Trump attacks ABC moderators and suggests he might withdraw from debate

Former President Trump hinted that he might withdraw from the debate with Vice President Kamala Harris scheduled for September 10 on ABC News after watching the network’s Sunday broadcasts.

Trump attacked ABC on Monday at a campaign rally in Falls Church, Virginia, as “by far the most unfair network” and suggested ABC should be “banned,” adding that he thought CNN was fair in his first debate with President Biden.

“I watched it this weekend and it’s the worst of all the networks,” Trump said of ABC. “George Slopadopalous and all the other people. The worst.”

Trump also brought up the dispute between his campaign and Harris’s team over the rules of the debate, including whether the candidates’ microphones will be turned off when they have finished speaking.

Former President Trump sues ABC News and George Stephanopoulos have been sued for defamation after the anchor repeatedly said on-air that the former president had been “convicted of rape” during a March 10 interview with Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C.

“They had this guy Jonathan Karl, who is a lightweight,” he said of ABC’s chief Washington correspondent. “He asked questions of Tom Cotton, who was fantastic, by the way. Only an absolute professional could have survived that interview.”

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“I saw this group talk to Biden about Vanilla Ice Cream, and I saw them go after Tom Cotton, and Tom Cotton handled it in his stride. When you see Jonathan Karl, who is terrible, I mean, he’s just terrible, just an average human being,” he added. “But they tell him what to do.”

He then sharply criticized the Sunday panel of “This Week,” which included former interim chair of the Democratic National Committee Donna Brazile, accusing her of feeding Hillary Clinton topics for a town hall meeting in the run-up to the 2016 election campaign.

Brazile wrote in an essay for Time Magazine In 2017, she shared potential topics for a CNN town hall with the Hillary Clinton campaign while serving as vice chair of the DNC, Politico reported. CNN fired Brazile as a staffer after the news became public.

Trum also mentioned Dana Walden, a high-ranking Disney executive whose portfolio includes ABC News, as one of Harris’ closest friends. Walden and Harris have known each other since 1994, while their husbands Matt Walden and Doug Emhoff have known each other since the 1980s.

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Trump said the “hostility” he observed this weekend made him question why he agreed to a debate with ABC.

“Let’s do it with another network. That’s what I want to do,” he said. “You know, I won because of the debates, ask Biden.”

“I want to have a fair debate and, you know, they can ask me tough questions,” he added. “I don’t mind. I think I’ve heard them all from you, I hear them every day. But I think it’s very unfair, by far the most unfair network. I think worse than CNN, worse than NBC, which is really hard to believe, and CBS is probably the best of the bunch.”

The network’s primetime debate is scheduled for September 10 and will be moderated by ABC anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis.

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