In their first and possibly only debate on September 10, Vice President Kamala Harris clashed with former President Donald Trump in a primetime showdown that drew massive viewership. Following the debate, however, ABC’s “World News Tonight” with anchor David Muir has experienced a notable dip in viewers.
The program averaged 6.7 million viewers for the episodes on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday post-debate, down from its 2024 average of 7.6 million prior to the debate according to The New York Post. This 12% drop in viewership for “World News Tonight” was significantly sharper than the minor decreases seen by “CBS Evening News” and “NBC Nightly News” during the same period, though Muir’s newscast remained the leading evening newscast.
Since then, Trump has referred to the ABC-hosted debate as a “rigged deal” and claimed he did “great” despite the odds being “3-to-1.” Last Thursday, Trump announced that there would be no more debates. He took to his social media platform, Truth Social, to declare his victory in the debate and to address future plans. Trump wrote, “When a prizefighter loses a fight, the first words out of his mouth are, ‘I WANT A REMATCH.’ Polls clearly show that I won the Debate against Comrade Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ Radical Left Candidate.”
“We spent a lot of time and I believe it was our duty to ask the issues that Americans care about,” Muir said on ‘Live with Kelly and Mark’ on Monday. “You have to be ready for whatever might come your way, even the most unexpected of moments. As you all know, you know what I’m talking about.”
“I will say this, all of the noise that you hear afterward about which candidate won the debate, did the moderators win or lose, that’s just noise. You all know that. The most important thing to remember is that you all have the power. Everybody at home has the power,” he finished.
During the presidential debate, ABC News moderators Muir and Linsey Davis took the controversial step of fact-checking former President Trump, interrupting him to “correct” his statements in real time for viewers, while failing to fact-check Vice President Kamala Harris. The approach differed significantly from the first presidential debate of the 2024 season on CNN, where moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash allowed both Trump and Joe Biden to speak without on-the-spot corrections, opting instead to address inaccuracies in an online and televised fact-check after the event. The aggressive fact-checking by ABC suggested bias, contrasting sharply with CNN’s less intrusive method during the high-stakes telecast.
ABC’s moderators displayed a noticeable restraint with Harris, avoiding any significant confrontations. They missed several chances to press her on contentious issues such as the Biden administration’s tumultuous withdrawal from Afghanistan and Harris’s inconsistent stances on fracking and border policies.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) said to reporters following the debate, “It was three-on-one. They continued to engage in so-called fact-checking of Donald Trump. They never did that to Kamala Harris.” For weeks leading up to the debate, Trump had been priming his supporters to expect a biased event. As soon as the debate kicked off, allegations of media bias flooded social media nationwide.
