In the CNN This Morning vs. Morning Joe fair 'n balanced stakes, CNN definitely has the upper hand.
Scott Jennings, an actual Republican, is a regular on CNN This Morning. In contrast, the only GOPers that Morning Joe deigns to have on are the "Republicans for Harris" variety.
That trend continued on today's edition of CNN This Morning. Republican strategist Brad Todd got off some great snark, and didn't hesitate to go toe-to-toe with his Democrat counterpart.
Todd scored the segment's first zinger, on the question of whether mics should be muted during the scheduled presidential debate on ABC.
"Kamala Harris should be very comfortable with the muted mic. We're on day 34 with her not doing any interview with a major journalist. Her mic's been muted for a month!"
Even host Kasie Hunt couldn't stifle a chuckle in response.
When Hunt asked Todd whether it could be in Trump's interest to debate, Todd deftly turned it into yet another jibe at Kamala's failure to do interviews:
"Most people in the news media can't get to Kamala Harris to ask her a hard question. So it may take a debate for her to have a hard question. So no, I think he needs to debate."
Hunt again had to go with Todd's flow, agreeing, "Yeah. I mean, okay. That's fair enough."
When talk turned to Harris' failure to conduct a serious media interview, Democrat strategist and former Obama comms adviser Ameshia Cross came up with more excuses than John Belushi in his tunnel scene in The Blues Brothers.
But Todd was having none of it, repeatedly pointing out that it's all about Harris not wanting to discuss her record of opposing fracking, private health insurance, and gasoline-powered cars.
Todd also managed to get in the last lick on Harris' ducking of the media. Referring to her supposed status as Biden's key adviser, Todd said: "She's the last one in the room. Let's hear it!"
Pushing back on the notion that Harris has been ducking interviews, Cross said that her campaign has promised to do one before the end of "next month"—which would be the end of SEPTEMBER. Until now, the Kamala campaign has been saying she'd do one before the end of THIS month. Does Cross know something the rest of us don't? Is Kamala planning to run and hide for yet another month?
Even Hunt seemed skeptical about Harris's interview scheduling. She said that Harris' advisers have said that she "is going to schedule an interview before the end of the month." Hunt put the emphasis on "schedule," seeming to leave open the possibility that before the end of August, the Kamala campaign will wriggle out, and announce the scheduling of an interview, but one that will not occur until sometime later. Right after polls close on Election Day, maybe?
Hunt—with exquisite understatement—also observed that responding under pressure in interviews is not Harris' "top strength," and that if it were, she would have already conducted an interview. Harris' horror show of an interview with Lester Holt surely still haunts Kamala and her handlers.
Here's the transcript.
CNN This Morning
8/27/24
6:05 am EDTMARK PRESTON: [Referring to Trump interrupting Hillary Clinton during a 2016 debate] It's a bad image to have a man, let alone Donald Trump, trying to speak over another candidate. I mean, we just saw the clips. They weren't a pretty. There were funny but they weren't pretty.
KASIE HUNT: Brad, what do you think about how they should be handling this?
BRAD TODD: Well, I think first off, Kamala Harris should be very comfortable with the muted mic. We're on day 34 with her not doing any interview with a major journalist [Hunt chuckles.] Her mic's been muted for a month! So she should be happy to have it muted after the questions in the debate.
You know, I always think that when you're the candidate trying to change the rules of the debate, then perhaps you're worried about how you're going to do in the debate. And that's how this looks to me with Kamala Harris.
HUNT: Ameshia, you wanna push back on that? I saw you --
AMESHIA CROSS: Absolutely, because she's needling him because she can. Kamala Harris has the wind at her back. She has outsized fundraising. She has been able to amass, within a very short amount of time, historic levels of on-the-ground outreach. We're talking a campaign like none other we've seen in American history. It's quite often compared to the 2008 Obama campaign, but Obama's campaign did not do this in record speed. That's what we're seeing here.
. . .
HUNT: Well wait. Hold on. I mean, Brad, do you see a world where not debating is good for Donald Trump? I mean, is that, I mean, if he is a little bit on his backfoot, it seems like a debate is something that might be able to change things for them.
TODD: I think most people in the news media can't get to Kamala Harris to ask her a hard question. So it may take a debate for her to have a hard question. So no, I think he needs to debate.
HUNT: Yeah. I mean, okay. That's fair enough.
. . .
Let's talk for a second about the interview question, because yesterday we also learned, and advisers said, she's going to, Kamala Harris is going to schedule an interview before the end of the month. She has started to get some pressure from fellow Democrats, including Congresswoman Debbie Dingell and others, who say that, hey, she is actually going to have to answer some more questions.
. . .
So Ameshia, have they let this go on a little too long, because it's now become the situation where the stories about whether she's going to do an interview, I mean, I realize that there are countervailing strategies often in terms of when you sit a candidate down with the news media. Sometimes it can be counterproductive ahead of a convention for example. But on the other hand, if you let it go on too long, it can get out of your control.
CROSS: I think you're right. And that's also why her campaign has said that it's going to happen before the end of next month. And I think that that's very important. Be mindful: the DNC just ended last week. She was just became the official nominee on Friday. On top of that, we also saw that with the roll call, which was just a few days prior, the virtual roll call, that vote came through. This is something where we've had Kamala Harris atop the ticket, officially, for just a few days.
So this is not, this is a very historic campaign, a very truncated campaign. But the pressure for her was to actually get out and talk to the voters. She's been doing that. She had to build that capacity. She also just chose her vice-presidential, her vice president as a running mate. The press is not her top priority.
TODD: Hang on, hang on. She's been the Vice President of the United States. She's been preparing to be president, allegedly, for the three-and-a-half years.
CROSS: She's also been doing a lot of interviews as vice president.
TODD: So how, therefore, she should have been able to do an interview on the first day. Why isn't she --
CROSS: It's not a question of ability. It is one of the campaign measuring the value of it's how much she needs to be out --
TODD: No, she doesn't want to answer for the fact that she was against fracking.
CROSS: She's expanding the map in a way that Joe Biden could not.
TODD: She was against private insurance. She's against gasoline cars. She doesn't want to talk about it.
CROSS: She's having those conversations every day.
TODD: She doesn't want to talk about what she said about it.
HUNT: Let me push pause, because Mark, I will say that she, this has been something that people behind the scenes will acknowledge is something that is not her top strength. These unscripted moments where she's under pressure from interviewers.
If it was her strongest, if it was her strongest move, they would have played it already.
PRESTON: They would have played it, no question.
. . .TODD: She's stalled off one-third of this campaign, and members of the news media have let her. She's not, she's not answering questions about—we know her positions! She's against fracking. She's against private health insurance. She's against gasoline cars. That's what she told us when she ran for president last time. She doesn't want to talk about those positions. That's why she stalling off.
PRESTON: And she should do an interview. I'm just politically saying, Brad, you have to acknowledge, it hasn't been that bad --
CROSS: She will do one. She will do one. It is coming.
TODD: She'll show up on NPR, somewhere like that. But she's not going to take tough questions.
CROSS: She's going to show up on a network and she's going to have a sit-down conversation. She has already said, her campaign has already said, that that's going to happen. If you're waiting for the day --
TODD: It's a month! It's a month!
CROSS: She's actually on the ground. She's doing bus tours across the state of Georgia. She is talking to the voters. The voters are the people who are going to make this decision.
TODD: She's the last one in the room: let's hear it!
