On Wednesday night, major broadcast networks CBS and NBC showed no interest in shedding light on the findings of new Quinnipiac poll that found Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s honest and trustworthy ratings are continuing to fall and she trails three possible GOP opponents in three battleground states.
While the CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News focused exclusively on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, ABC’s World News Tonight made time to report on both Trump and Clinton.
As for the nation’s leading Spanish-language networks, the disparity was identical as two out of the three failed to mention Clinton’s tumbling numbers with MundoFox and Telemundo providing zero mentions on their Wednesday evening newscasts. However, Univision did highlight the poll results on Wednesday’s Noticiero Univison with a 21-second news brief devoted to the topic by co-anchor Jorge Ramos.
Back on ABC, World News Tonight anchor David Muir hyped that there was “new fallout tonight” concerning Trump after he “ignit[ed] a firestorm first, with his comments about John McCain, then revealing a rival's private cell phone number on national TV” with the latest question being whether or not Trump is “helping or hurting his fellow Republicans.”
Before handing off to chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl, Muir snuck in a quick mention that there’s also “new troubling numbers for Hillary Clinton.”
Karl and Muir would circle back to Clinton, but Karl first chose to proclaim: “It's come to this, Lindsey Graham doing to his cell phone what many Republicans would like to do to the Trump campaign, after Trump gave out Graham's private phone number on national television.”
In a live shot moments later, Muir shifted topics from Trump to the former First Lady: “Republicans worry that Donald Trump might be hurting them, but it doesn't seem to be helping Hillary Clinton. They've got some troubling numbers in key battle ground states tonight?”
Karl responded with a brief summary of the poll’s findings: “New polls out in the key states of Virginia, Iowa and Colorado show that Hillary Clinton is losing in all three of them to Republicans [Marco] Rubio, [Scott] Walker and [Jeb] Bush.”
Further explaining that the Clinton campaign expressed no concern about the poll, the ABC correspondent concluded: “They say, look, it's really early and all the attention right now has been on the Republicans and she'll have plenty of time once the attention turns back to her.”
Here’s more on the poll from Fox News.com:
In every hypothetical contest, the former secretary of state was either clearly trailing or, as Quinnipiac phrased it, "on the wrong side of a too-close-to-call" race. A majority of voters in all three states also said they found Clinton not honest and trustworthy.
The gap between Clinton and GOP candidates was most pronounced in Colorado and Iowa. She trailed Rubio by 8 points in Colorado, 38-46 percent; and Walker by 9 points, 38-47 percent. She trailed Bush by 6 points in Iowa, 36-42 percent; and Rubio by 8 points, 36-44 percent.
The survey raises troubling questions for the campaign, which has struggled to shed the image of a candidate who is closed off to the media and the public, despite her decisive lead over the Democratic field. The latest results reflect a drop from a similar poll in April.
Instead of covering both Trump and Clinton, the CBS Evening News reserved 50 seconds for highlighting the latter candidate and his ongoing battle with the South Carolina senator. Fill-in anchor Charlie Rose introduced the brief by gleefully designating the brief as the latest installment in “our hit summer reality series Keeping Up with the Republicans.”
After recapping Tuesday’s happenings between Graham and Trump, Rose explained how Graham appeared in a video on Wednesday “which he demonstrates a number of ways to destroy his classic flip phone, using cleavers, blenders, golf clubs, fire, and gravity.”
NBC Nightly News also covered the 2016 campaign, but only with a report by national correspondent Peter Alexander on the FEC papers released on Trump’s wealth.
The relevant portions of the transcript from ABC’s World News Tonight with David Muir on July 22 can be found below.
ABC’s World News Tonight with David Muir
July 22, 2015
6:42 p.m. Eastern[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE CAPTION: No Holds Barred]
DAVID MUIR: Now to the race for 2016. Donald Trump, new fallout tonight after igniting a firestorm first, with his comments about John McCain, then revealing a rival's private cell phone number on national TV. Well, tonight here, the question: Is Trump helping or hurting his fellow Republicans? And the new troubling numbers for Hillary Clinton. Here's ABC's chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl.
[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: No Holds Barred; Is Trump Hurting or Helping GOP?]
JONATHAN KARL: It's come to this, Lindsey Graham doing to his cell phone what many Republicans would like to do to the Trump campaign, after Trump gave out Graham's private phone number on national television.
(....)
KARL: Republicans are worried Trump is hurting their party. We caught up with Lindsay Graham today on Capitol Hill. [TO GRAHAM] At this point, he's not only the front-runner, he's way ahead of all of you guys.
REPUBLICAN SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM (S.C.): He's a car wreck and everybody's stopping to look. If we did pick him, it would be the end of the Republican Party.
KARL: Trump today released a 92-page financial disclosure that lists him as president or chairman of more than 400 companies, most of them named after himself. He's got the President's attention.
(....)
MUIR: And Jon Karl with us now from the White House. Republicans worry that Donald Trump might be hurting them, but it doesn't seem to be helping Hillary Clinton. They've got some troubling numbers in key battle ground states tonight?
KARL: New polls out in the key states of Virginia, Iowa and Colorado show that Hillary Clinton is losing in all three of them to Republicans Rubio, Walker and Bush.
MUIR: But the Clinton team telling you tonight that they're not worried about this?
KARL: They say, look, it's really early and all the attention right now has been on the Republicans and she'll have plenty of time once the attention turns back to her.
