Congressional Republicans, at all times keen to point out that they put pleasing Donald Trump far forward of doing something productive for his or her constituents, are calling for an investigation into the debate between Trump and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
Trump misplaced that debate badly. That loss is mirrored in post-debate polls the place Harris has seen a lift from a efficiency by which she was reassuringly calm whereas baiting Trump into dozens of unforced errors—together with his baseless claims about immigrants consuming pets.
However Republicans are actually claiming that ABC Information, which hosted the controversy, supplied Harris with questions upfront and promised to fact-check Trump whereas leaving Harris unhindered. They’re additionally claiming that there’s a “whistleblower” prepared to element how ABC helped Harris—although they’ll’t appear to determine if that whistleblower is useless or alive.
Trump’s actual drawback is that he’s a loser who by no means needs to confess he misplaced. That was true in 2020, and it’s nonetheless true right this moment. To cowl up his dropping, Trump employs a three-part plan: insist upfront that his opponents will cheat, declare to have received regardless of how badly he misplaced, and then unfold conspiracy theories about why he misplaced.
That actually suits the sample for the controversy. Days earlier than Harris and Trump met, Trump was already pushing his declare that ABC was going to offer Harris with the questions upfront.
When Trump was shellacked on stage, he got here right down to the spin room to toss out a sequence of clearly made-up numbers claiming that polls confirmed he had received. “It was the best debate, personally, that I have ever had,” Trump mentioned. “Polls are indicating that we got 90 percent, 60 percent, 72 percent, 71 percent and 89 percent.”
Throughout that look, Trump railed towards ABC for fact-checking 55 lies he informed through the debate. By the morning after the controversy, Trump was calling for the community to be punished.
“They ought to take away their license for the way they did that,” Trump informed Fox Information.
By the next day, this had develop into a full-bore conspiracy principle with Trump boosting claims made by “Leading Report,” a conspiracy web site created by a automobile wash proprietor and greatest identified for spreading false claims about COVID-19.
There seems to be completely no proof for this declare, or for the existence of this whistleblower, outdoors of some posts on Twitter. The claims originated from a Twitter account of an acknowledged MAGA supporter who wrote “I shall be releasing an affidavit from an ABC whistleblower concerning the controversy. I’ve simply signed a non-disclosure settlement with the legal professional of the whistleblower.” This declare was picked up and repeated by accounts with over 1 million followers.
On Friday, Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall referred to as for a congressional investigation and mentioned he would demand “all correspondence, records, and potential coordination” between ABC and Harris forward of the controversy.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, at all times close to the bleeding fringe of any conspiracy principle, was fast to pile on in a sequence of tweets culminating with a Sunday declare that this unknown whistleblower had died in a mysterious accident.
Greene then needed to stroll again her declare after it turned clear that the story she had cited got here from a faux information web site full of tales written utilizing AI—a web site that additionally tried to unfold a virus to anybody who adopted the hyperlink.
However even when the whistleblower isn’t useless, there’s apparently no proof that they’ve something to do with ABC or any data concerning the debate, or exist. ABC has denied the veracity of the right-wing claims.
The identical account that mentioned it was in contact with the whistleblower launched a portion of the claimed affidavit on Sunday. The affidavit contains claims that Harris was unfairly supplied with a podium “significantly smaller than that used by Donald Trump” to make her look higher and that there was an settlement to not ask her about “her brother-in-law, Tony West, who faces allegations of embezzling billions.”
Tony West is the chief authorized officer at Uber who previously negotiated a $13 billion JPMorgan Chase settlement over dangerous mortgage practices. The one claims that West has been accused of embezzlement got here from different unverified excessive MAGA accounts on Twitter. That declare has not been picked up by any information group, not even Fox or Newsmax.
As well as, the purported affidavit is riddled with typos and misspellings, has no place for the signature of an legal professional, and has completely no info that reveals the writer has any data of actions inside ABC.
The complete affidavit seems to be a poorly disguised try and get the false claims about West into the media.
However don’t count on that to cease Republicans from utilizing this excuse to fill that Hunter Biden laptop-shaped gap of their hearts.
