CNN is trying its darnedest to resuscitate Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s struggling 2020 primary campaign, going so far as to side with her against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in a he-said-she-said reported first by … CNN.
Make of that last bit of information what you will.
On Monday, CNN reported that Sanders had told Warren during a closed-door meeting in 2018 that a woman could not win the presidency. CNN’s anonymous sources for the story were “two people Warren spoke with directly soon after the encounter” and “two people familiar with the meeting.” Translation: The Warren campaign fed the story to CNN.
Sanders denied the report immediately. Warren, meanwhile, said the characterization of her 2018 meeting with Sanders was indeed accurate, but she added she did not want it to distract from the real issues. How convenient.
It would be just awful if the story that the Warren campaign leaked to CNN won her dearly needed attention, sympathy, and support, all while tearing down the number two 2020 Democratic candidate.
Let’s be real: Handing this story to CNN was a shrewd move by the struggling Warren campaign. Her fundraising and polling numbers have tanked steadily since last fall. She is in bad need of a boost. Warren is hoping to get one by hoisting herself atop the shoulders of her main competitor in the hard-left lane.
And for whatever reason, CNN is more than happy to play along.
During a primary debate Tuesday evening, moderator and CNN political journalist Abby Phillip said, “Senator Sanders, CNN reported yesterday, and Senator Warren confirmed in a statement that, in 2018, you told her that you did not believe that a woman could win the election. Why did you say that?”
While you’re at it, you might as well ask when he stopped beating his wife.
“Senator Sanders, I do want to be clear here,” Phillip said later during the debate. “You’re saying that you never told Senator Warren that a woman could not win the election.”
“That is correct,” Sanders responded.
Phillip followed up with a question for Warren, asking, “What did you think when Senator Sanders told you a woman could not win the election?”
This was a hatchet job, plain and simple. Phillip and her cohort went into that debate sure of Sanders’s guilt. Amazingly, Phillip is not the only one at the “facts first” network who is siding with the Massachusetts senator, while simultaneously promoting the “exclusive” the Warren campaign fed to network employees.
Political analyst Joe Lockhart, for example, said following the debate, “I can’t imagine any woman watching last night and saying, ‘I believe Bernie.’ I think people believe Elizabeth and his explanation was not great.”
Sanders’s “explanation”? He denied it! What more can he do?
CNN contributor Julia Ioffe added elsewhere, “Still thinking about the Warren-Bernie squabble and I have a question to people who have accused Warren of lying: isn’t the lesson of #metoo and the last few years that we believe women and don’t call them liars?”
I certainly hope the idea that women — especially female politicians — are incapable of lying is not the lesson of the #MeToo movement. What a weird suggestion.
“Elizabeth Warren is on the record saying this happened,” said CNN’s Chris Cillizza, explaining why he thought Sanders was the loser of the Tuesday debate exchange. “I just think you have to handle it more delicately given their relationship, given where we are culturally to say, look. I respect what Senator Warren says.”
Nonsense. Had Sanders not offered a total denial, they would be jumping up and down and shouting, “He didn’t deny it!”
Sanders has a history of being truthful even to the detriment of his own political ambitions. Warren, on the other hand, lies about even trivial things, including her heritage, her past employment, and whether she sent her children to private school. Whom would you believe?
