Congressional Republicans, always eager to show that they put pleasing Donald Trump far ahead of doing anything productive for their constituents, are calling for an investigation into the debate between Trump and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
Trump lost that debate badly. That loss is reflected in post-debate polls where Harris has seen a boost from a performance in which she was reassuringly calm while baiting Trump into dozens of unforced errors—including his baseless claims about immigrants eating pets.
But Republicans are now claiming that ABC News, which hosted the debate, provided Harris with questions in advance and promised to fact-check Trump while leaving Harris unhindered. They’re also claiming that there is a “whistleblower” willing to detail how ABC helped Harris—though they can’t seem to decide if that whistleblower is dead or alive.
Trump’s real problem is that he’s a loser who never wants to admit he lost. That was true in 2020, and it’s still true today. To cover up his losing, Trump employs a three-part plan: insist in advance that his opponents will cheat, claim to have won no matter how badly he lost, and then spread conspiracy theories about why he lost.
That certainly fits the pattern for the debate. Days before Harris and Trump met, Trump was already pushing his claim that ABC was going to provide Harris with the questions in advance.
When Trump was shellacked on stage, he came down to the spin room to toss out a series of numbers that seemed made-up, claiming that polls showed he had won. “It was the best debate, personally, that I have ever had,” Trump said. “Polls are indicating that we got 90 percent, 60 percent, 72 percent, 71 percent and 89 percent.” He didn’t answer a reporter’s questions about where he got those numbers—though a review of his social media suggest he got them from some bogus right-wing “polls.”
During that appearance, Trump railed against ABC for fact-checking 55 lies he told during the debate. By the morning after the debate, Trump was calling for the network to be punished.
“They ought to take away their license for the way they did that,” Trump told Fox News.
By the following day, this had become a full-bore conspiracy theory with Trump boosting claims made by “Leading Report,” a conspiracy site created by a car wash owner and best known for spreading false claims about COVID-19.
There appears to be absolutely no evidence for this claim, or for the existence of this whistleblower, outside of some posts on Twitter. The claims originated from a Twitter account of an acknowledged MAGA supporter who wrote "I will be releasing an affidavit from an ABC whistleblower regarding the debate. I have just signed a non-disclosure agreement with the attorney of the whistleblower.” This claim was picked up and repeated by accounts with over 1 million followers.
On Friday, Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall called for a congressional investigation and said he would demand “all correspondence, records, and potential coordination” between ABC and Harris ahead of the debate.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, always near the bleeding edge of any conspiracy theory, was quick to pile on in a series of tweets culminating with a Sunday claim that this unknown whistleblower had died in a mysterious accident.
Greene then had to walk back her claim after it became clear that the story she had cited came from a fake news site filled with stories written using AI—a site that also attempted to spread a virus to anyone who followed the link.
But even if the whistleblower isn’t dead, there’s apparently no evidence that they have anything to do with ABC or any knowledge about the debate, or exist. ABC has denied the veracity of the right-wing claims.
The same account that said it was in touch with the whistleblower released a portion of the claimed affidavit on Sunday. The affidavit includes claims that Harris was unfairly provided with a podium “significantly smaller than that used by Donald Trump” to make her look better and that there was an agreement to not ask her about “her brother-in-law, Tony West, who faces allegations of embezzling billions.”
Tony West is the chief legal officer at Uber who formerly negotiated a $13 billion JPMorgan Chase settlement over bad mortgage practices. The only claims that West has been accused of embezzlement came from other unverified extreme MAGA accounts on Twitter. That claim has not been picked up by any news organization, not even Fox or Newsmax.
In addition, the purported affidavit is riddled with typos and misspellings, has no place for the signature of an attorney, and has absolutely no information that shows the author has any knowledge of activities inside ABC.
The entire affidavit appears to be a poorly disguised attempt to get the false claims about West into the media.
But don’t expect that to stop Republicans from using this excuse to fill that Hunter Biden laptop-shaped hole in their hearts.
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