Amidst the media’s wall-to-wall coverage on Friday morning of Donald Trump’s late-night tweetstorm about former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, MSNBC host Tamron Hall bemoaned the idea that this is a collective degrading of political decorum because it’s a “substantive” because it concerns whether Trump can win over women voters.
Of course, this admission by Hall serves as a glaring double standard concerning how the prevailing thought has been that invoking any number of Clinton scandals both salacious (Bill’s sex scandals) or not salacious (Clinton’s e-mail server, Clinton Foundation) are boring distractions and could drive voters to Hillary Clinton who somehow feel sympathetic.
After expressing indifference to comments by conservative talk radio host and MSNBC political analyst Hugh Hewitt about how Trump can eventually turn back to staying on message, Hall ruled that in the case of Judge Curiel, he didn’t change his mind but rather “stopped talking about it as he didn’t change course on the birther issue and making the allegation that it was started by Hillary Clinton.”
Hall also cited Trump’s inability to realize non-scientific polls aren’t credible barometers of the election but then moved onto her main point about the Machado controversy being most definitely worth the time of the American people and the media:
[B]ut going back to what’s happening with this Machado thing, Alicia, she's now responded on Facebook. We could make this about one woman, but in reality, while Hugh [Hewitt] and others want to pivot to substantive stories about Donald Trump, this is substantive. It's about women and you cannot become president without women voters.
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This diatribe served as a perfect segue to Moveon.org spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre, who obviously agreed with Hall’s every word and declared that Trump’s undeniably uncomfortable tweets about Machado and sex tapes “should disqualify him from becoming president.”
Jean-Pierre then continued spinning about Trump “continu[ing] to verbally abuse a women” and make no mention of how any behavior by Mrs. Clinton could be seen as disqualifying:
For over a year now, we've been talking about how unfit Donald Trump is to become president of the United States. This morning at 5:00 a..m. as we all have been talking about, he takes to Twitter and continues to verbally abuse a woman when she didn't do anything wrong except not meet Donald Trump's standards? And so it wouldn't show that not only is he unfit but just disgusting.
This all being said, Trump will certainly not win any undecided voters (let alone voters period) by engaging in such semantics, but the media’s insistence that it’s worth covering obsessively as they did in the primaries (to the determinant of his opponents) and not apply the same habit to covering Clinton scandal developments illustrate how little the American people trust the media.
The relevant portion of the transcript from the 11:00 a.m. hour of MSNBC’s The Place for Politics 2016 on September 30 can be found below.
MSNBC’s The Place for Politics 2016
September 30, 2016
11:15 a.m. Eastern
TAMRON HALL: Karine, for the record, Donald Trump did not change course on Curiel. He stopped talking about it as he didn’t change course on the birther issue and making the allegation that it was started by Hillary Clinton as he's not changed course and falsely saying scientific polls and he knows that's not the case, but going back to what’s happening with this Machado thing, Alicia, she's now responded on Facebook. We could make this about one woman, but in reality, while Hugh [Hewitt] and others want to pivot to substantive stories about Donald Trump, this is substantive. It's about women.
MOVEON.ORG’s KARINE JEAN-PIERRE: It's about women. That’s exactly right.
HALL: And you cannot become president without women voters.
JEAN-PIERRE: Yes. It should disqualify him from becoming president. That's exactly right. Look, Tamron. For over a year now, we've been talking about how unfit Donald Trump is to become president of the United States. This morning at 5:00 a..m. as we all have been talking about, he takes to Twitter and continues to verbally abuse a woman when she didn't do anything wrong except not meet Donald Trump's standards? And so it wouldn't show that not only is he unfit but just disgusting.
