The major broadcast networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC all omitted from their Wednesday evening newscasts the latest noteworthy comment from Vice President Joe Biden that the Republican Party is “beating” up Hispanics but instead continued harping on Ben Carson’s response to how he’d react if he came face-to-face with a mass shooter.
Speaking at an event with the Victory Project, Biden suggested that the crowd seemed “literally down because of the beating, the beating Hispanics are taking at the hands of the Republican caucus – I mean the Republican presidential race.”
As opposed to even giving that a mention in their coverage of growing rumors surrounding a Biden presidential bid, the “big three” networks spent yet another news cycle sustaining their offensive against Carson for stating that he would try and rush a gunman like the one last week at the Oregon community college.
ABC’s World News Tonight anchor David Muir declared that the retired neurosurgeon was “not backing down from his comments about that massacre at a community college in Oregon, saying he wouldn't just stand there” while GOP campaign correspondent Tom Llamas characterized Carson as “standing firmly behind his comments suggesting the victims in the Oregon campus massacre could have done more.”
Following the heated interview on CBS This Morning, correspondent Julianna Goldman reported on the CBS Evening News that Carson “doubled down” on the morning show by “repeating the suggestion that victims of last week's mass shooting at an Oregon community college could have done more to protect themselves.”
She added that his appearance came after he “ignited the firestorm” with an answer to a question on the Fox News Channel (FNC) and “isn’t the first time Carson has invited controversy”:
In 2014, he compared the Obama administration to Nazi Germany, and he recently said Muslims shouldn't be president. It may not be what Carson said but how he said it that's controversial. Scott, government guidelines for how to handle an active school shooting advise that, as a last resort, adults in immediate danger should try to overpower the gunman.
As part of a segment that also highlighted Hillary Clinton’s huge flip-flop on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), NBC News national correspondent Peter Alexander explained on NBC Nightly News that the conservative candidate has been “under fire for controversial comments this week that appeared to blame the Oregon victims just days after the deadly mass shooting.”
Referring to his appearance on CBS This Morning, Alexander mentioned that he “defended those comments” “despite blistering criticism” in what was “certainly not the last controversy of this campaign.”
