Fortunately, we now have a whistleblower. And I'm going to tell you something, Maria. We're going to we're going to do what we can to bring ABC in and have them answer some questions and as well as have this whistleblower and see what's going on as they're trying [00:00:15] to tear down the First Amendment. I'm glad you mentioned this, because Fox News is reaching out to ABC for response to that affidavit. This affidavit and this whistleblower story is gaining traction. [00:00:31] Yes, absolutely. And as it should, we need to have find out what the truth is. And the thing is this we all saw it. We actually don't need a hearing to know what we saw. You just heard from Republican Representative Dan Meuser speaking to Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business, [00:00:47] and they're specifically talking about how they want to investigate a sketchy and unverified affidavit that conveniently alleges that ABC news rigged the presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris to give Harris the upper hand. [00:01:04] Now he is unfortunately far from the only conservative pushing this flimsy story. But first, we'll discuss the affidavit itself, and then we'll get to all the different right wingers who have been pushing this, some of whom have had to backpedal. [00:01:20] So the author of the anonymous affidavit claims to have worked for ABC news for ten years in various technical and administrative positions. The affidavit is dated September 9th, 2024, which was one day [00:01:35] before the debate itself. Now, according to that affidavit, ABC leadership agreed that Trump would be fact checked, while Kamala Harris would not face comparable scrutiny. Gave the Harris campaign, but not the Trump campaign, sample questions in [00:01:51] advance, and promised the Harris campaign that she would not be questioned on a number of, you know, provocative topics. I guess, including what Kamala Harris knew about Biden's cognitive decline before it became public and common knowledge. [00:02:10] Now, the affidavit was released by a random X user. So we should totally believe it. Named Black Insurrectionist. And they have a history of some pretty extreme pro MAGA comments, including the following. On August or 1st August, post describes Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota [00:02:29] Governor Tim Walz, her running mate, as disgusting creatures and their supporters as the delightful cesspool of humanity we are fighting here today who may be just plain, flat out disgusting pedophiles. Okay, so. Before we get to the heart of the discussion, I just want [00:02:45] to make a comment about that quote. If that's true, that he's an ABC whistleblower and he's at ABC right now, he sounds like the most biased guy in the building. I mean, I mean, you want to talk about bias against Republicans or Democrats. That guy seems like you can't be more biased against Democrats than that guy. [00:03:01] He's part of the news operation. I double down on finding the whistleblower. There is no whistleblower. He's not an ABC. This is the most obvious horse crap there was. And if he was at ABC, he'd be the problem. You literally have elected lawmakers running around with [00:03:19] this so-called whistleblowers affidavit. There is, with no verification, no concern about what the truth is. You have Maria Bartiromo like, oh, we we we reached out to ABC news to see and think about think about how this actually makes Donald Trump and the Republican Party look like just [00:03:35] really just take a second to take that in. No one's even thinking about the debate already. Like, I get it. It sucks when your preferred candidate didn't perform well. Okay. But this sweeping that they're doing for Trump, this like intense cope [00:03:51] that they're engaging in, it makes you guys look so sad and pathetic. Like just stop talking about the debate. You got to move on, move on, move on, move on. People are already focusing on other things. Don't make it worse than it already is, but they can't help themselves. Okay. So again, the affidavit was released by that random user. [00:04:10] And it is not only riddled with all sorts of typos, which should have also been a red flag for the Republicans talking about it and spreading it, but it also contains some interesting inconsistencies like this one. So, as Oliver Alexander writes, a real high quality leaked [00:04:26] whistleblower affidavit he worked for ABC news for ten years, has observed significant transformations in the nature of news reporting at ABC news since 1996, which was 28 years ago. Impressive to have observed this 18 years prior to working there. [00:04:42] Media mediaite's Jamie Fravel and Sarah Rumpf did an excellent job, also explaining why you should take this affidavit with a massive grain of salt or the tiniest grain of salt. To be clear, what we have is a document that could be created with any computer, [00:04:59] at least newer than Pearl Jam's debut album, which says it was created the day before the debate but offers nothing to prove that makes claims that seize upon the fevered social media posts of MAGA conspiracy theorists, [00:05:15] and provides zero details that would allow anyone to verify this person even exists, much less works for ABC news in a capacity to have knowledge of the debate, negotiations and planning. But anyway, it didn't stop the right wing. Go ahead Jake. [00:05:31] So, I'm going to get back to the debate in a second and how all this plays out. But this is a trick as old as time for the right wing. So you remember Rush Limbaugh used to go on his radio show, and he would ruffle a piece of paper next to the microphone and go, I have a fox. [00:05:50] Ladies and gentlemen, I have a fax. This fax just came in and it says Bill Clinton is part of an illegal, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anybody can send you a fax. Your brother could send you a fax. The fact that you have a fax doesn't mean anything. And these idiots are going around going, there's a fax online. [00:06:08] There's is there. There is a statement. People wrote sentences online, so it must be true. You saw a post on X from an unverified guy and you thought it must be true. - To Ted Cruz. - Deeply embarrassing if you mean it. Ted Cruz was spreading it, saying at first with three fire emojis [00:06:27] like any credible senator would do if this is accurate and I do not know that it is, it would constitute one of the gravest violations of journalist ethics in presidential debate history. I'm sure Ted Cruz is very concerned about journalistic ethics. If true, multiple senior people at ABC should be fired. [00:06:45] Who should be fired if it's false because you're spreading it right now? Point. That is a good point. Billionaire Bill Ackman has also posted about the affidavit too many times for us to show you all of them. So we'll stick to this one. So here he's claiming that David Muir is probably guilty [00:07:02] of the affidavits claims because he hasn't publicly acknowledged it. Why has David Muir not responded to the accusations leveled by the whistleblower. One has to draw a negative inference. Do they? They don't have to draw any. Yeah. You know, for my all my life. [00:07:19] Mainstream media has been telling me, oh, these titans of industry, the people on Wall Street are so smart. And the people who run companies are the greatest people in these political leaders are amazing. No, the people at the top are the guy behind the green curtain. All frauds like Bill Ackman can't put two thoughts together. [00:07:37] It's amazing. I'm sure he's smart in other regards. But when it comes to politics, it's amazing how often he sounds like an utter moron. Like you didn't think. Is that how you do investments? Like, oh, I don't need to verify anything. Oh, here's a statement on Twitter. It must be true. [00:07:52] Let me go make public statements about it. Hey, why haven't you apologized for it or talked about it? David Muir I don't know, because you're dingbat friend made it up a minute ago. Elon Musk reposted it, but my favorite was Marjorie Greene. Okay, so Marjorie Greene also tweeted about it, writing that the ABC [00:08:09] was the ABC whistleblower who claimed Kamala Harris was given debate. Questions ahead of the debate has died in a car crash, according to news reports. Not only do they not exist, they did not die in a car crash and there is no such news report. [00:08:25] There was a community note attached to that tweet, which made it abundantly clear that this is not true. But to her credit, she later walked back the statements. Wow. Okay, that this story appears to be false and I'm glad to hear it. [00:08:41] We need a serious investigation into the whistleblower. No, it's. - That part's false, too, you knucklehead. - Jesus Christ, I have a fax. Okay, so, guys, let me break this down. Because this is important. Because this happens over and over again. First of all, who has the most credibility on this story? [00:08:57] We do. Literally, let me explain. You know, the one time you guys all remember the one time they actually did pass questions and a news organization did bust the people passing the questions. That was Donna Brazile passing questions to Hillary Clinton's team. You know, who broke that story? We did okay, even though she's a Democrat. [00:09:14] We broke that story. Originally it was in Wikileaks. So Wikileaks gets credit. Major credit. We couldn't possibly know it without Wikileaks. But our reporter rifled through all the Wikileaks when there was a one of those releases, and he found this and he publicized it. [00:09:31] And when he when we started highlighting it and saying, oh my God, Donna Brazile gave questions to Hillary Clinton. Mainstream media treated us like we were kooks, like, oh, yeah. Right. I bet that happened. Sure. But we're like, no, no, no, guys, this isn't some random guy on Twitter or fax. [00:09:47] This is indisputable. This is a fact. And we had receipts because because of Wikileaks. And we showed them the receipts and they denied it for so long. Not just CNN, but all of mainstream media that is beloved Donna Brazile [00:10:03] and beloved Hillary Clinton. How dare you. And you guys must be supporting Trump at the time. We're doing Loser Donald segments, right? But we actually care about what's true or not true. So we broke that story of someone doing this exact thing. The difference was evidence there. There was clear evidence here. [00:10:22] There's no evidence. Truth matters. Look, the one thing that I do miss about the boomer cons, which the modern day Republicans have seemed to reject, is the notion of personal responsibility. Right. And honestly, Donald Trump performed poorly because he didn't prepare. [00:10:41] There were a lot of opportunities where he could have taken jabs at Kamala Harris. He could have hit back, but he failed to do so. And so personal responsibility, you know, lashing out at everyone else isn't going to make the situation better and in fact, makes Trump look worse. [00:10:56] - It makes him look pathetic. - Yeah. And I've got to say last two things on that. So at the debate, she's so easily manipulated. And we're sitting here watching it before we went on air and we could see her, you know, reeling him in from a mile away, trolling his ass. [00:11:14] Yeah. The minute she started talking about the rallies, we were like, here it comes again. She's trolling him and is he going to go? Is he going to bite? And he bites every time. So you could try to pretend that the moderators were on her side and oh my god, boohoo. They did a fact check. I can't believe that they bothered. [00:11:31] They care about facts. People should know whatever, whatever your thing is. Oh, they should have done more on Kamala Harris. By the way, you want to see fact checks on Kamala Harris and everyone else right here on The Young Turks, because when it's real facts, we check her, we check Biden, we check Trump, etc. But your guy couldn't see the easiest traps in the world in a debate [00:11:52] like the minute she said rally, I would know if I'm Trump. Oh, she's trying to bait me, but he's so dumb he didn't see it coming at all. And you know this MAGA. You know, he walked into every single one of those traps like, look do do do do. [00:12:08] Jesus Christ, what a dumb ass. All right. But the last thing is about this phenomenon. And you'll see it going forward to Republicans will start a rumor and then say, well, people are talking about it. I'm talking about because because people are talking about it. [00:12:23] But, brother, you're the one who started it in the first place, right? J.D. Vance is doing that exact thing about the eating pet stuff right now, right? Start a rumor and go. People are talking about it, and then you go, well, we got to address it. We don't we don't have a choice. We have to address it. Right. [00:12:39] So since people are talking about it and we have to address it, we have to say that somebody at ABC should get fired. But all along the way, you forgot there was no evidence that you made it up. And look, you can get super frustrated at MAGA guys. [00:12:55] And I do too, okay? Because they believe this stuff so readily. The minute anyone on the right says it, they believe it in a second, right? And I want to snap them out of it. And sometimes I want to snap some of the Democrats out of their wrong way of thinking, oh, Biden's not too old, etc. [00:13:11] We've been through this, right? But guys, the number one culprit is the guys who are taking advantage of them and going, we know the MAGA guys trust us. We can give them any lie we want and they'll just go for it. We'll tell them that the immigrants are eating cats and dogs. [00:13:28] We'll tell them we won the last election. We'll tell them that, oh, ABC's moderators were unfair to poor Donald Trump. They were in cahoots. We have a fax. We have a tweet. We have a tweet. So if you're MAGA, stop falling for it. Actually ask for evidence. [00:13:47] And but the main problem is the Republican politicians who do this again and again and again. Thanks for watching The Young Turks really appreciate it. Another way to show support is through YouTube memberships. You'll get to interact with us more. There's live chat emojis, badges. [00:14:04] You've got emojis of me Anna John Jr. So those are super fun. But you also get playback of our exclusive member only shows and specials right after they air. So all of that, all you got to do is click that join button right underneath the video. [00:14:19] Thank you.