One of the tightest races in this year's midterm election is the contest in Arkansas, where Democratic incumbent senator Mark Pryor is struggling to be re-elected over popular Republican candidate Tom Cotton, who currently is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
During Monday's edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe program, political correspondent Kasie Hunt played a recording of her asking Pryor what was considered a “softball question” since the Democrat had run a 30-second advertisement a month ago accusing his GOP opponent of “being pro-Ebola” for “opposing more funding for public health programs while approving upper-class tax cuts.”
“Do you think that the Obama administration has done an appropriate job handling the Ebola crisis?” Hunt asked the incumbent Democrat.
Pryor's response stunned her and the MSNBC anchors:
Uuuuuuuuummmmmmmm. I would say that it’s hard to know because I haven’t heard the latest briefing on that to know all -- I read the paper and all.
But my impression is that we have people over there, both from the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and other medical-type people and even some engineers to try to build, you know, medical facilities. That’s what they need over there. They need the medical infrastructure.
Hunt tried again to get an answer to her question: “Have we been aggressive enough over there?”
“Uuuuuuuuummmmmmmm,” the Democratic incumbent said again while stalling for time. “Again, I have to see the latest numbers.”
At that point, co-host Mika Brzezinski shouted “Stop it!” four times before stating: “A sweet, little, nice, gentle question, and the guy just collapsed!”
Fellow co-host Joe Scarborough called the exchange “painful,” and Hunt added: “I thought he'd give a yes-or-no answer” to what Brzezinski called a “softball question.”
The entire interview, which is available at the MSNBC website, shows that Pryor continued to promote his “talking points” during a long, awkward diatribe.
“I don't know if I can say we've been aggressive enough,” the Democrat added. “Certainly, it's something we want to keep America safe from Ebola or any other pandemic. There's lots of other pandemics out there, by the way. This is just one of many.”
“I've actually had hearings on this in the Senate to make sure we are prepared” for such an outbreak, he said. ”I do think that we have the health-care infrastructure here to do it, and I know we have some cases now. Certainly, everybody's watching those very, very closely, and we should.”
Pryor also stated:
The appropriate thing to do is just to be very, very vigilant about watching it and treating it and um, you know, getting out there and trying to make sure it doesn't come to the U.S.
What you want to do is you want to try to contain it in those countries in Africa, annnnnd again, you know, some of that is up to those countries about how they're going to do this, and I think the U.S. has responded.
“I don't have any of the latest information on it, but it's a very, uh, it's something we all should take very, very seriously,” the incumbent Democrat concluded.
During another segment of the video, Hunt asked the GOP candidate about Pryor's ad and if he regretted the vote he took about public funding “since we're now seeing Ebola in America.”
I voted for the exact same legislation that senator Pryor did vote for as well that now became law. I opposed an earlier version of that legislation because it would have allowed the president to authorize the mandatory assignment of Arkansas physicians and scientists in an Ebola outbreak zone. These people are dedicated public servants but not active-duty soldiers. They shouldn't be sent anywhere against their will.
More importantly, Ebola is a serious matter. Mark Pryor's silly ad was not serious, and the president needs to take it more seriously to expand travel restrictions to the region that's affected by Ebola, as I and my fellow Arkansas congressmen called on him to do last week.
As NewsBusters previously reported, Washington Post reporter David Farhenthold has called Pryor a “low-key red-state Democrat” whose opponent is the "sharply conservative" Tom Cotton.
Of course, everyone makes mistakes, especially politicians who must talk for many hours every day, but if Pryor had been a Republican, you can be sure his huge stumble would be on the front page of every newspaper and a prominent item in every “mainstream media” news program.
