With calls to dismantle the electoral college, while simultaneously clinging to it as their last vestige of hope, liberals across the country hoped to use the system they hated to overturn the election in Hillary Clinton’s favor Monday. Not only did that not happen, more “faithless electors” actually changed their votes away from Clinton. Yet you might’ve missed that if you watched the morning news Tuesday, because only one of the networks made the briefest mention of it.
Leading up to Monday’s confirmation by the electoral college, all three networks hyped protesters’ last desperate attempt to convince “faithless electors” to change their votes in support of Hillary. But Tuesday’s results revealed that not only did the protester’s efforts fail, but they did their cause more harm than good: more electors defected from Clinton than they did from Trump by a count of eight to two. But CBS was the only network to cover this fact on the morning programs.
CBS’ Major Garrett opened his report stating matter-of-factly that Donald Trump “[s]uffered fewer defections than Hillary Clinton.” This one line was the only acknowledgement of that fact from all three networks.
Over on ABC, correspondent Cecilia Vega oddly noted that protesters’ “one last attempt to get electors to change their votes” actually worked, while trying to make it appear as if more electors somehow tried to stop Trump over Clinton:
VEGA: One last attempt to get electors to change their votes and a handful did. Among them, three in Washington who were supposed to vote for Hillary Clinton. Instead voting for Republican Colin Powell hoping to block Trump's victory. In Texas, two Trump defectors instead voting for John Kasich and Ron Paul.
Only ABC could paint three electors switching their votes away from Hillary Clinton as a hopeful attempt to “block Trump’s victory.”
NBC’s Kristen Welker on Today also ignored Clinton’s loss, only noting that, electoral college voters “essentially gave Mr. Trump the 270 votes need today win, despite protesters trying to stop it.”
All three networks instead played up Bill Clinton blaming Trump’s “angry white voters,” the FBI and the Russian hacking as reasons as to why his wife did not win the election.
