During her 2:00 p.m. ET hour show on Thursday, MSNBC anchor Katy Tur touted a July poll from the left-wing Center for American Progress that unsurprisingly found that a majority of respondents thought Republicans were “more corrupt” than Democrats. Tur quoted the biased survey results from a Politico article entitled: “Corruption message gaining traction against GOP.”
“There is a poll taken by the progressive Center for American Progress Action Fund that the corruption message is gaining traction against the GOP,” Tur announced during a panel discussion about Republican New York Congressman Chris Collins being indicted for insider trading. She detailed the findings:
Fifty-four percent of voters across 48 Republican-held congressional districts said Republicans are ‘more corrupt’ than Democrats, compared with 46 percent who said Democrats are ‘more corrupt.’ An even higher number of independents hold Republicans responsible for corruption: 60 percent.
Political analyst and ex-Republican strategist Steve Schmidt ranted in response: “I mean, this is full-on banana republic stuff. This doesn’t happen in healthy liberal democracies. It’s just utterly lawless. The greed, the corruption.” He then expressed his outrage that the numbers were even that close:
And I think, when I look at those numbers, and that there would be close to an even split on the question of who is more corrupt, Republicans or Democrats, speaks to a staggering failure on the part of the Democratic Party and its leaders to prosecute the case against this lawless and corrupt administration.
The unhinged commentator accused the Trump administration of “wholesale stealing, wholesale corruption” and “a level of disgustingness and behavior that has not ever been seen in the modern era in this country.”
The irony of MSNBC and Politico citing Center for American Progress, a group founded by longtime Clinton hack John Podesta, to label Republicans as corrupt was stunning.
Here is a transcript of the August 9 exchange on MSNBC Live With Katy Tur:
2:22 PM ET
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KATY TUR: Steve, there is a poll taken by the progressive Center for American Progress Action Fund that the corruption message is gaining traction against the GOP. “Fifty-four percent of voters across 48 Republican-held congressional districts said Republicans are ‘more corrupt’ than Democrats, compared with 46 percent who said Democrats are ‘more corrupt.’ An even higher number of independents hold Republicans responsible for corruption: 60 percent.” Seems like this sounds like another election that we went through, I don’t know, in 2006, or going back to the ’90s?
STEVE SCHMIDT: Small potatoes corruption, if you go back to 2006. You look at what’s going on in Washington, D.C. today, the culture around the lobbying community, I mean, Jack Abramoff looks like a piper compared to these people. I mean, this is full-on banana republic stuff. This doesn’t happen in healthy liberal democracies. It’s just utterly lawless. The greed, the corruption.
And I think, when I look at those numbers, and that there would be close to an even split on the question of who is more corrupt, Republicans or Democrats, speaks to a staggering failure on the part of the Democratic Party and its leaders to prosecute the case against this lawless and corrupt administration.
Because what this administration is doing is ripping off the American people, and it’s not penny-ante ripping off, it’s wholesale stealing, wholesale corruption. It is a level of disgustingness and behavior that has not ever been seen in the modern era in this country.
TUR: Could it just be hard for Democrats to find one thing to target and they end up targeting so many things that the message just gets lost? I use this analogy and it’s not perfect, but I really like it. Donald Trump is a man who got a stain on his shirt, like a hot dog mustard stain on his shirt. And instead of changing his shirt because he’s got a stain on it, he gets ketchup on it and relish and hot sauce and grease and whatever else is there. So you end up just looking at the shirt and saying, “Oh, that’s the way the shirt’s supposed to look.”
ELISE JORDAN: That’s a really dirty, nasty shirt. It needs to just be boiled and put with a bunch of bleach and stripped and cleansed. That’s what I think. And I think that’s what the Democrats’ message should be, that this morass of corruption is intolerable and that’s what they should be campaigning on. They shouldn’t be talking about treason. They should be talking about how taxpayers are funding the personal enrichment of Donald Trump and his family and of his cabinet.
SCHMIDT: And they should put a plan forward to clean it up.
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