Chuck Todd, NBC News Chief White House Correspondent, Political Director, and host of MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown, was at it again spinning for Democrats, this time Hillary Clinton, following remarks made by GOP consultant Karl Rove where he suggested that Hillary Clinton’s health may play a factor if she decides to run for president in 2016.
Appearing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Wednesday, May 14, Todd remarked that if the GOP questions Hillary’s health and or age “Then you may have to be throwing your own guy, Ronald Reagan under the bus a little bit.” [See video below.]
Todd began his comments by arguing “Look, the fact is she's the same age, she's going to be the same age as Reagan was. If you're going to go down this road and try to claim that she's going to have some issues, or health issues, and things of that, of this or that nature, then you may have to be throwing your own guy, Ronald Reagan under the bus a little bit.”
Todd did attempt to place a caveat on the question of asking about Hillary Clinton’s age:
I think that this is a dangerous, tricky road to go down. And as we saw, with Rove, you go down this road, and you stumble down this road, I mean, I agree, at any point, any presidential candidate has got to release their health records. I don't care if they're 45 or 70. Okay, because at the end of the day, you want to know. I think it's important, the American public wants to know, they want to make their judgment about who your running mate is, things like that. So that is fair game.
However, the NBC Chief White House Correspondent concluded by going into defense mode for Mrs. Clinton: “But to sit there and say it’s only really applies to her. And you go down that road, it's going to look a little sexist if you're not careful. And it's going to backfire as I think we’ve tried to show.”
Rather than argue that the same criticism about Ronald Reagan's, and more recently John McCain’s age and health should be applied to Ms. Clinton, Todd did his best to deflect Rove’s criticism of Ms. Clinton by suggesting that if it continued it could look sexist.
See relevant transcript below.
MSNBC
Morning Joe
May 14, 2014
7:12 a.m. Eastern
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Chuck Todd, what's going on? I mean, I just don't understand why would Karl Rove bend over backwards to make Hillary Clinton look like a more sympathetic figure?
CHUCK TODD: I am curious. You know. It's amazing the conspiracy theories that I heard yesterday from various people. Oh, Rove did this, he's doing the old LBJ here. Well, make them deny. You know, make them deny that they have brain damage. To throw it out there then say, oh, I didn't say it, I didn’t say brain damage, brain damage, brain damage, you know, but I'm trying to get it into the ether. Then I've talked to other folks who say that Rove truly was sort of shell-shocked that that got out there. That that isn’t what he meant.
SCARBOROUGH: Well, he didn't exactly spin it very well yesterday.
TODD: And he didn't spin is very well, no. Look, the fact is she's the same age, she's going to be the same age as Reagan was. If you're going to go down this road and try to claim that she's going to have some issues, or health issues, and things of that, of this or that nature, then you may have to be throwing your own guy, Ronald Reagan under the bus a little bit. So I think that this is a dangerous, tricky road to go down. And as we saw, with Rove, you go down this road, and you stumble down this road, I mean, I agree, at any point, any presidential candidate has got to release their health records. I don't care if they're 45 or 70. Okay, because at the end of the day, you want to know. I think it's important, the American public wants to know, they want to make their judgment about who your running mate is, things like that. So that is fair game. But to sit there and say it’s only really applies to her. And you go down that road, it's going to look a little sexist if you're not careful. And it's going to backfire as I think we’ve tried to show.
