It’s always a good day when a Republican in conversation with a journalist applies rule number one: Never accept their false premises.
Tom Cotton demonstrated exactly how to do this on Sunday when he appeared with Jonathan Karl, the editor-in-chief of ABC News. During a conversation in which Cotton mentioned several of Kamala Harris’ radical political positions, Karl insisted that she no longer supports the abolition of private health insurance. The Arkansas senator had been waiting for this statement.
SEE ALSO: Tom Cotton points out the media’s pampering of Kamala Harris
In this clip, Tom Cotton applies the most essential rule in dealing with the press: never accept their false premises.
Karl insists that Harris has changed her stance on abolishing private health insurance, and Cotton takes him out. pic.twitter.com/Ylq37mDRIw
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) 25 August 2024
COTTON: And President Trump will draw a keen contrast with Kamala Harris, who has championed things like decriminalizing illegal immigration, providing taxpayer-funded health care for illegal immigrants, stripping workplace health insurance for 170 million Americans, banning gas-powered cars and confiscating firearms.
KARL: What do you mean by abolishing health insurance? What are you talking about?
COTTON: When she ran for president, she said she wanted to eliminate private workplace health insurance for 170 million Americans, Jon.
KARL: Yes, I mean, that is not her position now, she has …
COTTON: How do you know that is not your position? How do you know that is not your position?
KARL: I mean, she says she no longer supports Medicare for All.
COTTON: She didn’t say that. She didn’t say that. Maybe anonymous aides said that on Friday night, but the last thing she said…
KARL: This was not a radical convention. I mean, she, she, she, as you heard from Bernie Sanders, does not represent positions on the far left of her party. She is clearly trying to move to the center.
COTTON: I heard what you said to Senator Sanders, and I think it was clear that he was very disappointed that she is making these efforts not to change her positions but to hide them, Jon. The American people are perfectly justified in concluding that Kamala Harris is a perilous liberal from San Francisco, given what she campaigned on in her last presidential bid and what this administration has done over the last four years.
Again, watching the Democratic convention last week, you would have thought that the Democrats were out of office. That they were not in power. That they were campaigning against an incumbent Republican, when in reality she has been part of the failures of the Biden-Harris administration for four years, and when she was campaigning for president in her rite of passage, [sic]she actually promised things like decriminalizing illegal immigration and abolishing health insurance
KARL: That is a position that she has clearly changed, and she said she has changed…
COTTON: No, she didn’t
KARL: Yes, yes, she did.
COTTON: No, Jon, she didn’t say that.
The only thing I can give Karl credit for in this clip is that he remained a complete scribbler until the bitter end of the segment. Other than that, he was taught a lesson by Cotton, who had done his homework and was ready to thwart the press’s attempts to act as a propaganda arm for Harris.
How can a self-proclaimed “journalist” sit there and repeatedly claim that Harris has changed her position on decriminalizing illegal immigration and abolishing private healthcare when she zero interviews And zero press conferences since the beginning of her presidential campaign? She has also not released an official political platform. Since when is a candidate allowed to change his mind about anonymous staff on a Friday night without questions being asked?
It’s embarrassing that members of the press like Karl not only let her get away with this, but also act as PR agents for her under the guise of news. That he then acted as PR agent for the DNC and claimed it wasn’t a radical conference is just as bad. Since when is it his job to defend political gatherings?
However, as I said, Cotton followed rule number one by rejecting the entire premise. This resulted in Karl repeating the same line over and over like a robot, because once you throw a journalist off track, they’re stuck. The press is lethargic. They don’t do real research. They go at it with the arguments they’re given, and when a Republican successfully counters them, they get nervous and frustrated. Cotton kept his frigid, refuted the lies, and made Karl look ridiculous.
