ABC News turned heads on Tuesday as anchors David Muir and Lindsey Davis moderated the first and likely only 2024 presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Trump.
The event will take place at 6pm Pacific time at Constitution Hall in Philadelphia without an audience. While ABC News is producing the debate, it will be available on all major broadcast and cable news channels, as well as streaming platforms including ABC News Live, Hulu, Disney+ and YouTube.
is the longtime anchor and editor in chief of “ABC World News Tonight,” the network’s most-watched evening news program. Davis, 46, is a 17-year ABC veteran who anchors “ABC World News Sunday.” She also helms “ABC News Live Prime,” an evening program on the network’s streaming channel.
President Trump has complained that ABC News is biased against him as he sues the news network and its “Good Morning America” co-anchor over its coverage of a civil trial that found the 2024 Republican candidate liable for sexual abuse.
But viewers have seen nothing from Muir or Davis that identifies their personal political leanings (President Trump agreed to debate Biden on ABC before he dropped out of the race).
Davis, who appears nightly for 90 minutes on ABC News Live, is regularly booked to interview lawmakers from both sides of the aisle. Muir was the first network anchor to interview Trump at the White House in 2016 and again in 2020, one of the few TV anchors to do so outside of conservative media. He was also the first to interview the Biden-Harris ticket in 2020.
Muir and Davis co-hosted two Democratic presidential primary debates on ABC during the 2020 election.
Their performance on Tuesday night will undoubtedly attract a lot of attention.
The first debate of the 2024 general election took place on June 27, when Trump was still running against Biden, and became one of the most crucial debates in US history. Biden’s lackluster performance caused great upset among Democrats, leading Biden to decide to withdraw from the race and endorse Harris.
According to Nielsen, 51.3 million viewers tuned in to watch the June showdown, down from 73 million viewers for the first showdown in 2020. Tuesday’s showdown is expected to perform much better with the summer break over and Democrats eager to see Harris emerge as an alternative to Trump.
Here’s what else you should know about moderators:
Muir was a 13-year-old newsroom intern.As a news-obsessed kid growing up in Syracuse, New York, Muir wrote letters to his favorite anchors at local TV station WTVH. He scrambled for summer internships at the station, delivering scripts and Coca-Cola to anchors and riding in the back of news cruisers. Station staff tracked his progress by leaving pencil marks on the newsroom walls. He became an anchor at the station at age 21.
His role model is Peter Jennings“Peter Jennings was the James Bond of the evening news, and that’s what I always wanted to be,” said Muir, who was tapped for the anchor job in 2014. “His evening news was really a conversation with America” A 21-year veteran of ABC News, Muir began as a reporter for “ABC World News” in 2003 and, like Jennings, has traveled extensively around the world.
He is the second–He was the longest serving “ABC World News” anchor in the network’s history. Muir succeeded Diane Sawyer in 2014, and his 12 years in the role are second only to Jennings’ 22 years in the role, which ran from 1983 until his death in 2005.
Davis is a best-selling author. The mother of a 10-year-old son, she has written six children’s books, including her latest, Girls of the World, which made the New York Times bestseller list.
The first black woman to moderate a presidential debate was Davis’ mentor.Carol Simpson, a longtime Washington correspondent for ABC News, made history in 1992 when she covered the court proceedings with George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ross Perot. She also served as the Sunday anchor of “ABC World News Tonight” for 15 years, the same role Davis holds today. They talk about her work every week.
She is running. Davis and her husband have traveled across the country to compete in half marathons. They have completed races in 46 states.
Her big gains: She was the only journalist to interview comedian Bill Cosby after he was accused of sexual assault by multiple women.
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