ABC anchor David Muir has dismissed the criticism he received after the Donald Trump/Kamala Harris TV debate of last week as “noise.”
Muir opted not to engage with the criticism leveled by Trump during a Monday appearance on Live with Kelly and Mark, calling the second assassination attempt on the former president “horrific,” while also suggesting people “lower the temperature” after Sunday’s incident.
Trump decried the debate as “THREE ON ONE” and vowed to not participate in a second one, and he specifically targeted Muir—once an anchor he doted over—over his performance. “His hair's not as good as it used to be,” Trump told a rally audience last week.
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“All of the noise that you hear afterward about you know, ‘Which candidate won the debate, did the moderators win or lose?’” Muir said on Kelly and Mark. “That's just noise.”
Muir did, however, defend his moderating alongside anchor Linsey Davis. He said the two and their ABC team hunkered down to prep for the debate, which marked the first—and potentially only—square-off between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris before the election.
“I believe it was our duty to ask the issues that that Americans care about,” Muir said, referencing their questions last week on the state of the economy, immigration, and abortion rights. “Those those types of questions—reproductive rights, Afghanistan, to bear any responsibility a peaceful transfer of power with the next election coming—these are all really important issues, the issues of our time.”
Donald Trump, left, and Kamala Harris at the ABC debate.
Win McNamee/Getty ImagesMuir, Davis, and ABC have come under intense scrutiny from Trump and other Republicans seeking to explain away the former president’s stumbles across the more than 90-minute telecast.
Republicans have tried to platform an anonymous whistleblower who has claimed in an alleged affidavit that ABC fed questions to Harris and assured her camp it would only fact-check Trump.
ABC denied to The Daily Beast last week it provided advance questions to Harris, and a source familiar with the matter dismissed the fact-check claims as untrue.
