Hours after the Associated Press fired off a since-deleted viral tweet falsely claiming 2024 GOP vice presidential candidate JD Vance shrugged off school shootings like Wednesday’s in Georgia as “a fact of life,” Friday’s CBS Mornings and NBC’s Today joined in this a blatant case of election interference by touting the “backlash” to Vance’s comment...which was actually about the need to fortify schools.
Of course, none brought up the AP tweet or the real firestorm it caused Thursday night on X.
“Trading shots, the Georgia school shooting now a hot topic on the campaign trail after these comments by President Trump’s running mate JD Vance,” said Today co-host Savannah Guthrie in a tease.
Guthrie and NBC promptly did the Harris-Walz team’s bidding with this out-of-context soundbite of Vance: “I don’t like this. I don’t like to admit this. I don’t like that this is a fact of life.”
“Why the Kamala Harris campaign is seizing on those comments this morning,” she then added.
Later, co-host Hoda Kotb led off the election segment by saying, on the shooting, it’s “became an instant topic of conversation on the campaign trail yesterday.”
Chief White House correspondent Peter Alexander argued what happened at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia “has really reignited this political debate over gun violence in this country where the competing candidates have very different views about how this issue should be addressed going forward”.
Alexander framed the Democrats as being the ones who want to keep people safe by arguing while Vance called for “new actions to fortify schools, “the Harris campaign is pushing for tougher restrictions, including efforts to keep guns out of the hands of criminals.”
But on the manufactured Vance controversy, he called it “[a] political war of words” that “[broke] out overnight after Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance weighed in on the Georgia school shooting.”
The Vance soundbite was three spliced sections together:
The Kamala Harris answer to this is to take law-abiding American citizens’ guns away from them. [SCREEN WIPE] Clearly, strict gun laws is not the thing that is going to solve this problem. [SCREEN WIPE] I don’t like that this is a fact of life, but if you’re, if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets and we have got to bolster security at our schools.
Alexander chose to parrot the X posts from Harris and Walz (which used the deleted AP post):
Vice President Harris focusing on the fact of life comment, writing: “School shootings are not just a fact of life. It doesn’t have to be this way.” Vance responding: “Instead of addressing her own failures, she lies about what I said.” Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz also on the attack, calling the Vance’s comments “pathetic”[.]
As for how CBS Mornings went about it, they had an extended news brief. Co-host Tony Dokoupil pivoted from the latest in Georgia to stating the obvious that “[g]un policy, as you might imagine, is once again a hot topic on the campaign trail.”
He at least had the courtesy to play more of Vance’s comments in context:
DOKOUPIL: In Arizona, Republican VP nominee, Senator JD Vance claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris has a plan on guns, and that is to take guns away from people. What he’s calling for is more security.
VANCE: I don’t like this, I don’t like to admit this, I don’t like that this is a fact of life. But if you’re — if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets and we have got to bolster security at our schools so that a person who walks through the front door — [APPLAUSE]
Dokoupil merely passed along that the Harris-Walz team “jumped on that comment from Vance” with Walz tweeting, “This is pathetic. We can’t quit on our kids — they deserve better.”
That was it. No explanation/fact-check of how Walz’s tweet was misleading and based on said deleted AP tweet.
To see the relevant transcripts from September 6, click here (for CBS) and here (for NBC).
