With the liberal media having achieved their dream 2024 match-up with former President Donald Trump all-but set to face off against President Joe Biden, the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC refused to acknowledge the existence of Congressman Dean Phillips (D-MN) as President Biden’s primary challenger and pulled 20 percent in the (unofficial) New Hampshire Democratic primary.
It wasn’t surprising at all as Phillips has been an afterthought for much of this campaign in the eyes of the liberal media.
CBS Mornings came the closest to mentioning Phillips with an on-air graphic with the vote tally from the Granite State on the Democratic side with a picture of the congressman, the number of votes he received, the percentage, and just his latest name.
This quickly came and went as co-host Nate Burleson setup a puffball piece by chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes on President Biden’s pro-abortion rally Tuesday afternoon in ultra-blue Northern Virginia:
I know we haven’t talked about it a lot, but there was actually a Democratic primary in New Hampshire yesterday. It wasn’t sanctioned by the National Democratic Party and President Joe Biden wasn’t actually on the ballot, but he easily won it as a write-in candidate over other challengers.
[ON-SCREEN GRAPHIC: New Hampshire Democratic Primary; Vote In: 68%; Delegates at Stake: 10; Projected Winner: Biden, 66.8%, Lead: 37,970, 54,178; Phillips, 20%, 16,208]
Biden’s campaign is already turning its attention to the general election[.]
Cordes boasted of Team Biden “looking past the primaries” to increase “their attacks on Trump” and especially since his “allies say that Donald Trump is knocking out some of his top GOP rivals more quickly than they expected”.
“In Northern Virginia, President Biden argued one man is responsible for the full or partial abortion bans that now exist in 21 states,” Cordes proclaimed going into a soundbite about how the Supreme Court and Trump have “ripped away the rights and freedoms of women in America.”
She continued with the White House talking points (click “expand”):
CORDES: Even as he spoke, his campaign was keeping an eye on events unfolding in New Hampshire. Biden campaign officials saying “Donald Trump has all but locked up the GOP nomination” and labeling Trump’s victory speech, “bitter and confused sounding.”
TRUMP: They use COVID to cheat and they did a lot of other things, too.
CORDES: Abortion rights will be a major theme for the Biden-Harris campaign, and here is one reason why. Exit polls from New Hampshire last night found that two-thirds of Republican primary voters oppose a national ban on abortion that’s been proposed by some congressional Republicans.
VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Extremists are trying to pass a national abortion ban to outlaw — [CROWD BOOING] — to outlaw abortion in every state, but what they need to know is that we will not allow it. [CHEERS AND APPLAUSE]
Cordes did, however, acknowledge the “[p]ro-Palestinian protesters” who “interrupted his speech over and over last night and had to be escorted out” and stated it’s “another issue...likely to dog President Biden”.
Later, she concluded with another puffy Biden tidbit: “The Biden campaign is also signaling that the GOP presidential primary race is over by selling these new t-shirts with the slogan, “Together We Will Defeat Trump Again.’”
Over on ABC (which has yet to mention Phillips on its flagship morning or evening news show), Good Morning America co-host and former Clinton official George Stephanopoulos played it cool as if we all knew Trump and Biden faced voters: “Decisive night in politics. Donald Trump, Joe Biden both scored big in the New Hampshire primary.”
This allusion to Biden winning a primary again came up as Stephanopoulos noted to chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl that “[r]elatively, Joe Biden did better with Democrats than Donald Trump did with the Republicans.”
Karl concurred that Biden did “a lot better,” “without really campaigning, without having his name on the ballot,” and despite some Granite State voters having crossing party lines to take a Republican ballot to back Nikki Haley to send a mesage to Trump.
“[T]his is a phenomenon that could really hurt him in a general election, which is you have a significant number of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who simply will not vote for Donald Trump. In a close race, that can be decisive,” he added.
Before that exchange, ABC’s chief Biden apple polisher Mary Bruce eagerly peddled Team Biden’s spoonfed talking points (click “expand”):
STEPHANOPOULOS: Is this truly the candidate that Joe Biden wants?
BRUCE: Look, the overarching message from the White House and the President's campaign is that Joe Biden beat Donald Trump before and he can beat him again. And this morning, the message coming out of the Biden campaign is game on. They are very clearly gearing up for a general election. I mean, the President in his statement last night said flatly Donald Trump is going to be the GOP nominee and he said our very democracy is at stake here. And he made a direct appeal to those key independents and Republican voters who don't support Trump to go ahead and join his fight. And, George, he's changing up his campaign structure. He is now dispatching two of his top white House aides that helped run his 2020 campaign, sending them over to help run his re-election. And perhaps the clearest sign yet that he’s changing gears: Biden himself is ramping up his direct attacks on trump. He called him out 14 times in his speech yesterday.
The only other mention came thanks to another Stephanopoulos footnote at the top of the second hour about Biden and Trump having “scored big in the New Hampshire primary.”
As for NBC’s Today, the Biden write-in campaign never came up once.
To see the relevant transcripts from January 24, click here (for ABC) and here (for CBS).
