During an interview with the Charlotte Observer to preview MSNBC’s Democratic presidential forum on Friday night, host Rachel Maddow strongly downplayed criticism leveled against CNBC for its handling of the Republican presidential debate.
The MSNBC host wildly claimed that the questions asked during the CNBC debate were no different than previous debates and “[I]f you looked at the other debates and you didn’t know who the questioners were, you would have a hard time sorting out the CNBC questions as being qualitatively different or more egregious than the other questions.”
Maddow continued to deflect criticism away from her NBC colleagues by asserting “[I]t’s never the job of the moderator to make themselves the story. That said, it is often the job of the politician to make the moderator the story.”
When the subject of whether the media becoming “part of the story” in Republican debates was a “good thing?” Maddow peddled the standard liberal line that the GOP loves to use an “old dynamic in politics” by and accuse the media of being biased:
A smart politician can always turn an uncomfortable question back on the questioner. It’s an old dynamic in politics, to complain about the media, complain about the process. And so I’m not surprised.
The job of moderator, particularly in a debate format, is to be confrontational, to let the candidates fight it out and sometimes to interrupt and get candidates off their mark. It is a political decision on the part of the candidates to make that itself a scandal. I think it’s sort of a tactic of the moment.
The self-described liberal MSNBCer insisted she doesn’t want to “become part of the story” after her discussion with the three remaining Democratic presidential candidates and stressed she will ask probing questions so the voters will “learn something that’s going to help them make their decision.”
Stay tuned to see if Maddow actually keeps her word and asks the three Democrats challenging questions or if she will end up looking like a Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders sycophant who merely props up their far-left agenda.
