On Friday's MTP Daily on MSNBC, host Chuck Todd offered a pompous commentary on how he was refusing to show what he thought was the worst of President Trump's Thursday night rally in Minneapolis. Todd made it sound like it was beyond the pale to criticize Rep. Ilhan Omar, or Hunter Biden.
MSNBC tweeted the video out on the Meet the Press account, and Andrew Klavan tweeted over it "I for one feel so safe now that@chucktodd is protecting me from hearing the news."
CHUCK TODD: Tonight in "2020 Vision," President Trump held a campaign rally in Minnesota last night. There are parts of it we can't show you or rather there are parts of it we're not going to show you. The president's red meat vitriol wasn't new, neither was his use of profanity or his railing against the media or his attacks on Congresswoman Ilhan Omar or his anger at the "insane impeachment witch hunt."
None of that should go unremarked because the idea that the president of the United States is doing all of those things on a regular basis is actually quite remarkable. We're just not shocked any more. The fact that we now expect the president to act that way when he is in front of a crowd of his supporters is also remarkable, not unremarkable.
Trump called Omar an "America-hating socialist" with "a history of launching virulent anti-semitic screeds," which he then quoted. NBC clearly doesn't want that...and certainly not Trump hailing the local Twin Cities blogger Scott Johnson of Power Line, who is one of the few to investigate Omar's bizarre marriages (and her new divorce). Then came the Hunter Biden portion. To hear Chuck tell it, Hunter Biden is as distant from the policy sphere as a Tiffany Trump or a Malia Obama:
TODD: But what is even more remarkable about what happened at last night's Trump rally, the president went further than he's ever gone before. So we're going further -- we are going further than we've ever gone before to say we aren't going to play the sound. We aren't going to repeat the president's vicious attacks on Hunter Biden.
The president of the United States stood in front of a crowd of supporters and character-assassinated a man, whatever you might think of his decisions. He is not a public figure, he isn't running for office, and he's not a campaign surrogate. He's not even on the campaign trail and isn't in any way asking for this attention, obviously.
Look, we are going to tell you that the president's attack on Hunter Biden is remarkable and it's newsworthy, but we can't in good conscience amplify those attacks. We won't. We will simply tell you that it happened and it seemed to cross a line, another line. Politics ain't being bad, but it isn't supposed to be this either.
We all need to play a role and not rewarding this kind of politics, not just the press. This is the job of anyone who has sworn an oath to defend the Constitution.
This lecture looked even stranger after the next segment. Todd decided to show this undignified snippet from the Trump rally: "He was never considered a good senator. He was only a good Vice President because he understood how to kiss Barack Obama's ass." Todd then said Biden looked "swampified" by Trump's attacks. When his NBC colleague Carol Lee suggested Biden was not rich by Washington standards, Todd admitted "Look, his brother and son clearly traded on his name." Lee replied "Absolutely, and so the president is trying to taint him in that way."
By Sunday, Todd was announcing that the Biden campaign insisted that Biden's family would now reject all these international business deals they've been doing. So why was it not worth airing before that?
A look at Trump's rally when he mocked Hunter Biden as a "loser" also included mockery of NBC and "Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd," so you can see where Mr. Thin Skin didn't want to show it. This video ends right before the butt-kiss wisecrack:
