The Monday morning flagship network news shows began with heavy doses of rank propaganda for Vice President Kamala Harris, telling viewers to find joy in saying “this is an entirely different campaign” with “momentum” and “new signs of strength” for Democrats now that President Joe Biden has been axed.
In contrast, they showed they’re in lockstep with the Harris campaign by falsely attacking Trump for saying there “won’t have to vote anymore if he’s elected” and bragging Senator JD Vance (R-OH) is still “facing backlash” nearly a week into the (clearly coordinated) campaign to destroy Vance for “2021 comments referring to some Democrats as childless cat ladies”.
CBS Saturday Morning co-host Michelle Miller pinch-hit on Monday and showed her partisan stripes (as she’s married to longtime liberal activist, former New Orleans Democratic mayor, and National Urban League boss, Marc Morial): “[T]here are new signs of strength for the Kamala Harris presidential campaign including new poll numbers and a growing financial haul. Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump is turning up the heat on her with a series of personal attacks.”
Chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes followed suit in working to gain brownie points for her new handlers:
The Harris campaign says it brought in $200 million in the first week of her candidacy, that is a record. It’s also touting more than 170,000 new volunteers. Now the campaign says this is sign of pent-up interest in the race as the party converges around a new message about the Republican nominees, arguing they’re weird.
Cordes excitedly added that Harris hasn’t just “rak[ed] in campaign cash”, but “also experienced a polling surge.”
Cordes’s tone flipped the script for the Trump/Vance ticket. First, she whined the former President “tested out a series of new personal attacks this weekend” and Harris received “backup” in fighting Trump “from potential running mates...who held events on her behalf around the country.”
The CBS correspondent also touted the latest word games against Trump before closing with negative doses for Vance on the “cat ladies” smear and a false claim that giving illegal immigrants citizenship wouldn’t mean they could vote (even though voting is, in fact, largely open to those who have U.S. passports) (click “expand”):
CORDES: They also went after Trump for this unusual plea he made to Christian conservatives —
TRUMP: Christians, get out and vote! Just this time. [APPLAUSE ] You won't have to do it anymore. Four more years — you know what, it’ll be fixed. It’ll be fine. You won't have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.
CORDES: — the Harris campaign said he was signaling an “end to democracy”. Republicans weren’t sure what he meant.
(....)
CORDES: Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, gave this explanation to CBS News —
VANCE: I think he's saying get out there, make sure this election matters because if you don't, the next four years we may not have a real election if the Democrats give illegal aliens the right to vote.
CORDES: It’s important to note the Democrats have not suggested that undocumented migrants should get the right to vote any time in the next four years. Democrats went after Vance all weekend, actually, for his past claim that childless cat ladies run the Democratic Party and even some Republicans said privately that they’re worried his comments will further erode Trump’s support among women.
ABC’s Good Morning America understood the assignment on Monday. Correspondent Rachel Scott celebrated this day as “an entirely different campaign” with “Harris hoping to seize on that new momentum”.
Scott used most of her segment to attack Vance and celebrate him “facing backlash for these comments he made three years ago disparaging Harris and other Democrats for not having children.”
As for Trump, Scott huffed that “[a]fter surviving an attempted assassination, former President Trump says he’s now backing away from calls to tone down the rhetoric” and fawned over “Democrats pouncing” with the claim about Trump joking this will be the last election if he wins.”
“Donald Trump starting to sharpen his attacks against his new rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, mocking her laugh, mispronouncing her name, calling her unhinged and extreme. Vice President Kamala Harris responding to those new attacks from both Trump and Senator J.D. Vance, calling it all just plain weird,” she concluded.
ABC political director Rick Klein also marveled (click “expand”):
[T]his is an entirely different race than it was just a week ago, and one thing is for certain, it is close. We’ve had four major polls come out just since Joe Biden left the race and endorsed Harris. You have everything from a Harris plus two to a Trump plus three, basically a tied race all within the margin of error. We’ve also gotten some initial battleground state polling that’s encouraging for Democrats...[I]t has been quite a honeymoon for Vice President Harris. Just in the space of a week — so a week ago, 35 percent of the country saw her favorably — now it’s up to 43 percent. That includes a big jump among independents. She is now the very rare politician viewed more favorably than unfavorably at least for the moment. On the other side, we have seen kind of the opposite happened for Donald Trump. Coming out of his convention and that assassination attempt, we talked last week, he got to a four-year high in favorability of 40 percent, now it’s down to the mid-30s, back where it’s been for a long time, and J.D. Vance, this has not been a good debut week for him. The number of people who view him unfavorably jumped by eight points in the space of a week. Look at that gap, 15 points underwater overall
(....)
Just a week ago, 14 percent of the country said they were unfavorably inclined to support either one of the candidates. They — we call them the double haters. Now that number is cut in half, and check this out. The enthusiasm gap that Democrats have worried about, at least for now, entirely erased. Democrats enthusiastic about Kamala Harris’s candidacy just like Republicans are for Trump, and this is a striking number — 49 percent of independents say they are enthusiastic about Kamala Harris. Compare that number to Trumps and you see how this race has been turned on its head[.]
NBC’s Today had senior Washington correspondent Hallie Jackson tout Team Harris “deploying a new adjective to blast the Republican ticket” as “weird” and “fueled by controversy surrounding Mr. Trump’s running mate JD Vance” with this manufactured “cat ladies” controversy.
Jackson played a clip of Vance from last week in which he told the great Megyn Kelly that what he said in 2021 was “about criticizing the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child.”
She also went after Trump by hyping a December appearance on NBC by Liz Cheney:
It's gonna be a LONG 100 days of leftist bias. The 'Today' show themes on Monday:
— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) July 29, 2024
--Kamala raises BIG BUCKS
--Kamala says Vance is WEIRD
-- Trump now on DEFENSE over jokes about not needing to vote after 4 years of excellence...End of Democracy! Liz Cheney says so! pic.twitter.com/DM1ratLzhh
To see the relevant transcripts from July 29, click here (for ABC), here (for CBS), and here (for NBC).
