Republican nominee former president Donald Trump stated on Wednesday that ABC’s broadcasting license should be revoked, accusing the network of bias toward Vice President Kamala Harris during the recent presidential debate.
Speaking on “Fox & Friends,” Trump criticized debate moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis for being “dishonest” by not correcting Harris’s false claims regarding the 2017 Charlottesville riot, his stance on in vitro fertilization (IVF), and The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.
Trump further argued that while the ABC moderators unfairly fact-checked him, they allowed Harris to make misleading statements without challenge, reinforcing his claims of media bias.
“They’re dishonest and because I think ABC took a big hit last night. I mean, to be honest, as a news organization they have to be licensed to do it. They ought to take away their license for the way they did that,” Trump said. “Bloodbath was referred for the economy. Everybody loved that term because as soon as they heard that word, it is kind of a vicious word. But, referring to the economy, they have created an economy, bloodbath is the word I used, and it was fine in that context. They were trying to make it sound like it was a riot or something. IVF, I was a leader on IVF. The IVF, which is in vitro fertilization, I was a leader on that. When I first heard about it, from the very beginning, I was one of the leaders on it and the Republican Party has been a leader on it. [Harris] was trying to say it was the opposite. The whole thing about abortion, [Muir] said, it was incredible. I think he corrected me about six times, and each time I was right.”


ABC moderators appeared to frequently fact-check Donald Trump during the debate while allowing Vice President Kamala Harris to make several false claims without challenge.
For instance, moderator Linsey Davis immediately pushed back on Trump when he stated that some Democratic states permit late-term abortions and even the killing of babies after a botched abortion.
In contrast, Harris falsely claimed that Trump intended to sign a national abortion ban if it reached his desk, despite Trump’s public opposition to such legislation, yet the moderators did not correct her.
Additionally, Harris repeated the misleading claim that Trump referred to Neo-Nazis and white supremacists as “very fine people” during the 2017 Charlottesville riot.
This statement has been widely debunked, including by fact-checking outlet Snopes, which rated the claim false in June. Snopes noted that Trump explicitly said those groups should be “condemned totally.”
Despite this, the moderators did not address or correct Harris’s remarks, adding to concerns about bias during the debate.
“She was using Charlottesville, and everybody, you take a look at [Fox News host] Laura Ingraham, she did it incredibly. She had it totally debunked, in fact she gets angry when people hear about Charlottesville, when they use that,” Trump told “Fox & Friends.” “Because what they did is they stopped and they didn’t put the following sentence in, and when they put the last sentence in, when it’s all put together, what I said was absolutely perfect. And ABC knew that, everybody knew that, frankly. I think they lost a lot of credibility.”
During the debate, ABC moderators did not fact-check Vice President Kamala Harris when she claimed that Donald Trump “intends on implementing” The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a conservative policy blueprint and personnel list aimed at guiding the next Republican president.
The Trump campaign has publicly distanced itself from the initiative, yet this was not addressed by the moderators.
In contrast, moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis fact-checked Trump when he alleged that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pet cats and ducks. They pointed out that local police had not received any credible reports supporting this claim, highlighting a discrepancy in the moderators’ handling of fact-checking between the two candidates.