When even the guy who said Sen. Mitt Romney would put black people “back in chains” thinks you have gone too far, you have gone too far.
NBC News’s Chuck Todd this weekend asked former Vice President Joe Biden whether President Trump has “blood on his hands” for the federal government’s sluggish response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Biden, who did not take the bait, balked, saying he thought the characterization was unfair to the president.
“Your campaign put out, in a critique of President Trump,” Todd said during Biden’s appearance this weekend on Meet the Press, “and says, ‘If he doesn’t do these things, you know, he could cost lives.’”
The NBC host added, “Do you think there’s already — do you think there is blood on the president’s hands considering the slow response? Or is that too harsh of a criticism?”
Biden responded, “I think that’s a little too harsh.”
The former vice president and 2020 Democratic candidate added: “I think what’s happening is the failure to, as I watched … your show where someone said that, made the phrase, used the phrase that the president just thinks out loud. He should stop thinking out loud and start thinking deeply.”
This is not to say Biden did not have criticism for Trump, whom the former vice president plans to face off against in the 2020 presidential election. Biden had plenty of criticism. But even the 2020 Democratic candidate’s inherently partisan criticisms seem evenhanded and reasonable compared with Todd’s cheap and ugly line of questioning, which is about as embarrassing a thing as one can imagine for the Meet the Press host.
And aside from an obviously partisan question from Todd is the fact that it served no real journalistic purpose. Remember, Meet the Press is supposed to be a hard-hitting news program. This is not one of those CNN Democratic town hall events. It is the sort of show that other journalists discuss in hushed, reverential tones.
But Todd’s stupid “blood on his hands” question served no public interest. Indeed, the only person Todd’s question served was Biden, and even Biden wanted no part of it.
What does it say about the current state of the corporate media when the host of one of the biggest and most famous news programs comes across as more partisan and demagogic than even a presidential candidate?
Nothing good, I suspect.
