On Sunday’s This Week on ABC, both co-moderator Jonathan Karl and his panelists on the “PowerHouse Roundtable” tore into the Democrat Party congressional campaign arm: the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) for running ads promoting Trump-backed candidates in GOP primaries. One panelist, USA Today Washington Bureau chief Susan Page declared it both “risky” and “hypocritical."
Switching gears from an unrelated subject, Karl turned to the topic of the Democrats' election meddling. He remarked: “Speaking of this question of credibility, I wanna Susan, get you to kinda help explain Democrats going in and putting millions of dollars in states, in races across the country to support candidates” that are like former President Donald Trump.
Turning to Page, Karl bemoaned how even liberal Never-Trump Republican Peter Meijer, who was one of the ten Republicans to vote for Trump’s second impeachment is being targeted by the DCCC.
Page slammed the Dems, claiming “it’s risky because sometimes the candidate you don’t expect to win turns out to be stronger than you think, and they win and then they’re in office.”
Continuing to take the DCCC to task, Page noted “it’s hypocritical because Democrats have been saying that election deniers threaten our very democracy,” adding that “Democrats sede the high ground on this.”
After reading a statement given by Democrat Congresswoman Kathleen Rice in which she called her party’s election meddling “unconscionable”, Karl agreed and noted how “They're putting money behind candidates who in her words want to come to Washington and destroy our democracy.”
Fellow panelist and Democrat Congressman Ritchie Torres slammed his party’s misguided and anti-democratic strategy: “It's embarrassingly hypocritical, we cannot credibly defend democracy and then prop up candidates who are an existential threat to the very democracy we're defending. And in politics when you try to be too cute and clever, it often backfires.”
Torres went on to note how the DCCC “cannot guarantee the outcome of the general election and when you prop up a conspiracy theorist in a Republican primary, you run the risk of sending an extremist to the United States Congress, and that’s an egregious use of Democratic resources.”
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To read the relevant transcript, click “expand”:
ABC’s This Week
July 31, 2022
9:31:59 a.m. EasternJON KARL: Speaking of this question of credibility, I wanna Susan, get you to kinda help explain Democrats going in and putting millions of dollars in states, in races across the country to support candidates that are like Trump junior, you know, I don't mean Donald Trump Jr. But President Trump junior, saying the election was stolen, all of that stuff, including Peter Meijer, I mean this is one of the ten voted who to impeach Donald Trump and now you have the DCCC going in and supporting his Republican primary challenger.
SUSAN PAGE: You know, it's risky and it's hypocritical. It’s risky because sometimes the candidate you don’t expect to win turns out to be stronger than you think, and they win and then they’re in office. And it’s hypocritical because Democrats have been saying that election deniers threaten our very democracy. So you’re going to go out and in effect campaign for an election denier because you made a political calculation that it might serve your interests. I think it means Democrats sede the high ground on this.
KARL: So let me say what one of your fellow Democratic colleagues in the House had to say about this. This is Kathleen Rice, she said dirty tricks like this are part and parcel of political campaigns, but when you talk about putting money behind candidates who want to come to Washington and destroy our democracy, it's not a political, dirty trick anymore, it’s unconscionable. And that’s what it is. They're putting money behind candidates who in her words want to come to Washington and destroy our democracy. What do you think of this?
REP. RITCHIE TORRES: It's embarrassingly hypocritical, we cannot credibly defend democracy and then prop up candidates who are an existential threat to the very democracy we're defending. And in politics when you try to be too cute and clever, it often backfires. The DCCC is not God. It cannot guarantee the outcome of the general election and when you prop up a conspiracy theorist in a Republican primary, you run the risk of sending an extremist to the United States Congress, and that’s an egregious use of Democratic resources.
KARL: So do you think the DCCC will reverse course on this?
TORRES: Hopefully under pressure from members because there are a number of members like myself who are displeased.
