The Media Research Center’s pattern of obsessively nitpicking Kamala Harris’ media appearances continued for her Oct. 23 town hall on CNN. Jorge Bonilla led kicked things off:
CNN hosted Vice President Kamala Harris on what had been originally proposed as a debate that was rejected by former President Donald Trump. With the floor to herself, would Harris sink or swim? Would host Anderson Cooper try to tip the scale? And would CNN allow some Democrat ringers to slip through the cracks? We watched so you wouldn’t have to.
The town hall began with Cooper asking Harris what she would say to Trump voters who aren’t swayed by her messaging. Harris proceeded to double down on it.
As with Curtis Houck’s attack on Harris’ interview with Howard Stern, Bonilla littered his post with edited, cherry-picked clips of Harris that he originally posted on his personal Twitter/X account — 22 in all. He concluded by huffing:
Harris doubled down on specific policies when pressed. As is often the case, Harris is most passionate about abortion, This town hall was not the exception.
Cooper’s followups were notable for the non-responses or spin they would elicit from Harris. But, for most part, Harris was allowed to speak freely. There were occasions where Harris merited a fact-check from the crowd. For example, Harris claimed that law enforcement officers died on January 6th, but that is simply not the case. Harris was also given wide berth to repeat hoaxes such as “suckers and losers”, among others.
Early analyses on CNN indicate that the Regime Media are dissatisfied with Harris’s performance. There are 12 days left to Election Day, and diminishing opportunities for the Regime Media to prop Harris up.
Tim Graham further whined about the Harris town hall in his Oct. 24 column:
The ideal of a “town hall meeting” where citizens can spontaneously ask politicians the questions they would like answered doesn’t match what the “town hall” is in today’s politics. There’s too much risk for politicians, or the TV networks who platform the event.
A humorous example came on October 21 at a “town hall” with Kamala Harris and her ally Liz Cheney. An audience member asked ex-NBC reporter Maria Shriver if they could ask questions. “You’re not, unfortunately, we have some pre-determined questions,” Shriver said. “Hopefully I’ll be able to ask some of the questions that might be in your head.” Harris took only three of those pre-determined questions in an hourlong event.
[…]On October 23, CNN aired a town-hall event with Kamala Harris, and the difference was obvious from the first few minutes. Anderson Cooper asked his first question – you call Trump unhinged, but he’s now popular than he’s ever been. Harris bloviated a 500-word answer. Cooper asked Harris if she thought Trump was a fascist, and she said yes for 300 words, without interruption.
Calling Trump a “fascist” was apparently not an occasion for “fact checking in real time.” Fact-checking Daniel Dale skipped it afterward.
[…]Most of the post-game show was typical liberal analysis, with a blip of David Urban here and a moment of Scott Jennings there. Jennings had enough time to sum up the night. She was “empty, empty, empty. If she were an animal, she’d be a duck-billed platitude.”
If Kamala Harris failed to “make the sale” on CNN, no one should blame CNN. They gave her a blandly promotional platform to smear her opponent as a fascist, then praised her afterward for her fervid fascist blather. Hating Trump defines CNN.
The next day, Graham’s boss whined further about the town hall on a Fox Business safe space:
On Friday, MRC founder and president Brent Bozell went on Fox Business Network’s Varney & Company to discuss Kamala Harris’s Wednesday night CNN Town Hall.
Bozell pointed out that, ironically, Harris’s media blitz appeared to have exacerbated the very problem that it supposedly had been intended to fix — her flagging poll numbers.
“She wanted a basement strategy; she got away with it for a long time,” Bozell began. “[But] ultimately, even her base started saying, ‘enough is enough, you’ve got to come forward and let us know what it is you’re going to do.’”
“Now you know why she had a basement strategy,” he continued. “She’s awful! She’s just awful where it comes to making a presentation. She can’t give a coherent answer.”
By contrast, the MRC almost totally ignored Donald Trump’s town hall on Fox News a week earlier. The only mention of it is an Oct. 17 post by Alex Christy whining that Jimmy Kimmel pointing out the sotball treatment that Fox News gave him:
ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel showed a stunning lack of self-awareness on Wednesday as he accused Fox News of conducting a “North Korea-level” town hall with Donald Trump.
After playing a montage of various Fox personalities praising Bret Baier’s interview with Kamala Harris, Kimmel reacted to Trump’s response with an interesting use of the word “us.” “Alright, save it for the post-show orgy, everybody, come on now. They all sit there in fear, imagining Donald Trump on the toilet watching them. Trump said Fox has grown ‘so weak and soft’ on the Democrats. Which is true. They barely accuse us of eating babies anymore.”
Speaking of Harris, Kimmel added, “You remember when Trump was complaining that Kamala Harris wouldn’t sit for interviews? Now she’s on TV more often than those Jardiance commercials.”
However, “while Trump was hammering Fox for being too fair to his opponent, this is the grilling he got earlier today from Fox right from the start at his pre-taped all-women town hall.”
Kimmel then played a clip from the town hall where a woman began her question about illegal immigration, “Dear President Trump, thank you so much for everything you have done for this country. You fought for us in the past, you are fighting for us right now, and I know you will fight for us in the future.”
Kimmel replied, “So, some hard-hitting stuff going on there. This is like North Korea-level propaganda. This is a hand-picked audience of Trump-loving women in Georgia.”
Christy responded to this by having a hissy fit, declaring that Kimmel is not allowed to be a comedian and also critique politicians: “The comedians cannot have it both ways. They can either be the court jester who just clowns around or they can portray themselves as serious political thinkers who use jokes instead of lectures or long-winded essays to educate their audience on issues they care about, but they cannot do both.”
With that fit of whining, Christy obscured the fact that Kimmel was right — indeed, he made no effort to dispute Fox News’ kid-glove handling of Trump. The town hall was indeed filled with Trump supporters, something Fox News did not disclose to viewers; a Republican women’s group took credit for “hosting this event,” which it tried to walk back. Fox News also did some strategic editing of the town hall — something the MRC has told us is a bad thing when done for Harris.
Christy’s post was unironically headlined “Irony Is Dead.” It seems he and MRC are trying to have it both ways, unleashing partisan anger at a candidate they don’t like while giving a Republican candidate and a right-wing media outlet a pass for doing the exact same thing. Now that’s irony.