ABC Debate Moderators Failed to Ask a Single Question About China

At Tuesday night's debate in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the ABC News moderator did not ask a single question about China, one of the most significant challenges facing the United States both economically and militarily.

Network-specific Transcript It became clear that China was only discussed when a candidate (usually Trump) brought it up.

• FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: First of all, I don't have a sales tax. That's a false statement. And she knows it. We put tariffs on other countries. Other countries are finally going to pay us back after 75 years for everything we've done for the world. The tariffs will be substantial in some cases. You know, I took billions of dollars from China. In fact, China didn't lift the tariffs. They couldn't, because it was too much. Because if they lifted them, it would have undermined everything they were trying to do. We took billions of dollars from China and other countries. The tariffs are still there. When I was in power, we had tariffs, but we didn't have inflation.
• Former President Donald Trump: Prices aren't going to go up. Prices are going to go up for China and all the countries that have been cheating us for years. I'm the only president I've ever had that China has paid us hundreds of billions of dollars. So have other countries. If they didn't like her, they should have gone out and removed the tariffs right away. But those tariffs have been going on for three and a half years under my administration. We're going to get billions and billions of dollars. There was no inflation under my administration. There was virtually no inflation, but they were probably the highest inflation in the history of our country. Because we've never seen it this bad. People can't go out and buy cereal, bacon, eggs, whatever. Our people are definitely dying because of what they've done. They destroyed our economy. You can see it in the polls. Polls show 80, 85, even 90 percent of people saying that the Trump economy is great and their own economy is terrible.
• VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Well, I want to be very clear that the Trump administration has led to the worst trade deficit in American history. [This is false; see Breitbart News fact check here.] He invited a trade war. If you talk about the deal with China, what he ended up doing under President Donald Trump was selling American semiconductors to China to help China improve and modernize its military. Basically, our policy on China should have been about making sure the United States wins the 21st century race, but it failed us.
• Former President Donald Trump: Let's talk about world leaders. One of the most respected ones, Viktor Orbán, is called a strong man. A tough guy, smart. He's the prime minister of Hungary. People ask me why the world is exploding, but it wasn't like that three years ago. Why is it exploding? He said it's because Trump needs to come back as president. They were afraid of him. China was afraid. I don't want to use the word fear, but I'm just quoting him. China was afraid of him. North Korea was afraid of him. Look at what's happening with North Korea, by the way. He said Russia was afraid of him.
• Former President Donald Trump: That didn't happen under Donald Trump. Frankly, we lost 10,000 manufacturing jobs last month. They're all leaving. They're building big car plants in Mexico. Many of them are Chinese-owned. They're building huge factories and they think that because of these people, they can sell cars to the United States. It's incredible what they've given China. But we're not going to allow it. We're going to put tariffs on these cars so they don't come into the United States. Because they're going to kill the United Auto Workers and all the auto workers, whether it's in Detroit, South Carolina or anywhere else. It's so terrible what they've done to business and manufacturing in this country. We have nothing because they refuse. You know, Biden is not going to go after the people who were allegedly paid millions of dollars by China. He's afraid of that. Between him and his son. They're getting all this money from Ukraine. They're getting a lot of money from different countries. So you wonder why he's pledging allegiance to countries like Ukraine and China. Why? Why did he take $3.5 million from the wife of the Moscow mayor? Why did he take it? Why did she pay him $3.5 million? This is a corrupt regime and they are trying to ruin our country.

ABC's parent company, Disney, has huge profits in China, including from theme parks, television and movies.