On Monday morning’s New Day, CNN hosts John Berman and Alisyn Camerota brought on Axios political reporter Alexi McCammond and CNN analyst Joe Lockhart to falsely blame President Trump for “culture wars” and to campaign for their presidential candidate, Joe Biden. McCammond even claimed that Americans “don’t like” Trump’s “personality traits” and that “they trust Joe Biden.”
Berman began the unabashedly anti-Trump segment by knocking the President’s handling of several issues:
Alexi, you know, it strikes me that the president's answer to 130,000 dead Americans is statues. His answer to 10% unemployment, statues. His answer to questions about racial injustice, statues. I can see a pattern emerging here.
And what solutions has Biden proposed for these issues? On racial injustice, Biden has a history of promoting segregation in the 1970s. He said he was opposed to integration because he did not want his children to grow up in a “racial jungle.” He has also praised George Wallace, who ran for President on a segregationist platform in 1968, and Robert Byrd, who was the grand wizard of the KKK.
Of course Berman is a Democratic shill, so he is not concerned with Biden’s solutions, only with him winning the presidency. Berman knocking Trump’s handling of the economy is also laughable, given that June saw the largest increase in employment in American history -- despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
McCammond then hypocritically accused the President of inflaming “culture wars”:
But the statues point of this is important, to your point, because it's another example of the president's love of inciting and capitalizing on culture wars. We've seen this from the president, obviously, since he was running in 2016, with the border wall, and the way that he talked about Mexican immigrants, but we've also seen this you know, with relation to immigration, policy, in the 2018 midterms. Remember the scary migrant caravan that was charging towards the U.S. from the southern border that we suddenly stopped hearing about as soon as the midterm elections were over. We've seen him do this with impeachment. We've seen this do him -- him do this with Democratic congresswomen, who are all women of color, telling them to go back to where they came from.
We've seen him do this with NFL players, kneeling during the national anthem in protest of police brutality and racism against America. The same things that these Confederate statues represent in part, of course, larger history with the American country. But what is interesting is that the president knows that his base is really fired up by these culture wars. And he calls himself a wartime president in relation to the coronavirus. But now we're really seeing how the president views himself as a wartime president, as it relates to these culture wars.
Never mind that it is the radical left which has divided the United States with such “culture wars.” Leftist activists have been initiating violent protests where they have been chanting to “fry” cops “like bacon.” Leftist hero Colin Kaepernick even said that the 4th of July should not be celebrated: “We reject your celebration of white supremacy.” It was leftist activists that toppled statues of American heroes such as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. It has been the left-wing media which has forwarded the narrative that Mount Rushmore is a monument to white supremacy. The left has stoked such wars with a radical agenda which advocates hatred of America and erasing its history.
McCammond then gloated over poll numbers that favor her candidate:
I mean, one thing we know to be true, the numbers do not lie. If you look at polling time and time again in the last few weeks alone, but even in the last few days, if the presidential election were held today, Joe Biden would win by a ten-point advantage. And that is not, you know, a coincidence, given what's happening with the coronavirus. We've seen how President Trump’s standing with seniors, especially those 65 and older, has declined significantly, since the coronavirus pandemic started.
But we've also seen how Americans are sort of revealing that they don't really like these intangible qualities about the president. They don't like personality traits. They feel fearful or angry when they're thinking about the next couple of months, they say, in polling, leading up to the election. And they trust Joe Biden not just to unite the country, but to handle the coronavirus in ways that they're signaling in polling they just don't trust President Trump to do.
“Trust” is a rich word to use when describing Biden. During his first presidential run in 1988, even the leftist media knocked Biden for ripping off the speeches of others and lying about his academic record. Biden has also further demonstrated his dishonesty through his cancer nonprofit, the Biden Cancer Initiative. The nonprofit spent almost two-thirds of its donations on its leading executives, and much less on cancer research.
As always, facts do not matter to CNN. What matters to CNN is creating narratives to help its party win the presidential election.
This DNC-TV was brought to viewers by Crest and Tractor Supply.
The full July 6th transcript is here:
CNN New Day
07/06/20
6:26:32 AM
JOHN BERMAN: So we learned overnight, the president has a campaign rally scheduled for this coming weekend in New Hampshire. And if the last few days are a guide, one thing this rally will not focus much on is the pandemic, which has killed nearly 130,000 Americans. Joining us now, CNN political analyst, Joe Lockhart and Alexi McCammond, political reporter for Axios. Alexi, you know, it strikes me that the president's answer to 130,000 dead Americans is statues. His answer to 10% unemployment, statues. His answer to questions about racial injustice, statues. I can see a pattern emerging here.
ALEXI MCCAMMOND (POLITICAL REPORTER FOR AXIOS): Statues and also joking, let's not forget his testing remarks, ordering the tests to be slowed down is now being billed as a joke by both the president and his campaign, as you know, hundreds of thousands of people are dying around the world and the country alone. But the statues point of this is important, to your point, because it's another example of the president's love of inciting and capitalizing on culture wars. We've seen this from the president, obviously, since he was running in 2016, with the border wall, and the way that he talked about Mexican immigrants, but we've also seen this you know, with relation to immigration, policy, in the 2018 midterms. Remember the scary migrant caravan that was charging towards the U.S. from the southern border that we suddenly stopped hearing about as soon as the midterm elections were over. We've seen him do this with impeachment. We've seen this do him -- him do this with Democratic congresswomen, who are all women of color, telling them to go back to where they came from. We've seen him do this with NFL players, kneeling during the national anthem in protest of police brutality and racism against America. The same things that these Confederate statues represent in part, of course, larger history with the American country. But what is interesting is that the president knows that his base is really fired up by these culture wars. And he calls himself a wartime president in relation to the coronavirus. But now we're really seeing how the president views himself as a wartime president, as it relates to these culture wars.
ALISYN CAMEROTA: Joe, politically speaking, do you understand the logic here? I mean, obviously, no one likes their community being looted or being defaced by graffiti, but at the same time, no one lists removal of Confederate statues in their top five priorities for what they want in a second term. So where -- where's the politics, where's the brilliant politics here.
JOE LOCKHART (CNN POLITICAL ANALYST): Well, I don't know if it's brilliant, but it’s -- it is a strategy of necessity. It's the only one thing he has. He can't run on his record, he can't run on health care with COVID going on. He can't run on the economy. So he's got to find these social or cultural issues to drive his base out to the polls. You know, we've seen this before, George Bush 41 in 1988 ran on burning the flag and Mike Dukakis and he was an ACLU member and Willie Horton, which played on racial tensions. The -- the problem with the strategy, though is, when you don't have a great record, you make it about the other guy. And Donald Trump is incapable of making it about the other guy. He has to make it about himself. So they've got a -- a little bit of a self-defeating strategy going on there. And, you know, it’s -- it's -- you never know, but it's -- I don't see this working.
BERMAN: Well, the big difference between 1988 and 2020 is that there were no pressing, giant, life and death national issues in that election. I mean, it's a glaring difference, compared to 2020, when you have a pandemic, Alexi. And now you have this pandemic which is affecting states like Texas and Florida and Arizona, maybe places that the President's message might have had an impact before. But I'm just not sure that the audience, the broader audience beyond his base is receptive to what he's saying.
MCCAMMOND: I mean, one thing we know to be true, the numbers do not lie. If you look at polling time and time again in the last few weeks alone, but even in the last few days, if the presidential election were held today, Joe Biden would win by a ten-point advantage. And that is not, you know, a coincidence, given what's happening with the coronavirus. We've seen how President Trump’s standing with seniors, especially those 65 and older, has declined significantly, since the coronavirus pandemic started. But we've also seen how Americans are sort of revealing that they don't really like these intangible qualities about the president. They don't like personality traits. They feel fearful or angry when they're thinking about the next couple of months, they say, in polling, leading up to the election. And they trust Joe Biden not just to unite the country, but to handle the coronavirus in ways that they're signaling in polling they just don't trust President Trump to do. And I think all of that is leading to a decreased standing in sort of his re-election campaign and his campaign officials looking at their prospects and thinking, what can we do to hang on to that base group of voters who we know have been with us from the beginning, in spite of the polling showing concerning numbers. And even campaign officials for President Trump admit privately that their internal polling is looking more and more concerning, as time goes on.
CAMEROTA: Joe, as Alexi points out, polls show that Americans, the vast majority, do not trust President Trump to give them real information about coronavirus. But they were trusting the task force. I mean they were trusting the people around President Trump, though they have been sidelined. And then this weekend, the FDA commissioner refused to say that coronavirus is not harmless. I mean, when Dana bash asked him point-blank, do you -- is this right? You know what the president said, the coronavirus is harmless. He said something to the effect of, I'm not going to get into who's right and who's wrong? Isn’t that his job? Where does that leave the Americans of who they can trust?
LOCKHART: Yeah, it’s -- it’s sort of the antithesis of science when you’re not trying to decide who’s right and who’s wrong. I mean, the -- the task force members are in a very difficult position. They know what they should be doing, but their -- I think their ability to get things done is -- is way too dependent on the president's mood. So they tiptoe around it. But they are doing a disservice to the country because you know, you've got a third of the country who now says they won't take a vaccine for coronavirus, because, you know, it's something out of China. It’s -- the -- the disinformation out there is, you know, staggering. But going back to -- to John's point, he's right. In 1998, and in -- in most campaigns, when there isn't a pressing issue, cultural and social issues kind of come to the fore. Because then people can get into the ideological battle, instead of the battle of, do I have a job? Do I have health care? And this is the textbook case in 2020, of national pressing issues, you know -- you know, COVID, the economy, all of that. So that's why, you know, I just think -- don’t -- I think it's the only strategy he has, but as the polls show, it's not likely to work.
