ABC This Week host George Stephanopoulos opened today’s broadcast with an editorial that can most charitably be described as hysterical, as he pontificates over “what’s at stake” in the 2024 presidential election, and how that colors his coverage of the election.
Watch the opening editorial in its entirety as aired on ABC This Week on Sunday, April 28th, 2024:
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Good morning, and welcome to This Week. Until now, no American president had ever faced a criminal trial. No American president had ever faced a federal indictment for retaining and concealing classified documents. No American president had ever faced a federal indictment or a state indictment for trying to overturn an election, or been named an unindicted co-conspirator in two other states for the same crime. No American president ever faced hundreds of millions of dollars in judgments for business fraud, defamation and sexual abuse. Until now, no American presidential race had been more defined on what’s happening in courtrooms than what is happening on the campaign trail. Until now. The scale of the abnormality is so staggering that it can actually become numbing. It’s all too easy to fall into reflective habits- to treat this as a normal campaign where both sides embrace the rule of law, where both sides are dedicated to a debate based on facts and the peaceful transfer of power. But that is not what’s happening this election year. Those bedrock tenets of our democracy are being tested in a way we haven’t seen since the Civil War. It’s a test for the candidates, for those of us in the media, and for all of us as citizens.
It appears that Stephanopoulos took President Joe Biden’s Nerd Prom speech to heart, followed Biden’s call, and chose to Regime harder. The program did not lead with polls, or scandals, or foreign policy matters, but with “what’s at stake”.
In a sense, Stephanopoulos isn’t wrong. This is a unique time inasmuch as no American president had ever had elements of state and federal offenses Frankensteined into felony charges against him. No American president has ever been prosecuted by his successor. No American president has ever left the border as wide open as has the current officeholder. And this is all happening against the backdrop of Americans having their government weaponized against them, such as pro-life activist Mark Houck, among many others.
But Stephanopoulos doesn’t address those unique historical circumstances. They are not favorable to the reelection of Joe Biden and, therefore, are insufficiently cognizant of “what is at stake”. The Title “Regime Media” is well earned.