Interviewing Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus on Wednesday, the hosts of both NBC’s Today and CBS This Morning pushed the idea that the 2016 Republican field was so divided that there would have to be a brokered convention to pick the party’s nominee.
On Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie demanded: “There's open discussion among some Republicans of this notion of a brokered convention. That if Donald Trump were to be the nominee, that Republicans would get together at the convention and come up with an alternative and have a floor fight. Let me ask you directly, will you rule out this notion of a brokered convention?”
Priebus dismissed the idea: “Well, Savannah, I don't know where that narrative comes from other than a fictional narrative that's spun up last week that never happened.” Guthrie pressed: “Will you rule it out? Can you rule it out?” Preibus explained: “First of all – well no one can rule it out. I mean, if a candidate doesn't get to a majority of delegates by the time you get to the convention, then you could have a contested convention. But my belief is that we will have a presumptive nominee by the end of March or middle of April.”
After the interview, fellow co-host Matt Lauer questioned Priebus’s honesty on the issue: “...is Reince Priebus being forthcoming about this idea of a possible brokered convention and his support of Donald Trump?” Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd replied: “I think he is. I think there are a lot of people around the party that believe he's whistling past the graveyard on this....the criticism has been he's got his head in the sand.”
An hour later, on This Morning, co-host Norah O’Donnell began her exchange with Priebus: “We see Donald Trump is still the frontrunner, not only nationally but in many of the leading caucus and primary states. Are you now expecting a brokered convention or contested convention?” Priebus remarked: “Boy, this is a hot topic. You know, I highly doubt it. I think most likely we’ll have a presumptive nominee by mid-April...”
O’Donnell pressed: “So was there a dinner where you discussed this with a lot of other Republicans about how to deal with such a convention?”
Priebus again rejected the notion:
Not really. I mean, the idea that I would call a meeting at a public restaurant in Washington, D.C. to discuss the idea of engineering a brokered convention – which you can't really do, it either happens or it doesn't – is ridiculous....It's not a meeting to discuss how we’re going to overthrow the whole process and take over a convention. That’s absurd. And I know you're doing the right thing by asking the questions, I'm not opposed to that. It's just that, that particular narrative is just ridiculous.
While the NBC and CBS hosts seemed eager to sow GOP division before any primary votes had even been cast, it was a very different story back in 2008, as the broadcast networks covered the hotly contested Democratic primary between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
At that time, instead of discussing a possible brokered convention, all three morning shows excitedly promoted the idea of unifying Democrats around an Obama-Clinton “dream ticket.”
On the February 1, 2008 Today, correspondent Andrea Mitchell gushed over a meeting between the two candidates: “So with all the smiles, hugs and good humor, could this be a dream ticket?” Moments later, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow proclaimed: “They both looked friendly....Democrats like them, like them both. The biggest applause of the night was ‘You guys look like a dream ticket.’”
In March, on ABC’s Good Morning America, then co-host Diane Sawyer asked Clinton ally James Carville: “Let me go to the other dream solution. We heard Senator Clinton herself talking about the possibility that maybe they're heading, maybe everybody is heading to the point you have to have a Clinton/Obama, Obama/Clinton ticket.”
In June, then-CBS Early Show co-host Maggie Rodriguez enthused: “Breaking news overnight. Obama and Clinton sneak off for a secret meeting. Was the dream ticket on the agenda?”
In May, all three morning shows urged Clinton to get out of the race so Democrats could rally around Obama.
Here are the questions put to Priebus in the December 16 interviews on NBC and CBS:
Today
7:06 AM ET> SAVANNAH GUTHRIE: Donald Trump seemed to be flirting again with the idea this week of mounting an independent run. Last night he seemed again to close the door on that and say he'll run as a Republican, no matter what. Can you now sleep at night? Is the issue closed in your mind?
> There's open discussion among some Republicans of this notion of a brokered convention. That if Donald Trump were to be the nominee, that Republicans would get together at the convention and come up with an alternative and have a floor fight. Let me ask you directly, will you rule out this notion of a brokered convention?...Will you rule it out? Can you rule it out?
> The discussion comes up because there's this feeling that if Donald Trump emerges as the nominee that some Republicans will not be happy with that and that they fear that it will essentially hand the election to Hillary Clinton. A lot of the candidates, if you ask them, say they’ll ultimately support whoever the Republican nominee is, but they cannot bring themselves to say, “I will support Donald Trump.” Where are you on that? Will you support Donald Trump if he is the Republican nominee?
> You know, Trump is getting a lot of attention and certainly setting the agenda in terms of this ban on Muslims that he has proposed. You've been critical of it. You said that it would come at the expense of our values. Other candidates have criticized it in varying degrees, and yet Republicans support that idea, the poll I saw was 59 to 61% approve of that idea. And Trump is getting a bump out of it, he's at 41% in some polls. Where's the disconnect? Is he more accurately reflecting where the Republican voters are right now?
> But you said it comes at the expense of our values and yet you'll also support Donald Trump and I'm just trying to put those two concepts together.
This Morning
8:05 AM ET
> NORAH O’DONNELL: We see Donald Trump is still the frontrunner, not only nationally but in many of the leading caucus and primary states. Are you now expecting a brokered convention or contested convention?
> O’DONNELL: So was there a dinner where you discussed this with a lot of other Republicans about how to deal with such a convention?
> CHARLIE ROSE: May I ask just one question? Is there – with some of the comments that came after Donald Trump made his comment about banning Muslims from coming into the country temporarily – is there a serious discussion among people in the party, your party that you're chairman of, who believe that he would be disastrous for the party and, therefore, they must do something to stop him from winning the nomination? How serious is that conversation?
> GAYLE KING: Okay, without taking – without talking about the timetable, are there things that come out of his mouth, Mr. Priebus, that sometimes you're sitting there with your mouth open shaking your head, going, “Boy, I wish he wouldn't have said that”?
> O’DONNELL: After the 2012 election, you called for the most comprehensive post-election review in the history of any national party. You did an autopsy of why your party lost. I went back and looked at some of the findings, specifically on demographics, and your own report said, “It does not matter what we say about education, jobs or the economy, if the Hispanics think we don’t want them to be here, they will close their ears to our policies.” Is that still a concern of yours today?
