David Muir left his fans scrambling as they begged him to be careful amid his latest assignment, which saw him climb up the arm of the Statue of Liberty in New York City.
The journalist looked right at home in a shot posted to Instagram that saw him smiling as he surveyed New York Harbor from the vantage point. David didn’t appear nervous at all, despite the staggering height.
“Getting ready to take you 305 feet up. We climbed up through Lady Liberty’s right arm to reach the torch. Friday night 10 p.m. ET @abc #America250,” he wrote in the caption, as his fans took to the comment section to share their concerns.
“Be careful tomorrow night,” one fan wrote, while another added: “Mind your step…” and a third chimed in: “It seems very dangerous.”
“Be careful, especially of winds!” said another, while a fifth declared: “I am so scared of heights even if I see it on a screen.” The Statue of Liberty’s torch has been closed since 1916. After the Black Tom explosion occurred in the same year, authorities blocked all access to the torch.
David opened up about the “terrifying” experience of walking up to the torch in an interview with USA Today, sharing that he knew he wasn’t going back down. “How many people are allowed up here?” he asked the ranger, who replied: “Nobody.”
© NurPhoto via Getty Images“Climbing the ladder itself was more terrifying than standing up on the platform,” David continued. “You just hear the audio of me saying, ‘I’m not going back down.’ We’re not doing this twice.”
See David during his college years below…
The climb was well worth it, according to the World News Tonight anchor. “Once you’re up there, you are just in complete awe of the beauty of New York Harbor, and you immediately think of the people who came into the harbor on those ships and thought, ‘I’m getting a chance at a new life.'”
David previously shared how his love for journalism began in his childhood home in New York. “I was a nerd who felt this gravitational pull to the news, starting back when I was 12 years old,” he told People.
© Getty Images“I remember being outside, playing with the rest of the kids in the neighborhood and being the only kid who would go inside when the local news came on, and then watching Peter Jennings, who I thought was sort of the James Bond of the evening news, the globetrotter.”
© ABC via Getty ImagesHe then began writing letters to local newsrooms asking for internship opportunities. “I began interning, carrying all the equipment – and back then the equipment was huge and heavy – and I’d jump into the back of the cruiser, and I was honestly the happiest kid,” he recalled.
“Most kids were looking forward to summer vacation, and I couldn’t wait to get into the back seat of that cruiser all over again.” After graduating with a journalism degree from Ithaca College, he worked at local news stations before landing a spot on ABC’s World News Now in 2003.
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