Who are the best type of Republicans to give the GOP perspective on night one of the party’s convention? Well, if you're at MSNBC, the answer is ex-Republicans who are doing their best to elect Democrats. In order to understand the out of touch, delusional perspective MSNBC holds, it’s helpful to see a list of who the network turned to on Monday night for coverage.
As soon as the last speaker was done, MSNBC featured co-host Nicolle Wallace. She’s an ex-Republican aide to the 2008 John McCain campaign who promised (if necessary) to vote for Bernie Sanders in 2020.
Brian Williams introduced Steve Schmidt, he’s an ex-Republican aide to the 2008 John McCain campaign who was now determined to elect Democrats. As Brian Williams said: “Back with us tonight, Steve Schmidt, veteran political strategist, leader of the John McCain '08 campaign effort, who has since left the party. He was among the founders, in fact, of the Lincoln Project, dedicated to the defeat of one Donald Trump and Trumpism.” And by the way, he also interviewed for a leadership positioning the 2016 Trump campaign.
The network also turned to Michael Steele, a Republican who has (you guessed it!) joined the Lincoln Project and was working to elect Democrats. The list continues: MSNBC included David Jolly, an ex-Republican congressman who has left the party.
Got the pattern? Of course these former Republicans were supplemented by MSNBC liberals Joy Reid, Brian Williams, Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell and former Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill.
Maddow whined about the indignity of having to broadcast all these GOP lies:
I think it's distracting to us as broadcasters doing this because we feel a responsibility to correct stuff, and it is awkward to have to interrupt. And it makes us make hard decisions about what we're not showing so that we can clean some stuff up that was otherwise said that people might otherwise believe is factually true. I will just say personally I feel like there's no clean, easy, and perfect way to do it, but we do our best. And my priority at least is to make sure that we broadcast as little false medical information as possible.
During the GOP convention — unlike the Democratic edition a week earlier — MSNBC constantly interrupted for “reality checks” of the speakers.
The MSNBC propaganda was sponsored by Verizon.
A partial transcript is below:
MSNBC post-Republican National Convention coverage
8/24/2020
10:54 PM ETRACHEL MADDOW: It is distracting to have a lot of false information broadcast. I think it's distracting to us as broadcasters doing this because we feel a responsibility to correct stuff, and it is awkward to have to interrupt, and it makes us make hard decisions about what we're not showing so that we can clean some stuff up that was otherwise said that people might otherwise believe is factually true. I will just say personally I feel like there's no clean, easy, and perfect way to do it, but we do our best.
And my priority at least is to make sure that we broadcast as little false medical information as possible, and we had a bunch of that tonight around COVID. Not only lying about the President's record, I don't know what Don junior meant when he said the president has delivered PP and E to our brave front line workers. It's just PPE, but that didn't get delivered in a hurry. The President making some false claims about therapeutics and immunity and other things about COVID that just makes me -- it's really bad on a night with this many people watching to still be broadcasting false information to a country where we've lost 176,000 Americans already. And the last thing we need is more lies and misinformation about what this virus is, how it works, and how you can or can't protect yourself from it. So I'm -- I get — I feel that acutely, but technically they did -- they did pull it off.
...
JOY REID: Did it not strike you all as this is my kind of theory that they are a bit monarchist, right? This idea that I think he thinks it is his house. They treat it as their own house. I've been obsessing about the Rose Garden, and I know it's not the most important thing in the world. But there's a sense of I can Reno this. This is my place.
