On Monday morning, the broadcast networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC ran scared and not only downplayed 2024 GOP vice presidential candidate JD Vance’s appearance on three of the Sunday morning political shows (ABC, CBS, and CNN), but completely omitted clips of Vance completely owning the liberal hosts.
Instead, they played up Vice President Kamala Harris as having “dramatically” “gain[ed] momentum” and “traction” to create “an entirely new campaign” against former President Trump.
ABC’s Good Morning America co-host and former Clinton official George Stephanopoulos set the tone in a tease:
A shift in the race for the White House. Vice President Harris gaining momentum...Wrapping up her first major campaign blitz in the battleground states with Governor Walz. Former President Trump pushes false conspiracy theories that Harris used artificial intelligence to use images of fake crowds. There were actually thousands of people there.
Despite the polls having some flaws (as per the Trump campaign), Stephanopoulos later insisted Harris is “pulling ahead in some of those key states”, as if to tell viewers the election is over.
More insane propaganda from ABC's 'Good Morning America'.
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) August 12, 2024
The media are stacking the deck to rig this election by painting this world to viewers that the election is over (it's not) pic.twitter.com/MvioDKk3UK
Congressional Rachel Scott was ebullient about this is “entirely different campaign, one week out from the Democratic National Convention and a new poll shows that Vice President Harris is gaining traction in those critical battleground state”, which is “not sitting well with former President Trump, who has resorted to pushing conspiracy theories”.
Only after excitedly touting the polls did Scott note the caveat of Harris’s four-point-lead being “within the margin of error”, she touted Harris running mate Tim Walz taking a “dig at Trump” over crowd sizes.
“Trump has been struggling to pivot to a new Democratic ticket, doing everything from questioning Harris’s racial identity to mocking her intelligence and lashing out at new polling,” she huffed.
She even whined that Trump would be incensed Harris stole his tips idea. The only allusion to the beatdown Vance gave to ABC’s Jonathan Karl on This Week was to claim “Karl press[ed]....Vance for specifics” on how a Trump-Vance administration would undertake “the largest deportation effort in American history.”
NBC’s Today was also all-board the Kamalamania train. Co-host Savannah Guthrie began by boasting of “some new polls show [Harris] inches ahead of Donald Trump in several key swing states” and was followed by correspondent Garrett Haake gushing that “[t]his race has changed dramatically in the month between the two party conventions”.
For the Harris-Walz ticket, Haake further proclaimed they’re “riding a wave of new enthusiasm with crowds of thousands and millions of dollars in donations, building a surge that’s starting to show up in the battleground polls and in Donald Trump's evident frustration.”
Along with emphasizing Harris having “a fired up crowd of 12,000 supporters in Las Vegas Saturday”, Haake touted a Harris campaign tweet taunting Trump, new polling, and trying to put a square peg in a round hole by making abortion front and center in the election (click “expand”):
HAAKE: The Harris campaign poking back on social media with a photo of one large crowd, writing, “Trump has still not campaigned in a swing state in over a week...Low energy?” The former President pushing a baseless conspiracy about President Biden.
TRUMP: I hear he’s going to make a comeback at the Democrat Convention. He’s going to walk into the room, and he's going to say, I want my presidency back.
HAAKE: New polling shows Harris leading Harris in three swing states, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, all within the margin of error. Over the weekend, the Trump campaign said it was hacked by an Iranian group in June and the documents were “obtained from foreign services.” The statement came after Politico said it was sent Trump campaign documents from an anonymous email account. NBC News has not independently verified the hack. Meanwhile, Vance is trying to walk back Mr. Trump's comments on abortion, suggesting he’s open to banning access to a commonly used abortion. [TO TRUMP] [on 08/08/24] Would you direct your FDA, for example, to revoke access to mifeprisone? That’s one of the things that’s been discussed.
TRUMP [on 08/08/24]: So, you could — you do things that would supplement, absolutely and those things are pretty open and humane.
HAAKE: Vance says the former President believes that decision should be left up to the states.
VANCE [on CBS’s Face the Nation, 08/11/24]: You, of course, want to make sure every medicine is safe, that it’s proscribed in the right way and so forth. But the president wants the states to make these individual decisions.
HAAKE: Now, Trump is also accusing the Vice President of stealing one of his new policy proposals after she endorsed eliminating the federal tax on tips this weekend. It’s a potent issue, especially in battleground Nevada. Trump had backed the same policy two months ago, a rare moment of agreement between two campaigns who agree on almost nothing else[.]
Senior Washington correspondent Hallie Jackson cropped up with analysis, disguised as a pep talk for liberal viewers (click “expand”):
JACKSON: On the Democratic side, Savannah, the Harris-Walz team is feeling like they have some wind at their backs, some momentum here moving forward for a couple of reason — couple of reasons here. That new battleground polling that we talked about here showing that she is inching ahead within the margin of error in some of these key swing states. And, when you look at independents, those numbers are interesting too. There is some good news in there for Democrats, showing that Vice President Harris is doing better with independents in some of those critical swing states. You’ve also got the money factor. The Harris team has raked in tens of millions of dollars in a short period of time and then look ahead at what's happening a week from today. The Democratic National Convention begins in Chicago. And that is a week of prime time coverage for the Democrats. We're learning more about who some of the headliners will be. Two sources familiar with the planning tell us that former President Obama will speak, along with former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Biden will be one of the headliners as well in what seems like a nod to his leadership after he withdrew from the 2024 race. In a new interview just recently, Savannah, his first since he decided to step off the 2024 ticket, he says he did so partly so as not be a distraction for Dems.
GUTHRIE: Let’s talk about the Trump campaign. Still adjusting, it seems, to this new race and new candidate they're facing at the top of the ticket.
(....)
JACKSON: [The Trump team] see[s] the fundamentals as still being fairly consistent here and that is a real focus on two big issues — the issues that we’ve talking about for months now that voters care about: the economy and immigration. On both of those issues, battleground polls show that former President Trump actually polls better than Vice President Harris...Vice President Harris is going to combat on both of those issues, going on the offense on both the economy and immigration[.]
CBS Mornings also ignored the Vance schoolings, but in contrast to ABC and NBC, they remained more heavily focused on the alleged hack of the Trump campaign by Iran.
Co-host and former NFL player Nate Burleson, however, flashed his deep-blue partisanship in the “Eye Opener”: “Donald Trump lashes out on social media as the Harris campaign pulls in cash and crowds.”
After spending the first half of his report on Iran, senior White House and campaign correspondent Ed O’Keefe had a brief aside boasting of Harris “raising more than $12 million in San Francisco” along with seeing “large crowds in Arizona and Nevada” this past weekend.
O’Keefe then closed with a back-and-forth on how Harris has stolen Trump’s tax-free tips policy proposal, but tried to have it both ways by arguing the opposite is true with the argument that child tax credits — like those that Vance supports — are Democratic ideas.
To see the relevant transcripts from August 12, click here (for ABC), here (for CBS), and here (for NBC).
