Bipartisan: Biden Staffer Gets Clowned By MS NOW Host and Republican

Nicholas Spinnato
April 16th, 2026 7:23 PM

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During Wednesday night’s The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle, panelist Dan Koh, a former Biden staff member and current congressional candidate in Massachusetts, spent the show not answering direct questions and instead positioning himself for social media clips. So much so that Ruhle had to point it out at the end of the show. He also faced pushback from Republican panelist Marc Short about the national debt and congressional spending, something he should have known about as a wannabe representative.

As the panel discussed Iran, Koh made his allotted panelist time of the segment with attacks on Vice President J.D. Vance’s previous comments about President Trump, along with more and more about Vance, even a quick sneak of a “couch” comment.

 

 

It was so off base that, just about seven minutes into the show, Ruhle had to tell him to focus on the actual important matters of the world:

KOH: (...) Now, he's literally standing by while Trump is making genocidal statements about Iran, basically fulfilling what old JD prophesied. He said he'd support a classmate. He did support a classmate who was transitioning. Now he's calling gender transition surgery mutilation -

RUHLE: Yes. But let's focus on Iran.

Later in the show, Koh visited some talking points about cuts to the budgets, as he listed apparent cuts from things like housing and the National Science Foundation. 

After his talking points, Ruhle, once again, had to try and redirect the conversation, but Short had a question for Koh, the wannabe congressman:

SHORT: We’re $39 trillion in debt. Are there any programs people running for congress will actually cut?

Koh tried to ask Short a question back, before Ruhle again directed him, “Hold on, answer his question.”

The congressional candidate shifted to a return on investment of congressional funds, before Short and Koh got into some crosstalk as Koh attempted to interrupt. 

Short kept on going and explained how cuts may be necessary:

There's a lot of programs that sound good, Dan. Then there's a lot of programs you say, “hey, boy, it hurts to take that away from people,” but nobody's actually saying, what are we going to do to actually bring down the deficits? What are we going to actually control debt?

 

 

Finally, at the end of the show, Ruhle had enough of Koh. After she asked about possible reforms to primary elections, Koh talked about religion. She responded:

You don’t answer - I just want to be clear, you don’t answer any of my questions. We're now in like the fourth block of the show. It doesn't matter what I ask you, you answer something else. How do we get you guys paying attention to this? Because I noticed it now, the whole show.

Koh represented the modern Democrat: Talking only about how evil Trump and his allies were, with no sense of reality when it came to issues like the national debt. 

The transcript is below. Click "expand":

MS NOW’s The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle

April 16, 2026

11:06:28 PM Eastern

(...)

DAN KOH: There's a political subtext here, which is how stupid JD Vance looks in all this. Let's play a little game here, which is old JD versus new JD, okay? Old JD claimed that Trump might be America's Hitler. Now, he's literally standing by while Trump is making genocidal statements about Iran, basically fulfilling what old JD prophesied. He said he'd support a classmate. He did support a classmate who was transitioning. Now he's calling gender transition surgery mutilation -

RUHLE: Yes. But let's focus on Iran.

KOH: But, but what I'm saying is, in this whole point, if we're looking at the subtext of what could happen in 2028, jd Vance is looking increasingly impotent, powerless to control Donald Trump. He continuously tries to reinvent himself, and he will once again, no matter how you couch it, he's going to find a way to try to reinvent himself. He's going to continue to look like an idiot in front of American people. And Trump is not helping him in that regard.

(...)

11:12:21 PM Eastern

RUHLE: Well, all right, I do want to share. One expert told The Wall Street Journal the war changed the regime, and not in a good way. We created a reality that is worse than what the Iranians were facing before the war. Whether regime, whether regime change was the goal or not, did it backfire?

KOH: Look, I think there's a lot of concern here to the point of whether Republicans will stick with it. I think Republicans are pretty concerned about the fact that this president has the lowest approval rating in modern history, worse than Joe Biden's was at this time. And I think people need to save their own skin. At the end of the day, this is a president who, presumably, if he doesn't run for a third term, is going to be a lame duck. And at the end of the day, this is a town about power. So, I'm not convinced that Republicans are going to stick with them all the way through here.

RUHLE: Here we are saying -

MARC SHORT: It’s nice of you to be concerned about Republicans' prospects.

[Laughter]

(...)

11:24:52 PM Eastern

RUHLE: And people will forget the tax relief if your life costs a whole lot more and there's no relief felt.

KOH: If you want to talk about the disconnect, there's a huge disconnect with what trump is saying. I'm going to lower prices and make your life easier, foster innovation and what his budget is saying. 

He proposed cutting $11 billion to the housing budget, including the block grants that fund things like domestic violence shelters for women. He's proposing cutting 70 percent of food assistance for breastfeeding mothers as well as children. And he's also proposing cutting 50 percent of the National Science Foundation budget, which fueled the creation of the internet and predicting the weather. He's literally enabling the very things that he claims that he's fighting against. And that's the crazy part about this. This disconnect could not be greater.

RUHLE: Okay, here’s - yes - 

SHORT: We’re $39 trillion in debt. Are there any programs people running for congress will actually cut?

KOH: Do you - do you believe that the - 

RUHLE: Hold on, answer his question.

KOH: I believe that you have to have a return on your investment. And I don't think there is anything that people would doubt about the fact that our investment in the internet and predicting the weather to prevent disasters is a good use of our money. 

Do you disagree?

SHORT: Nobody is proposing anything that actually we're going to cut. We're 39 trillion dollars - 

[CROSSTALK]

KOH: 50 - 50 percent of -

SHORT: - and we're growing more rapidly than ever before. 

KOH: Do you agree with - 

SHORT: There's a lot - everything - There's a lot of programs that sound good, Dan. Then there's a lot of programs you say, “hey, boy, it hurts to take that away from people,” but nobody's actually saying, what are we going to do to actually bring down the deficits? What are we going to actually control debt?

[CROSSTALK:

KOH: I think - 

[CROSSTALK}

SHORT: $39 trillion in debt.

KOH: I think that's a load of crap. When he's giving the biggest tax cuts in the history of the United States to the richest people and allowing people to write off their private jets.

RUHLE: All right. We're going to move on from this. (...)

(...)

11:52:45 PM Eastern

NAYYERA HAQ: And this is where I love mentioning the fact that the majority of American voters are not MAGA, they're not lefty. They are not part of any political party. They will not show up for a primary, but they'll show up for a general election. And this is the type of rhetoric when we speak so far to the extremes. No one is speaking to that vast majority of Americans who still have some kind of faith.

RUHLE: Then is there a strategic plan among either either parties, I mentioned it kind of tongue in cheek before, but seriously, to get more people to vote in primaries because that's why we're here.

KOH: Well, look, I think people see their religion as incredibly personal.

RUHLE: You don’t answer - I just want to be clear, you don’t answer any of my questions. We're now in like the fourth block of the show. It doesn't matter what I ask you, you answer something else. How do we get you guys paying attention to this? Because I noticed it now, the whole show.

[Laughter]

KOH: How do we get people more involved in primaries?

RUHLE: Like, I just feel like we keep coming to things and the answer is, how do we end up here? It's primaries and now you're just dead. Nobody shows up in the primaries. They're unhappy with how our government works. That's how you solve it boys and girls, show up every time.

KOH: I was answering your question then -

RUHLE: No he wasn’t

(...)

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