CNN has decided that their Republican Presidential Town Halls are going to be regular features. Nikki Haley has one coming up on June 4th, and Mike Pence has one set for June 7th. Funny thing about Pence though. Pence has not made an announcement that he is definitely throwing his hat in the ring, but he’s getting a CNN PRESIDENTIAL Town Hall just the same! And guess who gets to be the interviewer for Pence’s Town Hall? Dana Bash!
And you can just feel that Chris Matthews’ Tingle Up The Leg!
Actually, it seems that several people outside the CNN executive bubble think this is a really, really bad idea:
These days, CNN seems to be caught between two adages: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again,” and “Insanity is when you do the same thing repeatedly and expect different results.”
On Thursday, the network announced that anchor Dana Bash would be hosting a Republican presidential town hall with former Vice President Mike Pence on June 7 in Des Moines, Iowa.
The announcement comes just weeks after the network’s town-hall-style event with former President Donald Trump, which critics blasted as “shameless” and “a disaster,” and which was also criticized by CNN employees, including chief international anchor Christiane Amanpour.
Considering the first town hall didn’t help CNN’s rep and that Pence hasn’t actually officially announced his 2024 presidential candidacy (or criticized Trump for allegedly expressing approval of rioters chanting “Hang Mike Pence” on Jan. 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol), many Twitter users decided the only reasonable response was mockery. Pure and simple brutal mockery.
This is one of my favorites:
And as others have pointed out, there is NO WAY that partisan hack Dana Bash will ask Pence why he still supports the man who tried to have him killed? It’s bad enough that Pence will have a town hall. Pence will speak in that so called calm, “comforting” tone of voice that oozes the smugness of God’s Chosen. Pence will lie and deflect all night long, which I expect. But the questioner will be Dana Bash, and she will raise the bullshit exponentially to this travesty event.
If you are not familiar with Dana Bash, she is so infamous for promoting the “Trump is PIVOTING!” line during his regime. No matter what Trump did wrong, Bash was there to point out in some other staged event that Trump was “changing his tone” and “pivoting.” She even implied after the Jan 6th insurrection that Trump was maybe not aware of what he was doing. After Trump gave a speech on Jan 8th, here is what her hackiness had to say:
But for additional context, Bash also took criticism — and a gentle on-air rebuke — for another comment earlier Thursday in which she gave Trump too much benefit of the doubt from anchor John King.
Discussing Trump’s speech prior to the attack, Bash said that “The most important question now is the culpability of Trump and the fact he went to that rally and called for incited violence. Maybe he didn’t realize he was doing it, maybe he did, but he did it.”
“But he doesn’t get that, I’m sorry,” King said. “In the first week of the Trump presidency, maybe a guy who’d never held office, you’d say he doesn’t realize what he’s saying. That’s over. That is over. That is long over. He has been president for 4 years. He has supported conspiracy theorists, he has lied repeatedly, he is lying repeatedly still about the election.”
“He did it, and that’s all that matters,” Bash said.
Emphasis is mine.
Her antics about pivoting got so bad that her fellow journalists at CNN ganged up on her when she was talking about Trump’s tone during 2020. I do not have the clip, but I specifically remember two other journalists started to laugh or give her shit when she yelled, “I did not use the word PIVOT!”
Oh, and there was this Twitter reply:
And finally, there is the general mockery of Mike Pence from other D.C. Villagers. I cannot tell you how many times I have seen Eugene Robinson on MSBNC laugh and have this look of “Who the fuck does Pence think he is kiddding?” whenever there is talk about Pence running for president. Alex Wagner, Nicole Wallace, Joy Reid, and Lawrence O’Donnell have had guests LOL whenever this subject come up, or the answer to the question of “Who is Pence’s constituency in the GOP?” is always, “No one!”
What this shows is that 1) the media is still plugged into providing as much air time as possible for Republicans, even when they are not in power and 2) Mike Pence is not only insufferably sanctimonious, but he is also willfully blind to the point of stupidity. Pence’s has stated that his campaign (when he jumps in that is) will be a return to the times of Saint Ronald Reagan. He feels that evangelicals, fiscal conservatives, and foreign policy hawks will flock to his campaign and form an anti-Trump coalition.
Even some of the most ardent Never Trumpers are not that delusional. Stuart Stevens has stated that Trump is a reflection of the modern GOP. If a meteor or a lightning strike took out Trump tomorrow, there would still be Trumpism. Trump has revealed what the Republican Party is today: white people afraid to give up their supremacy over an increasingly diversifying America. Losing power drives all the racism, sexism, misogyny, and homophobia that we are witnessing spewing forth from the modern GOP.
Ronald Reagan ushered in this era, but his time as president seems quaint and has long since devolved into outright fascism practiced by today’s Republicans. All that remains is watching the continued humiliation of Mike Pence in his futile quest for power. It would be lovely to be a fly on Pence’s head to see if he ever has a moment of true self-awareness that the voice in his head is not God’s but his own ambition that lead him to his place as one of the many arch villainous fools of history.