The establishment media often goes to extraordinary lengths to run cover for establishment politicians like Vice President Kamala Harris.
Thus, on rare occasions when it happens in real time, one enjoys seeing instant pushback.
Wednesday on CNN’s “News Night with Abby Phillip,” former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner, CNN contributor Scott Jennings and other members of the six-person panel instantly shot down Phillip’s attempt to gaslight viewers about Vice President Kamala Harris’s record on fracking.
In fact, the panelists’ negative and seemingly unanimous reaction came with such swiftness and volume that it was difficult to tell who yelled, “That’s not true!”
Phillip’s gaslighting comment came in the context of a discussion about who won Tuesday’s presidential debate.
Turner, who twice supported the presidential campaigns of socialist independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, argued that Harris won the debate but that moderators also treated former President Donald Trump more harshly, in part by failing to follow up with questions that would have exposed the vice president’s inconsistent policy statements.
“On the fracking question, to the vice president — and this is me as a liberator — she, in 2019, when she was running [for the Democratic presidential nomination], she said ‘I’m done with fracking. We’re gonna do away with it,’” Turner said in a clip posted to the social media platform X.
“You can’t say you’re gonna do away with it. They had her dead to right on that. What you can say, as a candidate, that ‘I’m not in 2019. I’m not in 2020, and you know what? I changed my mind,’” the former state senator added.
That prompted Phillip to come to Harris’s aid.
Will Kamala Harris lose?
“She reversed herself in 2020,” the host said.
All at once, a cacophony of voices objected.
“That’s not true!” a male voice replied. “That’s a lie.”
“No, she didn’t, Abby. No way,” Jennings said, shaking his head.
“It’s not true,” Turner added.
The relevant portion of the discussion began around the 1:20 mark of the clip below.
.@ninaturner says more than one thing can be true at the same time: Trump lost the debate but the moderators were also “harsher” on the former president than on Harris. pic.twitter.com/hZbv2k0vsG
— Abby D. Phillip (@abbydphillip) September 12, 2024
Harris, of course, has made a “highly-choreographed” effort to distance herself from her past liberal statements.
Clips of her making those statements, however, have circulated on social media and found their way into political ads.
“There is no question I’m in favor of banning fracking,” Harris said in the campaign ad below.
Bob Casey just endorsed the most liberal nominee in U.S. history. pic.twitter.com/J0V6W7CUlh
— Dave McCormick (@DaveMcCormickPA) July 23, 2024
She made that statement in 2019. But the clip came from a July 2024 campaign ad in support of Dave McCormick, Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania.
Harris, in other words, has largely tried to avoid the fracking question because she knows that the issue looms large in the projected swing state of Pennsylvania, which boasted the 5th-most fracking wells in the nation as of 2020, per WHTM-TV.
Pennsylvania voters, therefore, might want to know where Harris stands on the issue now and why.
True to her establishment instincts, Phillip tried to defend the vice president. We have come to expect that from CNN.
At the same time, however, in recent weeks that network has also shown a willingness to expose Harris’s past radicalism and challenge the vice president’s campaign on its reluctance to engage with the press.
Thus, it was good to see panelists correct the host so quickly. As Turner said, the debate moderators should have pressed Harris on the fracking question, among many others.
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