After the Wednesday editions of CBS This Morning and NBC’s Today attempted to excuse the disgusting Washington Post cartoon depicting Ted Cruz’s daughters as moneys, various hosts and guests throughout the day on CNN and MSNBC followed suit by chiding the “weird” and “controversial” Cruz for sending out fundraising e-mails related to the smear and “not reacting kindly” to cartoonist Ann Telnaes’s latest work.
The bashing came early and often, beginning in the 9:00 a.m. Eastern hour of CNN Newsroom as host Carol Costello expressed uneasiness at what Telnaes did (which was soon after retracted), but still found a way to take a swipe at Cruz: “I will say....the fact that Ted Cruz is raising money off a controversy that involves his children is kind of weird.”
The bashing came early and often, beginning in the 9:00 a.m. Eastern hour of CNN Newsroom as host Carol Costello expressed uneasiness at what Telnaes did (which was soon after retracted), but still found a way to take a swipe at Cruz: “I will say....the fact that Ted Cruz is raising money off a controversy that involves his children is kind of weird.”
Also that hour on MSNBC Live, NBC News correspondent Hallie Jackson described Cruz’s reaction to the cartoon related to his campaign’s holiday spoof ad this way: “Ted Cruz not reacting kindly to that at all, sarcastically tweeting: ‘Classy, Washington Post. If you want to attack,’ basically attack me, his daughters ‘are out of your league.’”
The insanity returned two hours later on CNN’s At This Hour with host Kate Bolduan wondering aloud to Republican strategist Bruce Haynes if Cruz was somehow the one to blame for this controversy: “Was this genius or is this dangerous, using his girls in an ad after the up — and then after the uproar fundraising off of it?”
Before admitting that it was the correct move to take it down, CNN political commentator Errol Louis opined that, in reality, “there's rough and tumble and there's free speech” and so the job of political cartoonists isn’t successful “unless somebody howls in pain and they've gone too far.”
Speaking to correspondent Dana Bash on CNN just after 1:00 p.m. Eastern, Wolf Blitzer lamented: “[B]ut he’s now using that cartoon, showing that cartoon, trying to use that cartoon to raise $1 million. That’s somewhat controversial.”
If none of those examples were enough, afternoon MSNBC Live host Thomas Roberts suggested to Iowa Christian activist Bob Vander Plaats that Cruz “will learn” a lesson from the vicious criticism of having his children appear in a campaign commercial:
[I]n the parody, there's also one point where another timeless classic called The Grinch Who Lost Her E-Mails and the oldest daughter, a seven-year-old, acts out a daughter from the Christmas story saying “I will use my own server and none will be the wiser.” So, this is directed at Secretary Clinton. Do you think that the cartoonist has a point here or even maybe the Senator will learn going forward that maybe let's not act the kids in our political campaign ads?
While that provides only a sampling of the attacks on Cruz, there were a few rare exceptions. Appearing with Jackson on MSNBC, USA Today’s Susan Page fired back:
I agree with the general point that you should leave kids alone, that children of candidates do not choose to run. Hard enough to be a kid, especially hard to be a kid when your parents is in politics. There are lots of things to make fun of Ted Cruz about. I don't think this is an appropriate venue — and appropriate subject for that.
Over on MSNBC Live with Tamron Hall, NBC News senior political editor Mark Murray also strongly condemned the depiction:
[Y]ou know, to my advantage point is bringing children in, whether you’re Democrat or Republican and lampooning them and even characterizing them as monkeys is always off base. I don't know what the judgment was there, but certainly something that Ted Cruz is playing to to his supporters.
