If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America, President Lyndon Johnson allegedly complained in February 1968 while watching CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite pronounce from Vietnam during the Tet Offensive that the war was a clearly a stalemate and hence pointless for the United States to remain in the fight.
Turns out this oft-cited tale is probably apocryphal, as American University professor and Media Myth Alert blogger W. Joseph Campbell has persuasively argued. On the night of Cronkite's report, Johnson was in Texas attending a birthday party for Gov. John Connally and could not have seen Cronkite's reporting, back in a nascent high-tech era before videocassette recorders and DVRs.
Regardless of its veracity, the Cronkite Moment remains emblematic of a recurring scenario, that of a politician knowing the wind has shifted unfavorably based on how a previously neutral or sympathetic media figure responds to a specific event. For Hillary Clinton, that moment may have come during Morning Joe today when one of her most steadfast apologists in media sounded the alarm.
Along with the rest of the regulars on the MJ set, Brzezinski weighed in on last night's commander-in-chief forum, live on NBC, when Clinton and GOP nominee Donald Trump separately answered questions from Today co-host Matt Lauer --
MJ CO-HOST JOE SCARBOROUGH: Mika, a lot of people looking at this forum and obviously there are limitations but great frustrations. Many people wondering why questions were asked about Hillary's email server and yet none asked about Aleppo, none asked about Syria, none asked about the very questions that are going to be facing, the most important questions that are going to be facing the next commander in chief. So, a lot of question marks out there. What was your takeaway?
BRZEZINSKI: Well, bottom-lining it for both, kind of overall pulling back, Donald Trump was tragically uninformed, it was frightening. You can't pin him down and he could not be pinned down on anything because everything he said was sort of woefully unprepared blurts of TV talk and there was nothing to what he said that really helped sort of give the American public a sense that he had a grasp on anything.
So much for Brzezinski's predictable slam of Trump. After what she said next, Clinton cultists across the nation groaned in unison --
BRZEZINSKI: And for Hillary Clinton, there was a different problem. She was defensive. She clenched up. She began to filibuster 'cause you could see her getting nervous about the email, uh, situation. She began to attack her opponent instead of talk about her own qualities. She is clearly impaired by the email scandal.
That Clinton attacked Trump to divert attention from her email, uh, "situation" came after Lauer, right before questioning Clinton, asked "if we can talk about your qualities and your qualifications" to be commander in chief and "not use this to attack Mr. Trump." (Lauer later asked the same of Trump). By all means, Clinton readily agreed, "I think that's an exactly right way to proceed." Until it wasn't, as even Brzezinski conceded the morning after.
Bad enough for Brzezinski to state the obvious about the empress's lack of apparel. Making it worse was her revealing use of the word "impaired" at a time of growing doubts about Clinton's health.
