David Axelrod
While CNN’s panels of partisan analysts and journalists had their thoughts on which Democratic candidates did well in their debate, co-host Chris Cuomo stated it best when he deduced that “the consensus, though, is that this was not the type of night of ambition we expected.” One analyst was so distraught he declared he was “dispirited.” Not what the Democratic National Committee wanted to hear going into the Iowa caucuses.
There have been five Democratic primary debates and nine candidates have already dropped out. But not long after the conclusion of the fifth Democratic debate, CNN analysts saved some of their loudest praise for a candidate that didn’t even make it onto the debate stage. In fact, the candidate didn’t announce his candidacy until last week. The candidate many of them were gushing over was former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick.
Even before the MSNBC Democratic primary debate was finished on Wednesday, CNN was already live with their post-debate analysis. And during a day marked by hours upon hours of televised impeachment hearings, their analysts and commentators discovered that, in many ways, their obsession with impeaching President Trump was hurting their party’s primary process.
One of the biggest takeaways from Thursday’s Democratic presidential debate on ABC, was that the radical left wasn’t shy about telling the public what their plans for guns were. At one point, former Congressman Beto O’Rourke (TX) was raging and promised: “Hell, yes, we're going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.” It was a radical declaration that went under-discussed during CNN’s post-debate analysis and didn’t seem to concern anyone on the panel.
Even though Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren wasn’t on the debate stage Wednesday for night two of CNN’s Democratic primary debates, the network’s journalists still declared her the winner. After the debate finally wrapped up, CNN’s crack team of partisan journalists wasted little time in declaring Warren the stand out candidate.
It appears that the first Democrat presidential candidate debate was brutal for Beto O'Rourke according to CNN's Van Jones. He was joined in this harsh assessment of O'Rourke by CNN's senior political commentator David Axelrod as well as former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe.
While MSNBC was raging about the 2020 Democratic candidates not bashing President Trump enough during Wednesday’s debate, the liberal panel on CNN seemed okay with it. “We saw a range of views on stage tonight in Miami at the Democratic debate, except on the subject of President Trump. On that, the candidates were of one voice and they didn't miss a chance to make to clear who their real opponent is,” host Anderson Cooper stated after coming back from a commercial break.
And the winner of the first half of the first Democratic Party primary debates was...According to most of CNN’s post-debate analysts and commentators, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. Shortly after sharing a highlight reel from the NBC News debate, the CNN analysts began to coalesce around Warren’s performance.
Former Obama chief strategist and White House adviser David Axelrod usually interviews his Democrat friends for his CNN show/podcast The Axe Files. But it wasn't cozy in Saturday night's installment, at least not about 35 minutes into the hour, when Axelrod asked Sen. Elizabeth Warren why she decided to call herself an "American Indian" on professional applications, including a law license. She bumbled through her answers.
The morning after Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (MI) made some vulgar comments about the need to impeach President Trump, ABC’s Good Morning America refused to cover it, but CNN’s New Day offered a welcome contrast as not only as Tlaib’s tirade covered, but it was covered heavily across the show’s three hour duration. Most notably, co-host John Berman repeatedly wondered about what the outrage would be like if a hypothetical freshmen Republican member of Congress had said the same thing during the Obama presidency.
Election Night 2018 was a mixed bag that left both parties walking away feeling happy. Republicans blunted the so-called “blue wave” and captured key governorships while Democrats flipped control of the House. During CNN’s Election Night in America, Tuesday, liberal activist and commentator Van Jones was a whirlwind of emotions as each development unfurled.
During Friday’s edition of HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher, host Bill Maher and his panel each gave a hypothesis as to who authored the anonymous New York Times op-ed allegedly written by a senior member of the Trump administration. After thanking the op-ed author for their “service” and sharing his theory that White House Chief of Staff General John Kelly wrote it, Maher surmised that For Kelly, working for President Trump “has got to be worse than Iraq,” citing the fact that Kelly called his role as Chief of Staff the “worst job he ever had” in Bob Woodward’s upcoming book, a claim that Kelly denies.