The leftist press has been laying it on thick in hyping the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz ticket. It wasn’t just at the DNC (see here). It’s been going on for well over a month.
Network and cable anchors, reporters and hosts celebrated the “joyful” “jubilation” surrounding the Harris nomination, and whipped-up excitement for the selection of “folksy” “football coach” Walz. Some even dared to sell Harris as a Democratic version of Ronald Reagan. Former MSNBC host Chris Matthews crawled out of retirement to compare Harris to John Wayne.
Meanwhile, the Trump-Vance ticket was derided as the “weird” “dark” and “dangerous” threat to democracy.
The following are the most egregious examples of leftist journalists holding up the Harris-Walz ticket, while trashing Trump-Vance over the last month:
DNC Was “Joyful” and “Happy,” RNC Felt Like a “Weighted Blanket”
“People wanted to be a part of it [DNC]....The jubilation is also around a candidate and around a party....people are hungry. I think they’re exhausted by all the negativity and the hate and the heaviness, and they want to be joyful in solving the country’s problems....Whereas in Milwaukee [RNC], every night I felt like when we left the set....like a weighted blanket. Four days in Chicago is a completely different experience….Democrats are....happy, they’re excited....They have rocketed out of Chicago ready, willing, and able to push Kamala Harris over the finish line.”
— Washington Post associate editor/PBS contributor Jonathan Capehart on PBS NewsHour, August 23.
Harris Is Throwing a “No-Hitter”
“The trend is heavily towards Harris, and it’s rushing towards Harris in recent weeks. The Vice President at this point throwing the equivalent of a no-hitter in the first three weeks of her campaign.”
— MSNBC host Jonathan Lemire on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, August 12.
Democratic Ticket More Like “Reagan” Than Trump-Vance
“There’s a lot more kind of sunny Reagan about the Democratic ticket at the moment than there is about the Republican ticket.”
— BBC correspondent Katty Kay on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, August 8.
“Patriotism Fully Reclaimed” at DNC
“Being in this arena last night, the flags got bigger as the night went along. So, everyone had a small flag in their hand to wave for the speech, and then they brought out the big flags for Kamala Harris’ speech. Chants of ‘USA!’ Patriotism fully reclaimed.”
— Co-host Willie Geist on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, August 26.
“Joyful” Democrats Vs. “Frightening” “Weird” “Dark” Republicans
“We begin tonight with joy. No, not–not me, Joy, but the feeling joy. The joy felt by Americans backing the Harris/Walz ticket. A joy that is palpable and pervasive, as illustrated by the massive crowds greeting VP Harris and Governor Walz at their rallies in Wisconsin and Michigan, today. It feels like we're experiencing another 2008 Obama moment, the energy, the excitement, the enthusiasm. It feels fun. Imagine that. American politics. Joyful again. It’s the tale of two tickets. One radiates joy. The other is dour and, frankly, frightening.”
— Host Joy Reid on MSNBC’s The ReidOut, August 7.
Former Senator/MSNBC analyst Claire McCaskill: “The Democrats are having fun, and it’s about joy and opportunity and freedom. And the other side is about, you know, cat ladies and electrocuting boats.”...
Host Jonathan Lemire: “And ‘weird’ is the word Democrats have fixated on the last ten days, but it’s also, it’s really dark. It’s a dark image of America that Donald Trump and JD Vance are putting forward.”
— MSNBC’s Morning Joe, July 31.
Christian Voters “Fed Up” with Trump’s “Hateful Vision”
“Not all Christians are the Evangelical white dudes with main character energy from The Handmaid’s Tale, but this most surprising election does keep delivering surprises….Christians for Kamala, had a Zoom meeting that included leaders from several progressive groups urging supporters to get behind Harris and Walz. Call it divine intervention, or perhaps lots of Christians are just getting fed up with being associated with the hateful vision of Donald Trump.”
— Host Joy Reid on MSNBC’s The ReidOut, August 14.
Berman Really Reaching, Suggests Vance Mocked Suicide
“Last night after CNN released a small clip of the Harris interview, you, on Twitter, posted a clip from a Miss Teen USA beauty pageant from 2007, Caitlin Upton and you wrote, ‘I have gotten a hold of the full Kamala Harris-CNN interview.’ Now, this thing that surfaced around the internet for a few years she had, you know, she had, you know, struggled answering a question back in this beauty pageant. I’m not sure you’re aware in 2015, Caitlin Upton, did an interview in New York Magazine about all the social media attention this clip got, and she said, ‘I definitely went through a period where I was very, very depressed, but I never let anybody see that stuff except for people I could trust. I had some very dark moments where I thought about committing suicide.’ So, when you posted this last night, were you aware that the woman you are posting a picture of had contemplated committing suicide for the attention that it received?...Would you like to apologize to Caitlin Upton for posting that last night given what you've now learned?”
— Host John Berman to J.D. Vance on CNN News Central, August 30.
Gayle King Zinging In Those Hardball Questions
“Let’s talk about the rave reviews that Governor Walz seems to be getting from all spectrums of your party. You’ve got Nancy Pelosi on one side, Joe Manchin, we have the progressives on the left. What does this mean, what does this say? It’s been a long time since we’ve seen this kind of reaction.”
— Co-host Gayle King to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on CBS Mornings, August 7.
Washington Post Reporter Urges White House to Censor Elon Musk, So Much for “Democracy Dies in Darkness”
“Elon Musk is slated to interview Donald Trump….tonight on X. I don’t know if the President is going to — feel free to say if he is or not — but I think that misinformation on Twitter is not just a campaign issue. It’s a — you know, it’s an America issue. What role does the White House or the President have….sort of stopping that or stopping the spread of that or sort of intervening in that?”
— Washington Post White House reporter Cleve Wootson to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on August 12.
Republicans Should Be “Scared” of “Amazing” “Fresh and New” Harris-Walz Ticket
“The Republicans were scared of Josh Shapiro. Republicans were scared of Mark Kelly. They were not scared of Governor Walz, but they should be. They should be because what you just saw tonight was extraordinary….Everybody is like ‘This guy is amazing because he talks like a normal person about stuff that people really care about.’...This is old, and sorry, and pathetic, and boring, and doom, and gloom versus young, and exciting, and fresh, and new….It’s the past versus the future. It is a completely different fight…. They [Kamala Harris and Walz] fit together like Legos. It is an unbelievable feeling that’s sweeping through the country and Donald Trump is scared and he should be.”
— Contributor Van Jones on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, August 6.
She’s So Excited (About Saving Democracy From Trump) and She Just Can’t Hide It
Host Stephen Colbert: “Are you excited about this change of the election story?
MSNBC Host Alex Wagner: “I mean, Stephen, yes. Yes, 1,000 times, yes, I’m excited! I will say I thought maybe this would be a chill summer of taking the kids to soccer camp, like, kicking back with a white wine spritzer, maybe a little bit early, no. It has been, for journalists, it’s been an exhilarating time. For members of a democracy that we hope to be functioning, it’s been a thrilling time.”
— CBS’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, August 15.
Is Chris Getting Another Thrill? Kamala is John Wayne!
“I said after Barack Obama spoke in Boston back in 2004, we saw the first black president….This election may be short enough to beat history. That we can have a woman of color as our next president because of the length of this campaign. They got to get out there and keep the excitement going….Her incredible confidence to speak to that room as if she owned it. She was the emcee of that room….We saw leadership last night. Bob Casey, the former governor of Pennsylvania….said, ‘Pennsylvania is a John Wayne state, not a Jane Fonda state.’ She was John Wayne last night! She was a leader. A leader! And she was clear that she was the boss.”
— Former MSNBC Hardball host Chris Matthews discussing Kamala Harris performance at rally, as aired on Morning Joe, August 7.
This is the Sales Pitch? Walz Is “Normal As Can Be”
“Tim Walz is the opposite of weird. Like in a dictionary, if you had ‘weird’ and ‘ant-weird,’ you’d have Tim Walz’s picture there as a high school coach and its history teacher, and a guy that seems as normal as can be.”
— USA Today Washington bureau chief Susan Page on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, August 6.
Did Walz’s PR Staff Write This Headline?
“Walzing on Sunshine: How Tim Walz’s Upbeat Demeanor Got Him on The Kamala Harris Ticket”
— Headline to August 11 USA Today article.
Selling Leftist Walz as “Folksy” “Football Coach” “Moderate” with “Rural Roots”
Correspondent Selina Wang: “He [Tim Walz] really has that perfect backstory. He also has those rural roots….He’s the one….who labeled J.D. Vance and his Republican allies as ‘weird,’ which gained a lot of steam with the Harris campaign. He has this folksy, personal, informal vibe that has really appealed to a lot of Democrats….Rural backstory….former member of the NRA….He was a football coach.”...
Chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl: “His district is a district that Donald Trump carried quite handedly, a pretty conservative district. And as a member of Congress, he was viewed as a moderate Democrat.”
— Correspondent Selina Wang on ABC News Special Report, August 6. Walz’s lifetime ACU rating is 8.
Co-host Mika Brzezinski: “He [Tim Walz] sounds like, you know, a football coach, talking about very progressive issues….He brings to the table a background that is very down to earth and connected with people and their daily lives, as a former teacher.”...
Financial Times Washington bureau chief Ed Luce: “He’s a hunter….He shoots. He’s got a pretty normal family…. J.D. Vance was….a weird choice who talks in weird ways. Walz is the unweird.”
— MSNBC’s Morning Joe, August 6.
Condemning “Swift-Boating” of Walz
“Republicans are talking about swift-boating Walz because he left the National Guard back in 2005 rather than stay and deploy to Iraq….Republicans are going to find out, I think, that framing a gun-owning Midwest nice guy as a radical far-left commie ends up painting you into some really weird corners.”
— Host Chris Hayes on MSNBC’s All In, August 6.
CNN’s Keilar Questions J.D. Vance’s Military Service
“I also think that J.D. Vance, as a messenger on this, may be an imperfect messenger because we have, as you introduced him as a combat correspondent, which was what his title was. But when you dig a little deeper into that, he was a public affairs specialist, someone who did not see combat, which certainly the title ‘combat correspondent’ kind of gives you a different impression. So, he may be the imperfect messenger on that.”
— Host Brianna Keilar on CNN’s Inside Politics, August 8.
J.D. Vance Only Wants White People to Have More Children
Host Jonathan Lemire: “Some older adults say they don’t have kids due to medical reasons or because they haven’t found the right partner....More and more Americans choosing not to have kids which again emphasizes why J.D. Vance’s comments about childless Americans, childless cat ladies could be so politically damaging.”...
Vanity Fair special correspondent Molly Jong-Fast: “This is this natalism that comes from an authoritarian playbook right?...There need to be more white children....This is about great replacement theory racism, right? This is what this is. So don’t misunderstand it for him wanting more children. He wants a certain kind of — you know racist thing.”
— MSNBC’s Morning Joe, July 30.
Conservative Supreme Court Is a “Stain” On America
“If you lived in a democracy, where the candidate with the most votes wins, there would be no other Republican justice currently serving. Clarence Thomas would be the only one. The current composition of the Supreme Court stands, in my view, and in my view alone, as a stain on America’s claim to the world that it is a democracy. In no other democracy in the 21st century with seven out of 50 states decide presidential elections through an electoral contrivance created in a slave-holding country 235 years ago, a contrivance they tried to make sound serious by calling it a college, the Electoral College.”
— Host Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC’s The Last Word, August 27.
Thanks for Coming to Our Event, You Racist!
“You have told four congresswomen of color — who are American citizens — to go back to where they came from. You have used words like ‘animal’ and ‘rabbid’ to describe black attorneys. You attack black journalists, calling them ‘a loser’ saying the questions that they asked are, quote, ‘stupid and racist.’ You’ve had dinner with a white supremacist at your Mar-a-Lago resort. So, my question, sir, now that you are asking black supporters to vote for you, why should black voters trust you after you have used language like that?”
— ABC News correspondent Rachel Scott’s first question to Donald Trump at the National Association of Black Journalists’s convention in Chicago, July 25.
Kamala Campaign Arises “In the Midst” of “Darkness” and Racial “Backlash”
“We’re in the middle of a kind of backlash. You know the backlash against George Floyd, the backlash against DEI, the backlash against critical race theory, the backlash against Barack Obama. Historically, these backlashes, they last a long time. You think about the end of Radical Reconstruction. That darkness doesn’t end until Brown v. Board in 1954….We’re in the middle of a backlash and now suddenly the country is facing a choice….I think that past/future is right in front of us, right now, in the midst of this darkness.”
— MSNBC contributor/Professor Eddie Glaude on MSNBC’s The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle, July 26.
“Older Folks” Just Don’t Get Kamala
“A new poll shows [Kamala] Harris pretty much just vastly outperforming Biden right now with young voters by 16 percentage points….What is stirring this excitement?...I remember at the time when she made that comment about the ‘context in which we all live.’...People were, you know, criticizing that as being a bit of a word salad. But, you know, I’ve heard from a lot of younger folks over the last several days who just love that comment. So, I mean, is it just like the older folks not getting with the younger folks are thinking these days?”
— Host Jim Acosta on CNN Newsroom, July 26.
Biden’s “Final Legacy” was “Ushering Out” Trump’s “Dangerous” and “Anti-Democratic” Behavior
“The final legacy of Biden is that he has returned the presidency to an office of sanity, decency, and dignity, ushering out the dangerous demagoguery and anti-democratic rhetoric and behavior that preceded him. But for that legacy to endure and for Biden’s term not to simply be a moment in time, he needed to ensure that the United States actually closes the chapter on Donald Trump and to help make this more likely, he made the painful decision not to run for the presidency, which will also earn him a special place in the history books.”
— Host Fareed Zakaria on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS, July 28.
As If Lemon’s “Corporate Overlords” Stifled His Leftism at CNN?
“I’m happy to be in an independent space where I don’t have to worry about the corporate overlords now, where I can stand up for democracy, where I can say who I’m supporting. And I’m on the side of democracy, and I’m on the side of people who are going to — someone who’s gonna help our people. I’m not on the side of Project 2025, I’m not gonna pretend to put these two campaigns on equal footing.”
— Former CNN anchor Don Lemon on his official YouTube channel, July 28.
“Moderate” Kamala
“I think the Republicans are trying to frame her as this deep-leftist. She’s a former prosecutor….Prosecutors are not really leftist. They put people in jail for a living, okay? They’re pretty moderate. I know Kamala, I know the Vice President personally….She’s moderate.”
— Co-host Sunny Hostin on ABC’s The View, July 26.
Harris-Walz Like “Reagan!”
Host Jen Psaki: “The show [The West Wing] was inspiring too because it brought joy back into politics….And politics should be joyful, it should be inspired.”
Actor Martin Sheen: “It is again. It is again now, yes.
Psaki: “I wanted to ask you about that. Are you seeing that out there, as you are watching [Kamala] Harris and [Tim] Walz?”
Sheen: “Seeing it, feeling it, knowing that — It’s like. Reagan had an ad that he won the election with, primarily. ‘A new dawn in America.’ It’s happened again. It’s a new day. America is the city, the shining city on the hill. A new Jerusalem. There is a new fresh air. There’s a new energy. It’s young and vital and it’s joy-filled. And it can finally breathe.”
Actress Mary McCormack: “Yeah I think people watch The West Wing as a tonic, also — you know? And I think that’s what feels like is happening now. That Walz and Harris — it feels like a tonic. And they’re what’s next. I’m into it.”
— MSNBC’s Inside with Jen Psaki, August 18.
