CBS This Morning journalist Major Garrett on Monday derided 2016 complaints of media bias as “excuses” from Donald Trump that he will use to explain an electoral loss. The reporter also dismissed the candidate’s claims of voter fraud coming out of Pennsylvania. After highlighting reports of campaign manager Paul Manafort’s possible ties to Russia, Garrett played a clip of Trump calling the New York Times “garbage.”
The journalist downplayed, “Beyond the media bashing, Trump is setting up another excuse for losing, voter fraud.” Regarding Pennsylvania, Garrett lectured, “Democrats have carried Pennsylvania in six straight presidential elections. There are nearly one million more registered Democrats there now than Republicans.”
Yet, as National Review explained, voter fraud in Pennsylvania is no imaginary issue:
Philadelphia has a long reputation of fixing elections as a means of controlling patronage and municipal contracts. Voter intimidation also has occurred. In the 1960s, cops would routinely hassle black voters trying to vote. But intimidation can take many forms. In 2012, two members of the radical New Black Panther Party used nightsticks and racial epithets in an effort to scare white voters away from a Philadelphia polling place. The Obama administration ended up dropping almost all of the charges in the case against the Panthers.
The potential for fraud is also considerable. “People working the polls don’t ask for ID,” says Jimmy Tayoun, a former city councilman who went to prison in the 1990s for corruption. “You can flood a lot of phony names on phony addresses, and there’s no way they’re going to check.” In 1993, a federal judge had to overturn a special state senate election in which Democratic precinct workers had gone door to door with absentee ballot forms and “helped” voters fill them out. Ed Rendell, then Philadelphia’s mayor and later the state’s governor, explained away the irregularities at the time by saying, “I don’t think it’s anything that’s immoral or grievous, but it clearly violates the election code.”
As for making “excusess for candidates, CBS last week did that after Hillary Clinton placed the father of a mass murdering terrorist on a campaign stage with her. Over two days, the network allowed just 59 seconds to the story.
On August 10, CBS This Morning co-host Charlie Rose made sure to read from a Clinton statement, disavowing, “Clinton's campaign responded that it was ‘an open-door event for the public. This individual wasn't invited as a guest and the campaign was unaware of his attendance until after the event.’”
In a follow-up segment on Monday, New York Times writer Mark Leibovich dismissed complaints of liberal media bias as part of a “classic Republican playbook.”
Regarding Trump specifically using it, he scoffed, “The thing about Trump is it's not background noise. He is actually leading with it. He seems to spend all day yesterday tweeting how awful the media is. I mean, very precisely going after how our paper, whatever paper ticks him off.”
A transcript of August 15 segment is below:
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CBS TM
8/15/16
7:14am ETMARGARET BRENNAN: A report this morning links Donald Trump's campaign chairman to alleged corruption in Ukraine. Officials tell the New York Times that a pro-Russia political party set aside millions in undisclosed cash payments designated for Paul Manafort. Now, Manafort denies that he got any such payment. Our Major Garrett is looking at the newest headache for the trump campaign. Major, good morning.
MAJOR GARRETT: Good morning. Paul Manafort ties to Viktor Yanukovych, the , pro Russian former President of Ukraine are well-documented but new details about the amount of money designated for Manafort by Yanukovych’s political allies are likely to amplify Donald Trump’s claims he is facing media bias. According to the New York Times, 12.7 million dollars was earmarked for on Paul Manafort by the pro-Russian political party of his main client, former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych from 2007 to 2012. That is according to a so-called black ledger analyzed by Ukrainian anti-corruption investigators who believe it documents, quote, “an illegal off the books system whose recipients also included election officials.” This morning, Manafort issued a statement denying it. “I have never received a single off the books cash payment as falsely reported by the New York Times. Nor have I ever done work for the governments of Ukraine or Russia. The suggestion that I accepted cash payments is unfounded, silly, and nonsensical.” As Trump prepares to deliver a major speech on terrorism in Ohio today, the Clinton campaign called the news “troubling,” adding Trump has a responsibility to disclose Manafort's and all other campaign ties to Russia or pro-Kremlin entities.”
DONALD TRUMP: I'm running against the crooked media. That’s what I’m running against. It’s true.
GARRETT: The report provides more ammunition for Trump's ongoing clash with the New York Times.
TRUMP: We have a newspaper that is failing badly, a real garbage. They are garbage. It's a garbage paper. Maybe we will start thinking about taking their press credentials away from them.
GARRETT: Beyond the media bashing, Trump is setting up another excuse for losing, voter fraud.
TRUMP: The only way we can lose, in my opinion, I really mean this, Pennsylvania, is if cheating goes on. I really believe it.
GARRETT: Trump called for volunteer election monitors.TRUMP: Go around and look and watch other polling places and make sure that it's 100 percent fine.
GARRETT: Democrats have carried Pennsylvania in six straight presidential elections. There are nearly one million more registered Democrats there now than Republicans, mathematically undercutting Trump's claims that fraud could tip the balance. Trump will try, yet again, to refocus his campaign again with that counter-terrorism speech at Youngstown State University. Charlie?
