ABC's David Muir sees newscast ratings decline after controversial debate performance

ABC’s "World News Tonight" anchor David Muir may have driven away some viewers after the Disney-owned network irked conservatives during last week’s presidential debate.

Muir and co-moderator Linsey Davis fact-checked former President Trump five times without ever correcting Vice President Kamala Harris, prompting a plethora of conservatives to suggest the debate wasn’t fair. Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America even called for a correction after Davis made an abortion claim made during the debate during one of the fact-checks on Trump that the group said was "100% inaccurate."

Muir’s "World News Tonight" averaged 6.7 million viewers on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, the three episodes following the debate, after averaging 7.6 million in 2024 leading up to the debate.

The 12% drop in viewers for "World News Tonight" is more significant than slight declines "CBS Evening News" and "NBC Nightly News" saw when comparing the three episodes following ABC’s debate to the year-to-date totals, although Muir’s newscast remained the No. 1 broadcast evening newscast.

ABC'S DAVID MUIR DISMISSES POST-DEBATE ‘NOISE’ ABOUT MODERATORS

While it’s unclear if Trump supporters have tuned out ABC’s newscast on the heels of the debate, the former president has blasted it as "one-sided." Trump told Fox News that he believed Harris should have been fact-checked on a variety of claims.

"Every one of them should have been questioned by David Muir, who I've lost a lot of respect for. Everyone's lost respect for him," Trump said last week.

"It was so ... one-sided," he continued. "It was one against three."

Davis admitted in a post-debate interview that her fact-checking of Trump was influenced by the CNN debate that went disastrously for President Biden in