The story is not simply that NBC News’ chief foreign affairs correspondent is so often wrong about so many things. The story is that she always seems to favor Democrats.
NBC’s Andrea Mitchell marveled this week that anyone would use the word “socialist” to refer to the freshmen Democratic women, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley.
“First of all, none of these members of Congress are socialists,” Mitchell said during a discussion regarding House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s defense of President Trump’s rally this week in North Carolina, “but that is the way the Republican leadership wants to frame this election. They don’t have a Democrat to run against, they’re not running against Bernie Sanders per se yet.”
McCarthy said specifically of the Trump rally and the supporters who chanted “Send her back!” in reference to Omar that the president is fighting “a battle over a socialist issue and the socialist Democrats, that’s one that he’s taken up even in the State of the Union, he promised that this country will never have socialism here.”
Mitchell added, “There’s not a single member of these congressional representatives who are avowed socialists. We don’t know where that’s coming from other than opposition research.”
Mitchell’s unique combination of ignorance and confidence here requires explanation. It could be that she does not research anything before discussing it on-air. It also could be that she simply assumes Republicans are always wrong.
As it turns out, both Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib are members of a group called the Democratic Socialists of America, which claims to be the “largest socialist organization in the United States.” Ocasio-Cortez herself once said in an interview, “Call me a socialist. I don’t give a damn.” Further, as the Washington Free Beacon notes, an Omar staffer told a DSA representative in 2018 that “[Omar] is proud to call herself a democratic socialist, she’s very excited about this. So I hope you guys endorse us, too.”
Mitchell could be forgiven for being just ignorant. But her ignorance is so often partisan, it deserves greater attention and criticism.
In May 2016, for example, Mitchell said that the allegations of sexual misconduct that have dogged Bill Clinton since even before he took the White House have all been “discredited,” including former Arkansas nursing home administrator Juanita Broaddrick’s claim that the former president raped her in 1978. Mitchell’s assertion came as news to everyone who is familiar with the allegations leveled against Clinton, including Broaddrick herself.
Later, in January 2018, Mitchell bungled basically every detail concerning an outburst that occurred during Vice President Mike Pence’s address before the Knesset, Israel’s governing body, claiming incorrectly that the Israeli government had subjected the Israeli-Arab members of its parliament to discriminatory behavior.
Then in November 2018, Mitchell claimed that the woman at the center of the 2018 Florida Senate and gubernatorial recount circuses, former Broward elections supervisor Brenda Snipes, is a registered Republican. Snipes is a Democrat. She is listed as a Democrat, and she was elected to office as a Democrat. Snipes has always been a Democrat.
There is more, including Mitchell’s defense for Omar’s anti-Semitic outbursts, Mitchell’s rote recitation of Democratic talking points, and Mitchell’s numerous subservient interviews with left-wing luminaries.
The law of averages states that at least one of Mitchell’s multitude of errors would favor Republicans. Maybe you, dear reader, could find me some counterexamples. I’ve never seen them.
Democrats appear to be the sole beneficiaries of her dependably sloppy reporting.
