Was Kasie Hunt unaware of her own network's reporting—or was she being intentionally obtuse?
The question arises after Hunt said this on today's episode of CNN This Morning, the show she hosts, regarding the suspect in the second assassination attempt against Donald Trump:
"We obviously don't know very much at this point about a potential motive here. And we may never know about that."
We may never know? Why is a journalist encouraging everyone to think it may be impossible to locate a motive?
Hunt could look up a CNN article entitled: "Man detained in apparent assassination attempt on Trump criticized former president on social media" contains the following [all caps in the original]:
"In an April post on X tagging President Biden’s presidential account, he wrote that Biden’s campaign should be: 'called something like KADAF. Keep America democratic and free. Trumps should be MASA …make Americans slaves again master. DEMOCRACY is on the ballot and we cannot lose.'”
So the suspect accuses Trump of wanting to make Americans slaves again. And then, in all caps, he writes "DEMOCRACY is on the ballot and we cannot lose."
"Democracy is on the ballot" is a central Democrat theme in this election. We could cite countless examples of Democrats reciting it. But for present purposes, let's focus on none other than Kamala Harris posting those precise words.
And the "we" that cannot lose, in the suspect's mind, can only be "we" anti-Trump forces.
Before Hunt's profession of ignorance as to the suspect's motive, CNN analyst Alex Thompson of Axios projected Trump would use the assassination attempts against him to portray himself as a "martyr."
Tom Olohan notes TIME magazine also tried to claim a motive was "unclear."
Here's the transcript.
CNN This Morning
9/16/24
6:08 am EDTKASIE HUNT: Shermichael Singleton, we of course want to be careful and precise in our language. We were saying this was a suspect, the person that was detained. Law enforcement not naming him yet as the suspect.
We obviously don't know very much at this point about a potential motive here. And we may never know about that.
This man had done an interview with the New York Times about traveling -- he did travel to Ukraine. We have video of him in Ukraine.But as you look at how this is kind of playing out in the campaign, this is another incredibly difficult moment for the country, and one that puts the violence in our politics on display.
