What Did ABC Think Voters Needed to Hear From Harris and Trump?
Julie Hollar
 The questions ABC News' moderators asked in the September 10 presidential debate they hosted between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump could be faulted for not doing much to illuminate many of the issues important to voters. They did, however, ask some surprisingly pointed questions about perhaps the most important issue in this election—the preservation of democratic elections themselves.
And in sharp contrast to CNN, which hosted the debate between Trump and President Joe Biden in June, ABC's David Muir and Linsey Davis made at least some effort to offer real-time factchecking during the debate.
Economy & healthcare
Asked by ABC's Linsey Davis if he had a healthcare plan, Donald Trump replied, "I have concepts of a plan. I'm not president right now."
On the economy—which was identified, along with "the cost of living in this country," as "the issue voters repeatedly say is their number one issue"—ABC's Muir asked only a handful of specific questions. He started out by asking Harris a question that he said Trump often asks his supporters, and which was famously asked by Ronald Reagan during a 1980 presidential debate: "When it comes to the economy, do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?"
Aside from that rather open-ended query, the only specific questions ABC asked about the economy concerned tariffs, a favorite topic of Trump's. Muir asked the former president whether "Americans can afford higher prices because of tariffs," while he asked Harris to explain why "the Biden administration did keep a number of the Trump tariffs in place." (The skepticism of both questions reflected corporate media's traditional commitment to the ideology of "free trade.")
The healthcare questions both candidates got from Davis were superficially similar—"Do you have a plan and can you tell us what it is?" to Trump, and "What is your plan today?" for Harris. But Trump's question was set up by noting that "this is now your third time running for president," and that last month, when asked if he now had a plan, he said, "We're working on it."
Davis prefaced her query to Harris by noting that "in 2017, you supported Bernie Sanders' proposal to do away with private insurance and create a government-run healthcare system"—following the insurance industry-promoted terminology of "government-run" vs. "private," rather than "public" vs. "corporate" (FAIR.org, 7/1/19).
Another question had the same theme of citing earlier, more progressive positions Harris had taken when running for president in 2019—on fracking, guns and immigration—and seemingly asking for reassurance that she had indeed changed her mind on these issues: "I know you say that your values have not changed. So then why have so many of your policy positions changed?" The line of question reflects corporate media's preoccupation with making sure that Democrats in general and Harris in particular move to the right (FAIR.org, 7/26/24).
Abortion
Trump tells Kamala Harris that her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, supports "execution after birth."
Addressing abortion, a motivating issue for many voters, Davis laid out Trump's changing positions on abortion rights and an abortion ban, then posed the question:
Vice President Harris says that women shouldn't trust you on the issue of abortion because you've changed your position so many times. Therefore, why should they trust you?
While both candidates frequently avoided giving concrete answers, Davis pressed Trump on his position, asking whether he would "veto a national abortion ban," and again asking, "But if I could just get a yes or no"—helping to make his refusal to answer clear to viewers.
Perhaps in response to Trump's claim that Harris's running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, supports "execution after birth," Davis then asked Harris if she would "support any restrictions on a woman's right to an abortion." It's a bit of a trick question without context, though. Many people say they oppose abortions later in pregnancy; media have long bought into the right-wing notion that "late-term" abortions are beyond the pale (Extra!, 7–8/07). But in practice, abortions later than 15 weeks are exceedingly rare and largely occur because of medical necessity or barriers to care (KFF, 2/21/24)—a nuanced reality that Davis's question left little space for.
Immigration & race
Harris looks on as Trump claims, "In Springfield, they're eating the dogs. The people that came in. They're eating the cats.... They're eating the pets of the people that live there."
Despite Trump's repeated invocation of a border crisis and vilification of immigrants, ABC only asked him two immigration questions. One asked how he would achieve his plan to "deport 11 million undocumented immigrants"; the other followed up on Harris's charge that Trump killed a border bill that, as Muir stated, "would have put thousands of additional agents and officers on the border." Neither of the questions challenged Trump's narrative of the "crisis" or the idea that further militarizing the border is necessary. (See FAIR.org, 6/2/23.) (ABC did counter Trump's outrageous claim that immigrants were eating people's pets.)
In his sole immigration question to Harris, Muir offered a right-wing framing:
We know that illegal border crossings reached a record high in the Biden administration. This past June, President Biden imposed tough new asylum restrictions. We know the numbers since then have dropped significantly. But my question to you tonight is why did the administration wait until six months before the election to act and would you have done anything differently from President Biden on this?
The media, like Trump, regularly neglect to put immigration numbers in context. Border crossings have increased markedly under Biden, but so have deportations and expulsions, as Biden kept in place most of Trump’s draconian border policies (FAIR.org, 3/29/24).
And the suggestion that Biden “waited…to act” further paints a false picture of the Biden administration as not having “tough restrictions”—immigrant rights advocates called them “inhumane”—prior to 2024.
The one question introduced as being about "race and politics" addressed Trump's race-baiting of Harris: "Why do you believe it's appropriate to weigh in on the racial identity of your opponent?"
Democracy
Recalling the January 6, 2021, Capitol Hill insurrection, ABC's David Muir asks Donald Trump, "Is there anything you regret about what you did on that day?"
On the crucial issue of democratic rule, ABC did not pull many punches. To introduce his first question on the theme, Muir addressed Trump:
For three-and-a-half years after you lost the 2020 election, you repeatedly falsely claimed that you won, many times saying you won in a landslide. In the past couple of weeks, leading up to this debate, you have said, quote, you lost by a whisker, that you, quote, didn't quite make it, that you came up a little bit short. Are you now acknowledging that you lost in 2020?
When Trump claimed he said those things sarcastically, and argued that there was "so much proof" that he had actually won in 2020, Muir challenged his claims directly, first noting, "I didn't detect the sarcasm," then continuing:
We should just point out as clarification, and you know this, you and your allies, 60 cases, in front of many judges....and [they] said there was no widespread fraud.
(Trump interrupted this factcheck with another lie, falsely declaring that "no judge looked at it.")
Muir continued his pushback against Trump in his subsequent question to Harris:
You heard the president there tonight. He said he didn't say that he lost by a whisker. So he still believes he did not lose the election that was won by President Biden and yourself.
Muir's question to Harris highlighted Trump's recent social media post declaring that those who allegedly "cheated" him out of victory would be "prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, which will include long-term prison sentences."
Harris was also asked to respond to Trump's charge that his numerous prosecutions reflect a "weaponization of the Justice Department."
International policy
Harris tells Trump that "the American people have a right to rely on a president who understands the significance of America's role."
ABC devoted the widest variety of specific questions to the topic of international policy—often with the implicitly hawkish perspective debate moderators tend to take (FAIR.org, 12/14/15, 2/11/20, 12/26/23). Muir set up his questions on Ukraine with a prelude that left little doubt what the right answers would be:
It has been the position of the Biden administration that we must defend Ukraine from Russia, from Vladimir Putin, to defend their sovereignty, their democracy, that it's in America's best interest to do so, arguing that if Putin wins he may be emboldened to move even further into other countries.
Muir then asked Trump, "Do you want Ukraine to win this war?"—evoking an aspiration for a military victory in the conflict that has seemed improbable at least since the failure of Kiev's counteroffensive in the spring of 2023 (FAIR.org, 9/15/23). Failing to get the response he wanted, Muir reframed the issue as a matter of making America great: "Do you believe it's in the US best interests for Ukraine to win this war? Yes or no?"
For her part, Harris was asked, "As commander in chief, if elected, how would you deal with Vladimir Putin, and would it be any different from what we're seeing from President Biden?"—and also, in response to a false Trump claim, "Have you ever met Vladimir Putin?"
Muir asked about the end of the US's 19-year occupation of Afghanistan—presented as a shameful moment, as he invoked "the soldiers who died in the chaotic withdrawal." His questions to both Harris and Trump implicitly criticized their connection to the war's end: "Do you believe you bear any responsibility in the way that withdrawal played out?," Harris was asked, while Trump was asked to respond to Harris's accusation that "you began the negotiations with the Taliban."
ABC's moderators asked three questions about the Gaza crisis, which was framed as "the Israel/Hamas war and the hostages who are still being held, Americans among them," though Muir went on to note that "an estimated 40,000 Palestinians are dead."
Harris was asked how she would "break through the stalemate"—and also to respond to Trump's charge that "you hate Israel." Muir asked Trump how he would "negotiate with Netanyahu and also Hamas in order to get the hostages out and prevent the killing of more innocent civilians in Gaza."
ABC asked one climate crisis question, addressed to both candidates. It took climate change as a fact and asked what the candidates would do to "fight" it. While not a particularly probing question—and disconnected from the debate's discussions of fracking—it's a slight improvement over previous presidential debates that have ignored the vital topic altogether (FAIR.org, 10/19/16, 9/22/20).
Factchecking
Muir points out to Trump that "the FBI says overall violent crime is coming down in this country."
The presidential debate between Trump and then-candidate Biden was hosted in June by CNN, which made the remarkable decision to not attempt any factchecking during the live event (FAIR.org, 6/26/24). Post-debate factchecks turned up countless fabrications by Trump (and several by Biden), but that was entirely overwhelmed in the news coverage by pundits' focus on Biden's obvious stumbles.
ABC took a different tack, choosing to counter a few of Trump's more noteworthy lies. Post-debate analysis counted at least 30 falsehoods from Trump and only a few from Harris; Muir and Davis called out Trump four times and Harris none.
Muir and Davis intervened on some of Trump's most outlandish fictions. For instance, when Trump claimed that immigrants were "eating the pets of the people that live" in the communities they moved to, Muir noted that "there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community."
In addition to Muir's pushback against Trump's election fraud lies, Davis countered Trump's insistence that Democrats support "executing" babies, drily noting that "there is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it's born."
ABC also challenged a Trump falsehood that many prominent media outlets continued to propagate long after it was no longer even remotely true (FAIR.org, 11/10/22, 7/25/24): that violent crime is "through the roof." (As Muir pointed out, "The FBI says overall violent crime is coming down in this country.")
Of course, the vast majority of Trump's lies went unchecked, demonstrating the inherent failure of the debate format when one participant exhibits a flagrant disregard for honesty (FAIR.org, 10/9/20).
ABC did not explicitly correct any of Harris's claims, in part because there was less misinformation in her rhetoric. Some of Harris's more dubious statements were of the sort that are often found in corporate media, such as her allusion to the claim that Covid originated from a Chinese lab, when she blamed President Xi Jinping for "not giving us transparency about the origins of Covid." There is no more evidence for this than there is for immigrants eating pets in Ohio—but as it's a media-approved conspiracy theory (FAIR.org, 10/6/20, 6/28/21, 7/3/24), one would not expect debate moderators to call her out on it.
Research assistance: Elsie Carson-Holt
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