Donald Trump's campaign team went on a behind-the-scenes meltdown mid-way through the former president’s debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, a new report revealed Monday.
As moderators fact-checked claims in real time, his senior advisers began berating senior executives at the network, demanding the challenges stop.
Trump’s top aide, Suse Wiles, even made a call to senior executive at ABC, the Washington Post reported.
“Trump’s advisers — including Chris LaCivita and Miller — erupted on ABC executives and journalists in the middle of the debate, according to the people familiar with the situation,” the Post reported.
“They implored the network to stop fact-checking for the rest of the event and said they had breached their promise, and a call was even lodged to the president of ABC News by Susie Wiles, the campaign’s top aide. At least one Trump adviser demanded to talk to the moderators during the debate.”
A contract signed by Trump’s team before the ABC debate and reviewed by the Post had no stipulation that he would not be fact-checked, according to the report.
But the team flipped as Trump received pushback over claims that Haitian immigrants were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, with moderator David Muir interrupting to say the city manager “told us there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”
ABC News did not comment on the Post’s report.
ALSO READ: Busted: Armed man arrested at rally tied to Trump's 'secretary of retribution'
“Everyone who watched the ABC debate agreed that it was a 3-on-1 fight with 2 moderators who wrongly ‘fact-checked’ President Trump multiple times, but did not fact-check Kamala Harris ONCE, even though she spewed multiple lies on the debate stage,” Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
“The ABC debate was widely viewed as one of the worst-moderated debates in history, yet President Trump still won.”
The outburst from Trump’s handlers was unsuccessful at stopping the challenges, but it represents a clear move to make it acceptable for him to utter claims without expectations of fact-checking, the Post reported.
Earlier this month, he pulled out of a sit-down with CBS’ “60 Minutes” because, the show's producers said, he objected to being fact-checked.
“Within the political establishment on the right, it is now considered quite legitimate — and quite legitimate to say publicly and openly — that you disapprove of fact-checking,” Lucas Graves, author of “Deciding What’s True: The Rise of Political Fact-Checking in American Journalism," told the Post.
“Precisely because of Trump’s unusual relationship with the truth — even for a politician — it’s hardly surprising that he would object to it so volubly and so forcefully.”