Amanpour & Co. host Christiane Amanpour, fresh from arrogantly criticizing her network CNN for hosting a Donald Trump town hall and urging student journalists to “speak truth to power,” didn’t exactly renew confidence in the news media to challenge the powerful with her choice of guest to discuss the looming debt-ceiling deadline: Patrick Gaspard, president of the left-wing Center for American Progress. With Amanpour’s encouragement, Gaspard took partisan shots with no journalistic challenge on Thursday’s show, which also airs on tax-funded PBS.
Gaspard is former president of the grand-making organization Open Society Foundations, founded by leftist billionaire George Soros, as well as a former executive director of the Democratic National Committee, and has a long background in partisan Democratic politics. Amanpour left that partisan history out of her introduction, just his leadership at CAP and being U.S Ambassador to South Africa. Gaspard referred to his White House experience:
Gaspard: We've been here multiple times before. Certainly, when I served in the Obama/Biden White House. We had a similar crisis in 2011 and again in 2013. Each instance we got to a resolution. But I have to say, Christiane, that we've never had a Congress like this one where, regrettably, we are all quite concerned that Republican leadership, influenced by MAGA Republicans, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, are far more concerned about their own power than they are about the debt and credit of the United States….
Amanpour encouraged Gaspard’s blatant partisanship.
Amanpour: Can I bring you back now into the United States? You know, yours is the Center for American Progress. As you see, Former President Trump has, obviously, thrown his hat into the ring. It appears that the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, is very close to doing the same thing. And in the run up to any declaration, he has apparently signed a whole stack of very, very tough, tough bills. What do you think? How is this going to proceed, this actual campaign season right now? Everybody competing for the most extreme, at least on the Republican side?
Gaspard matched Amanpour's pomposity:
Gaspard: Both Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump and others who are declared and soon to be declared candidates are playing to the extremes of the Republican primary, which, unfortunately, has been captured by MAGA interest and MAGA instincts. And we have to guard against that. Those of us who care about democracy have to be vigilant when we consider what occurred on January 6th on Capitol Hill, when we consider the kind of policy secession that we are seeing in state after state where they're blocking the right to vote, the right of women to choose a direction for their own lives, and are subverting democratic practice.
Gaspard made a flowery condemnation of the mainstream media covering Trump's statements to “a blood sport in the Roman coliseum, replete with built-in cheering crowds for the most extreme and viral and violent statements being made by the former president."
Amanpour poured on the partisanship:
Amanpour: Do you think -- obviously, you’re a Democrat. You support you know, your President Biden who is running for reelection. Do you think he can again survive these culture wars, and what the New York Times is reporting to be a second attempt, maybe a stealth attempt, by lots of GOP legislators to actually, you know, undertake a new wave of voting restrictions, which is largely going unnoticed?
Gaspard: Yeah. You know, it's important to know, Christiane, the initiatives that are being advanced by the extreme wing of the Republican Party, which is the dominant wing of that party now, they don't have a popular mandate for that agenda….
