Apparently being a left-wing pundit on CNN is enough for one to offer a medical diagnosis. This is the only explanation for why co-hosts John Berman and Alisyn Camerota as well as their guests were wildly speculating about the President’s mental state on Wednesday's New Day. Camerota offered this nasty assessment: “… President Trump is inconsistent and impulsive on a good day, okay? And so now, given that he's on steroids, we think, given that he's still fighting the virus, it's impossible to know what will happen today.”
This was in response to the President disagreeing with House Democrats over the economic stimulus package that has long been debated in Congress. On Tuesday afternoon, the President tweeted out that he was ending the negotiations saying “[House Speaker Nancy Pelosi] is not operating in good faith.” Not once in the broadcast did they state why the President actually withdrew from the talks.
Berman also eagerly speculated on the President’s decision “It just isn't clear to me that there's any linear thought, which brings me back to that comment that I read from Maggie Haberman and Annie Karni that their piece, which is that staffers inside the White House are wondering whether or not the drugs are affecting the President's thinking.”
There was no evidence, or a medical opinion, given to back up these claims made throughout the broadcast. Sadly, it is not hard to see where CNN is getting their talking points. On a call with Congressional Democrats Tuesday night, Speaker Nancy Pelosi ranted: “Believe me, there are people ... who think that steroids have an impact on your thinking. So, I don’t know.”
The media are just repeating nearly verbatim the talking points of the Democratic Party.
Berman childishly joked: “He's negotiating with himself and he's losing in the negotiation with himself. I mean, honest-to-god, that's what's happened over the last 20 hours. I don't mean to laugh.” Rather than try to understand and report on both sides of a serious issue, Berman was laughing over Trump’s position.
The issue of economic stimulus is not as clear cut as CNN would like people to believe. Rather than attempt to accurately report the news, the leftist network promotes a leftist narrative based on vile unfounded claims about the President's health.
CNN did not comment on the allegations that the Democrats were not negotiating on good faith, but laid everything at the feet of the President. Instead of discussing policy differences, they called him mentally ill for disagreeing with them.
These Democratic talking points were brought to you by Tractor Supply Co and Febreze. Click on the links to let them know what you think.
A transcript of the October 7 coverage is included below:
New Day
10/7/20
6:13 AM ET[…]
BERMAN: The joint chiefs are in quarantine this morning. The Joint Chiefs of Staff. Why? Well, because Vice Commander of the Coast Guard, Admiral Charles ray has tested positive. He has been in a meeting with all of them, he was at the White House. He is now positive for coronavirus. So the entire top strata of the U.S. Military this morning is in quarantine. It's a great point. So Errol, there is confusion about what's going on inside the White House. We didn't see the President yesterday. We were told, Jeff Zeleny reports he did tape a video about the treatments he's on, but we didn't see it for whatever reason. You would think if White House aides thought it would help his case, we would have saw it. We didn't see him, but we did hear from him on Twitter in this dizzying array of tweets. First, unilaterally walking away from economic relief negotiations, despite what fed chair says. And overnight, trying to maybe inch his way back in. It does create some confusion, I think, this morning.
ERROL LOUIS [CNN Political Commentator]: Nothing but confusion. In fact, the President may have put himself into a corner, because by staging, by so carefully staging this return to the White House and taking off the mask very theatrically and saluting and so forth, he made it seem as if everything is behind us. On the other hand, we know that, he's in a phase of this disease where it could take a catastrophic turn for the worst. We also know those who have had the disease have certainly told us over and over again, it makes you feel awful. It makes you feel low energy. It's really hard to sort of get up and do the things that you would expect a President to do. So if they don't show us more of these propaganda shots of him saluting and dramatically going around without a mask, you have to assume the worst. You have to assume that he's not feeling well, which is what I think most people would have imagined. That's why he got hospitalized in the first place. And so we don't know what's going on. The fact that the defense leadership is now in quarantine is really quite alarming, because the questions that now have to be asked, what about their aides, what about command and control? What about the nuclear umbrella? Who's in charge of all of this? How are they feeling? What's the level of infectious spread and how is it going to be brought under control? Those are all really, really important questions that this White House is not answering right now, John.
CAMEROTA: Errol, do we know the answer to any of those?
LOUIS: We don't -- not only do we not know the answer, we're not likely to know the answer, because we're hearing from White House sources all the time that they're not going to talk to the press. Contact tracing is not being done. That would be the first level of trying to at least get your hands around what's going on. And then some kind of rationale conversation through the media, with the American people about what the situation is. Instead, all we've gotten is propaganda. It's really very unfortunate that the President's role as a campaigner in the closing 30 days of a campaign is taking precedence over his much-more important role as leader of the country.
BERMAN: Margaret, talk about the economic situation right now with these negotiations. Because this was really surprising. The President unilaterally walked away from negotiations. I don't know if a deal was possible or not, but they were talking. They were negotiating. Steve Mnuchin and Nancy Pelosi were and it was the President I think, without any of their knowledge, who said, okay, we're done completely. And then last night all of a sudden to go back and start proposing things that are really a few weeks ago in terms of where they were in negotiations. It just isn't clear to me that there's any linear thought, which brings me back to that comment that I read from Maggie Haberman and Annie Karni that their piece, which is that staffers inside the White House are wondering whether or not the drugs are affecting the President's thinking.
TALEV: Well, er John, this is really important. The state of play with the stimulus is that Democrats have sought around $2 trillion and Republicans want to give less and that's where they were and Pelosi and Mnuchin were going back and forth over this. And there were some fault lines that we think some of these talks have stalled around, both including the overall dollar amount and some of the provisions for government -- you know, provisions of health care or care for immigrants or whether it could involve coverage of abortion. That would be natural fault lines that the two parties would fight over and they were disagreeing over those things, but Mnuchin thought he was working on a deal, and this was very abrupt yesterday and it really, threw many Republican lawmakers for a loop. Just as a matter of course. Like Jay Powell is saying the federal reserve chair is saying, this stimulus needs to go into the economy to prevent bigger problems. Politically, many Republicans in swing districts or swing states have no idea how to explain to their constituents the fact that their team pulled the plug on these talks now. And because the President is saying that, you know, a Supreme Court nominee has to be signed off on before election day at all costs, it's just a slightly harder argument to make when you're saying the stimulus doesn't have to happen, but the Supreme Court nominee does. So I think politically, it's very complicated and it's given Democrats an upper hand. It seemed like when he walked it back, what he was saying was, I would like my name on a $1,200 check before election day. I don't want to talk about any of the other details. And obviously, for, you know -- for Democrats, that's a non-starter. That's just not the way things work.
BERMAN: He's negotiating with himself and he's losing in the negotiation with himself. I mean, honest-to-god, that's what's happened over the last 20 hours. I don't mean to laugh. It's really hard to figure out what's going on. And I know that both Democrats and Republicans would love to know. And probably people in the White House would love to know what's going on with this right now. Margaret Talev, Errol Louis, thank you both for being with us this morning.
CAMEROTA: As would so many Americans who are waiting for these checks, who are desperate. We'll be talking to some of them coming up in the program. This is the difference for them whether they have enough food or don't have enough food.
BERMAN: And you're right to bring that up and that should have been the first thing I said. This is a very real issue for people.
New Day
10/7/20
6:39 AM EALISYN CAMEROTA: Developing overnight, President Trump appearing to backtrack hours after abruptly ending negotiations for aid that is desperately needed by millions of Americans. That announcement came after federal reserve chief Jerome Powell warned of an economic downward spiral. Joining us now, Christine Romans, and Julia Chatterley, anchor of "First move" on CNN international. Great to see both of you. Christine, help us parse what the President was saying at 2:48 yesterday afternoon, he said, he had told his representatives to stop negotiating until after the election. Then, eight hours later, less, seven and a half, he says, the House and Senate should immediately approval $25 billion for airline payroll support and $135 billion for paycheck protection program for small business. So which one is it?
CHRISTINE ROMANS [CNN Chief Business Correspondent]: It is erratic, it is irrational, it is out of touch. This is a President who effectively canceled stimulus talks that were probably going to fail anyway and then said, I'll take the blame for all of the economic hardship that that will cause you. The fed chief earlier in the day saying, we need more stimulus now to help households heal and to help small business. It's needed urgently. And the President said, no, we don't need it. The economy is doing great, the stock market is at record highs, we don't need any new stimulus now. We'll do it next year and we’ll gonna focus on the Supreme Court nomination. It completely defies any kind of political advantage the President would try to get here. Just doesn't make any sense. It's the President saying, I'll take the blame for ending negotiations. And I literally have no -- I just can't understand why he would do it.
JOHN BERMAN: Well, again, he's negotiating with himself now and losing in the negotiation with himself, Julia. And the politics of it is interesting to a lot of people. People trying to figure out what the President is thinking. I know it was interesting, but the bottom line is, there are millions of people hurting. There are millions of people who need economic relief. There are businesses that will not be able to stay open past election day, without the money that they're not going to get.
JULIA CHATTERLY [CNN Anchor]: I am overwhelmed on a daily basis by surveys saying, 15% of small businesses saying they can't make it past the end of this month if they don't get more federal help. 35% of businesses say they won't survive beyond the end of the year. Individuals, we know, you guys talk about it all the time. One in seven families simply can't feed their families properly on a weekly basis. This should be the message that lawmakers take into every single negotiation here. I mean, the President's behavior is inexcusable. It's 50 degrees of chaos. He's got covid, he's got access to social media, he's been taking and is taking drugs. The result is this. It's tone deaf and it's inexcusable. But you know what these people that are suffering need now is transparency. What's so unpalatable about the Democrats $2.2 trillion deal that they won't sign it? For the Democrats, what's wrong with agreeing $1.3 trillion or whatever the Republicans are putting on the table and winning the election and coming back and doing more. All of the people in America now and those that are suffering most need transparency and they need an explanation. And they need a compromise deal. Nothing else matters.
CAMEROTA: I mean, Christine, as Julia points out, President Trump is inconsistent and impulsive on a good day, okay? And so now, given that he's on steroids, we think, given that he's still fighting the virus, it's impossible to know what will happen today. And we have regular people coming up, who are hanging on, by their fingernails. What do we tell them today?
ROMANS: I think it's pretty clear from all of this that the President doesn't understand what's happening to real families. You've heard us talk about this k-shaped recovery President Trump's friends and family and people he knows, people who are CEOs and business leaders, they're doing fine on their own. They've recovered. But the rest of the country hasn't. Airline workers and hotel workers and people who own small businesses are really suffering, in a way I've never seen before in my lifetime. And the President doesn't feel that pain. One place where he has been consistent, guys, is on his disdain for any money going to state and local aid here. You know, these states have lost all this money, because their tax revenues have cratered because of the coronavirus. He doesn't want to give them money. Ironically, they need that money to pay for things like teachers and police officers and so you have a President who has said again and again, he wants to starve the states of this important emergency funding. That is one of the fault lines here that he has not budged on.
BERMAN: Christine Romans, Julia Chatterley, thank you both for being with us this morning and trying to sort through the confusion as best we all can. Appreciate it.
