not a dictator, OK?," Trump said, laughing and then agreeing verbally just seconds later when Hannity said Trump was only referencing his own policy proposals.

  • MODERATOR: President Trump, as you know, the FBI says overall violent crime is coming down in this country

  • Kamala: “Trump left us the worst unemployment since the Great Depression” (COVID) 

  • Kamala: “Trump left us the worst public health epidemic in a century” (COVID, plus he got us the vaccine, which you said publicly you’d refuse to take, then tried to mandate it to millions of Americans https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dAjCeMuXR0 and https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-announce-additional-vaccine-mandates-he-unveils-new-covid-strategy-n1278735)

  • Kamal: “I made that very clear in 2020. I will not ban fracking.”

  • Kamala: “Trump left us the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War” (she says the day before 9/11, also Pearl Harbor? Cold War? See “political violence” chapter) 

  • Kamala: “In his Project 2025 there would be a national abortion—a monitor that would be monitoring your pregnancies, your miscarriages [the Harris-Walz campaign has claimed in TV spots that Trump has endorsed “requiring the government to monitor women’s pregnancies.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkuOOfpDyWg

    • He has said repeatedly that he would not do this; he was already president and he did not do this. He gave the power of abortion back to the people via the states, so this issue is settled. Also, Project 2025 is not his policy platform. 

    • Trump removed the Republican Party platform’s historic commitment to passing a Human Life Amendment, aspirational as it was, and has repeatedly said he opposes any further national legislation on the issue. “It’s the vote of the people now,” Trump said at the debate.

    • Project 2025—which is not Trump’s platform—contains no such provision. Presumably, Harris is wrenching out of context its reasonable proposal that states report abortion statistics accurately. The Biden administration’s most recent annual report on abortion—known as the Abortion Surveillance—excludes statistics from four states including the most populous state: California, Maryland, New Hampshire, and New Jersey. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/ss/ss7209a1.htm 

    • Project 2025 calls on the federal government “to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method.” The government would “ensure that [state] statistics are separated by category: spontaneous miscarriage; treatments that incidentally result in the death of a child (such as chemotherapy); stillbirths; and induced abortion.” That’s a far cry from a “government monitor” peeping in on women’s ultrasounds.

  • Kamala on women having a miscarriage being “denied care” and “bleeding out in the car in the parking lot” and she had spoken to women “being denied care in an emergency room, because the health care providers are afraid they might go to jail.

    • No pro-life law in the nation prohibits doctors from caring for miscarriages. Even Project 2025, which Harris repeatedly invoked as extreme, states, “Miscarriage management or standard ectopic pregnancy treatments should never be conflated with abortion.”  https://www.project2025.org/ 

    • 14 states have a total abortion ban & 27 states have abortion bans based on gestational duration. 9 states and Washington D.C. do not restrict abortion based on gestational duration. This means that those states - Maine, Alaska, Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon, New Mexico, New Jersey - and DC allow abortion at any time during pregnancy, which includes up until birth. For those states with a “total ban” on abortion, each state has exceptions, with every single state including the exception “to save a pregnant person’s life”. This means that if the mother’s life is at risk, her life is priority.

    • https://lozierinstitute.org/fact-check-state-pro-life-laws-explicitly-protect-lives-of-pregnant-women/ 

  • Kamala: “nowhere in America is a woman carrying a pregnancy to term and asking for an abortionhttps://www.abortionfinder.org/abortion-guides-by-state 

  • Kamala: “Well, I will tell you, I agreed with President Biden's decision to pull out of Afghanistan. Four presidents said they would, and Joe Biden did. And as a result, America's taxpayers are not paying the $300 million a day we were paying for that endless war.” On Afghanistan: 

    • [but thanks to you and Biden, we ARE now paying at least $200 billion to Ukraine, and how much to Israel? So 2 new “endless wars” in your administration]

    • Left billions of dollars of military equipment to the Taliban

    • Taliban took over country 

    • People falling from planes taking off

    • 13 dead Americans

    • …whose memorial at Arlington you didn’t even attend and then you bash Trump FOR going

    • As a result of the botched withdrawal, there are now 19 million Afghanistan women living in sexual servitude, can’t leave the house or speak in public, not going to school, forcibly married at age 11 to men 3x their age

  • Kamala: “And as of today, 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, the first time this century.” 

  • Kamala: “The United States Supreme Court recently ruled that the former president would essentially be immune from any misconduct if he were to enter the White House again,” said Harris, while claiming Trump would weaponize government against his political enemies in a second term. 

    • “The [p]resident enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the [p]resident does is official,” stated the court ruling, written by Chief Justice John Roberts. “The [p]resident is not above the law.” https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2024/07/scotus_immunity-7-1.pdf 

    • “Would weaponize government against his political enemies?!” see “Trump Trials” 

  • Kamala: “you negotiated with terrorists.” 

    • You are actively negotiating with terrorists RIGHT NOW (Hamas)