With one day to go before the polls close and vote tallies start rolling in, members of the mainstream press are feeling the pressure. Not at all confident that Kamala Harris is going to pull out a victory, networks like CNN have been reduced to running full-scale campaign ads as hard news.
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On Monday morning, Kasie Hunt took her seat in front of the camera to deliver an opening monologue that would make North Korean propagandists proud. In fact, Hunt was so proud of herself that she went to social media to post a highlight reel.
ONE DAY LEFT
The contrast is stark
Trump and his allies are laying the groundwork to contest a loss
We remember what that meant
As Harris aides and supporters are cautiously optimistic momentum is with them in the final days
My open @CNNThisMorning pic.twitter.com/9rvqFilj92
— Kasie Hunt (@kasie) November 4, 2024
HUNT: Tomorrow is election day. The first polls will open just 24 hours from right now, and the choice, your choice, could not be more clear in these final days.
(Runs positively-framed clips of Kamala Harris)
(Runs negatively-framed clips of Donald Trump)
HUNT: Harris invoking Martin Luther King Jr. Trump closing with more violent rhetoric, raising the specter of reporters being shot, and already casting doubts on the election results. He said there he shouldn’t have left in 2020.
That is part of a broader strategy that we should be paying attention to in the race’s final days. The NYTs wrote it this way on Sunday. Quote, “Former President Donald J. Trump and his allies are rolling out a late-stage campaign strategy that borrows heavily from the subversive playbook he used to challenge his loss four years ago.”
So what was that playbook? Let’s review.
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From there, Hunt plays the infamous clip of Trump talking to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and then starts discussing January 6th. Whatever you think of those things, there’s nothing new there. I’ve listened to that Raffensperger clip dozens of times at this point, and it’s still obvious to me the former president wasn’t asking for votes to be manufactured but wanted Raffensperger to “find votes” he believed were legitimate and already existed. Again, whatever you thought of that pursuit, I don’t see how it’s justifiable for the press to continue to lie about it.
Hunt’s entire monologue is just a masterclass in press bias. She opens by stating the choice “could not be more clear” before playing two carefully curated packages that ignore all the divisive, hateful rhetoric spewed by Harris in favor of pretending she’s Martin Luther King Jr. A week ago, the vice president compared Donald Trump to Hitler. That didn’t make Hunt’s clip, though. Funny how that works.
As to the whole “stolen election” talking point, Hunt conveniently leaves out that Democrats also have an army of lawyers ready to contest anything they deem to be irregular. Marc Elias and “Project 65” are the most well-known, but far from the only ones. Further, in the clips she played of Trump, he was specifically talking about actions taken by Bucks County officials that stopped people from voting. Guess what? Republicans sued and won, causing a judge to order the county to provide three extra days of early voting. I’m sure Hunt not mentioning that was just an oversight, right?
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All of this is just so tiring. Every Trump news cycle is the same as the last. Every outrage is just the last outrage repackaged. The press has run out of ideas, and as they become more desperate, they are leaning into the same old talking points. I suspect many people are sick and tired of hearing them when they are facing real problems that affect their everyday lives.
Lastly, I feel like I ask this every time I write on media bias, but at what point do Republicans stop treating CNN as a credible news source? What is being gained by showing up for CNN town halls and appearing on Jake Tapper’s show? I would suggest the answer is absolutely nothing. Shun them. Let them rot in their low ratings. Stop giving them lifelines by letting them be part of the conversation.
