In the wake of President-elect Donald Trump’s victory over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in November, the Democrats and the liberal media have been in a frenzy trying to find a reason for their comeuppance. At first they ran to their usual cries of racism and misogyny, but on MSNBC’s All In Thursday night the straw grasping got weird as host Chris Hayes literally blamed too many people on Twitter talking about Clinton’s controversies.
“A new report released by Echelon Insights perfectly illustrates the problem journalists had in covering Donald Trump during the campaign,” Hayes announced at the start of his Thing Two segment. The chart Hayes displayed showed the sheer volume of Twitter mentions each controversy received during the election, and for both candidates
The top three controversies all involved Clinton: WikiLeaks (33,083,038), e-mail scandal (21,123,778), and her deplorables smear of Trump’s supporters (5,989,433). “For Clinton the same few stories kept coming up over and over, spiking Twitter use throughout the election,” Hayes whined as he proceeded mislead on one controversy and pass off a bold faced lie on another:
Clinton's e-mails and her e-mail server which we should note the FBI found no wrongdoing, and the hacked DNC and John Podesta e-mails released by WikiLeaks, which spawned a torrent of articles and more than a little fake news but produced no legitimate scandal. But those two issues by far in total eclipsed the Trump controversies in total mentions.
Although the FBI didn’t find grounds to prosecute Clinton, Director James Comey made it perfectly clear that her handling of classified material was extremely reckless. Let’s not forget that the FBI had to briefly re-open the case because they found some pertinent e-mails on a laptop belonging to Anthony Weiner, the husband of her aide Huma Abedin.
Hayes’ claim that the WikiLeaks e-mail dumps “produced no legitimate scandal” is a flat out lie, if not fake news. The revelations from the leaked e-mails was so damaging, that Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz had to resign because it came to light that she help tilt the Democratic primary in Clinton’s favor. That’s not to mention that CNN had to give the boot to commentator Donna Brazile for handing off debate questions to the Clinton campaign. And that’s just to name a few.
The MSNBC host agreed with the conclusion reached by the organization who ran the study, “As the co-founder of Echelon Insights noted about this chart [on Twitter], ‘Possibly the best evidence yet. The medium moved on too quickly for anything to really stick to Trump.’”
During his earlier Thing One segment, Hayes admitted that they failed to keep up with the near daily Trump controversies. But he never took into account all the smaller controversies that arose from WikiLeaks, which occurred nearly every day as well. That fact gets lost when they’re all just lumped together under “WikiLeaks/Hacking” like the study shows.
It appears that Hayes still didn’t understand that Clinton was a heavily flawed candidate, or that all her controversies confirmed concerns the public had about her. And that’s proven by the fact that people were talking about her more often on Twitter. Blaming Clinton’s loss on too many Twitter mentions, and whining that the media didn’t do enough to boost Trump’s, demonstrates just how out of touch the liberal media are and their level of desperation for an excuse.
Transcript below:
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MSNBC
All In
December 29, 2016
8:41:21 PM EasternCHRIS HAYES: Thing one tonight, during the election we had a segment called Trump's last tent—last ten. Which was our attempt to keep up with the absolute flood of Donald Trump controversies. Things that had any other candidate said or done probably would have ended their campaign. Things like, I don't know, accusing Ted Cruz's father of helping JFK's assassin, lying about donating a million dollars to veteran charities until he was caught four months later, urging Russia to hack Hillary Clinton's e-mail, saying he'd try Americans at Guantanamo, or claiming President Obama sympathizes with ISIS and literally founded ISIS, just to name a few.
So we started keeping and updating a list, of the last ten outrageous controversies so as new controversies drove the news cycle they wouldn't eclipse past controversies that deserve more or as more attention. BUT, that effort failed as new legitimate controversies and scandals popped up nearly on a daily basis. We're not the only media outlet that failed. And new data out illustrates exactly the problem. That's thing two in 60 seconds.
…
8:43:19 PM Eastern
HAYES: A new report released by Echelon Insights perfectly illustrates the problem journalists had in covering Donald Trump during the campaign. All right, this chart shows the number of Twitter mentions about scandals, gaffs, and controversies. And there is a real pattern here.
For Trump, a string of legitimately concerning scandals would pop up and then disappear, replaced by the next controversy. That included the Trump University fraud law suite, racist attacks on a federal judge because of his Mexican descent, bigoted attacks on a gold-star family that was Muslim, refusing to release his tax returns or the uncovered tape of Trump bragging about sex assaulting women and the women who claimed they sexually assaulted him thereafter.
For Clinton the same few stories kept coming up over and over, spiking Twitter use throughout the election. Clinton's e-mails and her e-mail server which we should note the FBI found no wrongdoing, and the hacked DNC and John Podesta e-mails released by WikiLeaks, which spawned a torrent of articles and more than a little fake news but produced no legitimate scandal. But those two issues by far in total eclipsed the Trump controversies in total mentions. As the co-founder of Echelon Insights noted about this chart, “Possibly the best evidence yet. The medium moved on too quickly for anything to really stick to Trump.”
