Wednesday afternoon on MSNBC, Craig Melvin made viewers a bold and likely empty promise days ahead of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Melvin began by insisting that the Republican National Convention was filled with “gloom and doom,” to which his guest, Senator Dan Coats, responded it is “the most exciting convention he’s ever been to.”
He then painted a rosy picture of a mainstream media that would treat Democrats the same way that they have treated Republicans during the convention.
MELVIN: Yeah, yeah, let's talk about Senator Pence taking the stage tonight. What can we expect from him? And is he going to be the voice that finally makes his convention start to sound like something other than gloom or doom?
COATS: Well first of all, it hasn't been doom and gloom, I think it’s been the most exciting event.
Melvin then made an unlikely promise on behalf of MSNBC. He assured viewers that the mainstream media would press their liberal friends on any excessive mentions of Donald Trump at the DNC in the same manner as they have been pressing the Republicans on Hillary Clinton in Cleveland.
MELVIN: Hillary Clinton's name was mentioned more than a dozen times more than Donald Trump's last night.
COATS: And what do you think the Democrats are going to copy?
MELVIN: Chris Christie chanted lock her up more than a dozen times.
COATS: So are you saying that in the Democratic convention, they're not going to mention Donald Trump's name?
MELVIN: I don’t know. I'm not there, but if they do, rest assured we'll call them on it as well.
COATS: Yeah.
Rest assured, we won’t hold our breath. Someone should tell Craig Melvin that you shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep. We greatly look forward to watching MSNBC’s coverage in Philadelphia next week.
View Full Transcript Here:
07-20-16 MSNBC Live
01:22:13 PM – 01:25:02 PMCRAIG MELVIN: It's not about the speech. It's not about the speech, it's about how it was handled. It's about a campaign that said for 48 hours, it wasn't plagiarized. And now all the sudden, a staffer says comes forward and says you know what, it was. That's what it's about. It's not about -- it's not about the speech. Again, it's not about the crime, it's about the cover-up.
DAN COATS: You know this is about the 50th time that the media has responded to something that –
MELVIN: Don't do that.
COATS: –has been said by Donald Trump.
MELVIN: Don’t lump me in.
COATS: And you spent three days, three days on a paragraph that someone said that the words come out that I've said at graduation speeches, I've heard others say, let's go back and look at everything Barack Obama has said and see if someone else has said that.
MELVIN: So your position is that the campaign handled this extraordinarily. This was handled well. Or it's the media's fault?
COATS: I'm just saying you guys are making much ado about very, very little when the people of this country, the people on this street are more worried about their security and their safety and the future of America than they are about some little kerfuffle from a someone from a foreign country who came here legally and said something with words that all of us have said. To graduations –
MELVIN: I don’t know how that’s relevant. I really don't know how that's germane to the conversation. But let's move forward. Let's talk about your colleagues, Mike Pence taking the stage.
COATS: We’ll end on a positive note on this one.
MELVIN: Yeah, yeah, let's talk about senator Pence taking the stage tonight. What can we expect from him? And is he going to be the voice that finally makes his convention start to sound like something other than gloom or doom?
COATS: Well first of all, it hasn't been doom and gloom, I think it’s been the most exciting event—
MELVIN: Hillary Clinton's name was mentioned more than a dozen times more than Donald Trump's last night.
COATS: And what do you think the Democrats are going to copy?
MELVIN: Chris Christie chanted lock her up more than a dozen times.
COATS: So are you saying that in the democratic convention, they're not going to mention Donald Trump's name?
MELVIN: I don’t know. I'm not there, but if they do, rest assured we'll call them on it as well.
COATS: Yeah.
MELVIN: You would concede that the first two or three days of the convention have not necessarily been as forward-thinking –
COATS: It's the most exciting convention I've ever been to and I've been to a lot of them. There's a dynamic out here that the press doesn't seem to be picking up. What they’re not picking up is that people do not want more of Hillary Clinton, they do not want more of Barack Obama, they don’t want eight more years of dysfunction, weakness abroad, and a tepid economy here at home. They want a change. Donald Trump has tapped into that change. Mike Pence has made it happen in Indiana, our state has been taken from the deficit, Democrat-led state to a surplus it is the place to go to grow your new businesses. It's growing like crazy. You said Indianapolis is a dynamic place.
MELVIN: It is. It’s one of my favorite cities.
COATS. And Donald Trump looked at Indianapolis, he looked at the character of Mike Pence and he said, this is a guy that can unite our ticket and I like him personally, I love this family, we've interacted. We're going to go forward with this ticket. It's going to be a tough ticket to beat for the Democrats. Because they're the old, we're the new.
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