SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES

Diane Sawyer: Drunk, high, or really tired?

Nov 7, 2012, 11:41 AM | Updated: 2:40 pm

While Twitter is blowing up with extremely emotional post-election reactions from the likes of Ted Nugent and Donald Trump, many people are tweeting to ask if ABC’s Diane Sawyer was drunk during election night coverage.

“People started tweeting about Diane Sawyer pretty early in the coverage last night,” said show host Dori Monson.

In the election news segments projecting winners state by state, Sawyer waved her arms and seemed to slur her words and insert strange pauses in her speech. Some speculate that this was because she may have been celebrating election results a bit early.

“They were tweeting throughout the night: ‘I’ll have what Diane Sawyer is having,'” Dori said. “Some people said maybe it’s that she’s high, prescription-something, maybe she’s celebrating the Washington Marijuana initiative.”

This isn’t the first time that viewers have speculated that Diane Sawyer has been drinking. In a 2009 broadcast, Sawyer sounds distinctly altered as she covers the beginning of President Obama’s presidency.

ABC responded to the flurry of tweets by saying that Sawyer was just exhausted from round-the-clock election coverage.

But the damage was done: thousands of tweets and several fake Twitter personalities later, people are still asking what was going on with Diane Sawyer.

Dori and producer Jake Skorheim think she had been drinking a little, while news anchor Maura Galluci thinks she might have taken some Xanax to take the edge of the election drama.

Dori wants you to decide for yourself. Vote on our Facebook page: was Diane Sawyer drunk, high, or really really tired?

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