Appearing as a guest on Thursday's Anderson Cooper 360, CNN Senior Political Analyst David Gergen admitted that GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio "had a point" during the debate in calling out the media for ignoring Hillary Clinton's "clear inconsistency" in her Benghazi story, conceding that he had also joined in the media chorus focusing on "praising her performance."
But the CNN analyst then absurdly rationalized the media's behavior by blaming Republicans who "told us that this was a rigged process" for causing the media "naturally" to "look at it through that lens." Gergen did not mention that neither of the two Republicans who hinted at politics in the Benghazi investigation was even on the Benghazi committee.
At about 8:35 p.m., after host Anderson Cooper brought up Rubio's attack on the media, Gergen noted that conservative criticism of the media having a liberal bias against them dates back to the 1960s, and then declared:
And, you know, to be honest with you, I thought Marco Rubio had a point last night when he said that in the Benghazi hearings that Hillary Clinton emerged with a lot of us praising her performance and I thought, and I was among them. It's also true, as Rubio pointed out, we didn't talk a lot about the fact there was a clear inconsistency in her story, and Rubio says basically she's a liar about what happened and who she told what when, that the story given to the public was conflicted with what she was saying privately.
But the CNN analyst then pushed blame onto Republicans for causing the media to mishandle Benghazi coverage as he added:
And I think that's a legitimate concern on the part of Marco Rubio and the republicans, but, you know, Marco Rubio also didn't mention that the reason the media got so interested in whether she could handle these Republicans was it was Republicans who told us that this was a rigged job, that this was a rigged process, the Benghazi hearing, so naturally we looked at it through that lens when it was over.
Gergen ended up admitting that the dominant news media have a liberal bias:
This is a complicated story. I think the media gets a generally -- the mainstream media, print media -- tends to be more liberal. Talk radio tends to be very conservative.
Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Thursday, October 29, Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN:
DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Anderson, listen, as Rand Paul said last night, controversies in the sense of liberal bias in the mainstream media among Republicans, and especially among conservatives, does stretch all the way back to Goldwater 1964 convention and that whole campaign, and ever since then, that's when the media started looking, you know, I knew a lot of business people who were conservatives who were trying to buy one of the three networks so that there could be an alternative, and along came Fox of course, and I think there's more balance now than there used to be. But there is a widespread feeling among conservatives still that they don't get a fair shake,
And, you know, to be honest with you, I thought Marco Rubio had a point last night when he said that in the Benghazi hearings that Hillary Clinton emerged with a lot of us praising her performance and I thought, and I was among them. It's also true, as Rubio pointed out, we didn't talk a lot about the fact there was a clear inconsistency in her story, and Rubio says basically she's a liar about what happened and who she told what when, that the story given to the public was conflicted with what she was saying privately.
And I think that's a legitimate concern on the part of Marco Rubio and the Republicans, but, you know, Marco Rubio also didn't mention that the reason the media got so interested in whether she could handle these Republicans was it was Republicans who told us that this was a rigged job, that this was a rigged process, the Benghazi hearing, so naturally we looked at it through that lens when it was over.
This is a complicated story. I think the media gets a generally -- the mainstream media, print media -- tends to be more liberal. Talk radio tends to be very conservative.
