As MSNBC’s Deadline: White House prepared for Tuesday night’s primary coverage, Axios’s Alexi McCammond joined host Nicolle Wallace to declare that it is “mis and disinformation” for Republicans to say that record shattering early turnout in Georgia proves they are not suppressing the vote. Unfortunately for McCammond, as she tried to make her case all she ended up doing was spreading disinformation of her own.
Wallace led off by asking McCammond to “Take me inside what you're watching and — and — and — what part of this story is not just from a GOP civil war front but for anybody who cares about small-D democracy front, which part of this is most interesting to you?”
McCammond, who is a reporter covering 2022 gubernatorial elections (and been dating liberal activist and former White House official T.J. Ducklo), sounded like a left-wing activist when she hyped Democrats, “sharing this human moment where they're kind of having an almost existential crisis, and they say, 'like yes, we're talking about the threats to democracy on the trail. We're talking about the different visions between the parties,' but at the end of the day, this is an existential moment for these folks who are running against some of the most extreme Republicans we've seen in a really long time.”
As for Georgia, McCammond claimed that record early voting is just part of the GOP’s dark and sinister plan:
We've seen increased turnout there. The thing that I'm watching and I have reporting coming on this later today with my colleague Andrew at Axios, Republicans are determined to make the big lie bigger because of the turnout numbers we're seeing in Georgia. They're using it to say that it's evidence that there's no voter suppression, and that's not just Republicans in Georgia. It's Republicans here in Washington and across the country telling us they're planning to make this another cornerstone of their so-called election integrity campaign messaging.
She then tried to claim such statistics are misleading:
But, of course as you know, and as Democrats will argue, that's just not true. There are so many other macro external factors that contribute to turnout, as you know well. The type of candidates that are running, the profile of the campaigns, which obviously Republicans have higher profile contests than Democrats this time. So I think that's something we're going to watch. How Republicans are trying to twist this mis and disinformation around voting into saying, oh, ‘our voter suppression laws, they're not that bad. They're not actually working against Democrats.’”
It is not clear why McCammand thought “other” factors helped her argument. If anything, it proved that lower turnout could be attributed to Stacey Abrams running unopposed or it being a bad year for Democrats versus more innocent explanations than racism or voter suppression.
Despite McCammand and liberal activists trying to downplay Georgia’s early voting numbers by citing a more hotly contested GOP race, Georgia’s Democratic early votes are more than double what they were in 2018 despite an uncontested race.
This segment was sponsored by the U.S. Postal Service.
Here is a transcript for the May 24 show:
MSNBC Deadline: White House
05/24/2022
4:04 PM ETNICOLLE WALLACE: Take me inside what you're watching and—and—and-- what part of this story is not just from a GOP civil war front but for anybody who cares about small-D democracy front, which part of this is most interesting to you?
ALEXI MCCAMMOND: Well, thanks so much for having me and today is definitely a very interesting primary day. I’m covering governors this cycle, Nicolle, and you cannot talk to Democratic gubernatorial candidates on the record, off the record, however, without them sharing this human moment where they're kind of having an almost existential crisis, and they say, “like yes, we're talking about the threats to democracy on the trail. We're talking about the different visions between the parties,” but at the end of the day, this is an existential moment for these folks who are running against some of the most extreme Republicans we've seen in a really long time.
You're talking about the Georgia primary. We've seen increased turnout there. The thing that I'm watching and I have reporting coming on this later today with my colleague Andrew at Axios, Republicans are determined to make the big lie bigger because of the turnout numbers we're seeing in Georgia.
They're using it to say that it's evidence that there's no voter suppression, and that's not just Republicans in Georgia. It's Republicans here in Washington and across the country telling us they're planning to make this another cornerstone of their so-called election integrity campaign messaging. But, of course as you know, and as Democrats will argue, that's just not true. There are so many other macro external factors that contribute to turnout, as you know well. The type of candidates that are running, the profile of the campaigns, which obviously Republicans have higher profile contests than Democrats this time. So I think that's something we're going to watch. How Republicans are trying to twist this mis and disinformation around voting into saying, oh, “our voter suppression laws, they're not that bad. They're not actually working against Democrats.”
