With World News Tonight anchor David Muir co-moderating Tuesday’s presidential debate, co-hosting duties for the hour-long pre-game show fell to This Week co-hosts and longtime ABC correspondent Jonathan Karl and Martha Raddatz alongside chief White House correspondent Mary Bruce and senior congressional correspondent Rachel Scott. Simply put, it was a disaster of the highest proportions.
From leftist fear-mongering to dismissal of the issues, ABC bolstered why we found their flagship evening newscast to be 100 percent positive toward Kamala Harris and 93 percent negative Kamala Harris. In essence, they set the table for what would be the worst presidential debate of all time that would transpire with Muir and ABC News Live anchor Linsey Davis.
Moments after welcoming in viewers, Karl dispatched with substance to attack Trump:
Kamala Harris is now the Democratic nominee without competing in a single primary. Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, stands indicted for his efforts to overturn the last election and has suggested he won’t accept the results of this one if he doesn’t win.
Bruce then fawned over Harris’s debate preparation, gushing over her plan “to really reintroduce herself to voters, remind them of her proposals and her policies, and then to pivot and go on the attack.”
Moments later, Karl even showed his disgust with “the issues” voters care about in favor of the apocalyptic rhetoric about Trump:
ABC’s Jonathan Karl and Martha Raddatz are co-hosting the pre-#debate show, dismissing the idea of “talking about the issues” because what’s more important, they claim, is “or the first time you have a president who is talking about retribution against his enemies if he gets back… pic.twitter.com/cFFrO6jPOH
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) September 11, 2024
As part of that, the panel then invoked January 6 and Scott’s showdown with Trump at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ):
When it came to those pesky issues, they eventually got there and started with the economy. For that, however, they went to Bruce to defend Harris:
She knows that it is top of mind for so many of those voters and that she is walking this fine line, as Rebecca described. She’s proud of her record with Joe Biden, the Bidenomics record, but she knows she has to build on that and make clear to voters what she would do differently, how she would make a difference in their actual wallets. It’s one of the few policy areas that she’s gone into the most detail of so far. She knows that she has to continue to make that argument.
They moved next to the topic voters often place second behind the economy and its litany of subcategories: immigration.
There, it was a full-blown disaster, down to the predictable declarations from Karl and Bruce that Harris “was not the border czar”:
Karl huffed that “Trump’s been taking a hardline on this issue for a long, long time” while Scott painted securing the border as “us[ing] the National Guard and even the military to target — we’re talking about 15 million to 20 million people possibly.”
Karl scoffed at this, huffing “the logistics are that are beyond” reason before telling Bruce that Harris is “not the border czar.”
Bruce acted like she’s Harris’s personal assistant:
She knows tonight that she has to make clear to voters really what her role was here. She was not the border czar. She was never tasked with border security as trump has argued. She was put in charge of addressing the root causes of immigration, but it is certainly safe to say they know this is a vulnerability for her. She has braced for those attacks to come tonight.
ABC at least had the awareness to go down the list of issues voters care about most with crime being third. That awareness stopped there as they kicked dirt on Americans worried about their safety:
After defending Bidenomics as a success and insisting Kamala Harris “was not the border czar”, ABC’s pre-debate show then tackles crime by lecturing viewers to stop worrying about it because “for the last two years, we’ve seen significant decreases” pic.twitter.com/PXCscKR9UE
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) September 11, 2024
They then arrived at abortion, which tickled their fancies:
In another segment, Afghanistan received a brief mention, but it was lip service and, even then, ABC couldn’t get its ducks in a row:
ABC’s Jonathan Karl and Martha Raddatz completely bungle the name of what the House posthumously awarded to the 13 Americans killed at Abbey Gate.
They couldn’t remember it’s called the Congressional Gold Medal. pic.twitter.com/UY9awqo6Sd
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) September 11, 2024
Their pre-game show eventually came to end with this insulting decision:
Six minutes before the start of their #debate, ABC brings in Donna Brazile — the lady who gave Hillary Clinton questions to a debate — for analysis.
They closed by giving their audience the middle finger pic.twitter.com/wQno58AQR1
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) September 11, 2024
