Sighh, they really are trying to make fetch happen. Like ABC’s Good Morning America and NBC’s Today, Wednesday’s CBS Mornings did what they thought was needed to project joy over the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz ticket and claim they’re “electric” kick off rally was the start of something special.
Reacting to clips of The Daily Show fawning over Walz, fill-in co-host Jericka Duncan boasted Walz “had a lot of good one liners” at the rally while co-host and Democratic donor Gayle King gushed that “from what we learned last night, he does seem to have a lot of skills.”
Tossing to chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes, King boasted that the “energized crowd...jumped off the screen” when she watched it on TV.
Cordes, who was there, relayed “[i]t was electric inside the arena, too” with “10,000 screaming supporters, thousands more who were waiting outside but couldn’t get in” to see Harris and Walz “lavishing praise on one another”.
“It was Walz who first dubbed the Republican nominees ‘weird’ two weeks ago. It caught fire with Democrats, so he brought it back last night,” she added.
Cordes didn’t have a soundbite from the Republican inside, instead boiling it down to two sentences: “Former President Donald Trump called Harris and Walz the most radical left duo in American history. The race is on for both sides to define themselves and each other in what feels like a brand-new race.”
Following the pattern set by ABC’s Selina Wang and NBC’s Hallie Jackson, CBS had senior White House and campaign correspondent Ed O’Keefe deliver the syrupy Walz biographical segment.
Here were some snippets, which included his military service (but not his questionable statements about it) and a touting of his leftist credentials (click “expand”):
O’KEEFE: Born in Nebraska, the 60-year-old governor in his second term, has marveled at the interest in him.
WALZ: I don’t know if every high school Geography teacher expects to be in this position at some point.
O’KEEFE: Tim Walz also coached the state champion high school football team.
HARRIS: Under those Friday Night Lights, Coach Walz motivated his players to believe they could achieve.
O’KEEFE: An Army National Guard veteran, he first ran for Congress in 2006 in part over concerns with the Iraq war.
WALZ: Our troops deserve a plan to win the peace.
O’KEEFE: He represented a Southern Minnesota district, and strongly backed former President Donald Trump in 2016 and developed a bipartisan reputation that got him elected governor in 2018. Critics blamed him for a flatfooted response in 2020, the violence sparked by George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis. People we spoke to in his St. Paul neighborhood admitted he could have done more faster.
WOMAN: I think kind of the buck got passed. But I think you live and learn.
O’KEEFE: Walz did enact a series of police reforms, including a ban on chokeholds. He spoke to us in 2021 after officer Derek Chauvin’s conviction.
(....)
O’KEEFE: More recently, Walz signed bills expanding school meals programs —
WALZ: Now law.
O’KEEFE: — banning conversion therapy for minors and protecting abortion services, even visiting a women’s health clinic in Minnesota with Vice President Harris. He and his wife Gwen, have two children. His daughter was conceived through IVF.
(....)
O’KEEFE: Hope often co-stars with him in some of his most popular videos.
CBS wasn’t done. Later in the show, they trotted out Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) to geek out over Harris and Walz.
To see the relevant transcript from August 7, click here.
