Like its competitors on CBS and NBC, ABC’s Good Morning America took time on Friday to get to former President Trump’s Republican National Convention speech and the hubbub surrounding President Biden’s cognitive and physical impairment thanks to the global Microsoft outage. But when they did, they denounced Trump’s “anti-immigrant”, “dark”, and “divisive” speech while continuing to dig Biden’s political grave.
“Former President started with a call for unity and recounting the attempt on his life, but the bulk of his 92-minute speech was a repetition of false claims about the 2020 election and familiar attacks on immigrants and his rivals,” co-host and former Clinton official George Stephanopoulos complained in a tease.
Correspondent Rachel Scott bemoaned from the convention in Milwaukee that “Trump said he wanted this speech to focus on unity, to turn the page from the divisive rhetoric after the attempted assassination on his life” but “[t]hat message of unity did not last long” as he went “off script, launching into partisan attacks and making false claims.”
Scott only briefly focused on Trump’s rapturous recounting of Saturday’s assassination attempt on his life before pivoting to “dark rhetoric to paint the U.S. as a nation in decline, and attacking his opponents” and ad-libbing on everything “from inflation to ISIS, trans athletes, to not taxing tips”.
Her most seething comments came in bashing Trump for engaging in “anti-immigrant rhetoric, falsely claiming there’s a surge in violent crime by undocumented immigrants when crime rates have declined in the last two years and promising to create a massive militarized force to deport millions of undocumented immigrants.”
Amazing. The liberal media want to downplay and thus poo-poo the families of those who lost loved ones to incidents caused by illegal aliens.
Later, Stephanopoulos huffed that, “in the end, Donald Trump gave the speech he wanted to give last night” with Scott replying Thursday “was typical Donald Trump” and “just couldn’t help himself” but launch into “false claims and also partisan attacks.”
Pivoting to Biden, even chief White House correspondent and lead Biden apple polisher Mary Bruce has shown signs she’s moving on.
In her report from Reboboth Beach, Delware, Bruce said “the future of his candidacy is hanging in the balance” and “in crisis” with “party leaders up[ping] the pressure on him to exit the race.”
While admitting “senior White House officials insist he remains as committed as ever” with “Biden...preparing to hit the trail again next week”, Bruce later said in a second Biden segment that “this is a very difficult time inside of this White House, inside of this campaign.”
Bruce then added:
[P]hysically, the President is wiped out from the Covid diagnosis, but he is also taking in all of these concerns, as we know...[I]t is hard to see how he can sustain this. It’s really near impossible to run a successful campaign when you don’t have your party united behind you.
If you’re losing perhaps your most obsequious network correspondent, it might be game over.
Stephanopoulos and political director Rick Klein had some hard truths on polling and the Electoral College (click “expand”):
KLEIN: [T]he portrait in the battleground states is significantly more grim for — for Joe Biden. Right now, in the 538 polling averages, he is trailing in all of the major battlegrounds. He won six of seven of those battlegrounds four years ago. Those battlegrounds include the upper Midwest, including where this convention just wrapped up here in Wisconsin. Trump ahead even here.
STEPHANOPOULOS: And that gets to a broader and persistent point, Rick. I mean, I remember the Biden people have often talked about this being a close national race. I don’t want to say quite this stark, but, in some ways, that doesn’t matter. This is an electoral college vote. And, right now, in the electoral college, it’s not close.
KLEIN: That’s exactly right. And the possibility of a wipeout that takes you out of the game is what has Democrats concerned right now. They understand they might be able to make up a gap but if it’s not close in the battleground states. That is not a good portrait. And we’re still a couple weeks ahead of the convention. As you know, George, no one has actually been selected as the nominee. That won’t happen until a month from tomorrow.
Speaking to Karl and Bruce, Stephanopoulous admitted “Democrats seem to be coalescing around the idea that he has to step aside” while, “inside the Biden camp, they seem to be dealing with the stages of grief somewhere between bargaining and acceptance.”
Karl painted a grim picture (click “expand”):
You have virtually the entire elected leadership of the Democratic Party directly making the case in private to Joe Biden that if he stays in, he is likely to lose and he is likely to hurt Democrats up and down the ballot. They are making the case to him to drop out of the race. And, as you heard Mary report, he is receptive to listening to these ideas, but, George, so far no indication that he is ready to change his mind and drop out. In fact, I spoke to two members of his real inner circle who said that, as of now, he is all in. He plans to be back at the White House and on the campaign trail next week as soon as he recovers from Covid. But, George, he is listening to this and it seems to most Democrats it is absolutely untenable to stay in a race when your party leadership doesn’t think you should be there and when, by the way, the money has dried up.
To see the relevant transcripts from July 19, click here (for Trump coverage) and here (for Biden coverage).
