Dana Bash Shuts Down CNN Reporter's Attack On Trump
CNN is finally beginning to crack down on guests spewing fake news. The latest instance occurred Monday when network anchor Dana Bash rebuked a correspondent for claiming former President Donald Trump has only done “friendly” interviews for most of the year.
Jeff Zeleny, the network’s chief national affairs correspondent, appeared on “Inside Politics with Dana Bash” on Monday afternoon to falsely state that the former president sticks to friendly networks or reporters with whom he shares a rapport. Zeleny described Trump’s media strategy as loaded with conservative or center-right news outlets, a point he attempted to hammer home before Bash jumped in to remind him about Trump’s appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists in July.
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“The criticism from the right about, ‘Oh, these are all softball things,’ my recollection is the last difficult interview that former President Trump has done was on ‘Meet the Press’ with Kristen Welker [in September 2023] … I mean, it has been a series of friendly interviews on Fox and other places,” Zeleny said. “He declined ’60 Minutes.’” The correspondent’s remarks came as a panel discussed Vice President Kamala Harris’s recent appearance on the salacious “Call Her Daddy” podcast.
“Well he did NABJ,” Bash reminded him, but Zeleny brushed off the appearance as a “roundtable conversation,” not a formal interview. “The last program, I think, before that was ‘Meet The Press.’ So, look, I mean, the reality is they both go to venues where they can get their message out in a conversational way.”
The Caller also noted other instances of President Trump taking unscripted questions from reporters where deferential treatment wasn’t a given. He appeared on CNBC in March, and on the campaign trail, he has taken questions from at least seven local media outlets. By comparison, Vice President Harris campaigned as the Democratic Party’s nominee for over a month before sitting for her first interview, one that was ridiculed after she requested that running mate Tim Walz be by her side.
Privately, senior Democratic figures have raised alarms that Harris is not doing enough to combat the perception that she is sticking to scripted formats in order to avoid public gaffes with less than a month to go before the election. In addition to appearing on “Call Her Daddy,” the Democrat is scheduled to take interviews with “The View,” “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” and “The Howard Stern Show” this week. Prognosticators betting on how those sit-downs will go may look no further than her appearance on Sunday’s “60 Minutes.”
For over two painful minutes, Harris dodged repeated questions from veteran CBS reporter Bill Whitaker about the years-long spike of illegal crossings along the southern border. A visibly flustered Harris attempted to blame President Trump for killing a bipartisan border bill, but Whitaker refused to let Harris avoid accepting that it was her and President Biden who green-lit an aggressive expansion of U.S. asylum policies.
Whitaker challenged her to admit that the number of illegal crossings “quadrupled on your watch.” “Because of what we have done,” she replied, pivoting back to an answer divorced from reality. “We have cut the flow of illegal immigration by half. We have cut the flow of fentanyl by half. But we need Congress to be able to act to actually fix the problem.”