When I watch a news event, I’m constantly switching back and forth between MSNBC and CNN. I like to hear from Republican pundits with campaign experience like Steve Schmidt, Michael Steele and Nicole Wallace. CNN is another story with their goofy food fight panel approach. I can’t stand the Trump liars on the panel, but I do want to hear from some of the other panelists, like Paul Begala.
After the debate, I thought Clinton clearly won, but it wasn’t as big as the first debate. I was a little taken back that many of the regular journalists on both MSNBC and CNN were praising Trump for making it through the debate without grabbing the crotch of half the women in the auditorium. Yes, the bar was that low for Trump.
And then during my back and forth switching, James Carville was on MSNBC
“He didn’t convince a single person that’s not already with him,” he said, predicting that Trump would get “slaughtered” by fact-checkers. Carville also characterized Trump’s looming behind Clinton while she spoke as a bad visual.
But he really went out of his way to say that he’s a Clinton supporter but he’s really trying to say this as an analyst and not a partisan. He really thought Clinton won big and Trump looked and acted terrible.
Of course he was right and the journalists and pundits were dead wrong. I think this article from Gregg Mitchell puts it very well.
…
the cable TV pundit class (regular hosts and panelists) overpraising the GOP candidate's performance, only to be humbled minutes later by scientific polls showing the Democrat won easily. We saw it again last night with an hour of claims--even on Dem-heavy MSNBC--that Trump "did well" and the debate was a "draw" or a "wash."
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I flipped continually between CNN and MSNBC and it was astounding how little attention was paid, for many minutes, to Trump's jaw-dropping promise to prosecute and jail Hillary (in a Nixon-like abuse of power) as they continued to give him high marks in the debate. I was watching what seemed to be turning points at both cable channels when Van Jones and James Carville finally went ballistic on this. Almost in shame, some of the others starting talking about it.
The GOP and the media have some real soul searching to do after this election. I really thought the media was making some real progress with their false equivalencies, their constant low bars for GOP candidates, and their giving a big microphone to GOP pundits who just bald face lie. I’m going to cross my fingers and hope that last night was a temporary set back for the media, but it looks like we’ll have to hold their feet to the fire for a while yet.