MSNBC’S Mitchell Fails to Ask Pennsylvania AG and Gubernatorial Candidate Shapiro About Crime in Softball Interview

Both violent and property crime in Pennsylvania have only increased over the past year. As of Oct. 13, there have been 429 homicides in Philadelphia in 2022, just three fewer homicides than the number of them at this point in 2021. The number of armed and non-armed robberies in the City of Brotherly Love has skyrocketed year-over-year.

And yet what did MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell ask Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee in the Granite State’s gubernatorial race, during what was a softball interview on Friday’s Andrea Mitchell Reports?

Not about crime, rather Republican election deniers, such as Shapiro’s opponent, Doug Mastriano, running for office; Mastriano’s anti-Semitism; and inflation. The last topic was the only issue that Mitchell asked about that is on the top of voters’ minds in Pennsylvania and nationwide.

Let’s break down the interview.

Mitchell teed it off for Shapiro when she asked him “what’s at stake” in the midterms, less than four weeks away, considering that 200 of 552 GOP election-deniers are running for office, according to FiveThirtyEight.

While Mastriano is a detestable candidate who has denied the 2020 election and was at Trump’s Save America rally on Jan. 6 (Mastriano said he didn’t enter the Capitol), election denialism is nowhere near the top of issues Pennsylvania voters care about.

Mitchell’s questioning exemplified the liberal media’s obsession with House committee investigating Jan. 6, leading the news with it and making it the top story at every opportunity on every show.

While Jan. 6, as I’ve previously written, was an attack on American democracy, that topic simply is not what voters in Pennsylvania and elsewhere care most about amid pressing issues such as inflation and the economy, crime and abortion, and particulars to their states.

The preoccupation with both Jan. 6 and Donald Trump by mainstream media outlets demonstrates they are out of touch with, and don’t care about, everyday Americans or their concerns.

Mitchell’s question about Mastriano and anti-Semitism was likewise more about what the media wants to talk about than what the voters do. I care deeply about the issue of anti-Semitism and have written extensively about it. I have condemned what Mastriano said in going after the Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy, in that he was parroting anti-Semitic tropes about Jews as an elite and indifferent or malicious force. Not to mention his ties to the CEO of Gab, a social media cesspool rife with appalling anti-Semitism. These issues are all the more glaring for Mastriano considering it’s been less than four years since the deadliest attack in American Jewish history, when a gunman killed 11 people at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, and this is a Pennsylvania race.

This is something the press definitely should press, and certainly have pressed, Mastriano about. And absolutely it’s true that giving a politician the chance to attack something their opponent has done is part of political media in general, and in this case, one very specific to their race. If the interview were longer, it wouldn’t even be an issue. But what ends up happening time and again, and happened here, is that in the six minutes of air they spent most of the time on issues that the candidate wanted to promote and with which the journalists are obsessed, and very little on what is actually on the ballot as far as the Pennsylvania electorate is concerned.

However, with all due respect to my fellow Jews, anti-Semitism is not the big picture issue for Pennsylvania voters. It’s not the singular focus. And while obviously MSNBC and Andrea Mitchell have a target national demographic consisting almost entirely of Democrats, as opposed to the general electorate in Pennsylvania, this close to the election it’s glaring on a show that does purport to be real news to go an entire interview without mentioning what is not only one of the top issues in the state, but one on which the candidate being interviewed has specifically been attacked: Crime.

Now, to her credit, Mitchell did bring up inflation, which actually is the top issue for Pennsylvania voters. But rather than challenge the candidate on the issue or any specific part, her question boiled down to, “how do you deal with that?”

Mitchell should’ve provided statistics about the cost of goods in Pennsylvania, about how he would handle gas prices, or asked how it’s plausible the massive spending under President Joe Biden hasn’t made it worse. She didn’t even ask Shapiro whether Biden deserves any blame for the current state of the economy at all.

Whereas location is prime in real estate, in journalism, time is of the essence. With the midterms fast approaching, the time that journalists have with candidates is precious and needs to be used judiciously. Mitchell failed in that regard and demonstrated that left-wing outlets like MSNBC only care about their own bubble, detached from the rest of America.

Watch above via MSNBC.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.