Chuck Ross at the Daily Caller offered some eye-opening details on media-Democrat collusion from the latest WikiLeaks disclosures. CNN asked the Democratic National Committee for questions that Wolf Blitzer could ask Ted Cruz and Donald Trump:
“CNN is looking for questions,” reads an April 28 email entitled “Cruz on CNN” sent from DNC research director Lauren Dillon to other party officials and staffers. “Please send some topical/interesting ones.”
Several days before that, Dillon asked for questions for an interview that Trump was scheduled to have with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.
“Wolf Blitzer is interviewing Trump on Tues ahead of his foreign policy address on Wed,” she wrote in the email, entitled “CNN questions for Trump.”
The group of DNC staffers submitted numerous questions for Blitzer to ask of the real estate billionaire. But the interview ended up being cancelled, Dillon informed the DNC staff in a follow-up email.
“CNN said the interview was cancelled as of now but will keep the questions for the next one [sad face emoji] Good to have for others as well,” Dillon wrote.
This is doubly embarrassing after WikiLeaks exposed that CNN contributor Donna Brazile was feeding "town hall" questions to the Clinton campaign.
The London Daily Mail added Jake Tapper to the Wiki-mix:
In a separate conversation dated on April 28, Jason Seher, a writer for Jake Tapper's show on CNN, emailed Pablo Manriquez, a former DNC media booker thanking him for 'facilitating Luis coming on today, and bearing with us through a meelee (sic) of GOP nonsense and cancellations and all that. Any particular points he'll want to make? We're gonna stay Dem focused...'
Manriquez then sent a message to several staffers and wrote, 'Window closing on this. Need to know asap if we want to offer Jake Tapper questions to ask us.'
Tapper responded to this on a personal Tumblr account back in July:
The “nonsense” Jason was referring to in his email had to do with a bunch of booking issues, which happens. One critic suggests that this betrays a certain “coziness” with Democratic officials. I disagree – we work very hard to make The Lead and State of the Union fair and I think we have developed a reputation for good nonpartisan journalism; I think the staffer was just being collegial. Some days we have GOP nonsense/booking issues, some days we have Democratic nonsense/booking issues. That said, it’s a good lesson for everyone in journalism and beyond that emails get hacked and things get misconstrued.
“Any particular points he’ll want to make?” is a fairly standard question – producers and reporters ask it all the time of Democrats, Republicans, everyone, to make sure we don’t miss out on news-making opportunities....
Wanting to stay “Dem-focused” is a reference to the fact that I wanted to focus on the Democratic presidential contest – the fight between the Sanders campaign and Clinton campaign about superdelegates.
Network bookers (journalists in general) often sound cozier in private to get booking or the quotes that they want. That is how the sausage is made. That doesn't mean it won't look cozy when exposed. What ultimately matters is what questions were asked...and whether they were actually challenging.
We can say from MRC experience that network bookers want to anticipate what a guest wants to say, so the interviewer knows what to expect. That's different from CNN going to the DNC for which hostile questions should be asked of Trump or Cruz. It's not like the DNC and the RNC aren't always pushing their talking points on the cable news stars, on and off the air. But the audience doesn't expect producers to ask for a special order of DNC opposition questions, like the Blitzer team did.
The Daily Mail and the Daily Caller noted Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank came to the DNC for anti-Trump research for a column called "Ten Plagues of Trump." This might not be surprising for an opinion columnist, but Milbank puts on an air of being far too creative to let party hacks do his homework. Peter Hasson of the Caller wrote:
In the email — which was titled “research request: top 10 worst Trump quotes?” — Walker wrote, “Milbank doing a Passover-themed 10 plagues of Trump.”
The DNC research team worked together to come up with a list of things Milbank could use that was provided to Walker. (RELATED: Hill’s Shills: Leaks Have Exposed Journalists In Clinton’s Corner)
Of the 10 “plagues” listed by Milbank, eight of them matched up with suggestions from the DNC.
Some of these are very obvious, like Trump's comments on Mexico sending rapists, and Trump's insult that Megyn Kelly had blood coming from...somewhere. So why would he need to lean on the DNC? At the end of that column, Milbank asked his readers to crowd-source the Trump outrages:
Like the Seder service on Passover, the catalog of Trump’s outrages could go on and on. And it should: Post Opinions Digital Editor James Downie and I are compiling a comprehensive list of Trumpisms, and we invite you to email us your favorites at posttrumpisms@gmail.com to make sure all of his offenses are included.
