This is the most traumatic podcast ever. And iHeartRadio podcast. Chris Harrison and Lauren z E Ma Comedy from the home office in Austin, Texas. And Okay, we're going to dip our toe into it, just to dip.
Just testing the water, just to see how it feels.
We're gonna get into this political arena. And it's funny that we even have to say that with trepidation these days, because it says a lot about where we are. And maybe it's because we're all passionate and that's a good thing, and hopefully you do have a passion for what's going on in the political arena right now. We obviously have a huge election coming up, maybe the biggest ever, or maybe just feels like it's the biggest ever, because that's the way the media and the press wanteds to feel,
because that's what drives viewership. But one thing that Lauren and I wanted to dip our toe into is the debate last week, and it wasn't We're not going to get into who won, who lost, etc. You guys can debate that yourselves, and I'm sure you have your own opinions, and Laura and I have of our own opinions. What we love and what Lauren and I both grew up on is journalism and it's what struck us the most after that debate, and it's what has really the reason
we're talking about it. It's like, oh, guys, that debate was last week, Well it has carried on. What's happened. What happened in that debate last week is really you're seeing the ramifications and the ripple effects throughout this week, into the Sunday morning shows that I watched, into the interviews and the things that are happening on social media now. And that's what has driven the conversation in our house between Lauren and I, both of us journalism students, both
of us study journalism, love journalism. We talk about it a lot, and so the more we start talking about this, and especially after I saw the Sunday morning shows, I'm like, babe, we got to talk about this. Oh yeah, this was fascinating.
And another big thing happened on Sunday. I mean, there was a second apparent assassination attempt on a former president of the United States, and there's a journalistic angle we can get in there too, about how much that was covered or not. I mean, we were watching the Emmys on Sunday night and I turned to you and said, you know what's wild. Yeah, just a few years ago, if there had been an assassination attempt on a recent and any former president and a presidential candidate, it would
have affected the Awards show. It would have been brought up. I would venture to say, the hosts would have a set, opened the show and everybody, it's a heavy night in America tonight.
But I know the execs, I know they definitely would have said, let's start the show. We got to say something. This is one of the biggest news events in the world. A president has been they attempt to assassinate a president of the United States of America.
And we would have then they would have said, but we're all here together tonight, and we're going to, you know, do what we do best and try to find joy together and safety and being together, and we're going to try to make you laugh and have some fun tonight and go on as a country and be strong. That did not happen Sunday night. So that's another sort of
interesting just journalistic and media note. I think that I had and you know, you're right, there's been so much and how much you know, coverage that s getting or not. I mean, it's a little it's a little scary to me, however your feelings are. And we are not going to get into her who we're endorsing or not. We're not going to tell you who to vote for or not. I don't know.
We're all just moving pretty quickly through the news cycle.
And I think we've been talking about that really since the Trump Biden debate, is just how quickly the news cycle moves now. I mean the first assassination attempt, we were passed pretty fast.
I'm fifty three years old. I've almost now, in the last couple of months, have almost doubled assassination attempts in my lifetime.
It's wild.
And presidents of the United States. You know, I was not alive for the Kennedy assassination, so I mean, I remember when Reagan was shot, and now I'm watching two assassination attempts. And it's in the fact that that wasn't No one mentioned that on the red carpet last night, as you said, no one, Yes, there were no question.
At the Grammys a few years ago, I was there on the Grammy's red carpet for et and horribly that was when the Kobe Bryant helicopter crash happened. And we instantly went and I mean, Kobe was in entertainment, but he's an athlete, you know, It's not like it was an actor.
But we instantly were like, we have to ask people about this.
And it was really a hard thing to do as a reporter because people are there for this beautiful night. We were even breaking the news to some people, but we said, we have to ask them about this. And I don't think that happened last night that any of the reporters. I didn't see anybody asking about an assassination.
It's aptitude, it was, and what does that say about us as a people? What does that say about us as a society as a country right now? And the reason that I brought up the debate is last week ABC hosted the debate. The debate moderators were David Muir, who is the head and the face and the hair of ABC News right now, Yes have great hair, and Lindsey Davis, a lesser known I think reporter at a news and so the two of them moderated the debate
between Trump and Kamala Harris. And again, don't care who you think one or lost, nor should you care who I think one or lost. But what I found debatable pun intended, was the lack of journalistic integrity, just the lack of journalism. It was embarrassing, the display of journalism.
And I know, whether you sit on the right or the left, has this deep moving feeling of who of how you think my last comments probably weigh on you, but regardless, and I somehow we have to be able to dissect this pull away, the politics of it, and just look at the journalistic integrity that we are now lacking in this country, and it's really glaring. The way David Muhr and Lindsay Davis behaved was abysmal, embarrassing, and disgusting as a journalist. And that's just purely as a journalist.
Now as a Republican Democrat, I don't care. You can't have what we had last week, and the ramifications of that are now being felt dramatically, And maybe maybe that was you know, how we say there's this pivot point, there's this tipping point, and things are swinging. Things have started swinging back the other way because of their behavior and what ABC News put on display, which was unbelievably every journal This should be studied in school. Is how embarrassing this was.
And to really just put in simple terms what you're talking about, Sara on the same page. You mean that they didn't fact check both sides. You mean the way the questions were asked. I'm speaking for you, but yeah, no, all these are Yeah, I mean the attitude of like sort of the the way things were phrased positive versus negative between the two candidates, and when they were being asked questions. I was watching it going. I mean, look again,
we won't get into who won or lost. I do think that one candidate got pretty riled up and the other candidate was a lot more polished in her presentation.
And you know who I'm talking about, But I.
Think that I was watching it going, but they're kind of only coming at him, and I my gauge and our gauge at ET used to be like, look, sometimes it's hard because you're in media. Most people in big media organizations are coastal. They're you know, they're either in LA or New York. And we used to try to say, remember, our audience is the middle of the country and what are they watching and how what are they interested in?
We need to be in touch with them, so I you know, I'm texting like my friends and the debate women who live in Missouri and Texas, and you know, I'm in Iowa, the middle of the country, and many of them are Kamala supporters. But they were going, I'm this debate isn't feeling two sided. And I think it was a mistake on ABC's part because a lot of people had just watched Biden and Trump on CNN, and CNN handled it much better. They kept it neutral. They
just asked the questions. They didn't fact check at all, which I think was the right choice, because it is it is too hard to fact check in the moment. It is it's only an hour and a half. Things are happening so quickly, you're going back and forth, you're listening. It's I just think it's too hard to fact check in the moment. And when you're only fact checking one person, well that's just a glaring obvious bias. Whatever you're politically is, whatever it is, it's making it look like you lean
one way. And as journalists, I know that our media has gotten so so like everybody has a brand, you know, Fox is this way or MSNBC's this way. But when you're conducting a debate between two presidential candidates, this is a big deal. This is a big stage. This matters, and I thought that they handled it really, really poorly.
My guess is there will be financial ramifications. I know there are viewer ramifications that people have. I can't wait for more ratings to come out. I find it interesting that they torpedo David Muir's career this way. David, and maybe he did it on his own, but I doubt it because that's not usually how these things work. It's it comes from higher up, and that the executives, and you know, the president of ABC who is best friends with Kamala Harris. I mean the way this started out,
and again there is an affidavit out. We're going to talk about that here in a little bit and we'll read through that. But Dana Walden, who's the president of ABC, in charge of ABC News and in charge of the debate, is best friends with Kamala Harris. They are best friends. She introduced Kamala to her husband. That's how they met. I was trying to put myself in Dana Walden's shoes, and the if my best friend was running for president, it is impossible for me to be unbiased. It's impossible.
It's my best friend and my best friend in the world. I was at your wedding, I've watched your kids be born. It's I don't blame her for being biased. You should be biased. We know who she's voting for. We know who she loves and who she's talking to on the daily, who she's giving advice to on how to act and how to be in these speeches and debates and how to handle Trump. So this isn't breaking news that there's
a bias. It's just I can't believe that we all just sat back and watched this unfold and then in any way our surprise that when the debate happened on her network there was a very glaring bias. It's like, we can't have one plus one and we get two and go, oh, that's a shock.
See I disagree. I think it's possible. I just think you have to own it. And the reason I say I think it's possible, and maybe it's from a hopeful place, but in this world, I think it's impossible for people to not.
Know each other. Like by that, I mean when you're talking about the world of like.
Really high up media executives, politicians, Like this is an elite class of people where people.
Are going to know each other and it's small circles.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
They meet each other at party, they introduce each other to people, like Trump knows a bunch of people high up, but he's I mean, I think him and Sean Hannity are pretty good friends at Fox, Like after the assassination attempt, Sean said he'd talked to the President and spoke to the president like, You're gonna have relationships with people because you cover them intimately as reporters. But what you have to do when you're on a stage is you have
to put that aside. And I don't know what the inner workings were happening at ABC, but I do know that Dana Walden was asked about this on the red carpet at the Emmy's by Mark Malkin.
He's a reporter with Variety. Mark and I were always friendly, and I'm glad he asked her this.
Yeah, Mark, kudos to you for being a journalist and asking the question.
He asked her, what you know people are I think you put it people on the far right, which I would disagree with a little bit. I think more than that are concerned that there was a bias in the debate. And I'm paraphrasing him here and she said, and I'm borderline direct quoting her here. She said, I don't even want to dignify that with an answer. And I thought that was arrogant. Dignify that with an answer. You run
the network. It's known that this candidate is a very good friend of yours, and you're talking about the American people voting for their next president based on what was on your network. You're the ones who got the debate. Dignify that with an answer. Address that. And if nothing was going awry behind the scenes, if nothing was you know, favorable to one person, then you should be able to just own that and answer it wholeheartedly and say listen, I hear, and we just and you should say, I
talk to my people behind the scenes. I said, listen, you guys, Kama and I have a relationship. I want to make sure we treat both people fairly. I want to make sure this is really done right. That's what you should be saying as an executive, as a leader.
And that's her answer to that makes the smoke even heavier. And where there is that much heavy smoke, now there's fire. And so again, I think if you want to seem like you are truly an unbiased news organization, which look, ABC is notoriously not. They are notoriously not.
Do you feel that way?
I know they're not. Well, I mean we can get maybe we've.
Had some personal experience. I see what you're reference.
I was worn by people. Look, I'll tell you a little inside baseball. When I was at ABC, and I was there for two decades, there is there's two factions to ABC. There's the you know, television side, there's entertainment, and then there's the fifty thousand pound gorilla, which was always ABC News. And there's a real contentious environment and relationship between those two. ABC News is that fifty thousand
pound gorilla that runs ABC. People have very little say over what ABC News does, and so there's already a very contentious relationship there and what they pulled off. Again, if I was Dana Walton, I would have come out because obviously you don't want to seem like you're onlike you're biased, and if she had come out before the debate said look, I just want to let you guys know, I am recusing myself. I have nothing to do with this debate. You know, clearly everybody knows where my loyalties lie.
It's with Kamala. She's a very dear friend. I hope she becomes president of the United States. I am recusing myself. ABC News will no, I don't know what's going on, and even if it's not true, I would have appreciated that the fact that even after the mess, that's the debacle that was ABC News, when she had the opportunity to speak to a very friendly reporter on the red carpet to say, I'm not going to even dignify that,
Like you said, you're a news organization. Not only do you need to dignify that, you owe us, that you owe that to the country. That's your job. And so yeah, to basically stick up your middle finger and say FU instead of hey, look, you know, she's my friend, she's my girl. But I promise you ABC News is above board. How they chose to handle this had nothing to do with me. I but what makes me worried. And again
this is just my maybe it's reality TV brain. I'm also a journalist, and I also know I know ABC News and I know the way they work. This worries me. The Affidavid that came out yesterday.
Right so, and what.
Strikes me is that counsel got to her and said, do not talk about this because what she did, what she really did last night on the red carpet, was not put anything in print that she didn't have anything to do with this. So it later because if there is a whistleblower, and this whistleblower supposedly allegedly has recordings, emails, et cetera, and if she is involved in that, she would have perjured herself. She would have lied. They have her on record. You can't go on record not knowing
what's out there. If she goes on record and says I had nothing to do with this, ABC News had nothing to do with this, you know, et cetera, that we were completely unbiased. We didn't fix this debate in favor of one of the politicians. If she goes on record, in the fact that she didn't go on record last night makes me you're right.
Sometimes sometimes your reality TV brain is very helpful. So there is this on Twitter. There's this alleged affidavit from an employee of ABC News talking about how they saw these different biases in the debate, I mean, in the
way the debate would be handled. And the claims in this alleged affidavit are that Harris's team was given access to sample questions before the debate, which would be a big allegation, that they were told she would be she would look different on camera than trumpet a get a sized podium better for her, and get visually like a better look apparently, and that she was able to take certain things off the table, was allowed to say some topics were restricted, and that the Trump team was never
given that option. So the affidavit also says that at ABC, you know, there's just generally a bias against Trump within the organization and that if you are a Trump supporter you would fear retribution there. So it's circulating on Twitter. It's been picked up by big Twitter personalities. Bill Ackman tweeted it today and he tagged Bob Iger in the
tweet and said, Bob address this. Bill Ackman is a big successful financial guy, And I mean, especially if she was given sample questions that would be an incredible violation.
To me, what struck me And there was one moment in the debate where I thought that it just felt too like David Mere and Lindsay Davis were two on the ready with the fact check. Why would they have talked to a city manager in Ohio, oh about the eating the cats like that? That to me, like that was like, why would you to fact checked that, like unless you knew there was a possibility that was going to come. But that was the oddest fact check of all.
What CNN did was they decided, Jake Tapper and them at CNN decided, hey, let's just let this go. We're not going to fact check it all because honestly, as you said, fact checking in real time is impossible. Honestly, fact checking post debate is impossible because now the fact checkers are being fact checked and it's very subjective and so there's a lot that goes into that. But real time fact checking is virtually impossible. And obviously Trump said
things that weren't true. Kamala Harris said a ton of things that weren't true, and that has come to light. And what is interesting, and I don't know, if we want to talk more about the AFFI David, but the ripple effect of this ABC debacle on CNN and now even on ABC.
Well, I was going to say, that's who are we watching.
We're watching Martha Raddits. George Stephanopolis, who worked in the Clinton administration, has a Sunday morning show. But Martha Raddits, who is a long time, very good journalist, took over that was doing the show yesterday Sunday a couple days ago. And what I found interesting is Martha Raddits, And again this is just this is my perception. I think there is probably that debate probably created a great divide at
ABC News. My guess is there is turmoil behind the scenes at ABC News of real journalists who said, are you effing kidding me? That was a joke. You just absolutely torpedoed any amount of credibility ABC News had and Martha Raddits and some of these journalists are very credible and very good at what they do. My guess is Martha Raddits went on that show and was like, FI you, I'm going to actually do my job. I'm going to
be a journalist. And she started to the other side started calling out Kamala Harris's in consistencies, lies stories, tall tales she was telling during the debate.
I think the biggest one was that Vice President Harris said that there were no troops in an active war war zones, no American troops and active war zones anywhere in the country. And they're actually like a few thousand troops. And yes, I shout out to you know the social media, real troops posted a video of them watching the debate while in an active war zones.
Said well then who are we?
Yeah?
And so Martha had a guest on a governor, a Democratic governor, and she said, why would Kamala Harris say that? It is a fact. She said, I have covered troops and war zones. I know they are American troops and war zones right now. Why would she say that? And she really seemed I agree with you. This is just
my perception, but she seemed agitated. And my instant thought was there is frustration behind the scenes, because when you're a journalist, your reputation matters, and then the reputation of the entity workform matters, and it can be very frustrating because you and we all know this.
Anybody knows this.
You're a member of your company and you don't have control over the choices everybody in the company makes, but you're aligned with it. And that's really really frustrating. And so I one hundred percent think there's fallout happening there behind the scenes.
Ratings are in now for David Muir and ABC News Tonight, World News, Tonight, World News, Tonight, Thank You, down twelve percent. A million viewers over three days, is what they're saying. So definitely taking a hit where it matters most, and that is viewership, and that is money, and that's advertising. So you can't disregard. There is a pretty grand pushback to their behavior.
And apparently David Muhir went on I didn't watch the morning shows, but I guess he went on Live with Kelly and Mark.
So some more inside baseball. So what happens in a situation like this is everybody is putting their heads together, wringing their hands, figuring out what to do. The ABC Comms team will put forth an idea. This is how this works. David Muhr can't go on Good Morning Mayor. There's only two places he can go right now to talk Good Morning America or live with Kelly and Mark. Both are part of the ABC family.
And you mean to talk to say, we.
Got to get David mure out.
We got to get him out there. We've got to get in front of he.
This is a disaster. ABC News is melting down. It's a huge public relations hit. We got to get David Muir out there. David put on blue jeans, boots, look like the everyday guy. Go on the friendliest place on earth for you with Kelly and Mark. They're not going to push you. They're not going to ask any tough questions. You need to smile. I know this because I was given the same speech by this same people. Go out and do the dance. David muirr Is doing the dance.
I'm curious. I would love to talk to him if he's feeling the same thing I felt back when he was being pushed out. So David Muir went out into the foxhole, onto the front lines by himself with Kelly and Mark to gaslight us. Make us all seem crazy for uh thinking we saw what we all know we saw in the debate.
He said something like and again I'm borderline direct quoting, but admittedly paraphrasing here.
I have it, Oh, you have it.
David Muir says our duty is to ask the issues Americans care about, the important issues of our time, and then he goes on to list issues as if we don't know what issues are. He's listening the issues that we talked about in the debate, David. No one is negating the fact that we all wanted to hear you talk about the issues and some of the questions, some of the questions you and Lindsey actually asked, were pertinent and they were right questions you should ask in a debate.
Nobody is giving you a hard time about.
That, right, He's totally dodging and missed and changing the direction on what the actual issue is.
The issue that people feel is.
Donald Trump was fact checked five times, I think, and Kamala Harris was not fact checked at all, and it has later come out that.
Many things she said were false. So that's that simple.
Thing right there. No matter how you feel politically, that's why it felt biased. That's why it felt that way.
And one of the things the affidavit that we've mentioned in this podcast alleges, and this is one of the things that of course Kelly and Mark are never going
to ask, but someone should ask. Well, David, it's not that you didn't ask a couple of good questions, but it's what you chose to ask Donald Trump, and you didn't ask that would have put Kamala under pressure, and that is Joe Biden's mental health, That is Kamala's brother in law, which honestly, I don't think that should have been aspen either.
Oh, you're being specific to the effigy, right, These these are the effidavit and these are so I know, I just don't want to confuse people, but these.
Are things that no one's saying. You didn't ask questions. We know you and lindsay ask questions. But you also chose to skip over the fact that Donald Trump there was an assassination attempt against him, he was shot, and that was never mentioned. Yet you chose to bring up January sixth, which honestly is fine, but you got to defend that now instead of going on and now gaslighting us, being somewhat glib on Kelly and Mark and just making us seem crazy that we didn't just watch what we watched.
Well, he just didn't address it at all. That's the thing.
And that's why I call it misdirection because it's sort of he's making this like generally positive statement, like our job is to ask the tough questions. And then and then he turns to the audience on this appearance with Live with Kelly and Mark and says, and you know, and and the power is yours. The power is in your hands everybody to vote. And so then people in the audience applaud because you know, they probably feel like they've got to applaud that, and maybe there was even an applause.
Su went on, this is how it goes, he said, quote all the noise you hear afterwards is just noise. You have the power. And then, as you just said, the stage manager tells every applause.
So it's this very curated, just sort of generic positive thing. I mean, if I can read your quote again on what he said here, he said, our duty is to ask the issues Americans care about, the important issues of our time. You could apply that that has nothing to do with the bias.
That people.
Themselves with that generic so it's it's complete misdirection. It's let's go create this appearance of a positive thing that we can attach to him. Now because the ratings are down twelve percent a million people in just a few days, and that's really bad for us, and that's really bad for us in our bottom line. And yeah, I think that it it's and I want to you know, circle his a little more actually happened.
Well, here you go ahead, a.
Little more has happened with this alleged affidavit. Look, I do want to keep calling it alleged because this Affidavid is circulating on Twitter. We don't it's not from, you know, a verified legacy media organization. I don't know where it's come from. But like I said earlier in the podcast, Bill Ackman, who's a big presence on Twitter, I'll pull up how many followers he has right now. He has
one point four million followers on Twitter. And I think he might be a Disney shareholder because he has tweeted at ABC at Bob Eiger, who runs Disney. He says they should directly address the specific accusations of this whistleblower. Iiger Disney should launch a full investigation. He wants the moderators of the debate to more directly address the accusations leveled in this apparent affidavit. He says Disney is subject to sec over the reputation of ABC is material to
the value of Disney. As such, the company must address the specific allegations made by this whistleblower and cannot mislead the market by issuing a statement which purports to address the issues identified but does not so what he's talking about.
There is actually.
Also since we recorded the podcast ABC in addition to the Dana Walsh interview on the Red Carpet where she said she didn't want to dignify Oh, Dana Walder's so sorry, where she said she didn't want to dignify things, ABC also and like nobody in the media has covered this. I mean that's my other kind of big thing here is again, whatever your political leaning is, we have to be able to ask questions and investigate both sides.
You can't be We live too much in a time now.
And I do want to say, again, whatever your political leaning, I don't think I think both parties are responsible for this. And I do think Donald Trump started a lot of this rhetoric. He was he he came into the political world as an entertainer, and he made big statements and he created a lot of chaos and I'm not saying he's not responsible for that here, even though I do think there was more of a bias against him in
the debate. But ABC released a statement, and what the statement says is, let me pull it up here and quote it. And I've only seen it in the Daily Beast. It's not like this is getting picked up everywhere. The statement to the Daily Beast. ABC News followed the debate rules that both campaigns agreed on, which clearly states no topics or questions will be shared in advance with campaigns
or candidates. So what Bill Ackman is pointing out here is that that statement doesn't address a lot that this alleged AffA David from an alleged whistleblower is accusing ABC of doing, like that it was that they allegedly shared sample questions, or that they allegedly had talks with Kamala's team but not Trump's team.
And they fixed top they set topics that certain they would leave certain things out, like we're not going to question when did you know about Joe Biden's mental decline? When did you So they fixed topics as well that we're yes the Affidavid, Yeah, that's it. I'm just telling you what's in the.
Affidavid, Yes, so I think that you know, again, we just need to be able to investigate, to question like what might be.
I don't know.
I think people like go around now calling everything, oh, well that's a conspiracy theory, and that's what the far left the far right things. And you know, we do live in this age of the danger of bad information.
But that's why we have to investigate things even more.
And here's the problem. And you know, there has been plenty of time and red carpets with Dana Walden to clear this up. There's now been an interview with Kelly and Mark to clear this up.
Like, just address it, just say it's false.
As you said, Dana was just arrogant and just kind of gave us all the middle finger. And now David Muir just gaslighted everybody saying, guys, you didn't see what you just saw. Look over here, like he's David Copperfield and just like he went on to say again it was so glib. Guys, in a debate. As a moderator, we asked questions and then you let them answer. Yes,
by the way, that's not exactly how the debate went. So, yeah, the fact that they have now had opportunity, and every opportunity they are very carefully, very scripted, and very carefully dancing around the actual allegations is what makes you even more suspicious. You're making it worse. And I'm just telling you this, David Muhror, be careful. They're going to keep pushing you out there, They're going to tell you to do the dance. Just be careful. Just make sure there's
people not acting like they're behind you. They should be in front of you, they should be beside you. Don't take the fall in this.
Hmmm little thing called escape coat.
Yes, be careful, David Muir, Elsie, thanks for diving into this.
Well here we go. What do we have another month? Yeah, let's have a glass of wine. Everybody all my love.
Thank you for being with us, and we will continue to have these honest conversations with you as that's what we do. And I thank you guys, appreciate that, and we will do it again next time because we have a lot more to talk about. Thanks for listening. Follow us on Instagram at the most dramatic pod ever and make sure to write us a review and leave us five stars. I'll talk to you next time.