Harris Dodges Chuck Todd’s Questions, Fleischer Ends a 9/11 Tradition After Bowing to LIV Golf | Winners & Losers in Today’s Green Room
MEDIA WINNER: Chuck Todd
Following President Joe Biden’s primetime speech in which he claimed democracy is “under assault,” NBC News’ Chuck Todd put Vice President Kamala Harris on the spot about Democrats helping out those who Biden accused of assaulting it.
In an interview on Meet the Press Sunday, Todd grilled the vice president about the controversial practice of Democrats across the country propping up extreme Republicans in their primary races by purchasing ads promoting them.
Harris began by defending Biden’s remarks — which some have criticized for being too divisive.
“There are those who right now are vividly not defending our Democracy,” Harris said. “And I think we want that our commander in chief, the President of the United States will speak up and raise the alarm about what this means to our strength, and our future — much less our integrity.”
Todd then asked the obvious follow-up: If the threat posed to Democracy by such candidates is truly so grave, then why are Democrats elevating them?
“And the president went out of his way to say there are good Republicans here. Should you leave the good Republicans alone in a primary? Is the Democratic Party making a mistake here?” he asked.
Harris completely dodged the question, prompting Todd to re-frame in a manner that allowed her to weigh in without commentating on anyone else’s campaign.
“Would you have done this?” Todd asked.
“I’m not going to tell people how to run their campaigns, Chuck,” Harris replied, adding that it’s best to let the candidates and their teams make decisions.
Todd tried a third time to get Harris to answer the question, but Harris ducked again.
Points to Todd for pressing Harris on the controversial practice.
MEDIA LOSER: Ari Fleischer
Ari Fleischer announced this year that he would be retiring his tweeted commemorations of September 11th just a few months after he was hired as a consultant by the Saudi-backed LIV Golf tour.
For years, Fleischer has recognized the anniversary of the attacks on Twitter by sharing his minute-by-minute recollection of the day. As the White House Press Secretary for President George W. Bush, Fleischer had a front-row seat to history on that tragic day.
He has regularly shared his memories on the anniversary of the attacks since signing up for Twitter in 2009.
The tweets would go viral and get a lot of media coverage. As a sampling, NBC News covered it in 2014, the Washington Post in 2015, Business Insider in 2016, and Huffington Post in 2017.
This year, however, Fleischer shared that he would not be live-tweeting the anniversary and did not intend to do so ever again.
He instead posted a thread saying that he skipped tweeting last year because he was at the 20th-anniversary events at Ground Zero and would be on a plane this year. He also added that it was “exhausting to relive the day,” and it “wears me down to go through it, even though I am not the one who has suffered the most.”
Twitter users were skeptical of Fleischer’s explanation, with the majority of replies pointing out his new gig as a communications consultant for LIV Golf, which has drawn criticism for its ties to a regime blamed for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi — not to mention the fact that the majority of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals.
“Cannot get over Ari Fleischer getting a PR job with the Saudis and then announcing that actually his 9/11 play-by-play tweets have run their course,” tweeted The Hill’s Zack Budryk.
Everyone has a price, we guess.
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Read the full Mediaite Green Room Newsletter here, including comments Trump reportedly made during the last days of his presidency about planning to stay in the White House.
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