Fox News Crowd Cheers Donald Trump’s ABC Roasting

Former President Donald Trump drew loud cheers from a Fox News audience after he sharply criticized ABC during a recent event.
“ABC is the worst network in terms of fairness,” Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity during a “town hall” event on Wednesday. “They are the most dishonest network, the meanest, the nastiest, but that is what I was presented with. I was presented with ABC, George Slopadopoulos. He’s a nasty guy.”
“They’re very nasty. I think a lot of people are going to be watching to see how nasty they are,” the former president added. “George Slopadopoulos” is one of his nicknames for ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos. He has also called him “George Flopadopoulos.”
Trump’s remarks came ahead of the first debate between him and Vice President Kamala Harris, which is due to air on ABC on September 10.
Harris and Trump repeatedly clashed over the rules for the debate, with the vice president’s team pushing for microphones to be live at all times, while Trump suggested multiple times that he may drop out of the event.
However, the two candidates agreed to a set of rules on Wednesday, similar to Trump’s debate against Biden, including muted microphones when an opposing candidate is speaking and no live audience. The rule set also notes that “no topics or questions will be shared in advance with campaigns or candidates.”
Nonetheless, in his Fox News interview, Trump still claimed that the vice president would be given questions in advance.
“You might give her the questions and give her the answers with the questions. I’m not sure it’s going to help her,” he said.
ABC denied that would happen.
Following the agreement between the two candidates, Trump campaign official Jason Miller said in a statement that the former president’s campaign was “thrilled that Kamala Harris and her team of Biden campaign leftovers” have “accepted the already agreed upon rules.”
“Americans want to hear both candidates present their competing visions to the voters, unburdened by what has been,” Miller said. “We’ll see you all in Philadelphia next Tuesday.”
In a letter to ABC, the Harris campaign agreed to the muted microphone rule, but said she “will be fundamentally disadvantaged by this format, which will serve to shield Donald Trump from direct exchanges with the vice president.”
“Notwithstanding our concerns, we understand that Donald Trump is a risk to skip the debate altogether, as he has threatened to do previously, if we do not accede to his preferred format. We do not want to jeopardize the debate. For this reason, we accepted the full set of rules proposed by ABC, including muted microphones,” the letter said.
Newsweek has contacted the Trump campaign and ABC News via email for comment.
In a statement, a spokesperson for ABC told media outlets this week:
“Beyond the debate rules published today, which were mutually agreed upon by two campaigns on May 15th, we have made no other agreements. We look forward to moderating the presidential debate next Tuesday.”
The debate will be moderated by “World News Tonight” anchor and managing editor David Muir and ABC News Live “Prime” anchor Linsey Davis.
Trump won a virtual coin flip, meaning he will deliver the last closing statement of the debate.
Update 09/05/24, 7:21 a.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.