CNN’s ‘American Morning’ Gushes Over Democrat Skills at Debate, Hillary in Particular

July 24th, 2007 3:17 PM

CNN "American Morning" co-hosts Kiran Chetry and John Roberts, in a discussion on Tuesday morning on the Democrat presidential candidates' performance CNN/YouTube.com debate, could only offer constructive criticism to one of the candidates, and nothing but praise for most of the others. Roberts gushed, "You know, I think that Hillary Clinton did really, really well last night. I thought John Edwards did well.... Barack Obama, I thought was very good as well. I was a little disappointed in Mike Gravel."

Chetry responded: "You know, and Joe Biden got off a couple of one-liners. Dennis Kucinich also did really do what he is best at doing, which is showing how different he is from some of the other candidates." Neither said anything about Chris Dodd or Bill Richardson, but given they offered praise for all of the others but Gravel, odds are they would have said something positive about them if they were given an opportunity.

The discussion, which aired near the bottom of the 7 am hour, was followed by a clip of Hillary Clinton from last night's debate. After the bottom of the hour commercial break, Roberts came back with another segment on the YouTube debate, which focused on a post-debate interview he had with Mrs. Clinton. Roberts continued his overwhelming praise for the former First Lady. Before the clip of the interview, Roberts gave Hillary this compliment: "Some of the candidates really rose to the occasion. One of those seemed to be Senator Hillary Clinton, who did very well last night." After the interview was aired, Roberts continued:

I tell you, there was one very impressive moment last night, for Hillary Clinton. There was a montage of health care questions, and they were prefaced, of course, by all of the questioners introducing themselves. She came back to answer that question, rattled off the names of every person who asked a question. And there was like five or six of them, so her pen was either very busy or her memory was working double-overtime. But it's that kind of relationship that I think the YouTube users were looking for.

Even with all the praise that was distributed to the Democrats on "American Morning," it seems that John Roberts can't stop his praise of Hillary Clinton.