Despite it drawing nowhere near the same levels of enthusiasm that other speeches drew in the 2016 Democratic National Convention (DNC) thus far, the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC went into full spin mode late Wednesday hailing vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine’s personality as a “suburban dad” whose “extraordinary” Spanish-speaking skills made for “a Spanish lesson down here.”
ABC was undoubtedly the most amused by Kaine’s speech before President Obama as chief anchor and former Clinton administration official George Stephanopoulos gushed over the “rousing finish there for vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine, brought the crowd to its feet.”
“Tone had remarkable shift, though, when he started to talk about Donald Trump...when he imitated Donald Trump, not exactly Saturday Night Live-quality but he did it with gusto,” he proclaimed.
Before tossing to Clinton campaign correspondent Cecilia Vega, Stephanopoulos teed her up to hype Kaine’s Spanish: “We saw another reason that Hillary Clinton picked Tim Kaine, probably the first bilingual speech ever given by a vice presidential nominee in history, direct appeal to Latino voters.”
Just as she did on Tuesday night when it came to incessantly talking about people crying at Hillary Clinton’s official nomination, Vega had the same passion about Kaine’s use of Spanish by touting his “Spanish lesson down here” with the DNC [emphasis mine]:
Habla Espanol. He speaks Spanish. He started speaking Spanish five minutes into the speech, George, and at times, I got to say. It felt like a Spanish lesson down here. He would throw a word out and translate it into English. At one point, he had this whole hall here chanting Sí se puede. Yes we can. Todos somos americanos. We are all Americans...Clearly, Tim Kaine is going to play attack dog on immigration. He's going to be huge for her when it comes to winning Latinos and we know, a record number of Latinos eligible to vote this year[.]
Meanwhile, CBS This Morning co-host Norah O’Donnell hailed Kaine’s Spanish as “extraordinary too to hear” him speak to the audience in a different language.
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“Yes we can and also say she is listo. She is ready, to be president of the United States. That is outreach. Outreach to the fastest growing demographic in this country, Hispanics,” O’Donnell noted like a true liberal journalist.
Going last to NBC, Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd took a different approach by touting him as having “a suburban dad quality to him” attacking Trump in a way that came across as “very effective”:
There's a suburban dad quality to him. Every man, whatever cliche you want to use about it. But there's a genuineness about it. He seemed conversational in it, and there was — it exuded credibility when he took after Trump. He could become a very effective — I was not sure if he could be a good attack dog. That was a very effective sort of like your buddy telling you, “let me tell you the truth about this guy, Donald Trump.” I thought his persona was very effective.
