Tuesday afternoon’s CNN Newsroom brought us another example of how personalties on the Jeffrey Zucker-led network and his puppets were anything but civil, fair, mature, serious, and sober. For this installment, Brianna Keilar tossed one fit after another at Trump 2020 senior adviser Mercedes Schlapp for having the gall to articulate the difference between absentee and mail-in voting and voice concerns about the latter.
Showing an incapacity to behave like an adult, Keilar repeated threw down her pen, pounded her table, told Schlapp she doesn’t know what “facts” are, condescendingly wondered if she could ask questions, insisted Schlapp wanted to “sow doubt” to discourage voting, and told her that what she told her over the course of nearly 15 minutes was “crap.”
So let’s try to get through some of this. After stacking the deck with a lead-in from former conservative journalist-turned-Zuckerbot Kaitlan Collins, Keilar asked Schlapp why Trump trusted Florida’s voter system but not the rest of the country.
Schlapp calmly explained that “it's different on a state-by-state basis” because “there's a big concern about the universal mail-in voting that the Democrats really want to push through,” but Keilar interrupted to restate the question.
Thankfully, Schlapp laid it all out in plain English why cases like Nevada are harmful in addition to the New York Board of Elections’s failure to count ballots from their primaries. Keilar claimed she was “causing a lot of confusion,” but you be the judge (click “expand”):
SCHLAPP: [S]o let me take a state like Nevada. Well, let’s take the state of Nevada which, in the dead of night, these Democrats pushed forward this law that, as we know that, even come election day, you could still cast a ballot three days later if you don't have a postmark or seven days later if you have a postmark. Let's say, Brianna, you vote for Joe Biden. Then you find out in Nevada that Trump, President Trump wins. You can go to your family members, colleagues and say do you still have that mail-in vote? Let's cast it because you can cast it several days after the election. That is incredibly problematic and they also have weakened verification systems in states like Nevada when it comes to these mail-in voting — so again, this is a case-by-case basis, state by state basis we look at the case of New York as well where we still don't know the win — the victory in the congressional districts because they push for this mail-in voting that the state was not prepared for.
KEILAR: So, you're alleging in some states people will be able to look at what appears to be the outcome and try to change it after it is determined? That is what you are alleging? In many states, so you’re —
SCHLAPP: Well — I'm not alleging. That's the law in Nevada, so we’re going to take the law in Nevada, let's say, that they just passed that is also allowing for ballot harvesting. If you're over the age of 65, people can collect the ballots and put them and send them over and we know that could be rife with fraud. Some states handle this better than other states and so I think that —
KEILAR: Look, you're — you’re — you’re causing a lot of confusion here, Mercedes and you know that and I don't understand what the point of it is because when we —
SCHLAPP: I don’t think it’s confusing at all. No. When you look at the case of Nevada —
KEILAR: No, when we look at mail-in — when we look at mail-in studies — Loyola, it says, look, you know this. There are studies that have been done by the George W. Bush Justice Department. You used to work for the Bush administration. They have been done by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank and they have looked at what you are talking about then it comes to mail-in voting and they have found that there is no fraud. First off, voter fraud, in general, is minuscule. It is statistically insignificant.
SCHLAPP: Do you think any fraud acceptable, Brianna? Is any fraud acceptable? Because I don't think it's acceptable. I think the mere fact that you can —
KEILAR: Alright, well then let me walk through this for you then. The Loyola study —
SCHLAPP: [INAUDIBLE] where you had a 1,000 mail-in —
KEILAR: — oh, no, no, no. Don't muddy the waters here. This is extremely important, okay? Look, you can respond after I talk about this. —
SCHLAPP: Okay, yeah.
KEILAR: — Loyola study, they tracked elections over 14 years, 2000 to 2014, exactly 31 instances of voter fraud out of more than one billion stances. I mean, we're in a pandemic, so I would say, Mercedes, I would say you have bigger problems than this. George Bush commission study — five year study on voter fraud — the Justice Department “has turned up virtually no evidence of organized effort to skew federal elections.” Heritage Foundation looking at voting from 1982 to 2020. They had a detailed examination of this and what they saw was just 207. This is over the course of 38 years of voting. 207 fraudulent absentee ballot cases out of 277 instances of credible voter fraud cases —
SCHLAPP: [SKYPE AUDIO CUTS]
KEILAR: — so you're looking at 16 percent related to — 16 percent of a tiny number related to mail voting, so I hear you say, oh, is any too much?
Keilar brought up Republican ballot harvesting in North Carolina as if to blunt Schlapp’s arguments, but she replied that fraud is “not acceptable with any party,” so changing the way Americans vote to entirely by mail would increase the likelihood such an incident could be replicated. That was on top of her astute point that elections entirely by mail take manpower and time when Americans should feel confident in knowing by November 4th who won the election.
Schlapp even conceded discussions of fraud and lag time in vote counting were two different things, but Keilar didn’t care since her job required her to demean instead of engage.
Things continued to circle the drain until Keilar ascribed a state’s issues with counting ballots with the President’s less-than-positive view of the Postal Service and his refusal to hand over to them tens of billions of dollars. Talk about a red herring.
Schlapp replied that Americans should have options instead of being pressured into voting by mail and, if someone does so, there should be ample security protocols. As we saw Monday night in New York, the left has started to erase basic protocols like requiring voters to sign their envelope.
Nonetheless, Keilar continued to lie and insist there’s no difference. When Schlapp said they weren’t “seeing eye to eye on this,” Keilar went full Mean Girl by telling her they’re not because she, unlike Schlapp, was “talking about facts.”
Unsurprisingly, things went personal as Keilar accused her guest of intentionally scaring Americans into questioning whether to vote and interjected with annoyance to wonder if she was still allowed to ask questions.
On the other side, Schlapp unsuccessfully asked Keilar whether she found it okay for ballots to come in three days or even a week after Election Day (click “expand”):
KEILAR: Hello! I’d like to ask my question.
SCHLAPP: And they said — I could go over these cases with you where you see the —
KEILAR: Mercedes. Mercedes. Okay, why are you doing that? Because it appears that it’s just to sow doubt —
SCHLAPP: — [SKYPE AUDIO CUT] —
KEILAR: — in the minds of people when whether or not their votes are going to matter.
SCHLAPP: — look. For both sides, for this nation, for the sake of America, we need to make sure that every vote matters. And it’s why, you know, it’s important that we get it right. I am highlighting for you examples — [SKYPE AUDIO CUT].
KEILAR: So then why are you trying to ensure that some people won't be able to vote?
SCHLAPP: Do you think it’s okay to cast a ballot three days after the election? Let me ask you that question.
KEILAR: Why are you — okay, if everyone’s —
SCHLAPP: No, answer my question.
KEILAR: — no, you just said — you just said — Mercedes. [HAMMERS TABLE WITH PEN] Mercedes.
SCHLAPP: Is it okay to cast a ballot three days after the election?
KEILAR: Mercedes, you just said that everybody — you were just stating that a priority should be for people to practice their rights as Americans and vote and look, if they’re registered voters, that is their right.
SCHLAPP: And Election Day is November 3 and —
KEILAR: So, then why are you talking — so then why are you talking down — why are you villainizing mail-in voting which would give people the ability to practice their right —
SCHLAPP: — I’m not villainizing.
KEILAR: — as an American and vote.
SCHLAPP: I'm going to ask you again, do you think it’s okay after November 3rd to be able to cast a ballot three days after or seven days after
KEILAR: Mercedes —
SCHLAPP: — the election? November 3rd. Yes or no.
KEILAR: — you're saying — you’re saying — that vote fraud is a thing and I'm telling you that it’s not and you're muddying the waters —
SCHLAPP: Oh, okay. Let’s be real. [SKYPE AUDIO CUT]
KEILAR: — and I also wonder isn’t that — don't you worry that that’s going to actually hurt you. I mean, isn't that to the point why the President has said when it —
SCHLAPP: Here we go. Georgia. Mail-in ballot issues —
KEILAR: — okay —
SCHLAPP: — may have left thousands unclaimed —
KEILAR: — Mercedes, I’m asking —
[SCHLAPP THROWS UP HANDS]
SCHLAPP: — I’m just going — I can go through [SKYPE AUDIO CUT].
KEILAR: — Mercedes. Mercedes —
SCHLAPP: In fact, we can go have a cocktail and go down the list.
Keilar then declared not only was Schlapp’s claims “pointless,” but far worse than that: “This is, like, this is just pointless, okay. This is pointless. I get it, you're just saying a bunch of crap, okay. You're saying a bunch of crap.”
She added before ending this waste of time that Schlapp wasn’t willing to “have a serious conversation” because “[w]e're talking about voting in a pandemic and giving people the ability to vote If they are a registered voter and you seem to be talking about putting obstacles in their way to that.”
Uh-huh. Now do CNN, Brianna.
Keilar’s immature, Mean Girl-like routine and refusal to engage in the facts were brought to you by advertisers such as Amazon Pharmacy, Care.com, Discovery Channel, and the MRHFM Law Firm (MesoBook.com). Follow the links provided (or go here) to the MRC’s Conservatives Fight Back page.
