Debate Moderators Refuse To Acknowledge Trump Assassination

Nobody was surprised Tuesday night when the first — and likely only — 2024 presidential debate featured Donald Trump vs. Kamala Harris, David Muir, and Linsey Davis. Yet the level of corruption never ceases to amaze, this time in the form of Kamala’s ABC cronies neglecting to bring up the recent attempted murder of their political foe that occurred not two months ago.

You’d never know that the former and likely future president was shot in the head 59 days ago. And that it was at the hands of a crazed gunman who was allowed to scale the roof of a building near where President Trump was speaking even after bystanders saw him. And that the building was suspiciously left out of the security perimeter even though it was identified as a potential threat. And that snipers were supposedly told not to secure the roof of the building because the nearly flat roof was kind of “sloped.”

And that Democrats’ “Trump is Hitler” language might have had something to do with it.

No, Muir and Davis instead asked questions about a three-and-a-half-year-old (mostly peaceful) demonstration because that’s what Kamala Harris would rather talk about. Why would moderators generate discussion about Democrats inciting a would-be assassin when they can just keep recycling the fiction that Trump incited a violent mob in 2021? Here’s how Muir framed the ridiculous question:

I want to talk about the peaceful transfer of power, which of course we all know is a cornerstone of our democracy, and the role of a president in a moment of crisis. Mr. President, on Jan. 6, you told your supporters to march to the Capitol. You said you would be right there with them. The country and the world saw what played out at the Capitol that day, the officers coming under attack. Aides in the West Wing say you watched it unfold on television off the Oval Office. You did send out tweets, but it was more than two hours before you sent out that video message telling your supporters to go home. Is there anything you regret about what you did on that day? … Yes or no?

Imagine refusing to ask the current vice president whether she regrets any of her hateful anti-Trump rhetoric and the Biden administration’s weaponization of the federal government against Trump that may have inspired an armed nutbag to fire at his head, but asking the former president whether he regrets “anything about what [he] did on” Jan. 6, 2021, even after he explicitly told his supporters to protest “peacefully and patriotically.” (Which David Muir lied about, by the way.) You don’t hate the media enough.

As Trump said at the debate, he “probably took a bullet to the head because of the things that they say about me. They talk about democracy. I’m a threat to democracy. They’re the threat to democracy.” Correct. And the moment Trump brought up that uncomfy assassination topic, Muir pivoted because, you know, the moderators “ha[d] a lot to get to.”

Oh, they did get to lots of other things, important stuff too — like “reproductive rights,” “race and politics,” “Do you want Ukraine to win this war?” and fake “fact-checks” for Trump’s valid claims but nothing for Kamala’s whoppers.

As we rapidly approach Election Day — and with “election season,” early voting, and mail-in ballots practically already upon us — it’s pivotal to recognize the corporate media for what they are. If the debate did nothing else, it reminded us of their true colors. They aren’t biased. They don’t have a slant. ABC News and CNN and NBC and all the rest of the establishment media don’t “lean left.”

They are propagandists. They live and die for the regime. They are wholly and completely corrupt, a hostile force that exists to accrue power for Democrats. In short, they are the enemy.

In information warfare, it’s tough to beat an enemy, no matter how good your ground game is, if you don’t control the air. That’s why it’s so important to support real journalism like The Federalist, so our little cavalry can maximize our firepower against Democrat propagandists in their war of attrition. It’s time to send in the reinforcements and stop waiting for the left to friendly-fire. They won’t.

In the meantime, there’s an election to be won. And while David Muir and Linsey Davis might have chosen to forget the apex of political violence carried out against President Trump, voters haven’t.

Kylee Griswold is the editorial director of The Federalist. She previously worked as the copy editor for the Washington Examiner magazine and as an editor and producer at National Geographic. She holds a B.S. in Communication Arts/Speech and an A.S. in Criminal Justice and writes on topics including feminism and gender issues, religion, and the media. Follow her on Twitter @kyleezempel.