Do Rigged Debates Matter?

"I actually think they should do a full internal investigation, hire an outside law firm. I don't know how much of this was planned in advance," Mark Penn, a former top adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton, told the John Solomon Reports podcast.

Penn is urging ABC News to launch a formal internal investigation into the planning and execution of the presidential debate to uncover whether there were any attempts to manipulate the debate's outcome.

"I don't know what they told the Harris campaign. I think the day after, suspicion here is really quite high, and I think a review of all their internal texts and emails really should be done by an independent party to find out to what extent they were planning on, in effect, you know, fact-checking just one candidate and, in effect, rigging the outcome of this debate," he said. "I think the situation demands nothing less than that."

ABC News will certainly not conduct any investigation. Still, when a former Clinton advisor says it was "rigged" against Trump, I think even those who wouldn't admit so publicly know that it wasn't conducted fairly. 

According to conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, there is growing sentiment among Americans that former President Donald Trump actually won the debate because of the perception the debate moderators were grossly biased.

“I think he knows that he is in the process of winning the debate on Tuesday night and I want to explain that. NFL fans are familiar with the phrase ‘upon further review, the officials have reversed the call on the field due to overwhelming evidence.’ Well, upon further review, the American public has decided that that debate was rigged,” Hewitt said during an appearance on Fox News. “It was absolutely in the tank by ABC and Disney to hurt the former president and help Kamala Harris.”

“When you go back and look at the deep, deep bias that manifested itself, it was as though lawfare had become mediafare and that, one example, not one question on China … And I think Donald Trump is reading internals, reading their polls and realizing the American people are disgusted with ABC, Kamala Harris did not answer one question directly and they’re moving towards him,” Hewitt added. “He’s winning.”

Related: This Focus Group Changed How I Feel About the Trump-Harris Debate

“Enormous tidal wave of reaction continues to come in. A debate isn’t over in a day. There was an enormous audience but there’s an enormous reaction to the face plant by ABC that’s being factored in,” Hewitt said. “It’s all working in the favor of the former president because people don’t like cheating and they viewed that debate as cheating. … This was on a scale we have never seen before. Every question, every answer, five, six fact-checks of Trump, none of Kamala Harris.”

As much as I think Hewitt may be reaching a bit here, there were still plenty of positives things for Trump to come out of the debate. For example, a Fox News focus group showed that independents repeatedly tracked in line with Republicans during the debate when the candidates talked about the most important issues:

Independents tracked almost perfectly with Republicans during the debate

🔴= Republican
🟡= Independent
🔵= Democrat

On the major issues — economy, inflation, illegal immigration, energy — independents sided with Republicans

Democrats weren't huge fans of some of her answers pic.twitter.com/Z25a2VuNDU

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) September 12, 2024

That said, does the average voter really think about the bias of a debate, or just focus on what the candidates are saying? So far, it seem like while people think Kamala won the debate on style, Trump scored the win on substance. I'll take that.