David Muir's Ratings On ABC Tank Post-Debate

ABC News anchor David Muir dismissed widespread criticism that he and co-moderator Linsey Davis influenced the debate last week on behalf of Kamala Harris as just "noise."

"All of the noise that you hear afterward about you know, ‘Which candidate won the debate, did the moderators win or lose?’" Muir told the audience on ABC's Live With Kelly and Mark. "That's just noise. You all know that. The most important thing to remember is you all have the power."

Viewers disagree.

ABC’s World News Tonight with David Muir has lost over 12 percent of its viewership since the debate, down from its recent average of 7.6 million to 6.7 million.

While World News Tonight still leads CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News head-to-head, the latter two networks have since closed the gap with only minimal declines over the past week.

ABC should be concerned. A 12 percent drop is significant. Moreover, there's no guarantee that those lost viewers—who are presumably conservatives—will return.

MSNBC can get away with its avowed support for the Democratic Party. Viewers turn to MSNBC for just that. ABC, by contrast, still brands itself a moderate news organization. Though laughable, many viewers believed that. And there's great risk in a news organization that brands itself as moderate openly showing a political bias. 

Case in point: CNN. 

CNN embraced anti-Trump programming in 2016. Eight years later, the network is now closer to NewsNation in the ratings than Fox News or MSNBC. 

Could ABC be the next Bud Light? Put simply, yes.

NEWS - "Kamala Harris and Donald Trump  ABC News Presidential Debate" airs Tuesday, Sept. 10, at 9:00 p.m. EDT, live on ABC and streams live on the 24/7 streaming network ABC News Live, Disney+, and Hulu from Philadelphia, PA, and will be simulcast. "World News Tonight" anchor and managing editor David Muir and "World News Tonight" Sunday anchor and ABC News Live "Prime" anchor Linsey Davis are the moderators.(ABC NEWS/MICHAEL LE BRECHT II)

ABC made a calculated decision to interfere in the debate. Specifically, the moderators fact-checked Trump five times and Harris not even once, despite her many lies on stage.

Davis admitted the following day in a Los Angeles Times profile that she and Muir planned to hold Trump accountable heading into the night and seemingly had no such plans for Harris.

"People were concerned that [Trump's] statements were allowed to just hang and not [be] disputed by the candidate Biden, at the time, or the moderators," David said, referring to the CNN debate in June.

Moving forward, ABC News will be a hard sell for viewers who do not fully support Kamala Harris. 

David Muir and George Stephanopoulos are the network's two biggest stars. Muir lost his credibility during the debate, but Stephanopoulos, a former Clinton staffer, is proud of his allegiance to the Democratic Party.

Oh,  and The View still falls under the ABC News umbrella.

Between The View, Muir, Stephanopoulos, Davis, and Hillary Clinton's galpal Donna Brazile – news junkies already knew ABC News was not a credible news network.

Now, the normies know it too.