NewsBusters Executive Editor Tim Graham was interviewed by Trish Regan on Thursday's Intelligence Report on the Fox Business network. The topic was the liberal freakout over Vanity Fair's video begging Hillary Clinton to take up knitting or improv comedy instead of running another losing campaign for president. Graham said there's really nothing surprising in Democrats wanting a fresh face after losing a presidential campaign...as with Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry.
TRISH REGAN: I actually thought it was pretty funny but I'll tell you. Liberals are really angry. It's interesting because I saw it on Twitter myself. I saw them all tweeting about this, they've got a new hashtags called #CancelVanityFair and they're very very angry. Tweets include this one from actress Patricia Arquette: “Hey STOP TELLING WOMEN WHAT....THEY SHOULD OR CAN DO. Get over your mommy issues.”
And a grassroots leader: “Anyone ever tell Al Gore, Mitt Romney or John Kerry to go away and try knitting?” The magazine says the attempt at humor clearly missed the mark. Again, I don’t know if it did but they're backpedaling president Trump mocking the apology tweeting out: “Vanity Fair, which looks like it is on its last legs, is bending over backwards in apologizing for the minor hit they took at Crooked H.”
Joining me right now is Tim Graham from the Media Research Center. Tim, I don't know, am I the only one with a sense of humor right now? I thought it was kind of funny.
TIM GRAHAM: They — look, the Clintons and their devoted followers never want them to be mocked certainly not as stupid and absolutely not as losers even though they're losers. That's what they can't stand is that people would say as you would expect for John Kerry, as you would expect for Al Gore, as you would expect for Walter Mondale, we don't — Michael Dukakis — we don’t want you to run again. There's nothing exciting or new about that. I think just the fact that the word “knitting” was in there sent them all into a frenzy.
REGAN: Somehow that was sexist. I mean, that was — you saw Patricia Arquette's complaint. She said somehow this is a — this is a swipe at women. I mean, I certainly didn't read that into it. Really I just thought it was kind of funny and you think of everything SNL does going after the President. I mean, some of that stuff is funny, some of it not ,but some of it is pretty funny too and, you know, it seems like people should just lighten up and by the way, they ought to hope she doesn't run again for goodness sakes.
GRAHAM: Yeah, I mean this is basically they think Vanity Fair is our territory. This is a glossy, liberal rag and this isn't a magazine that regularly trashed Trump. They had an article a little while back where they basically cartooned trump as a rat with a big, brown pompadour basically wishing he would leave right now and when we get rid of him, we need — America needs a denazification program like Germany after World War II, so knitting is not that bad.
REGAN: Well you know, what I think maybe not so subtly they were sort of hinting at is that the Democratic Party needs new blood and part of the reason Donald Trump won that election was they put up a really bad candidate. It wasn't even that he was that good. I think there were a lot of things he said and did that were very refreshing to people, but they didn't have anybody that he really had to beat. I mean, had they put up say I don't know, Joe Biden, who seems like a normal enough guy and, you know, kind of hang with people a little bit but she doesn't have that touch. She doesn't have that — Je ne sais quoi — you need to have as a politician, the ability to connect with people, so how critical is it for the Democrats and maybe, you know, Vanity Fair is just trying to do their part but they start finding someone new.
GRAHAM: I think almost everybody whose going to run for 2020 is going to be someone new. Look, the Democrats in 2016 did exactly what, say, the Republicans did in 1996. They picked somebody who it was Bob Dole's turn. It was simply Hillary's turn. Hillary came in second.
REGAN: That doesn’t work.
GRAHAM: It's usually a Republican thing.
REGAN: Yeah, no she had, you know, gotten bitten off before and wasn't successful, so maybe they should have learned their lesson. Maybe they will learn it now. Tim, good to see you thank you so much. Happy New Year.
