Colby Hall Criticizes Tim Walz’s JD Vance Couch Joke — But Ridicules Pro-Trump ‘Pearl Clutching’

During a conversation on NewsNation on Thursday, Mediaite’s Colby Hall pointed the finger at both presidential campaigns for tossing insults rather than substance.

Hall told NewsNation anchor Anna Kooiman that it seemed like neither former President Donald Trump’s nor Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign was planning to hold back on the trash talk, especially since there was only 90 days left until Election Day. He said: “I think part of it is that they just want to rally their base” while portraying “their opponent in the most negative light possible.” But even so, voters were likely “tired of this.”

Kooiman tried to dig deeper into why either campaign would lean on negativity:

Kooiman: [I]t’s red meat or candy for the base very often. So, who do you think’s more to blame? Is it cable news? Is it social media? What is it?

Hall: I think it’s the human condition. It’s a judge not lest ye be judged. I think social media, and to a lesser extent cable news, have created sort of an environment that acts as a catalyst. It’s like tinder, right? Like sort of makes the flame burn brighter. But, it’s interesting that both sides will throw red meat and trash talk and insult the other. And then the moment that someone says, for example, that Tim Walz couch joke, that was arguably inappropriate for a vice presidential candidate to make that comment. But the pearl-clutching from sort of Trump surrogates over that, when their candidate’s sort of like, is the king of the insult comedy routine. So, the finger-pointing at one another and blaming one another for the decay of the discourse is a little rich, like everyone is guilty here. And, you know, the body politic as voters are less informed as a result.

Watch the video above via NewsNation.