On Wednesday morning, MSNBC anchors Stephanie Ruhle and Ali Velshi both on separate occasions highlighted a Nazi and perennial congressional candidate in Illinois who won the Republican nomination by default because no other candidates filed to run in the heavily Democratic district.
Ruhle did not mention that Republicans have condemned his most recent congressional run -- only noting that they have done so in the past -- as she hinted that the GOP had "decided" this time not to run a candidate against him and that they were essentially "Yup, that's our guy."
At 9:28 a.m. ET Ruhle first brought up the story as the anchored MSNBC LIve, and, after noting that he ran unopposed, she added:
I don't even understand that -- why would he run unopposed? Why would the Republican party want to say, "Yup, that's our guy," in Tuesday's primary? The Illinois state Republican party disavowed his candidacy and successfully blocked his congressional bids in the past, but, since the GOP decided not to run any candidate in the heavily Democratic district, Jones successfully met the criteria to make the ballot. Wow, this is America in 2018. Let's do better.
Not mentioned is that Republicans are trying to find another candidate to back in the general election.
About two hours later, Velshi read a brief without making any mention of the Republican party denouncing their official candidate:
A white supremacist and Holocaust denier won an uncontested Republican primary in Illinois. This man, Arthur Jones, is campaigning to represent the state's highly Democratic 3rd Congressional District which includes part of Chicago and its suburbs. The Illinois Republican Party has described Jones as a Nazi.
A bit later, Velshi resumed his show's practice of counting the days since the Parkland school shootings occurred while fretting that no federal gun control laws have yet been passed. Velshi:
It's been 35 days since the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, where 17 students and adults were killed. Just yesterday, we saw the seventh school shooting of the year, this one in Maryland. Still, there's been no federal legislative action on gun control.
