Ahead of Tuesday night time’s presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, Trump is already fueling conspiracies that the occasion was “rigged” in Harris’ favor.
In latest days, Trump has promoted a collection of baseless conspiracies claiming that ABC News, which can host the talk, is basically colluding with the Harris marketing campaign. But that is simply one among a number of conspiracies the previous president has promoted in latest weeks, and his rants within the press, on-line and in fundraising emails included baseless accusations that immigrants had been flooding the nation to vote, claiming that the elections can be fraudulent. and the concept Harris grew to become the Democratic nominee in a “coup.”
These conspiracies look like taking middle stage as Trump heads to the talk stage on the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia at 9pm ET on Tuesday night time. And given his willingness to repeatedly interact within the unfold of misinformation in the course of the June debate with President Joe Biden, it’s doable that Trump will proceed to unfold many of those false narratives.
“I’m going into very hostile territory with ABC, … (which) I feel is the worst of all,” Trump told reporters on Saturday. “The motive I’m doing (the talk) is that he is the one one (Harris) would do it with, as a result of her greatest good friend is the pinnacle of the ABC.”
Trump was referring to Dana Walden, a Disney government whose portfolio consists of ABC News. Walden and her husband have been pals with Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, for greater than 30 years, and Walden has donated giant sums of cash to Harris’ earlier campaigns, in addition to plenty of different Democratic candidates.
ABC News, nevertheless, is one among solely 18 manufacturers that Walden oversees at Disney, and his involvement with ABC News doesn’t lengthen to the editorial stage, however is as an alternative targeted on company affairs akin to budgets and staffing. “All editorial choices are within the fingers of ABC News administration and ABC’s skilled journalists and producers, who adhere to the very best journalistic requirements,” the community stated in an announcement to the New York Times final month.
On Truth Social, Trump on Sunday shared a hyperlink to an article from the right-wing web site referred to as Just the News highlighting the connection between Harris and Walden. Next to the hyperlink Trump wrote: “Rigged?”
In a fundraising e mail, the Trump marketing campaign pushed the concept Harris would ask questions earlier than the talk: “Do you assume ABC will give Kamala each query forward of time? We already know that her pals within the liberal media would do ANYTHING to maintain her from feeling embarrassed in the identical manner Biden was!
Trump spent the previous week publishing different conspiracies surrounding the talk as effectively. On Saturday morning, he posted on Truth Social that Kamala Harris may use “synthetic bins or elevators” on the talk stage to make her seem taller.
“We spoke about this beforehand with former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg whereas he was in a debate and was not given a ‘move,’” Trump wrote. “It can be a type of dishonest, and Democrats cheat sufficient already.”
